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Title: Letters to His Children

Author: Theodore Roosevelt

Release Date: September, 2004 [EBook #6467]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on December 17, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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LETTERS TO HIS CHILDREN
By Theodore Roosevelt

First published 1919.


                         THEODORE ROOSEVELT'S

                       LETTERS TO HIS CHILDREN



                              Edited by

                        Joseph Bucklin Bishop



                             INTRODUCTION

Most of the letters in this volume were written by Theodore Roosevelt
to his children during a period of more than twenty years. A few
others are included that he wrote to friends or relatives about the
children. He began to write to them in their early childhood, and
continued to do so regularly till they reached maturity. Whenever he
was separated from them, in the Spanish War, or on a hunting trip, or
because they were at school, he sent them these messages of constant
thought and love, for they were never for a moment out of his mind and
heart. Long before they were able to read he sent them what they
called "picture letters," with crude drawings of his own in
illustration of the written text, drawings precisely adapted to the
childish imagination and intelligence. That the little recipients
cherished these delightful missives is shown by the tender care with
which they preserved them from destruction. They are in good condition
after many years of loving usage. A few of them are reproduced in
these pages--written at different periods as each new child appeared
in the household.

These early letters are marked by the same quality that distinguishes
all his letters to his children. From the youngest to the eldest, he
wrote to them always as his equals. As they advanced in life the
mental level of intercourse was raised as they grew in intelligence
and knowledge, but it was always as equals that he addressed them. He
was always their playmate and boon companion, whether they were
toddling infants taking their first faltering steps, or growing
schoolboys, or youths standing at the threshold of life. Their games
were his games, their joys those of his own heart. He was ready to
romp with them in the old barn at Sagamore Hill, play "tickley" at
bedtime, join in their pillow fights, or play hide-and-seek with them,
either at Sagamore Hill or in the White House. He was the same chosen
and joyous companion always and everywhere. Occasionally he was
disturbed for a moment about possible injury to his Presidential
dignity. Describing a romp in the old barn at Sagamore Hill in the
summer of 1903, he said in one of his letters that under the
insistence of the children he had joined in it because: "I had not the
heart to refuse, but really it seems, to put it mildly, rather odd for
a stout, elderly President to be bouncing over hayricks in a wild
effort to get to goal before an active midget of a competitor, aged
nine years. However, it was really great fun."

It was because he at heart regarded it as "great fun" and was in
complete accord with the children that they delighted in him as a
playmate. In the same spirit, in January, 1905, he took a squad of
nine boys, including three of his own, on what they called a
"scramble" through Rock Creek Park, in Washington, which meant
traversing the most difficult places in it. The boys had permission to
make the trip alone, but they insisted upon his company. "I am really
touched," he wrote afterward to the parents of two of the visiting
boys, "at the way in which your children as well as my own treat me as
a friend and playmate. It has its comic side. They were all bent upon
having me take them; they obviously felt that my presence was needed
to give zest to the entertainment. I do not think that one of them saw
anything incongruous in the President's getting as bedaubed with mud
as they got, or in my wiggling and clambering around jutting rocks,
through cracks, and up what were really small cliff faces, just like
the rest of them; and whenever any one of them beat me at any point,
he felt and expressed simple and whole-hearted delight, exactly as if
it had been a triumph over a rival of his own age."

When the time came that he was no longer the children's chosen
playmate, he recognized the fact with a twinge of sadness. Writing in
January, 1905, to his daughter Ethel, who was at Sagamore Hill at the
time, he said of a party of boys that Quentin had at the White House:
"They played hard, and it made me realize how old I had grown and how
very busy I had been the last few years to find that they had grown so
that I was not needed in the play. Do you recollect how we all of us
used to play hide and go seek in the White House, and have obstacle
races down the hall when you brought in your friends?"

Deep and abiding love of children, of family and home, that was the
dominating passion of his life. With that went love for friends and
fellow men, and for all living things, birds, animals, trees, flowers,
and nature in all its moods and aspects. But love of children and
family and home was above all. The children always had an old-
fashioned Christmas in the White House. In several letters in these
pages, descriptions of these festivals will be found. In closing one
of them the eternal child's heart in the man cries out: "I wonder
whether there ever can come in life a thrill of greater exaltation and
rapture than that which comes to one between the ages of say six and
fourteen, when the library door is thrown open and you walk in to see
all the gifts, like a materialized fairy land, arrayed on your special
table?"

His love for the home he had built and in which his beloved children
had been born, was not even dimmed by his life in the White House.
"After all," he wrote to Ethel in June, 1906, "fond as I am of the
White House and much though I have appreciated these years in it,
there isn't any place in the world like home--like Sagamore Hill where
things are our own, with their own associations, and where it is real
country."

Through all his letters runs his inexhaustible vein of delicious
humor. All the quaint sayings of Quentin, that quaintest of small
boys; all the antics of the household cats and dogs; all the comic
aspects of the guinea-pigs and others of the large menagerie of pets
that the children were always collecting; all the tricks and feats of
the saddle-horses--these, together with every item of household news
that would amuse and cheer and keep alive the love of home in the
heart of the absent boys, was set forth in letters which in gayety of
spirit and charm of manner have few equals in literature and no
superiors. No matter how great the pressure of public duties, or how
severe the strain that the trials and burdens of office placed upon
the nerves and spirits of the President of a great nation, this
devoted father and whole-hearted companion found time to send every
week a long letter of this delightful character to each of his absent
children.

As the boys advanced toward manhood the letters, still on the basis of
equality, contain much wise suggestion and occasional admonition, the
latter always administered in a loving spirit accompanied by apology
for writing in a "preaching" vein. The playmate of childhood became
the sympathetic and keenly interested companion in all athletic
contests, in the reading of books and the consideration of authors,
and in the discussion of politics and public affairs. Many of these
letters, notably those on the relative merits of civil and military
careers, and the proper proportions of sport and study, are valuable
guides for youth in all ranks of life. The strong, vigorous, exalted
character of the writer stands revealed in these as in all the other
letters, as well as the cheerful soul of the man which remained
throughout his life as pure and gentle as the soul of a child. Only a
short time before he died, he said to me, as we were going over the
letters and planning this volume, which is arranged as he wished it to
be: "I would rather have this book published than anything that has
ever been written about me."





                             THE LETTERS



                          IN THE SPANISH WAR

At the outbreak of the war with Spain in the spring of 1898 Theodore
Roosevelt, who was then Assistant Secretary of the Navy, in
association with Leonard Wood, organized the Regiment of Rough Riders
and went into camp with them at Tampa, Florida. Later he went with his
regiment to Cuba.


Camp at Tampa, May 6th, '98.

BLESSED BUNNIES,

It has been a real holiday to have darling mother here. Yesterday I
brought her out to the camp, and she saw it all--the men drilling, the
tents in long company streets, the horses being taken to water, my
little horse Texas, the colonel and the majors, and finally the
mountain lion and the jolly little dog Cuba, who had several fights
while she looked on. The mountain lion is not much more than a kitten
as yet, but it is very cross and treacherous.

I was very much interested in Kermit's and Ethel's letters to-day.

We were all, horses and men, four days and four nights on the cars
coming here from San Antonio, and were very tired and very dirty when
we arrived. I was up almost all of each night, for it happened always
to be at night when we took the horses out of the cars to feed and
water them.

Mother stays at a big hotel about a mile from camp. There are nearly
thirty thousand troops here now, besides the sailors from the war-
ships in the bay. At night the corridors and piazzas are thronged with
officers of the army and navy; the older ones fought in the great
Civil War, a third of a century ago, and now they are all going to
Cuba to war against the Spaniards. Most of them are in blue, but our
rough-riders are in brown. Our camp is on a great flat, on sandy soil
without a tree, though round about are pines and palmettos. It is very
hot, indeed, but there are no mosquitoes. Marshall is very well, and
he takes care of my things and of the two horses. A general was out to
inspect us when we were drilling to-day.


Off Santiago, 1898.

DARLING ETHEL:

We are near shore now and everything is in a bustle, for we may have
to disembark to-night, and I do not know when I shall have another
chance to write to my three blessed children, whose little notes
please me so. This is only a line to tell you all how much father
loves you. The Pawnee Indian drew you the picture of the little dog,
which runs everywhere round the ship, and now and then howls a little
when the band plays.


Near Santiago, May 20, 1898.

DARLING ETHEL:

I loved your little letter. Here there are lots of funny little
lizards that run about in the dusty roads very fast, and then stand
still with their heads up. Beautiful red cardinal birds and tanagers
flit about in the woods, and the flowers are lovely. But you never saw
such dust. Sometimes I lie on the ground outside and sometimes in the
tent. I have a mosquito net because there are so many mosquitoes.


Camp near Santiago, July 15, 1898.

DARLING ETHEL:

When it rains here--and it's very apt to rain here every day--it comes
down just as if it was a torrent of water. The other night I hung up
my hammock in my tent and in the middle of the night there was a
terrific storm, and my tent and hammock came down with a run. The
water was running over the ground in a sheet, and the mud was knee-
deep; so I was a drenched and muddy object when I got to a neighboring
tent, where I was given a blanket, in which I rolled up and went to
sleep.

There is a funny little lizard that comes into my tent and is quite
tame now; he jumps about like a little frog and puffs his throat out.
There are ground-doves no bigger than big sparrows, and cuckoos almost
as large as crows.



                     YOUTHFUL BIBLE COMMENTATORS

(To Miss Emily T. Carow)

Oyster Bay, Dec. 8, 1900.

The other day I listened to a most amusing dialogue at the Bible
lesson between Kermit and Ethel. The subject was Joseph, and just
before reading it they had been reading Quentin's book containing the
adventures of the Gollywogs. Joseph's conduct in repeating his dream
to his brothers, whom it was certain to irritate, had struck both of
the children unfavorably, as conflicting both with the laws of common-
sense and with the advice given them by their parents as to the proper
method of dealing with their own brothers and sisters. Kermit said:
"Well, I think that was very foolish of Joseph." Ethel chimed in with
"So do I, very foolish, and I do not understand how he could have done
it." Then, after a pause, Kermit added thoughtfully by way of
explanation: "Well, I guess he was simple, like Jane in the
Gollywogs": and Ethel nodded gravely in confirmation.

It is very cunning to see Kermit and Archie go to the Cove school
together. They also come down and chop with me, Archie being armed
with a hatchet blunt enough to be suitable for his six years. He is a
most industrious small chopper, and the other day gnawed down, or as
the children call it, "beavered" down, a misshapen tulip tree, which
was about fifty feet high.



                      FINE NAMES FOR GUINEA PIGS

(To E. S. Martin)

Oyster Bay, Nov. 22, 1900.

Mrs. Roosevelt and I were more touched than I can well say at your
sending us your book with its characteristic insertion and above all
with the little extract from your boy's note about Ted. In what Form
is your boy? As you have laid yourself open, I shall tell you that Ted
sings in the choir and is captain of his dormitory football team. He
was awfully homesick at first, but now he has won his place in his own
little world and he is all right. In his last letter to his mother in
response to a question about his clothes he answered that they were in
good condition, excepting "that one pair of pants was split up the
middle and one jacket had lost a sleeve in a scuffle, and in another
pair of pants he had sat down in a jam pie at a cellar spread." We
have both missed him greatly in spite of the fact that we have five
remaining. Did I ever tell you about my second small boy's names for
his Guinea pigs? They included Bishop Doane; Dr. Johnson, my Dutch
Reformed pastor; Father G. Grady, the local priest with whom the
children had scraped a speaking acquaintance; Fighting Bob Evans, and
Admiral Dewey. Some of my Republican supporters in West Virginia have
just sent me a small bear which the children of their own accord
christened Jonathan Edwards, partly out of compliment to their
mother's ancestor, and partly because they thought they detected
Calvinistic traits in the bear's character.



                        A COUGAR AND LYNX HUNT

Keystone Ranch, Colo., Jan. 14th, 1901.

BLESSED TED,

From the railroad we drove fifty miles to the little frontier town of
Meeker. There we were met by the hunter Goff, a fine, quiet, hardy
fellow, who knows his business thoroughly. Next morning we started on
horseback, while our luggage went by wagon to Goff's ranch. We started
soon after sunrise, and made our way, hunting as we went, across the
high, exceedingly rugged hills, until sunset. We were hunting cougar
and lynx or, as they are called out here, "lion" and "cat." The first
cat we put up gave the dogs a two hours' chase, and got away among
some high cliffs. In the afternoon we put up another, and had a very
good hour's run, the dogs baying until the glens rang again to the
echoes, as they worked hither and thither through the ravines. We
walked our ponies up and down steep, rock-strewn, and tree-clad
slopes, where it did not seem possible a horse could climb, and on the
level places we got one or two smart gallops. At last the lynx went up
a tree. Then I saw a really funny sight. Seven hounds had been doing
the trailing, while a large brindled bloodhound and two half-breeds
between collie and bull stayed behind Goff, running so close to his
horse's heels that they continually bumped into them, which he
accepted with philosophic composure. Then the dogs proceeded literally
to /climb the tree/, which was a many-forked pinon; one of the half-
breeds, named Tony, got up certainly sixteen feet, until the lynx,
which looked like a huge and exceedingly malevolent pussy-cat, made
vicious dabs at him. I shot the lynx low, so as not to hurt his skin.

Yesterday we were in the saddle for ten hours. The dogs ran one lynx
down and killed it among the rocks after a vigorous scuffle. It was in
a hole and only two of them could get at it.

