Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
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| bangs and the bare brown boyish legs, his music lesson. One groping foot—for the lesson would n’t come—dangled within reach of the ugliest grizzly’s head a distorted fancy could conceive of. I know it, for I stumble over it regularly when I come there, until I have got it charted for that particular trip. The skin to which it is attached is one Mr. Roosevelt sets great store by. It is a memento of the most thrilling moment of his life, when he was hunting alone in the foothills of the Rockies. He had made his camp “by the side of a small, noisy brook with crystal water,” and had strolled off with his rifle to see if he could pick up a grouse for supper, when he came upon the grizzly and wounded it. It took refuge in a laurel thicket, where Roosevelt laid siege to it. While he was cautiously skirting the edge, peering in, in the gathering dusk, the bear suddenly came out on the hillside: “Scarlet strings of froth hung from his lips; his eyes burned like embers in the gloom.” |
| Roosevelt fired, and the bullet shattered the point of the grizzly’s heart. “Instantly the great bear turned with a harsh roar of fury and challenge, blowing the bloody foam from |