Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
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| be proud of, and I—well, we had looked at the rifle together the night before. Really, it is no use for me to try, either. |
| But about the score; that was shooting at a target. Hitting a running animal is a different story, as I know to my sorrow. Though Mr. Roosevelt is near-sighted and wears glasses, and though his hand, he says himself, is none too steady, yet he has acquired a very formidable reputation as a hunter, and this, he adds with characteristic touch, because he has “hunted very perseveringly, and by much practice has learned to shoot about as well at a wild animal as at a target.” It is the story of everything he undertook: his opportunities were in nothing unusually great, except in his marvelous mastery over his own mind, his rare faculty of concentration; sometimes he was at a clear disadvantage, as in the matter of physical strength and promise at the outset; yet he won by sheer perseverance. He has killed in his day every kind of large game to be found on the North American continent. |
| The “horse and the gun” were having their day. And while he hunted, with the instinct of the naturalist, who lets nothing escape that |