This morning, soon after starting out, we struck the cold trail of a
mountain lion. The hounds puzzled about for nearly two hours, going up
and down the great gorges, until we sometimes absolutely lost even the
sound of the baying. Then they struck the fresh trail, where the
cougar had killed a deer over night. In half an hour a clamorous
yelling told us they had overtaken the quarry; for we had been riding
up the slopes and along the crests, wherever it was possible for the
horses to get footing. As we plunged and scrambled down towards the
noise, one of my companions, Phil Stewart, stopped us while he took a
kodak of a rabbit which sat unconcernedly right beside our path. Soon
we saw the lion in a treetop, with two of the dogs so high up among
the branches that he was striking at them. He was more afraid of us
than of the dogs, and as soon as he saw us he took a great flying leap
and was off, the pack close behind. In a few hundred yards they had
him up another tree. Here I could have shot him (Tony climbed almost
up to him, and then fell twenty feet out of the tree), but waited for
Stewart to get a photo; and he jumped again. This time, after a couple
of hundred yards, the dogs caught him, and a great fight followed.
They could have killed him by themselves, but he bit or clawed four of
them, and for fear he might kill one I ran in and stabbed him behind
the shoulder, thrusting the knife you loaned me right into his heart.
I have always wished to kill a cougar as I did this one, with dogs and
the knife.



                        DOGS THAT CLIMB TREES

Keystone Ranch, Jan. 18, 1901.

DARLING LITTLE ETHEL:

I have had great fun. Most of the trip neither you nor Mother nor
Sister would enjoy; but you would all of you be immensely amused with
the dogs. There are eleven all told, but really only eight do very
much hunting. These eight are all scarred with the wounds they have
received this very week in battling with the cougars and lynxes, and
they are always threatening to fight one another; but they are as
affectionate toward men (and especially toward me, as I pet them) as
our own home dogs. At this moment a large hound and a small half-breed
bull-dog, both of whom were quite badly wounded this morning by a
cougar, are shoving their noses into my lap to be petted, and humming
defiance to one another. They are on excellent terms with the ranch
cat and kittens. The three chief fighting dogs, who do not follow the
trail, are the most affectionate of all, and, moreover, they climb
trees! Yesterday we got a big lynx in the top of a pinon tree--a low,
spreading kind of pine--about thirty feet tall. Turk, the bloodhound,
followed him up, and after much sprawling actually got to the very
top, within a couple of feet of him. Then, when the lynx was shot out
of the tree, Turk, after a short scramble, took a header down through
the branches, landing with a bounce on his back. Tony, one of the
half-breed bull-dogs, takes such headers on an average at least once
for every animal we put up a tree. We have nice little horses which
climb the most extraordinary places you can imagine. Get Mother to
show you some of Gustave Dore's trees; the trees on these mountains
look just like them.



                         THE PIG NAMED MAUDE

Keystone Ranch, Jan. 29, 1901

DARLING LITTLE ETHEL:

You would be much amused with the animals round the ranch. The most
thoroughly independent and self-possessed of them is a large white pig
which we have christened Maude. She goes everywhere at her own will;
she picks up scraps from the dogs, who bay dismally at her, but know
they have no right to kill her; and then she eats the green alfalfa
hay from the two milch cows who live in the big corral with the
horses. One of the dogs has just had a litter of puppies; you would
love them, with their little wrinkled noses and squeaky voices.



                           ADVICE AND NEWS

Oyster Bay, May 7th, 1901

BLESSED TED:

It was the greatest fun seeing you, and I really had a satisfactory
time with you, and came away feeling that you were doing well. I am
entirely satisfied with your standing, both in your studies and in
athletics. I want you to do well in your sports, and I want even more
to have you do well with your books; but I do not expect you to stand
first in either, if so to stand could cause you overwork and hurt your
health. I always believe in going hard at everything, whether it is
Latin or mathematics, boxing or football, but at the same time I want
to keep the sense of proportion. It is never worth while to absolutely
exhaust one's self or to take big chances unless for an adequate
object. I want you to keep in training the faculties which would make
you, if the need arose, able to put your last ounce of pluck and
strength into a contest. But I do not want you to squander these
qualities. To have you play football as well as you do, and make a
good name in boxing and wrestling, and be cox of your second crew, and
stand second or third in your class in the studies, is all right. I
should be rather sorry to see you drop too near the middle of your
class, because, as you cannot enter college until you are nineteen,
and will therefore be a year later in entering life, I want you to be
prepared in the best possible way, so as to make up for the delay. But
I know that all you can do you will do to keep substantially the
position in the class that you have so far kept, and I have entire
trust in you, for you have always deserved it.

The weather has been lovely here. The cherry trees are in full bloom,
the peach trees just opening, while the apples will not be out for ten
days. The May flowers and bloodroot have gone, the anemonies and
bellwort have come and the violets are coming. All the birds are here,
pretty much, and the warblers troop through the woods.

To my delight, yesterday Kermit, when I tried him on Diamond, did
excellently. He has evidently turned the corner in his riding, and was
just as much at home as possible, although he was on my saddle with
his feet thrust in the leathers above the stirrup. Poor mother has had
a hard time with Yagenka, for she rubbed her back, and as she sadly
needs exercise and I could not have a saddle put upon her, I took her
out bareback yesterday. Her gaits are so easy that it is really more
comfortable to ride her without a saddle than to ride Texas with one,
and I gave her three miles sharp cantering and trotting.

Dewey Jr. is a very cunning white guinea pig. I wish you could see
Kermit taking out Dewey Sr. and Bob Evans to spend the day on the
grass. Archie is the sweetest little fellow imaginable. He is always
thinking of you. He has now struck up a great friendship with
Nicholas, rather to Mame's (the nurse's) regret, as Mame would like to
keep him purely for Quentin. The last-named small boisterous person
was in fearful disgrace this morning, having flung a block at his
mother's head. It was done in sheer playfulness, but of course could
not be passed over lightly, and after the enormity of the crime had
been brought fully home to him, he fled with howls of anguish to me
and lay in an abandon of yellow-headed grief in my arms. Ethel is
earning money for the purchase of the Art Magazine by industriously
hoeing up the weeds in the walk. Alice is going to ride Yagenka
bareback this afternoon, while I try to teach Ethel on Diamond, after
Kermit has had his ride.

Yesterday at dinner we were talking of how badly poor Mrs. Blank
looked, and Kermit suddenly observed in an aside to Ethel, entirely
unconscious that we were listening: "Oh, Effel, I'll tell you what
Mrs. Blank looks like: Like Davis' hen dat died--you know, de one dat
couldn't hop up on de perch." Naturally, this is purely a private
anecdote.



                          ARCHIE AND QUENTIN

Oyster Bay, May 7, 1901.

BLESSED TED:

Recently I have gone in to play with Archie and Quentin after they
have gone to bed, and they have grown to expect me, jumping up, very
soft and warm in their tommies, expecting me to roll them over on the
bed and tickle and "grabble" in them. However, it has proved rather
too exciting, and an edict has gone forth that hereafter I must play
bear with them before supper, and give up the play when they have gone
to bed. To-day was Archie's birthday, and Quentin resented Archie's
having presents while he (Quentin) had none. With the appalling
frankness of three years old, he remarked with great sincerity that
"it made him miserable," and when taken to task for his lack of
altruistic spirit he expressed an obviously perfunctory repentance and
said: "Well, boys must lend boys things, at any rate!"



                       INCIDENTS OF HOME-COMING

Oyster Bay, May 31st, 1901.

BLESSED TED:

I enclose some Filipino Revolutionary postage stamps. Maybe some of
the boys would like them.

Have you made up your mind whether you would like to try shooting the
third week in August or the last week in July, or would you rather
wait until you come back when I can find out something more definite
from Mr. Post?

We very much wished for you while we were at the (Buffalo) Exposition.
By night it was especially beautiful. Alice and I also wished that you
could have been with us when we were out riding at Geneseo. Major
Wadsworth put me on a splendid big horse called Triton, and sister on
a thoroughbred mare. They would jump anything. It was sister's first
experience, but she did splendidly and rode at any fence at which I
would first put Triton. I did not try anything very high, but still
some of the posts and rails were about four feet high, and it was
enough to test sister's seat. Of course, all we had to do was to stick
on as the horses jumped perfectly and enjoyed it quite as much as we
did. The first four or five fences that I went over I should be
ashamed to say how far I bounced out of the saddle, but after a while
I began to get into my seat again. It has been a good many years since
I have jumped a fence.

Mother stopped off at Albany while sister went on to Boston, and I
came on here alone Tuesday afternoon. St. Gaudens, the sculptor, and
Dunne (Mr. Dooley) were on the train and took lunch with us. It was
great fun meeting them and I liked them both. Kermit met me in high
feather, although I did not reach the house until ten o'clock, and he
sat by me and we exchanged anecdotes while I took my supper. Ethel had
put an alarm clock under her head so as to be sure and wake up, but
although it went off she continued to slumber profoundly, as did
Quentin. Archie waked up sufficiently to tell me that he had found
another turtle just as small as the already existing treasure of the
same kind. This morning Quentin and Black Jack have neither of them
been willing to leave me for any length of time. Black Jack simply
lies curled up in a chair, but as Quentin is most conversational, he
has added an element of harassing difficulty to my effort to answer my
accumulated correspondence.

Archie announced that he had seen "the Baltimore orioles catching
fish!" This seemed to warrant investigation; but it turned out he
meant barn swallows skimming the water.



The President not only sent "picture letters" to his own children, but
an especial one to Miss Sarah Schuyler Butler, daughter of Dr.
Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University, who had
written to him a little note of congratulation on his first birthday
in the White House.


White House, Nov. 3d, 1901.

DEAR LITTLE MISS SARAH,

I liked your birthday note /very/ much; and my children say I should
draw you two pictures in return.

We have a large blue macaw--Quentin calls him a polly-parrot--who
lives in the greenhouse, and is very friendly, but makes queer noises.
He eats bread, potatoes, and coffee grains.

The children have a very cunning pony. He is a little pet, like a dog,
but he plays tricks on them when they ride him.

He bucked Ethel over his head the other day.

Your father will tell you that these are pictures of the UNPOLISHED
STONE PERIOD.

Give my love to your mother.

Your father's friend,

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.



                   UNCLE REMUS AND WHITE HOUSE PETS

(To Joel Chandler Harris)

White House, June 9, 1902.

MY DEAR MR. HARRIS:

Your letter was a great relief to Kermit, who always becomes
personally interested in his favorite author, and who has been much
worried by your sickness. He would be more than delighted with a copy
of "Daddy Jake." Alice has it already, but Kermit eagerly wishes it.

Last night Mrs. Roosevelt and I were sitting out on the porch at the
back of the White House, and were talking of you and wishing you could
be sitting there with us. It is delightful at all times, but I think
especially so after dark. The monument stands up distinct but not
quite earthly in the night, and at this season the air is sweet with
the jasmine and honeysuckle.

All of the younger children are at present absorbed in various pets,
perhaps the foremost of which is a puppy of the most orthodox puppy
type. Then there is Jack, the terrier, and Sailor Boy, the Chesapeake
Bay dog; and Eli, the most gorgeous macaw, with a bill that I think
could bite through boiler plate, who crawls all over Ted, and whom I
view with dark suspicion; and Jonathan, the piebald rat, of most
friendly and affectionate nature, who also crawls all over everybody;
and the flying squirrel, and two kangaroo rats; not to speak of
Archie's pony, Algonquin, who is the most absolute pet of them all.

Mrs. Roosevelt and I have, I think, read all your stories to the
children, and some of them over and over again.



                            THE DOG "GEM"

White House, Oct. 13, 1902.

BLESSED KERMIT:

I am delighted at all the accounts I receive of how you are doing at
Groton. You seem to be enjoying yourself and are getting on well. I
need not tell you to do your best to cultivate ability for
concentrating your thought on whatever work you are given to do--you
will need it in Latin especially. Who plays opposite you at end? Do
you find you can get down well under the ball to tackle the full-back?
How are you tackling?

Mother is going to present Gem to Uncle Will. She told him she did not
think he was a good dog for the city; and therefore she gives him to
Uncle Will to keep in the city. Uncle Will's emotion at such self-
denying generosity almost overcame him. Gem is really a very nice
small bow-wow, but Mother found that in this case possession was less
attractive than pursuit. When she takes him out walking he carries her
along as if she was a Roman chariot. She thinks that Uncle Will or Eda
can anchor him. Yesterday she and Ethel held him and got burrs out of
his hair. It was a lively time for all three.



                  PRESIDENTIAL NURSE FOR GUINEA PIGS

(To Mrs. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward)

White House, Oct. 20, 1902.

At this moment, my small daughter being out, I am acting as nurse to
two wee guinea pigs, which she feels would not be safe save in the
room with me--and if I can prevent it I do not intend to have wanton
suffering inflicted on any creature.



                   THANKSGIVING IN THE WHITE HOUSE

White House, Nov. 28, 1902.

DARLING KERMIT:

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, and we all went out riding, looking as we
started a good deal like the Cumberbach family. Archie on his beloved
pony, and Ethel on Yagenka went off with Mr. Proctor to the hunt.
Mother rode Jocko Root, Ted a first-class cavalry horse, I rode
Renown, and with us went Senator Lodge, Uncle Douglas, Cousin John
Elliott, Mr. Bob Fergie, and General Wood. We had a three hours'
scamper which was really great fun.

Yesterday I met Bozie for the first time since he came to Washington,
and he almost wiggled himself into a fit, he was so overjoyed at
renewing acquaintance. To see Jack and Tom Quartz play together is as
amusing as it can be. We have never had a more cunning kitten than Tom
Quartz. I have just had to descend with severity upon Quentin because
he put the unfortunate Tom into the bathtub and then turned on the
water. He didn't really mean harm.

Last evening, besides our own entire family party, all the Lodges, and
their connections, came to dinner. We dined in the new State Dining-
room and we drank the health of you and all the rest of both families
that were absent. After dinner we cleared away the table and danced.
Mother looked just as pretty as a picture and I had a lovely waltz
with her. Mrs. Lodge and I danced the Virginia Reel.



                       A WHITE HOUSE CHRISTMAS

(To Master James A. Garfield, Washington)

White House, Dec. 26, 1902.

JIMMIKINS:

Among all the presents I got I don't think there was one I appreciated
more than yours; for I was brought up to admire and respect your
grandfather, and I have a very great fondness and esteem for your
father. It always seems to me as if you children were being brought up
the way that mine are. Yesterday Archie got among his presents a small
rifle from me and a pair of riding-boots from his mother. He won't be
able to use the rifle until next summer, but he has gone off very
happy in the riding boots for a ride on the calico pony Algonquin, the
one you rode the other day. Yesterday morning at a quarter of seven
all the children were up and dressed and began to hammer at the door
of their mother's and my room, in which their six stockings, all
bulging out with queer angles and rotundities, were hanging from the
fireplace. So their mother and I got up, shut the window, lit the
fire, taking down the stockings, of course, put on our wrappers and
prepared to admit the children. But first there was a surprise for me,
also for their good mother, for Archie had a little Christmas tree of
his own which he had rigged up with the help of one of the carpenters
in a big closet; and we all had to look at the tree and each of us got
a present off of it. There was also one present each for Jack the dog,
Tom Quartz the kitten, and Algonquin the pony, whom Archie would no
more think of neglecting than I would neglect his brothers and
sisters. Then all the children came into our bed and there they opened
their stockings. Afterwards we got dressed and took breakfast, and
then all went into the library, where each child had a table set for
his bigger presents. Quentin had a perfectly delightful electric
railroad, which had been rigged up for him by one of his friends, the
White House electrician, who has been very good to all the children.
Then Ted and I, with General Wood and Mr. Bob Ferguson, who was a
lieutenant in my regiment, went for a three hours' ride; and all of
us, including all the children, took lunch at the house with the
children's aunt, Mrs. Captain Cowles--Archie and Quentin having their
lunch at a little table with their cousin Sheffield. Late in the
afternoon I played at single stick with General Wood and Mr. Ferguson.
I am going to get your father to come on and try it soon. We have to
try to hit as light as possible, but sometimes we hit hard, and to-day
I have a bump over one eye and a swollen wrist. Then all our family
and kinsfolk and Senator and Mrs. Lodge's family and kinsfolk had our
Christmas dinner at the White House, and afterwards danced in the East
Room, closing up with the Virginia Reel.



                         TOM QUARTZ AND JACK

White House, Jan. 6, 1903.

DEAR KERMIT:

We felt very melancholy after you and Ted left and the house seemed
empty and lonely. But it was the greatest possible comfort to feel
that you both really have enjoyed school and are both doing well
there.

Tom Quartz is certainly the cunningest kitten I have ever seen. He is
always playing pranks on Jack and I get very nervous lest Jack should
grow too irritated. The other evening they were both in the library--
Jack sleeping before the fire--Tom Quartz scampering about, an
exceedingly playful little wild creature--which is about what he is.
He would race across the floor, then jump upon the curtain or play
with the tassel. Suddenly he spied Jack and galloped up to him. Jack,
looking exceedingly sullen and shame-faced, jumped out of the way and
got upon the sofa, where Tom Quartz instantly jumped upon him again.
Jack suddenly shifted to the other sofa, where Tom Quartz again went
after him. Then Jack started for the door, while Tom made a rapid turn
under the sofa and around the table, and just as Jack reached the door
leaped on his hind-quarters. Jack bounded forward and away and the two
went tandem out of the room--Jack not reappearing at all; and after
about five minutes Tom Quartz stalked solemnly back.

Another evening the next Speaker of the House, Mr. Cannon, an
exceedingly solemn, elderly gentleman with chin whiskers, who
certainly does not look to be of playful nature, came to call upon me.
He is a great friend of mine, and we sat talking over what our
policies for the session should be until about eleven o'clock; and
when he went away I accompanied him to the head of the stairs. He had
gone about half-way down when Tom Quartz strolled by, his tail erect
and very fluffy. He spied Mr. Cannon going down the stairs, jumped to
the conclusion that he was a playmate escaping, and raced after him,
suddenly grasping him by the leg the way he does Archie and Quentin
when they play hide and seek with him; then loosening his hold he tore
down-stairs ahead of Mr. Cannon, who eyed him with iron calm and not
one particle of surprise.

Ethel has reluctantly gone back to boarding-school. It is just after
lunch and Dulany is cutting my hair while I dictate this to Mr. Loeb.
I left Mother lying on the sofa and reading aloud to Quentin, who as
usual has hung himself over the back of the sofa in what I should
personally regard as an exceedingly uncomfortable attitude to listen
to literature. Archie we shall not see until this evening, when he
will suddenly challenge me either to a race or a bear play, and if
neither invitation is accepted will then propose that I tell a pig
story or else read aloud from the Norse folk tales.



                          A FAR WESTERN TRIP

In April, 1903, President Roosevelt made a trip to the Pacific Coast,
visiting Yellowstone Park and the Grand Canyon of Arizona.



                         TAME WILD CREATURES

Yellowstone Park, Wyoming,
April 16, 1903.

DARLING ETHEL:

I wish you could be here and see how tame all the wild creatures are.
As I write a dozen of deer have come down to the parade grounds, right
in front of the house, to get the hay; they are all looking at the
bugler, who has begun to play the "retreat."



                     WESTERN CUSTOMS AND SCENERY

Del Monte, Cal., May 10, 1903.

DARLING ETHEL:

I have thought it very good of you to write me so much. Of course I am
feeling rather fagged, and the next four days, which will include San
Francisco, will be tiresome; but I am very well. This is a beautiful
hotel in which we are spending Sunday, with gardens and a long
seventeen-mile drive beside the beach and the rocks and among the
pines and cypresses. I went on horseback. My horse was a little
beauty, spirited, swift, sure-footed and enduring. As is usually the
case here they had a great deal of silver on the bridle and headstall,
and much carving on the saddle. We had some splendid gallops. By the
way, tell mother that everywhere out here, from the Mississippi to the
Pacific, I have seen most of the girls riding astride, and most of the
grown-up women. I must say I think it very much better for the horses'
backs. I think by the time that you are an old lady the side-saddle
will almost have vanished--I am sure I hope so. I have forgotten
whether you like the side-saddle or not.

It was very interesting going through New Mexico and seeing the
strange old civilization of the desert, and next day the Grand Canyon
of Arizona, wonderful and beautiful beyond description. I could have
sat and looked at it for days. It is a tremendous chasm, a mile deep
and several miles wide, the cliffs carved into battlements,
amphitheatres, towers and pinnacles, and the coloring wonderful, red
and yellow and gray and green. Then we went through the desert, passed
across the Sierras and came into this semi-tropical country of
southern California, with palms and orange groves and olive orchards
and immense quantities of flowers.



                      TREASURES FOR THE CHILDREN

Del Monte, Cal., May 10, 1903.

BLESSED KERMIT:

The last weeks' travel I have really enjoyed. Last Sunday and to-day
(Sunday) and also on Wednesday at the Grand Canyon I had long rides,
and the country has been strange and beautiful. I have collected a
variety of treasures, which I shall have to try to divide up equally
among you children. One treasure, by the way, is a very small badger,
which I named Josiah, and he is now called Josh for short. He is very
cunning and I hold him in my arms and pet him. I hope he will grow up
friendly--that is if the poor little fellow lives to grow up at all.
Dulany is taking excellent care of him, and we feed him on milk and
potatoes.

I have enjoyed meeting an old classmate of mine at Harvard. He was
heavyweight boxing champion when I was in college.

I was much interested in your seeing the wild deer. That was quite
remarkable. To-day, by the way, as I rode along the beach I saw seals,
cormorants, gulls and ducks, all astonishingly tame.



                            MORE TREASURES

Del Monte, Cal., May 10, 1903.

BLESSED ARCHIE:

I think it was very cunning for you and Quentin to write me that
letter together. I wish you could have been with me to-day on
Algonquin, for we had a perfectly lovely ride. Dr. Rixey and I were on
two very handsome horses, with Mexican saddles and bridles; the reins
of very slender leather with silver rings. The road led through pine
and cypress forests and along the beach. The surf was beating on the
rocks in one place and right between two of the rocks where I really
did not see how anything could swim a seal appeared and stood up on
his tail half out of the foaming water and flapped his flippers, and
was as much at home as anything could be. Beautiful gulls flew close
to us all around, and cormorants swam along the breakers or walked
along the beach.

I have a number of treasures to divide among you children when I get
back. One of the treasures is Bill the Lizard. He is a little live
lizard, called a horned frog, very cunning, who lives in a small box.
The little badger, Josh, is very well and eats milk and potatoes. We
took him out and gave him a run in the sand to-day. So far he seems as
friendly as possible. When he feels hungry he squeals and the colored
porters insist that he says "Du-la-ny, Du-la-ny," because Dulany is
very good to him and takes care of him.



                         A HOMESICK PRESIDENT

Del Monte, Cal., May 10, 1903.

DEAREST QUENTY-QUEE

I loved your letter. I am very homesick for mother and for you
children; but I have enjoyed this week's travel. I have been among the
orange groves, where the trees have oranges growing thick upon them,
and there are more flowers than you have ever seen. I have a gold top
which I shall give you if mother thinks you can take care of it.
Perhaps I shall give you a silver bell instead. Whenever I see a
little boy being brought up by his father or mother to look at the
procession as we pass by, I think of you and Archie and feel very
homesick. Sometimes little boys ride in the procession on their
ponies, just like Archie on Algonquin.



                       JOSIAH'S PASSIONATE DAY

Writing Senator Lodge on June 6, 1903, describing his return to the
White House from his western trip, the President said:

"Josiah, the young badger, is hailed with the wildest enthusiasm by
the children, and has passed an affectionate but passionate day with
us. Fortunately his temper seems proof."



                   LOVES AND SPORTS OF THE CHILDREN

(To Miss Emily T. Carow)

Oyster Bay, Aug. 6, 1903.

To-day is Edith's birthday, and the children have been too cunning in
celebrating it. Ethel had hemstitched a little handkerchief herself,
and she had taken her gift and the gifts of all the other children
into her room and neatly wrapped them up in white paper and tied with
ribbons. They were for the most part taken down-stairs and put at her
plate at breakfast time. Then at lunch in marched Kermit and Ethel
with a cake, burning forty-two candles, and each candle with a piece
of paper tied to it purporting to show the animal or inanimate object
from which the candle came. All the dogs and horses--Renown,
Bleistein, Yagenka, Algonquin, Sailor Boy, Brier, Hector, etc., as
well as Tom Quartz, the cat, the extraordinarily named hens--such as
Baron Speckle and Fierce, and finally even the boats and that
pomegranate which Edith gave Kermit and which has always been known as
Santiago, had each his or her or its tag on a special candle.

Edith is very well this summer and looks so young and pretty. She
rides with us a great deal and loves Yagenka as much as ever. We also
go out rowing together, taking our lunch and a book or two with us.
The children fairly worship her, as they ought to, for a more devoted
mother never was known. The children themselves are as cunning and
good as possible. Ted is nearly as tall as I am and as tough and wiry
as you can imagine. He is a really good rider and can hold his own in
walking, running, swimming, shooting, wrestling, and boxing. Kermit is
as cunning as ever and has developed greatly. He and his inseparable
Philip started out for a night's camping in their best the other day.
A driving storm came up and they had to put back, really showing both
pluck, skill and judgment. They reached home, after having been out
twelve hours, at nine in the evening. Archie continues devoted to
Algonquin and to Nicholas. Ted's playmates are George and Jack, Aleck
Russell, who is in Princeton, and Ensign Hamner of the /Sylph/. They
wrestle, shoot, swim, play tennis, and go off on long expeditions in
the boats. Quenty-quee has cast off the trammels of the nursery and
become a most active and fearless though very good-tempered little
boy. Really the children do have an ideal time out here, and it is an
ideal place for them. The three sets of cousins are always together. I
am rather disconcerted by the fact that they persist in regarding me
as a playmate. This afternoon, for instance, was rainy, and all of
them from George, Ted, Lorraine and Ethel down to Archibald, Nicholas
and Quentin, with the addition of Aleck Russell and Ensign Hamner,
came to get me to play with them in the old barn. They plead so hard
that I finally gave in, but upon my word, I hardly knew whether it was
quite right for the President to be engaged in such wild romping as
the next two hours saw. The barn is filled with hay, and of course
meets every requirement for the most active species of hide-and-seek
and the like. Quentin enjoyed the game as much as any one, and would
jump down from one hay level to another fifteen feet below with
complete abandon.

I took Kermit and Archie, with Philip, Oliver and Nicholas out for a
night's camping in the two rowboats last week. They enjoyed themselves
heartily, as usual, each sleeping rolled up in his blanket, and all
getting up at an unearthly hour. Also, as usual, they displayed a
touching and firm conviction that my cooking is unequalled. It was of
a simple character, consisting of frying beefsteak first and then
potatoes in bacon fat, over the camp fire; but they certainly ate in a
way that showed their words were not uttered in a spirit of empty
compliment.



                         A PRESIDENT AT PLAY

(To Miss Emily T. Carow)

Oyster Bay, Aug. 16, 1903.

Archie and Nick continue inseparable. I wish you could have seen them
the other day, after one of the picnics, walking solemnly up, jointly
carrying a basket, and each with a captured turtle in his disengaged
hand. Archie is a most warm-hearted, loving, cunning little goose.
Quentin, a merry soul, has now become entirely one of the children,
and joins heartily in all their plays, including the romps in the old
barn. When Ethel had her birthday, the one entertainment for which she
stipulated was that I should take part in and supervise a romp in the
old barn, to which all the Roosevelt children, Ensign Hamner of the
/Sylph/, Bob Ferguson and Aleck Russell were to come. Of course I had
not the heart to refuse; but really it seems, to put it mildly, rather
odd for a stout, elderly President to be bouncing over hayricks in a
wild effort to get to goal before an active midget of a competitor,
aged nine years. However, it was really great fun.

One of our recent picnics was an innovation, due to Edith. We went in
carriages or on horseback to Jane's Hill, some eight miles distant.
The view was lovely, and there was a delightful old farmhouse half a
mile away, where we left our horses. Speck (German Ambassador, Count
Speck von Sternberg) rode with Edith and me, looking more like Hans
Christian Andersen's little tin soldier than ever. His papers as
Ambassador had finally come, and so he had turned up at Oyster Bay,
together with the Acting Secretary of State, to present them. He
appeared in what was really a very striking costume, that of a hussar.
As soon as the ceremony was over, I told him to put on civilized
raiment, which he did, and he spent a couple of days with me. We
chopped, and shot, and rode together. He was delighted with Wyoming,
and, as always, was extremely nice to the children.

The other day all the children gave amusing amateur theatricals,
gotten up by Lorraine and Ted. The acting was upon Laura Roosevelt's
tennis court. All the children were most cunning, especially Quentin
as Cupid, in the scantiest of pink muslin tights and bodice. Ted and
Lorraine, who were respectively George Washington and Cleopatra,
really carried off the play. At the end all the cast joined hands in a
song and dance, the final verse being devoted especially to me. I love
all these children and have great fun with them, and I am touched by
the way in which they feel that I am their special friend, champion,
and companion.

To-day all, young and old, from the three houses went with us to
Service on the great battleship /Kearsarge/--for the fleet is here to
be inspected by me to-morrow. It was an impressive sight, one which I
think the children will not soon forget. Most of the boys afterward
went to lunch with the wretched Secretary Moody on the /Dolphin/. Ted
had the younger ones very much on his mind, and when he got back said
they had been altogether too much like a March Hare tea-party, as
Archie, Nicholas and Oliver were not alive to the dignity of the
occasion.



                       TO TED ON A HUNTING TRIP

Oyster Bay, Aug. 25, 1903.

DEAR TED:

We have thought of you a good deal, of course. I am glad you have my
rifle with you--you scamp, does it still have "those associations"
which you alleged as the reason why you would value it so much when in
the near future I became unable longer to use it? I do not have very
much hope of your getting a great deal of sport on this trip, and
anything you do get in the way of furred or feathered game and fishing
I shall count as so much extra thrown in; but I feel the trip will
teach you a lot in the way of handling yourself in a wild country, as
well as of managing horses and camp outfits--of dealing with
frontiersmen, etc. It will therefore fit you to go on a regular
camping trip next time.

I have sternly refused to allow mother to ride Wyoming, on the ground
that I would not have her make a martyr of herself in the shape of
riding a horse with a single-foot gait, which she so openly detests.
Accordingly, I have had some long and delightful rides with her, she
on Yagenka and I on Bleistein, while Ethel and Kermit have begun to
ride Wyoming. Kermit was with us this morning and got along
beautifully till we galloped, whereupon Wyoming made up his mind that
it was a race, and Kermit, for a moment or two, found him a handful.

On Sunday, after we came back from church and bathed, I rowed mother
out to the end of Lloyds Neck, near your favorite camping ground.
There we took lunch and spent a couple of hours with our books,
reading a little and looking out over the beautiful Sound and at the
headlands and white beaches of the coast. We rowed back through a
strange, shimmering sunset.

I have played a little tennis since you left. Winty Chandler beat me
two sets, but I beat him one. Alex. Russell beat me a long deuce set,
10 to 8. To-day the smaller children held their championship. Nick won
a long deuce set from Archie, and to my surprise Oliver and Ethel beat
Kermit and Philip in two straight sets. I officiated as umpire and
furnished the prizes, which were penknives.



                     END OF SUMMER AT OYSTER BAY

Oyster Bay, Sept. 23, 1903.

BLESSED KERMIT:

The house seems very empty without you and Ted, although I cannot
conscientiously say that it is quiet--Archie and Quentin attend to
that. Archie, barefooted, bareheaded, and with his usual faded blue
overalls, much torn and patched, has just returned from a morning with
his beloved Nick. Quentin has passed the morning in sports and
pastimes with the long-suffering secret service men. Allan has been
associating closely with mother and me. Yesterday Ethel went off
riding with Lorraine. She rode Wyoming, who is really turning out a
very good family horse. This evening I expect Grant La Farge and Owen
Wister, who are coming to spend the night. Mother is as busy as
possible putting up the house, and Ethel and I insist that she now
eyes us both with a purely professional gaze, and secretly wishes she
could wrap us up in a neatly pinned sheet with camphor balls inside.
Good-bye, blessed fellow!



                     "VALUABLEST" KIND OF RABBITS

(To his sister, Mrs. W. S. Cowles)

White House, Oct. 2, 1903.

Tell Sheffield that Quentin is now going to the public school. As yet
he has preserved an attitude of dignified reserve concerning his
feelings on the subject. He has just been presented with two white
rabbits, which he brought in while we were at lunch yesterday,
explaining that they were "the valuablest kind with pink eyes."



                          A PREACHING LETTER

White House, Oct. 2, 1903.

DEAR KERMIT:

I was very glad to get your letter. Am glad you are playing football.
I should be very sorry to see either you or Ted devoting most of your
attention to athletics, and I haven't got any special ambition to see
you shine overmuch in athletics at college, at least (if you go
there), because I think it tends to take up too much time; but I do
like to feel that you are manly and able to hold your own in rough,
hardy sports. I would rather have a boy of mine stand high in his
studies than high in athletics, but I could a great deal rather have
him show true manliness of character than show either intellectual or
physical prowess; and I believe you and Ted both bid fair to develop
just such character.

There! you will think this a dreadfully preaching letter! I suppose I
have a natural tendency to preach just at present because I am
overwhelmed with my work. I enjoy being President, and I like to do
the work and have my hand on the lever. But it is very worrying and
puzzling, and I have to make up my mind to accept every kind of attack
and misrepresentation. It is a great comfort to me to read the life
and letters of Abraham Lincoln. I am more and more impressed every
day, not only with the man's wonderful power and sagacity, but with
his literally endless patience, and at the same time his unflinching
resolution.



                       PROPER PLACE FOR SPORTS

White House, Oct. 4, 1903.

DEAR TED:

In spite of the "Hurry! Hurry!" on the outside of your envelope, I did
not like to act until I had consulted Mother and thought the matter
over; and to be frank with you, old fellow, I am by no means sure that
I am doing right now. If it were not that I feel you will be so
bitterly disappointed, I would strongly advocate your acquiescing in
the decision to leave you off the second squad this year. I am proud
of your pluck, and I greatly admire football--though it was not a game
I was ever able to play myself, my qualities resembling Kermit's
rather than yours. But the very things that make it a good game make
it a rough game, and there is always the chance of your being laid up.
Now, I should not in the least object to your being laid up for a
season if you were striving for something worth while, to get on the
Groton school team, for instance, or on your class team when you
entered Harvard--for of course I don't think you will have the weight
to entitle you to try for the 'varsity. But I am by no means sure that
it is worth your while to run the risk of being laid up for the sake
of playing in the second squad when you are a fourth former, instead
of when you are a fifth former. I do not know that the risk is
balanced by the reward. However, I have told the Rector that as you
feel so strongly about it, I think that the chance of your damaging
yourself in body is outweighed by the possibility of bitterness of
spirit if you could not play. Understand me, I should think mighty
little of you if you permitted chagrin to make you bitter on some
point where it was evidently right for you to suffer the chagrin. But
in this case I am uncertain, and I shall give you the benefit of the
doubt. If, however, the coaches at any time come to the conclusion
that you ought not to be in the second squad, why you must come off
without grumbling.

I am delighted to have you play football. I believe in rough, manly
sports. But I do not believe in them if they degenerate into the sole
end of any one's existence. I don't want you to sacrifice standing
well in your studies to any over-athleticism; and I need not tell you
that character counts for a great deal more than either intellect or
body in winning success in life. Athletic proficiency is a mighty good
servant, and like so many other good servants, a mighty bad master.
Did you ever read Pliny's letter to Trajan, in which he speaks of its
being advisable to keep the Greeks absorbed in athletics, because it
distracted their minds from all serious pursuits, including
soldiering, and prevented their ever being dangerous to the Romans? I
have not a doubt that the British officers in the Boer War had their
efficiency partly reduced because they had sacrificed their legitimate
duties to an inordinate and ridiculous love of sports. A man must
develop his physical prowess up to a certain point; but after he has
reached that point there are other things that count more. In my
regiment nine-tenths of the men were better horsemen than I was, and
probably two-thirds of them better shots than I was, while on the
average they were certainly hardier and more enduring. Yet after I had
had them a very short while they all knew, and I knew too, that nobody
else could command them as I could. I am glad you should play
football; I am glad that you should box; I am glad that you should
ride and shoot and walk and row as well as you do. I should be very
sorry if you did not do these things. But don't ever get into the
frame of mind which regards these things as constituting the end to
which all your energies must be devoted, or even the major portion of
your energies.

Yes, I am going to speak at Groton on prize day. I felt that while I
was President, and while you and Kermit were at Groton I wanted to
come up there and see you, and the Rector wished me to speak, and so I
am very glad to accept.

By the way, I am working hard to get Renown accustomed to automobiles.
He is such a handful now when he meets them that I seriously mind
encountering them when Mother is along. Of course I do not care if I
am alone, or with another man, but I am uneasy all the time when I am
out with Mother. Yesterday I tried Bleistein over the hurdles at Chevy
Chase. The first one was new, high and stiff, and the old rascal never
rose six inches, going slap through it. I took him at it again and he
went over all right.

I am very busy now, facing the usual endless worry and discouragement,
and trying to keep steadily in mind that I must not only be as
resolute as Abraham Lincoln in seeking to achieve decent ends, but as
patient, as uncomplaining, and as even-tempered in dealing, not only
with knaves, but with the well-meaning foolish people, educated and
uneducated, who by their unwisdom give the knaves their chance.



                     CONCERNING GETTING "SMASHED"

White House, Oct. 11, 1903.

DEAR TED:

I have received letters from the Rector, from Mr. Woods, and from Mr.
Billings. They all say that you should play on the third squad, and
Mr. Woods says you are now satisfied to do so. This was my first, and
as I am convinced, my real judgment in the case. If you get mashed up
now in a serious way it may prevent your playing later. As I think I
wrote you, I do not in the least object to your getting smashed if it
is for an object that is worth while, such as playing on the Groton
team or playing on your class team when you get to Harvard. But I
think it a little silly to run any imminent risk of a serious smash
simply to play on the second squad instead of the third.

I am judging for you as I would for myself. When I was young and rode
across country I was light and tough, and if I did, as actually
happened, break an arm or a rib no damage ensued and no scandal was
caused. Now I am stiff and heavy, and any accident to me would cause
immense talk, and I do not take the chance; simply because it is not
worth while. On the other hand, if I should now go to war and have a
brigade as I had my regiment before Santiago, I should take any chance
that was necessary; because it would be worth while. In other words, I
want to make the risk to a certain accident commensurate with the
object gained.



                        THE ART OF UNCLE REMUS

(To Joel Chandler Harris)

White House, Oct. 12, 1901.

MY DEAR HARRIS:

It is worth while being President when one's small daughter receives
that kind of an autograph gift. When I was younger than she is, my
Aunt Annie Bulloch, of Georgia, used to tell me some of the brer
rabbit stories, especially brer rabbit and the tar baby. But fond
though I am of the brer rabbit stories I think I am even fonder of
your other writings. I doubt if there is a more genuinely pathetic
tale in all our literature than "Free Joe." Moreover I have felt that
all that you write serves to bring our people closer together. I know,
of course, the ordinary talk is that an artist should be judged purely
by his art; but I am rather a Philistine and like to feel that the art
serves a good purpose. Your art is not only an art addition to our sum
of national achievement, but it has also always been an addition to
the forces that tell for decency, and above all for the blotting out
of sectional antagonism.



                      A RIDE AND A PILLOW FIGHT

White House, Oct. 19, 1903.

DEAR KERMIT:

I was much pleased at your being made captain of your eleven. I would
rather have you captain of the third eleven than playing on the
second.

Yesterday afternoon Ethel on Wyoming, Mother on Yagenka and I on
Renown had a long ride, the only incident being meeting a large red
automobile, which much shook Renown's nerves, although he behaved far
better than he has hitherto been doing about automobiles. In fact, he
behaved so well that I leaned over and gave him a lump of sugar when
he had passed the object of terror--the old boy eagerly turning his
head around to get it. It was lovely out in the country, with the
trees at their very best of the fall coloring. There are no red maples
here, but the Virginia creepers and some of the dogwoods give the red,
and the hickories, tulip trees and beeches a brilliant yellow,
sometimes almost orange.

When we got home Mother went up-stairs first and was met by Archie and
Quentin, each loaded with pillows and whispering not to let me know
that they were in ambush; then as I marched up to the top they
assailed me with shrieks and chuckles of delight and then the pillow
fight raged up and down the hall. After my bath I read them from Uncle
Remus. Usually Mother reads them, but now and then, when I think she
really must have a holiday from it, I read them myself.



                            STUDY AND PLAY

White House, Oct. 24, 1903.

DEAR TED:

I am really greatly pleased at your standing so high in your form, and
I am sure that this year it is better for you to be playing where you
are in football. I suppose next year you will go back to your position
of end, as you would hardly be heavy enough for playing back, or to
play behind the centre, against teams with big fellows. I repeat that
your standing in the class gave me real pleasure. I have sympathized
so much with your delight in physical prowess and have been so glad at
the success you have had, that sometimes I have been afraid I have
failed to emphasize sufficiently the fact that of course one must not
subordinate study and work to the cultivation of such prowess. By the
way, I am sorry to say that I am falling behind physically. The last
two or three years I have had a tendency to rheumatism, or gout, or
something of the kind, which makes me very stiff.

Renown is behaving better about automobiles and the like. I think the
difference is largely in the way I handle him. He is a very good-
natured and gentle horse, but timid and not over-wise, and when in a
panic his great strength makes him well-nigh uncontrollable.
Accordingly, he is a bad horse to try to force by anything. If
possible, it is much better to give him a little time, and bring him
up as gently as may be to the object of terror. When he behaves well I
lean forward and give him a lump of sugar, and now the old boy eagerly
puts around his head when I stretch out my hand. Bleistein I have
ridden very little, because I think one of his forelegs is shaky, and
I want to spare him all I can. Mother and I have had the most lovely
rides imaginable.



                         QUENTIN'S FIRST FALL

White House, Oct. 24, 1903.

DEAR KERMIT:

Yesterday I felt rather seedy, having a touch of Cuban fever, my only
unpleasant reminiscence of the Santiago campaign. Accordingly, I spent
the afternoon in the house lying on the sofa, with a bright fire
burning and Mother in the rocking-chair, with her knitting, beside me.
I felt so glad that I was not out somewhere in the wilderness,
campaigning or hunting, where I would have to walk or ride all day in
the rain and then lie out under a bush at night!

When Allan will come from the trainer's I do not know. Rather to my
surprise, Ronald has won golden opinions and really is a very nice
dog. Pinckney loves him, and he sits up in the express wagon just as
if it was what he had been born to.

Quentin is learning to ride the pony. He had one tumble, which, he
remarked philosophically, did not hurt him any more than when I
whacked him with a sofa cushion in one of our pillow fights. I think
he will very soon be able to manage the pony by himself.

Mother has just taken the three children to spend the afternoon at Dr.
Rixey's farm. I am hard at work on my message to Congress, and
accordingly shall not try to go out or see any one either this
afternoon or this evening. All of this work is terribly puzzling at
times, but I peg away at it, and every now and then, when the dust
clears away and I look around, I feel that I really have accomplished
a little, at any rate.

I think you stood well in your form, taking everything into account. I
feel you deserve credit for being captain of your football eleven, and
yet standing as high as you do in your class.



                      HOMESICK FOR SAGAMORE HILL

White House, Nov. 4, 1903.

DEAR TED:

Three cheers for Groton! It was first-class.

On election day I saw the house, and it was all so lovely that I felt
fairly homesick to be back in it. The Japanese maples were still in
full leaf and were turning the most beautiful shades of scarlet
imaginable. The old barn, I am sorry to say, seems to be giving away
at one end.

Renown now behaves very well about automobiles, and indeed about
everything. He is, however, a little touched in the wind. Bleistein,
in spite of being a little shaky in one foreleg, is in splendid
spirits and eager for any amount of go. When you get on here for the
Christmas holidays you will have to try them both, for if there is any
fox hunting I am by no means sure you will find it better to take
Bleistein than Renown.

Sister is very handsome and good, having had a delightful time.

That was a funny trick which the Indians played against Harvard.
Harvard did well to play such a successful uphill game in the latter
part of the second half as to enable them to win out; but I do not see
how she stands a chance of success against Yale this year.



                     JOY OVER A FOOTBALL VICTORY

White House, Nov. 4, 1903.

DEAR KERMIT:

To-night while I was preparing to dictate a message to Congress
concerning the boiling caldron on the Isthmus of Panama, which has now
begun to bubble over, up came one of the ushers with a telegram from
you and Ted about the football match. Instantly I bolted into the next
room to read it aloud to mother and sister, and we all cheered in
unison when we came to the Rah! Rah! Rah! part of it. It was a great
score. I wish I could have seen the game.



                     VICE-MOTHER OF THE CHILDREN

White House, Nov. 15, 1903.

DEAR KERMIT:

Didn't I tell you about Hector, Brier and Sailor Boy (dogs) when I saw
them on election day? They were in excellent health, lying around the
door of Seaman's house, which they had evidently adopted as their own.
Sailor Boy and Brier were exceedingly affectionate; Hector kindly, but
uninterested.

Mother has gone off for nine days, and as usual I am acting as vice-
mother. Archie and Quentin are really too cunning for anything. Each
night I spend about three-quarters of an hour reading to them. I first
of all read some book like Algonquin Indian Tales, or the poetry of
Scott or Macaulay. Once I read them Jim Bludsoe, which perfectly
enthralled them and made Quentin ask me at least a hundred questions,
including one as to whether the colored boy did not find sitting on
the safety valve hot. I have also been reading them each evening from
the Bible. It has been the story of Saul, David and Jonathan. They
have been so interested that several times I have had to read them
more than one chapter. Then each says his prayers and repeats the hymn
he is learning, Quentin usually jigging solemnly up and down while he
repeats it. Each finally got one hymn perfect, whereupon in accordance
with previous instructions from mother I presented each of them with a
five-cent piece. Yesterday (Saturday) I took both of them and Ethel,
together with the three elder Garfield boys, for a long scramble down
Rock Creek. We really had great fun.



                       QUENTIN'S SIXTH BIRTHDAY

White House, Nov. 19, 1903.

DEAR KERMIT:

I was much pleased at your being chosen captain of the Seventh. I had
not expected it. I rather suspect that you will be behind in your
studies this month. If so, try to make up next month, and keep above
the middle of the class if you can. I am interested in what you tell
me about the Sir Galahads, and I shall want to talk to you about them
when you come on.

Mother is back with Aunt Emily, who looks very well. It is so nice to
have her. As for Mother, of course she makes the house feel like a
home again, instead of like a temporary dwelling.

Leo is as cunning as ever. Pinckney went to see Allan yesterday and
said he found him "as busy as a bee in a tar barrel," and evidently
owning all the trainer's house. He is not yet quite fit to come back
here.

To-day is Quentin's birthday. He has a cold, so he had his birthday
cake, with the six candles, and his birthday ice-cream, in the
nursery, with Ethel, Archie, Mother, Aunt Emily, myself, Mame and
Georgette as admiring guests and onlookers.



                    A PRESIDENT'S POOR PROTECTION

White House, Nov. 28, 1903.

DEAR KERMIT:

It was very sad at Uncle Gracie's funeral; and yet lovely, too, in a
way, for not only all his old friends had turned out, but all of the
people connected with the institutions for which he had worked during
so many years also came. There were a good many of the older boys and
employees from the Newsboys' Lodging House and the Orthopaedic
Dispensary, etc. Uncle Jimmy possessed a singularly loving and
affectionate nature, and I never knew any one who in doing good was
more careful to do it unostentatiously. I had no idea how much he had
done. Mother with her usual thoughtfulness had kept him steadily in
mind while I have been Governor and President; and I now find that he
appreciated her so much, her constant remembrances in having him on to
visit us on different occasions. It was a lesson to me, for I should
probably never have thought of it myself; and of course when one does
not do what one ought to, the excuse that one erred from
thoughtlessness instead of wrong purpose is of small avail.

The police arrangements at the church were exasperating to a degree.
There were fully five hundred policemen in the streets round about,
just as if there was danger of an attack by a ferocious mob; and yet
though they had throngs of policemen inside, too, an elderly and
harmless crank actually got inside with them to present me some
foolish memorial about curing the German Emperor from cancer. Inasmuch
as what we needed was, not protection against a mob, but a sharp
lookout for cranks, the arrangement ought by rights to have been for
fifty policemen outside and two or three good detectives inside. I
felt like a fool with all the policemen in solemn and purposeless
lines around about; and then I felt half exasperated and half amused
when I found that they were utterly helpless to prevent a crank from
getting inside after all.

P. S.--I enclose two original poems by Nick and Archie. They refer to
a bit of unhappy advice I gave them, because of which I fell into
richly merited disgrace with Mother. Nick has been spending three days
or so with Archie, and I suggested that they should explore the White
House in the mirk of midnight. They did, in white sheets, and, like
little jacks, barefooted. Send me back the poems.



                         TED'S SPRAINED ANKLE

White House, Nov. 28, 1903.

DEAR TED:

If I were you I should certainly get the best ankle support possible.
You do not want to find next fall that Webb beats you for end because
your ankle gives out and his does not. If I were in your place, if it
were necessary, I should put the ankle in plaster for the next three
weeks, or for as long as the doctor thinks it needful, rather than run
any risk of this. At any rate, I would consult him and wear whatever
he thinks is the right thing.

 . . . . .

I wonder if you are old enough yet to care for a good history of the
American Revolution. If so, I think I shall give you mine by Sir
George Trevelyan; although it is by an Englishman, I really think it
on the whole the best account I have read. If I give it to you you
must be very careful of it, because he sent it to me himself.

P. S.--The Bond parrot for mother has turned up; it is a most
meritorious parrot, very friendly, and quite a remarkable talker.



                      THE SUPREME CHRISTMAS JOY

(To his sister, Mrs. Douglas Robinson)

White House, Dec. 26, 1903.

 . . . . .

We had a delightful Christmas yesterday--just such a Christmas thirty
or forty years ago we used to have under Father's and Mother's
supervision in 20th street and 57th street. At seven all the children
came in to open the big, bulgy stockings in our bed; Kermit's terrier,
Allan, a most friendly little dog, adding to the children's delight by
occupying the middle of the bed. From Alice to Quentin, each child was
absorbed in his or her stocking, and Edith certainly managed to get
the most wonderful stocking toys. Bob was in looking on, and Aunt
Emily, of course. Then, after breakfast, we all formed up and went
into the library, where bigger toys were on separate tables for the
children. I wonder whether there ever can come in life a thrill of
greater exaltation and rapture than that which comes to one between
the ages of say six and fourteen, when the library door is thrown open
and you walk in to see all the gifts, like a materialized fairy land,
arrayed on your special table?



                         A DAY WITH A JUGGLER

White House, Jan. 18, 1904.

DEAR KERMIT:

Thursday and Friday there was a great deal of snow on the ground, and
the weather was cold, so that Mother and I had two delightful rides up
Rock Creek. The horses were clipped and fresh, and we were able to let
them go along at a gallop, while the country was wonderfully
beautiful.

To-day, after lunch, Mother took Ethel, Archie and Quentin, each with
a friend, to see some most wonderful juggling and sleight of hand
tricks by Kellar. I went along and was as much interested as any of
the children, though I had to come back to my work in the office
before it was half through. At one period Ethel gave up her ring for
one of the tricks. It was mixed up with the rings of five other little
girls, and then all six rings were apparently pounded up and put into
a pistol and shot into a collection of boxes, where five of them were
subsequently found, each tied around a rose. Ethel's, however, had
disappeared, and he made believe that it had vanished, but at the end
of the next trick a remarkable bottle, out of which many different
liquids had been poured, suddenly developed a delightful white guinea
pig, squirming and kicking and looking exactly like Admiral Dewey,
with around its neck Ethel's ring, tied by a pink ribbon. Then it was
wrapped up in a paper, handed to Ethel; and when Ethel opened it,
behold, there was no guinea pig, but a bunch of roses with a ring.



                  MERITS OF MILITARY AND CIVIL LIFE

White House, Jan. 21, 1904.

DEAR TED:

This will be a long business letter. I sent to you the examination
papers for West Point and Annapolis. I have thought a great deal over
the matter, and discussed it at great length with Mother. I feel on
the one hand that I ought to give you my best advice, and yet on the
other hand I do not wish to seem to constrain you against your wishes.
If you have definitely made up your mind that you have an
overmastering desire to be in the Navy or the Army, and that such a
career is the one in which you will take a really heart-felt interest
--far more so than any other--and that your greatest chance for
happiness and usefulness will lie in doing this one work to which you
feel yourself especially drawn--why, under such circumstances, I have
but little to say. But I am not satisfied that this is really your
feeling. It seemed to me more as if you did not feel drawn in any
other direction, and wondered what you were going to do in life or
what kind of work you would turn your hand to, and wondered if you
could make a success or not; and that you are therefore inclined to
turn to the Navy or Army chiefly because you would then have a
definite and settled career in life, and could hope to go on steadily
without any great risk of failure. Now, if such is your thought, I
shall quote to you what Captain Mahan said of his son when asked why
he did not send him to West Point or Annapolis. "I have too much
confidence in him to make me feel that it is desirable for him to
enter either branch of the service."

I have great confidence in you. I believe you have the ability and,
above all, the energy, the perseverance, and the common sense, to win
out in civil life. That you will have some hard times and some
discouraging times I have no question; but this is merely another way
of saying that you will share the common lot. Though you will have to
work in different ways from those in which I worked, you will not have
to work any harder, nor to face periods of more discouragement. I
trust in your ability, and especially your character, and I am
confident you will win.

In the Army and the Navy the chance for a man to show great ability
and rise above his fellows does not occur on the average more than
once in a generation. When I was down at Santiago it was melancholy
for me to see how fossilized and lacking in ambition, and generally
useless, were most of the men of my age and over, who had served their
lives in the Army. The Navy for the last few years has been better,
but for twenty years after the Civil War there was less chance in the
Navy than in the Army to practise, and do, work of real consequence. I
have actually known lieutenants in both the Army and the Navy who were
grandfathers--men who had seen their children married before they
themselves attained the grade of captain. Of course the chance may
come at any time when the man of West Point or Annapolis who will have
stayed in the Army or Navy finds a great war on, and therefore has the
opportunity to rise high. Under such circumstances, I think that the
man of such training who has actually left the Army or the Navy has
even more chance of rising than the man who has remained in it.
Moreover, often a man can do as I did in the Spanish War, even though
not a West Pointer.

This last point raises the question about you going to West Point or
Annapolis and leaving the Army or Navy after you have served the
regulation four years (I think that is the number) after graduation
from the academy. Under this plan you would have an excellent
education and a grounding in discipline and, in some ways, a testing
of your capacity greater than I think you can get in any ordinary
college. On the other hand, except for the profession of an engineer,
you would have had nothing like special training, and you would be so
ordered about, and arranged for, that you would have less independence
of character than you could gain from them. You would have had fewer
temptations; but you would have had less chance to develop the
qualities which overcome temptations and show that a man has
individual initiative. Supposing you entered at seventeen, with the
intention of following this course. The result would be that at
twenty-five you would leave the Army or Navy without having gone
through any law school or any special technical school of any kind,
and would start your life work three or four years later than your
schoolfellows of to-day, who go to work immediately after leaving
college. Of course, under such circumstances, you might study law, for
instance, during the four years after graduation; but my own feeling
is that a man does good work chiefly when he is in something which he
intends to make his permanent work, and in which he is deeply
interested. Moreover, there will always be the chance that the number
of officers in the Army or Navy will be deficient, and that you would
have to stay in the service instead of getting out when you wished.

I want you to think over all these matters very seriously. It would be
a great misfortune for you to start into the Army or Navy as a career,
and find that you had mistaken your desires and had gone in without
really weighing the matter.

You ought not to enter unless you feel genuinely drawn to the life as
a life-work. If so, go in; but not otherwise.

Mr. Loeb told me to-day that at 17 he had tried for the army, but
failed. The competitor who beat him in is now a captain; Mr. Loeb has
passed him by, although meanwhile a war has been fought. Mr. Loeb says
he wished to enter the army because he did not know what to do, could
not foresee whether he would succeed or fail in life, and felt the
army would give him "a living and a career." Now if this is at bottom
your feeling I should advise you not to go in; I should say yes to
some boys, but not to you; I believe in you too much, and have too
much confidence in you.



                            ROOT AND TAFT

White House, Feb. 6, 1904.

DEAR TED:

I was glad to hear that you were to be confirmed.

Secretary Root left on Monday and Governor Taft took his place. I have
missed, and shall miss, Root dreadfully. He has been the ablest, most
generous and most disinterested friend and adviser that any President
could hope to have; and immediately after leaving he rendered me a
great service by a speech at the Union League Club, in which he said
in most effective fashion the very things I should have liked him to
say; and his words, moreover, carried weight as the words of no other
man at this time addressing such an audience could have done. Taft is
a splendid fellow and will be an aid and comfort in every way. But, as
mother says, he is too much like me to be able to give me as good
advice as Mr. Root was able to do because of the very differences of
character between us.

If after fully thinking the matter over you remain firmly convinced
that you want to go into the army, well and good. I shall be rather
sorry for your decision, because I have great confidence in you and I
believe that in civil life you could probably win in the end a greater
prize than will be open to you if you go into the army--though, of
course, a man can do well in the army. I know perfectly well that you
will have hard times in civil life. Probably most young fellows when
they have graduated from college, or from their post-graduate course,
if they take any, feel pretty dismal for the first few years. In
ordinary cases it at first seems as if their efforts were not leading
anywhere, as if the pressure around the foot of the ladder was too
great to permit of getting up to the top. But I have faith in your
energy, your perseverance, your ability, and your power to force
yourself to the front when you have once found out and taken your
line. However, you and I and mother will talk the whole matter over
when you come back here on Easter.



                        SENATOR HANNA'S DEATH

White House, Feb. 19, 1904.

DEAR TED:

Poor Hanna's death was a tragedy. At the end he wrote me a note, the
last he ever wrote, which showed him at his best, and which I much
appreciate. His death was very sad for his family and close friends,
for he had many large and generous traits, and had made a great
success in life by his energy, perseverance and burly strength.

Buffalo Bill was at lunch the other day, together with John Willis, my
old hunter. Buffalo Bill has always been a great friend of mine. I
remember when I was running for Vice-President I struck a Kansas town
just when the Wild West show was there. He got upon the rear platform
of my car and made a brief speech on my behalf, ending with the
statement that "a cyclone from the West had come; no wonder the rats
hunted their cellars!"

 . . . . .

As for you, I think the West Point education is, of course, good for
any man, but I still think that you have too much in you for me to be
glad to see you go into the Army, where in time of peace progress is
so much a matter of routine.



                     IRRITATING REMARK BY QUENTIN

White House, Feb. 27, 1904.

DEAR KERMIT:

Mother went off for three days to New York and Mame and Quentin took
instant advantage of her absence to fall sick. Quentin's sickness was
surely due to a riot in candy and ice-cream with chocolate sauce. He
was a very sad bunny next morning and spent a couple of days in bed.
Ethel, as always, was as good as gold both to him and to Archie, and
largely relieved me of my duties as vice-mother. I got up each morning
in time to breakfast with Ethel and Archie before they started for
school, and I read a certain amount to Quentin, but this was about
all. I think Archie escaped with a minimum of washing for the three
days. One day I asked him before Quentin how often he washed his face,
whereupon Quentin interpolated, "very seldom, I fear," which naturally
produced from Archie violent recriminations of a strongly personal
type. Mother came back yesterday, having thoroughly enjoyed Parsifal.
All the horses continue sick.



                          JAPANESE WRESTLING

White House, March 5, 1904.

DEAR KERMIT:

 . . . . .

I am wrestling with two Japanese wrestlers three times a week. I am
not the age or the build one would think to be whirled lightly over an
opponent's head and batted down on a mattress without damage. But they
are so skilful that I have not been hurt at all. My throat is a little
sore, because once when one of them had a strangle hold I also got
hold of his windpipe and thought I could perhaps choke him off before
he could choke me. However, he got ahead.


White House, April 9, 1904.

DEAR TED:

I am very glad I have been doing this Japanese wrestling, but when I
am through with it this time I am not at all sure I shall ever try it
again while I am so busy with other work as I am now. Often by the
time I get to five o'clock in the afternoon I will be feeling like a
stewed owl, after an eight hours' grapple with Senators, Congressmen,
etc.; then I find the wrestling a trifle too vehement for mere rest.
My right ankle and my left wrist and one thumb and both great toes are
swollen sufficiently to more or less impair their usefulness, and I am
well mottled with bruises elsewhere. Still I have made good progress,
and since you left they have taught me three new throws that are
perfect corkers.



                       LOVE FOR THE WHITE HOUSE

White House, May 28, 1904.

DEAR TED:

 . . . . .

I am having a reasonable amount of work and rather more than a
reasonable amount of worry. But, after all, life is lovely here. The
country is beautiful, and I do not think that any two people ever got
more enjoyment out of the White House than Mother and I. We love the
house itself, without and within, for its associations, for its
stillness and its simplicity. We love the garden. And we like
Washington. We almost always take our breakfast on the south portico
now, Mother looking very pretty and dainty in her summer dresses. Then
we stroll about the garden for fifteen or twenty minutes, looking at
the flowers and the fountain and admiring the trees. Then I work until
between four and five, usually having some official people to lunch--
now a couple of Senators, now a couple of Ambassadors, now a literary
man, now a capitalist or a labor leader, or a scientist, or a big-game
hunter. If Mother wants to ride, we then spend a couple of hours on
horseback. We had a lovely ride up on the Virginia shore since I came
back, and yesterday went up Rock Creek and swung back home by the
roads where the locust trees were most numerous--for they are now
white with blossoms. It is the last great burst of bloom which we
shall see this year except the laurels. But there are plenty of
flowers in bloom or just coming out, the honeysuckle most
conspicuously. The south portico is fragrant with that now. The
jasmine will be out later. If we don't ride, I walk or play tennis.
But I am afraid Ted has gotten out of his father's class in tennis!



                        PETER RABBIT'S FUNERAL

White House, May 28, 1904.

DEAR KERMIT:

It was great fun seeing you and Ted, and I enjoyed it to the full.

Ethel, Archie and Quentin have gone to Mount Vernon to-day with the
Garfield boys. Yesterday poor Peter Rabbit died and his funeral was
held with proper state. Archie, in his overalls, dragged the wagon
with the little black coffin in which poor Peter Rabbit lay. Mother
walked behind as chief mourner, she and Archie solemnly exchanging
tributes to the worth and good qualities of the departed. Then he was
buried, with a fuchsia over the little grave.

You remember Kenneth Grahame's account of how Harold went to the
circus and sang the great spheral song of the circus? Well, yesterday
Mother leaned out of her window and heard Archie, swinging under a
magnolia tree, singing away to himself, "I'm going to Sagamore, to
Sagamore, to Sagamore. I'm going to Sagamore, oh, to Sagamore!" It was
his spheral song of joy and thanksgiving.

The children's delight at going to Sagamore next week has completely
swallowed up all regret at leaving Mother and me. Quentin is very
cunning. He and Archie love to play the hose into the sandbox and
then, with their thigh rubber boots on, to get in and make
fortifications. Now and then they play it over each other. Ethel is
playing tennis quite a good deal.

I think Yagenka is going to come out all right, and Bleistein, too.

I have no hope for Wyoming or Renown. Fortunately, Rusty is serving us
well.


White House, June 12th, 1904.

BLESSED QUENTY-QUEE:

The little birds in the nest in the vines on the garden fence are
nearly grown up. Their mother still feeds them.

You see the mother bird with a worm in her beak, and the little birds
with their beaks wide open!

I was out walking the other day and passed the Zoo; there I fed with
grass some of the two-year-old elk; the bucks had their horns "in the
velvet." I fed them through the bars.


White House, June 12th, 1904.

BLESSED ARCHIE-KINS:

Give my love to Mademoiselle; I hope you and Quenty are /very/ good
with her--and don't play in the library!

I loved your letter, and think you were very good to write.

All kinds of live things are sent me from time to time. The other day
an eagle came; this morning an owl.

(I have drawn him holding a rat in one claw.)

We sent both to the Zoo.

The other day while walking with Mr. Pinchot and Mr. Garfield we
climbed into the Blagden deer park and almost walked over such a
pretty wee fawn, all spotted; it ran off like a little race horse.

It made great jumps and held its white tail straight in the air.


White House, June 21, 1904.

DEAR QUENTY-QUEE:

The other day when out riding what should I see in the road ahead of
me but a real B'rer Terrapin and B'rer Rabbit. They were sitting
solemnly beside one another and looked just as if they had come out of
a book; but as my horse walked along B'rer Rabbit went lippity lippity
lippity off into the bushes and B'rer Terrapin drew in his head and
legs till I passed.



                        CHARMS OF VALLEY FORGE

White House, June 21, 1904.

DEAREST ETHEL:

I think you are a little trump and I love your letter, and the way you
take care of the children and keep down the expenses and cook bread
and are just your own blessed busy cunning self. You would have
enjoyed being at Valley Forge with us on Sunday. It is a beautiful
place, and, of course, full of historic associations. The garden here
is lovely. A pair of warbling vireos have built in a linden and sing
all the time. The lindens, by the way, are in bloom, and Massachusetts
Avenue is fragrant with them. The magnolias are all in bloom, too, and
the jasmine on the porch.



               WASHINGTON'S COMPANIONS AT VALLEY FORGE

White House, June 21, 1904.

DEAR TED:

Mother and I had a most lovely ride the other day, way up beyond Sligo
Creek to what is called North-west Branch, at Burnt Mills, where is a
beautiful gorge, deep and narrow, with great boulders and even cliffs.
Excepting Great Falls it is the most beautiful place around here.
Mother scrambled among the cliffs in her riding habit, very pretty and
most interesting. The roads were good and some of the scenery really
beautiful. We were gone four hours, half an hour being occupied with
the scrambling in the gorge.

Saturday we went to the wedding of Teddy Douglas and Helen. It was a
beautiful wedding in every way and I am very fond of both of them.
Sunday we spent at Attorney-General Knox's at Valley Forge, and most
unexpectedly I had to deliver a little address at the church in the
afternoon, as they are trying to build a memorial to Washington. Think
of the fact that in Washington's army that winter among the junior
officers were Alexander Hamilton, Monroe and Marshall--a future
President of the United States, the future Chief Justice who was to do
such wonderful work for our Government, and the man of most brilliant
mind--Hamilton--whom we have ever developed in this country.



                ON THE EVE OF NOMINATION FOR PRESIDENT

White House, June 21, 1904.

DEAR KERMIT:

We spent to-day at the Knoxes'. It is a beautiful farm--just such a
one as you could run. Phil Knox, as capable and efficient as he is
diminutive, amused Mother and me greatly by the silent way in which he
did in first-rate way his full share of all the work.

To-morrow the National Convention meets, and barring a cataclysm I
shall be nominated. There is a great deal of sullen grumbling, but it
has taken more the form of resentment against what they think is my
dictation as to details than against me personally. They don't dare to
oppose me for the nomination and I suppose it is hardly likely the
attempt will be made to stampede the Convention for any one. How the
election will turn out no man can tell. Of course I hope to be
elected, but I realize to the full how very lucky I have been, not
only to be President but to have been able to accomplish so much while
President, and whatever may be the outcome, I am not only content but
very sincerely thankful for all the good fortune I have had. From
Panama down I have been able to accomplish certain things which will
be of lasting importance in our history. Incidentally, I don't think
that any family has ever enjoyed the White House more than we have. I
was thinking about it just this morning when Mother and I took
breakfast on the portico and afterwards walked about the lovely
grounds and looked at the stately historic old house. It is a
wonderful privilege to have been here and to have been given the
chance to do this work, and I should regard myself as having a small
and mean mind if in the event of defeat I felt soured at not having
had more instead of being thankful for having had so much.



                            PICTURE LETTER

White House, June 22, 1904.

DARLING ETHEL,

Here goes for the picture letter!

Ethel administers necessary discipline to Archie and Quentin.

Ethel gives sick Yagenka a bottle of medicine.

Father playing tennis with Mr. Cooley. (Father's shape and spectacles
are reproduced with photographic fidelity; also notice Mr. Cooley's
smile.)

Leo chases a squirrel which fortunately he can't catch.

A nice policeman feeding a squirrel with bread; I fed two with bread
this afternoon.

There! My invention has given out. Mother and Aunt Emily have been on
a picnic down the river with General Crozier; we have been sitting on
the portico in the moonlight. Sister is /very/ good.

Your loving father.



                           BILL THE LIZARD

White House, June 21, 1904.

BLESSED ARCHIKINS:

The other day when Mother and I were walking down the steps of the big
south porch we saw a movement among the honeysuckles and there was
Bill the lizard--your lizard that you brought home from Mount Vernon.
We have seen him several times since and he is evidently entirely at
home here. The White House seems big and empty without any of you
children puttering around it, and I think the ushers miss you very
much. I play tennis in the late afternoons unless I go to ride with
Mother.



                        ON THE EVE OF ELECTION

White House, Oct. 15, 1904.

DARLING KERMIT:

The weather has been beautiful the last week--mild, and yet with the
true feeling of Fall in the air. When Mother and I have ridden up Rock
Creek through the country round about, it has been a perpetual delight
just to look at the foliage. I have never seen leaves turn more
beautifully. The Virginia creepers and some of the maple and gum trees
are scarlet and crimson. The oaks are deep red brown. The beeches,
birches and hickories are brilliant saffron. Just at this moment I am
dictating while on my way with Mother to the wedding of Senator Knox's
daughter, and the country is a blaze of color as we pass through it,
so that it is a joy to the eye to look upon it. I do not think I have
ever before seen the colorings of the woods so beautiful so far south
as this. Ted is hard at work with Matt. Hale, who is a very nice
fellow and has become quite one of the household, like good
Mademoiselle. I am really fond of her. She is so bright and amusing
and now seems perfectly happy, and is not only devoted to Archie and
Quentin but is very wise in the way she takes care of them. Quentin,
under parental duress, rides Algonquin every day. Archie has just
bought himself a football suit, but I have not noticed that he has
played football as yet. He is spending Saturday and Sunday out at Dr.
Rixey's. Ted plays tennis with Matt. Hale and me and Mr. Cooley. We
tied Dan Moore. You could beat him. Yesterday I took an afternoon off
and we all went for a scramble and climb down the other side of the
Potomac from Chain Bridge home. It was great fun. To-morrow (Sunday)
we shall have lunch early and spend the afternoon in a drive of the
entire family, including Ethel, but not including Archie and Quentin,
out to Burnt Mills and back. When I say we all scrambled along the
Potomac, I of course only meant Matt. Hale and Ted and I. Three or
four active male friends took the walk with us.

In politics things at the moment seem to look quite right, but every
form of lie is being circulated by the Democrats, and they intend
undoubtedly to spring all kinds of sensational untruths at the very
end of the campaign. I have not any idea whether we will win or not.
Before election I shall send you my guess as to the way the different
States will vote, and then you can keep it and see how near to the
truth I come. But of course you will remember that it is a mere guess,
and that I may be utterly mistaken all along the line. In any event,
even if I am beaten you must remember that we have had three years of
great enjoyment out of the Presidency and that we are mighty lucky to
have had them.

I generally have people in to lunch, but at dinner, thank fortune, we
are usually alone. Though I have callers in the evening, I generally
have an hour in which to sit with Mother and the others up in the
library, talking and reading and watching the bright wood fire. Ted
and Ethel, as well as Archie and Quentin, are generally in Mother's
room for twenty minutes or a half hour just before she dresses,
according to immemorial custom.

Last evening Mother and I and Ted and Ethel and Matt. Hale went to the
theatre to see "The Yankee Consul," which was quite funny.



                            BIG JIM WHITE

White House, Dec. 3, 1904.

BLESSED KERMIT:

The other day while Major Loeffler was marshalling the usual stream of
visitors from England, Germany, the Pacific slope, etc., of warm
admirers from remote country places, of bridal couples, etc., etc., a
huge man about six feet four, of middle age, but with every one of his
great sinews and muscles as fit as ever, came in and asked to see me
on the ground that he was a former friend. As the line passed he was
introduced to me as Mr. White. I greeted him in the usual rather
perfunctory manner, and the huge, rough-looking fellow shyly remarked,
"Mr. Roosevelt, maybe you don't recollect me. I worked on the roundup
with you twenty years ago next spring. My outfit joined yours at the
mouth of the Box Alder." I gazed at him, and at once said, "Why it is
big Jim." He was a great cow-puncher and is still riding the range in
northwestern Nebraska. When I knew him he was a tremendous fighting
man, but always liked me. Twice I had to interfere to prevent him from
half murdering cowboys from my own ranch. I had him at lunch, with a
mixed company of home and foreign notabilities.

Don't worry about the lessons, old boy. I know you are studying hard.
Don't get cast down. Sometimes in life, both at school and afterwards,
fortune will go against any one, but if he just keeps pegging away and
doesn't lose his courage things always take a turn for the better in
the end.



                    WINTER LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE

White House, Dec. 17, 1904.

BLESSED KERMIT:

For a week the weather has been cold--down to zero at night and rarely
above freezing in the shade at noon. In consequence the snow has lain
well, and as there has been a waxing moon I have had the most
delightful evening and night rides imaginable. I have been so busy
that I have been unable to get away until after dark, but I went in
the fur jacket Uncle Will presented to me as the fruit of his prize
money in the Spanish War; and the moonlight on the glittering snow
made the rides lovelier than they would have been in the daytime.
Sometimes Mother and Ted went with me, and the gallops were
delightful. To-day it has snowed heavily again, but the snow has been
so soft that I did not like to go out, and besides I have been worked
up to the limit. There has been skating and sleigh-riding all the
week.

The new black "Jack" dog is becoming very much at home and very fond
of the family.

With Archie and Quentin I have finished "The Last of the Mohicans,"
and have now begun "The Deerslayer." They are as cunning as ever, and
this reading to them in the evening gives me a chance to see them that
I would not otherwise have, although sometimes it is rather hard to
get time.

Mother looks very young and pretty. This afternoon she was most busy,
taking the little boys to the theatre and then going to hear Ethel
sing. Ted, very swell in his first tail coat, is going out to take
supper at Secretary Morton's, whose pretty daughter is coming out
to-night.

In a very few days now we shall see you again.



                       PLAYMATE OF THE CHILDREN

(To Mr. and Mrs. Emlen Roosevelt)

White House, Jan. 4, 1905.

I am really touched at the way in which your children as well as my
own treat me as a friend and playmate. It has its comic side. Thus,
the last day the boys were here they were all bent upon having me take
them for a scramble down Rock Creek. Of course, there was absolutely
no reason why they could not go alone, but they obviously felt that my
presence was needed to give zest to the entertainment. Accordingly,
off I went, with the two Russell boys, George, Jack, and Philip, and
Ted, Kermit, and Archie, with one of Archie's friends--a sturdy little
boy who, as Archie informed me, had played opposite to him in the
position of centre rush last fall. I do not think that one of them saw
anything incongruous in the President's getting as bedaubed with mud
as they got, or in my wiggling and clambering around jutting rocks,
through cracks, and up what were really small cliff faces, just like
the rest of them; and whenever any one of them beat me at any point,
he felt and expressed simple and whole-hearted delight, exactly as if
it had been a triumph over a rival of his own age.



                       A JAPANESE BOY'S LETTER

(To Dr. William Sturgis Bigelow)

White House, Jan. 14, 1905.

DEAR STURGIS:

Last year, when I had Professor Yamashita teach me the "Jiudo"--as
they seem now to call Jiu Jitsu--the naval attache here, Commander
Takashita, used to come around here and bring a young lad, Kitgaki,
who is now entering Annapolis. I used to wrestle with them both. They
were very fond of Archie and were very good to him. This Christmas
Kitgaki sent from Annapolis a little present to Archie, who wrote to
thank him, and Kitgaki sent him a letter back that we like so much
that I thought you might enjoy it, as it shows so nice a trait in the
Japanese character. It runs as follows:

 "My dearest boy:

 "I received your nice letter. I thank you ever so much. I am very
  very glad that you have receive my small present.

 "I like you very very much. When I have been in Jiudo room with
  your father and you, your father was talking to us about the
  picture of the caverly officer. In that time, I saw some
  expression on your face. Another remembering of you is your
  bravery when you sleped down from a tall chair. The two
  rememberings can't leave from my head.

 "I returned here last Thursday and have plenty lesson, so my work
  is hard, hard, hard, more than Jiudo.

 "I hope your good health.

 "I am,

       "Sincerely yours,

           "A. KITGAKI."

Isn't it a nice letter?



                    ON COUNTING DAYS AND WRESTLING

White House, Feb. 24, 1905.

DARLING KERMIT:

I puzzled a good deal over your marks. I am inclined to think that one
explanation is that you have thought so much of home as to prevent
your really putting your whole strength into your studies. It is most
natural that you should count the days before coming home, and write
as you do that it will only be 33 days, only 26 days, only 19 days,
etc., but at the same time it seems to me that perhaps this means that
you do not really put all your heart and all your head effort into
your work; and that if you are able to, it would be far better to
think just as little as possible about coming home and resolutely set
yourself to putting your best thought into your work. It is an
illustration of the old adage about putting your hand to the plow and
then looking back. In after life, of course, it is always possible
that at some time you may have to go away for a year or two from home
to do some piece of work. If during that whole time you only thought
day after day of how soon you would get home I think you would find it
difficult to do your best work; and maybe this feeling may be partly
responsible for the trouble with the lessons at school.

Wednesday, Washington's Birthday, I went to Philadelphia and made a
speech at the University of Pennsylvania, took lunch with the
Philadelphia City Troop and came home the same afternoon with less
fatigue than most of my trips cost me; for I was able to dodge the
awful evening banquet and the night on the train which taken together
drive me nearly melancholy mad. Since Sunday we have not been able to
ride. I still box with Grant, who has now become the champion
middleweight wrestler of the United States. Yesterday afternoon we had
Professor Yamashita up here to wrestle with Grant. It was very
interesting, but of course jiu jitsu and our wrestling are so far
apart that it is difficult to make any comparison between them.
Wrestling is simply a sport with rules almost as conventional as those
of tennis, while jiu jitsu is really meant for practice in killing or
disabling our adversary. In consequence, Grant did not know what to do
except to put Yamashita on his back, and Yamashita was perfectly
content to be on his back. Inside of a minute Yamashita had choked
Grant, and inside of two minutes more he got an elbow hold on him that
would have enabled him to break his arm; so that there is no question
but that he could have put Grant out. So far this made it evident that
the jiu jitsu man could handle the ordinary wrestler. But Grant, in
the actual wrestling and throwing was about as good as the Japanese,
and he was so much stronger that he evidently hurt and wore out the
Japanese. With a little practice in the art I am sure that one of our
big wrestlers or boxers, simply because of his greatly superior
strength, would be able to kill any of those Japanese, who though very
good men for their inches and pounds are altogether too small to hold
their own against big, powerful, quick men who are as well trained.



                         SPRING IN WASHINGTON

White House, March 20, 1905.

DEAR KERMIT:

Poor John Hay has been pretty sick. He is going away to try to pick up
his health by a sea voyage and rest. I earnestly hope he succeeds, not
only because of my great personal fondness for him, but because from
the standpoint of the nation it would be very difficult to replace
him. Every Sunday on my way home from church I have been accustomed to
stop in and see him. The conversation with him was always delightful,
and during these Sunday morning talks we often decided important
questions of public policy.

I paid a scuttling visit to New York on Friday to give away Eleanor at
her marriage, and to make two speeches--one to the Friendly Sons of St.
Patrick and one to the Sons of the American Revolution.

Mother and I have been riding a good deal, and the country is now
lovely. Moreover, Ted and Matt and I have begun playing tennis.

The birds have come back. Not only song-sparrows and robins, but a
winter wren, purple finches and tufted titmice are singing in the
garden; and the other morning early Mother and I were waked up by the
loud singing of a cardinal bird in the magnolia tree just outside our
windows.

Yesterday afternoon Archie and Quentin each had a little boy to see
him. They climbed trees, sailed boats in the fountain, and dug in the
sand-box like woodcocks.

Poor Mr. Frank Travers died last night. I was very sorry. He has been
a good friend to me.



                            A HUNTING TRIP

Colorado Springs, Colorado,
    April 14, 1905.

BLESSED KERMIT:

I hope you had as successful a trip in Florida as I have had in Texas
and Oklahoma. The first six days were of the usual Presidential tour
type, but much more pleasant than ordinarily, because I did not have
to do quite as much speaking, and there was a certain irresponsibility
about it all, due I suppose in part to the fact that I am no longer a
candidate and am free from the everlasting suspicion and ill-natured
judgment which being a candidate entails. However, both in Kentucky,
and especially in Texas, I was received with a warmth and heartiness
that surprised me, while the Rough Riders' reunion at San Antonio was
delightful in every way.

Then came the five days wolf hunting in Oklahoma, and this was
unalloyed pleasure, except for my uneasiness about Auntie Bye and poor
little Sheffield. General Young, Dr. Lambert and Roly Fortescue were
each in his own way just the nicest companions imaginable, my Texas
hosts were too kind and friendly and open-hearted for anything. I want
to have the whole party up at Washington next winter. The party got
seventeen wolves, three coons, and any number of rattlesnakes. I was
in at the death of eleven wolves. The other six wolves were killed by
members of the party who were off with bunches of dogs in some place
where I was not. I never took part in a run which ended in the death
of a wolf without getting through the run in time to see the death. It
was tremendous galloping over cut banks, prairie dog towns, flats,
creek bottoms, everything. One run was nine miles long and I was the
only man in at the finish except the professional wolf hunter
Abernethy, who is a really wonderful fellow, catching the wolves alive
by thrusting his gloved hands down between their jaws so that they
cannot bite. He caught one wolf alive, tied up this wolf, and then
held it on the saddle, followed his dogs in a seven-mile run and
helped kill another wolf. He has a pretty wife and five cunning
children of whom he is very proud, and introduced them to me, and I
liked him much. We were in the saddle eight or nine hours every day,
and I am rather glad to have thirty-six hours' rest on the cars before
starting on my Colorado bear hunt.



                      ABERNETHY THE WOLF HUNTER

Colorado Springs, Colorado,
    April 20, 1905.

DEAR TED:

I do wish you could have been along on this trip. It has been great
fun. In Oklahoma our party got all told seventeen coyotes with the
greyhounds. I was in at the death of eleven, the only ones started by
the dogs with which I happened to be. In one run the three Easterners
covered themselves with glory, as Dr. Lambert, Roly Fortescue and I
were the only ones who got through excepting Abernethy, the wolf
hunter. It happened because it was a nine-mile run and all the cowboys
rode their horses to a standstill in the first three or four miles,
after which I came bounding along, like Kermit in the paper chase, and
got to the end in time to see the really remarkable feat of Abernethy
jumping on to the wolf, thrusting his gloved hand into its mouth, and
mastering it then and there. He never used a knife or a rope in taking
these wolves, seizing them by sheer quickness and address and
thrusting his hand into the wolf's mouth in such a way that it lost
all power to bite. You would have loved Tom Burnett, the son of the
big cattle man. He is a splendid fellow, about thirty years old, and
just the ideal of what a young cattle man should be.

Up here we have opened well. We have two cracker jacks as guides--John
Goff, my old guide on the mountain lion hunt, and Jake Borah, who has
somewhat the Seth Bullock type of face. We have about thirty dogs,
including one absurd little terrier about half Jack's size, named
Skip. Skip trots all day long with the hounds, excepting when he can
persuade Mr. Stewart, or Dr. Lambert, or me to take him up for a ride,
for which he is always begging. He is most affectionate and
intelligent, but when there is a bear or lynx at bay he joins in the
fight with all the fury of a bull dog, though I do not think he is
much more effective than one of your Japanese mice would be. I should
like to bring him home for Archie or Quentin. He would go everywhere
with them and would ride Betsy or Algonquin.

On the third day out I got a fine big black bear, an old male who
would not tree, but made what they call in Mississippi a walking bay
with the dogs, fighting them off all the time. The chase lasted nearly
two hours and was ended by a hard scramble up a canyon side; and I
made a pretty good shot at him as he was walking off with the pack
around him. He killed one dog and crippled three that I think will
recover, besides scratching others. My 30-40 Springfield worked to
perfection on the bear.

I suppose you are now in the thick of your studies and will have but
little time to rest after the examinations. I shall be back about the
18th, and then we can take up our tennis again. Give my regards to
Matt.

I am particularly pleased that Maurice turned out so well. He has
always been so pleasant to me that I had hoped he would turn out all
right in the end.



                            PRAIRIE GIRLS

Divide Creek, Colo., April 26, 1905.

DARLING ETHEL:

Of course you remember the story of the little prairie girl. I always
associate it with you. Well, again and again on this trip we would
pass through prairie villages--bleak and lonely--with all the people
in from miles about to see me. Among them were often dozens of young
girls, often pretty, and as far as I could see much more happy than
the heroine of the story. One of them shook hands with me, and then,
after much whispering, said: "We want to shake hands with the guard!"
The "guard" proved to be Roly, who was very swell in his uniform, and
whom they evidently thought much more attractive than the President,
both in age and looks.

There are plenty of ranchmen round here; they drive over to camp to
see me, usually bringing a cake, or some milk and eggs, and are very
nice and friendly. About twenty of the men came out with me, "to see
the President shoot a bear"; and fortunately I did so in the course of
an exhausting twelve hours' ride. I am very homesick for you all.



                       BEARS, BOBCATS AND SKIP

Glenwood Springs, Colorado,
    May 2, 1905.

BLESSED KERMIT:

I was delighted to get your letter. I am sorry you are having such a
hard time in mathematics, but hope a couple of weeks will set you all
right. We have had a very successful hunt. All told we have obtained
ten bear and three bobcats. Dr. Lambert has been a perfect trump. He
is in the pink of condition, while for the last week I have been a
little knocked out by the Cuban fever. Up to that time I was simply in
splendid shape. There is a very cunning little dog named Skip,
belonging to John Goff's pack, who has completely adopted me. I think
I shall take him home to Archie. He likes to ride on Dr. Lambert's
horse, or mine, and though he is not as big as Jack, takes eager part
in the fight with every bear and bobcat.

I am sure you will enjoy your trip to Deadwood with Seth Bullock, and
as soon as you return from Groton I shall write to him about it. I
have now become very homesick for Mother, and shall be glad when the
12th of May comes and I am back in the White House.



                         HOME AGAIN WITH SKIP

White House, May 14, 1905.

DEAR KERMIT:

Here I am back again, and mighty glad to be back. It was perfectly
delightful to see Mother and the children, but it made me very
homesick for you. Of course I was up to my ears in work as soon as I
reached the White House, but in two or three days we shall be through
it and can settle down into our old routine.

Yesterday afternoon we played tennis, Herbert Knox Smith and I beating
Matt and Murray. To-day I shall take cunning mother out for a ride.

Skip accompanied me to Washington. He is not as yet entirely at home
in the White House and rather clings to my companionship. I think he
will soon be fond of Archie, who loves him dearly. Mother is kind to
Skip, but she does not think he is an aristocrat as Jack is. He is a
very cunning little dog all the same.

Mother walked with me to church this morning and both the past
evenings we have been able to go out into the garden and sit on the
stone benches near the fountain. The country is too lovely for
anything, everything being a deep, rich, fresh green.

I had a great time in Chicago with the labor union men. They made what
I regarded as a rather insolent demand upon me, and I gave them some
perfectly straight talk about their duty and about the preservation of
law and order. The trouble seems to be increasing there, and I may
have to send Federal troops into the city--though I shall not do so
unless it is necessary.



                       SKIP IN THE WHITE HOUSE

White House, May 14, 1905.

DEAR KERMIT:

That was a good mark in Latin, and I am pleased with your steady
improvement in it.

Skip is housebroken, but he is like a real little Indian. He can stand
any amount of hard work if there is a bear or bobcat ahead, but now
that he is in the White House he thinks he would much rather do
nothing but sit about all day with his friends, and threatens to turn
into a lapdog. But when we get him to Oyster Bay I think we can make
him go out riding with us, and then I think he will be with Archie a
great deal. He and Jack are rather jealous of one another. He is very
cunning and friendly. I am immensely pleased with Mother's Virginia
cottage and its name. I am going down there for Sunday with her some
time soon.

P. S.--Your marks have just come! By George, you have worked hard and
I am delighted. Three cheers!



                       OFFICERS OF TOGO'S FLEET

White House, June 6, 1905.

DEAR KERMIT:

Next Friday I am going down with Mother to spend a couple of days at
Pine Knot, which Mother loves just as Ethel loves Fidelity. She and I
have had some lovely rides together, and if I do not go riding with
her I play tennis with Ted and some of his and my friends. Yesterday
Ted and one of his friends played seven sets of tennis against Mr.
Cooley and me and beat us four to three. In the evening Commander
Takashita brought in half a dozen Japanese naval officers who had been
with Togo's fleet off Port Arthur and had taken part in the fleet
actions, the attacks with the torpedo-boat flotilla, and so forth. I
tell you they were a formidable-looking set and evidently dead game
fighters!



                         A PRESIDENT AS COOK

White House, June 11, 1905.

DEAR KERMIT:

Mother and I have just come home from a lovely trip to "Pine Knot." It
is really a perfectly delightful little place; the nicest little place
of the kind you can imagine. Mother is a great deal more pleased with
it than any child with any toy I ever saw. She went down the day
before, Thursday, and I followed on Friday morning. Good Mr. Joe
Wilmer met me at the station and we rode on horseback to "Round Top,"
where we met Mother and Mr. Willie Wilmer. We all had tea there and
then drove to "Plain Dealing," where we had dinner. Of course I loved
both "Round Top" and "Plain Dealing," and as for the two Mr. Wilmers,
they are the most generous, thoughtful, self-effacing friends that any
one could wish to see. After dinner we went over to "Pine Knot," put
everything to order and went to bed. Next day we spent all by
ourselves at "Pine Knot." In the morning I fried bacon and eggs, while
Mother boiled the kettle for tea and laid the table. Breakfast was
most successful, and then Mother washed the dishes and did most of the
work, while I did odd jobs. Then we walked about the place, which is
fifteen acres in all, saw the lovely spring, admired the pine trees
and the oak trees, and then Mother lay in the hammock while I cut away
some trees to give us a better view from the piazza. The piazza is the
real feature of the house. It is broad and runs along the whole length
and the roof is high near the wall, for it is a continuation of the
roof of the house. It was lovely to sit there in the rocking-chairs
and hear all the birds by daytime and at night the whippoorwills and
owls and little forest folk.

Inside the house is just a bare wall with one big room below, which is
nice now, and will be still nicer when the chimneys are up and there
is a fireplace in each end. A rough flight of stairs leads above,
where there are two rooms, separated by a passageway. We did
everything for ourselves, but all the food we had was sent over to us
by the dear Wilmers, together with milk. We cooked it ourselves, so
there was no one around the house to bother us at all. As we found
that cleaning dishes took up an awful time we only took two meals a
day, which was all we wanted. On Saturday evening I fried two chickens
for dinner, while Mother boiled the tea, and we had cherries and wild
strawberries, as well as biscuits and cornbread. To my pleasure Mother
greatly enjoyed the fried chicken and admitted that what you children
had said of the way I fried chicken was all true. In the evening we
sat out a long time on the piazza, and then read indoors and then went
to bed. Sunday morning we did not get up until nine. Then I fried
Mother some beefsteak and some eggs in two frying-pans, and she liked
them both very much. We went to church at the dear little church where
the Wilmers' father and mother had been married, dined soon after two
at "Plain Dealing," and then were driven over to the station to go
back to Washington. I rode the big black stallion--Chief--and enjoyed
it thoroughly. Altogether we had a very nice holiday.

I was lucky to be able to get it, for during the past fortnight, and
indeed for a considerable time before, I have been carrying on
negotiations with both Russia and Japan, together with side
negotiations with Germany, France and England, to try to get the
present war stopped. With infinite labor and by the exercise of a good
deal of tact and judgment--if I do say it myself--I have finally
gotten the Japanese and Russians to agree to meet to discuss the terms
of peace. Whether they will be able to come to an agreement or not I
can't say. But it is worth while to have obtained the chance of peace,
and the only possible way to get this chance was to secure such an
agreement of the two powers that they would meet and discuss the terms
direct. Of course Japan will want to ask more than she ought to ask,
and Russia to give less than she ought to give. Perhaps both sides
will prove impracticable. Perhaps one will. But there is the chance
that they will prove sensible, and make a peace, which will really be
for the interest of each as things are now. At any rate the experiment
was worth trying. I have kept the secret very successfully, and my
dealings with the Japanese in particular have been known to no one, so
that the result is in the nature of a surprise.



                       QUENTIN'S QUAINT SAYINGS

Oyster Bay, N. Y., Aug. 26, 1905.

DEAR KERMIT:

Mr. Phil Stewart and Dr. Lambert spent a night here, Quentin greeting
the former with most cordial friendship, and in explanation stating
that he always liked to get acquainted with everybody. I take Hall to
chop, and he plays tennis with Phil and Oliver, and rides with Phil
and Quentin. The Plunger (a submarine) has come to the Bay and I am
going out in it this afternoon--or rather down on it. N. B.--I have
just been down, for 50 minutes; it was very interesting.

Last night I listened to Mother reading "The Lances of Linwood" to the
two little boys and then hearing them their prayers. Then I went into
Archie's room, where they both showed all their china animals; I read
them Laura E. Richards' poems, including "How does the President take
his tea?" They christened themselves Punkey Doodle and Jollapin, from
the chorus of this, and immediately afterwards I played with them on
Archie's bed. First I would toss Punkey Doodle (Quentin) on Jollapin
(Archie) and tickle Jollapin while Punkey Doodle squalled and wiggled
on top of him, and then reverse them and keep Punkey Doodle down by
heaving Jollapin on him, while they both kicked and struggled until my
shirt front looked very much the worse for wear. You doubtless
remember yourself how bad it was for me, when I was dressed for
dinner, to play with all you scamps when you were little.

The other day a reporter asked Quentin something about me; to which
that affable and canny young gentleman responded, "Yes, I see him
sometimes; but I know nothing of his family life."



                ADVICE REGARDING NEWSPAPER ANNOYANCES

When Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., entered Harvard as a freshman he had to
pay the penalty of being a President's son. Newspaper reporters
followed all his movements, especially in athletics, and he was the
victim of many exaggerated and often purely fictitious accounts of his
doings. His father wrote him indignant and sympathetic letters, two of
which are reproduced here.


White House, October 2, 1905.

BLESSED OLD TED:

The thing to do is to go on just as you have evidently been doing,
attract as little attention as possible, do not make a fuss about the
newspaper men, camera creatures, and idiots generally, letting it be
seen that you do not like them and avoid them, but not letting them
betray you into any excessive irritation. I believe they will soon
drop you, and it is just an unpleasant thing that you will have to
live down. Ted, I have had an enormous number of unpleasant things
that I have had to live down in my life at different times and you
have begun to have them now. I saw that you were not out on the
football field on Saturday and was rather glad of it, as evidently
those infernal idiots were eagerly waiting for you, but whenever you
do go you will have to make up your mind that they will make it
exceedingly unpleasant for you for once or twice, and you will just
have to bear it; for you can never in the world afford to let them
drive you away from anything you intend to do, whether it is football
or anything else, and by going about your own business quietly and
pleasantly, doing just what you would do if they were not there,
generally they will get tired of it, and the boys themselves will see
that it is not your fault, and will feel, if anything, rather a
sympathy for you. Meanwhile I want you to know that we are all
thinking of you and sympathizing with you the whole time; and it is a
great comfort to me to have such confidence in you and to know that
though these creatures can cause you a little trouble and make you
feel a little downcast, they can not drive you one way or the other,
or make you alter the course you have set out for yourself.

We were all of us, I am almost ashamed to say, rather blue at getting
back in the White House, simply because we missed Sagamore Hill so
much. But it is very beautiful and we feel very ungrateful at having
even a passing fit of blueness, and we are enjoying it to the full
now. I have just seen Archie dragging some fifty foot of hose pipe
across the tennis court to play in the sand-box. I have been playing
tennis with Mr. Pinchot, who beat me three sets to one, the only
deuce-set being the one I won.

This is just an occasion to show the stuff there is in you. Do not let
these newspaper creatures and kindred idiots drive you one hair's
breadth from the line you had marked out in football or anything else.
Avoid any fuss, if possible.


White House, October 11, 1905.

DEAR TED:

I was delighted to find from your last letters that you are evidently
having a pretty good time in spite of the newspaper and kodak
creatures. I guess that nuisance is now pretty well abated. Every now
and then they will do something horrid; but I think you can safely,
from now on, ignore them entirely.

I shall be interested to hear how you get on, first of all with your
studies, in which you seem to have started well, and next with
football. I expected that you would find it hard to compete with the
other candidates for the position of end, as they are mostly heavier
than you; especially since you went off in weight owing to the
excitement of your last weeks of holiday in the summer. Of course the
fact that you are comparatively light tells against you and gives you
a good deal to overcome; and undoubtedly it was from this standpoint
not a good thing that you were unable to lead a quieter life toward
the end of your stay at Oyster Bay.

So it is about the polo club. In my day we looked with suspicion upon
all freshman societies, and the men who tried to get them up or were
prominent in them rarely amounted to much in the class afterwards; and
it has happened that I have heard rather unfavorably of the polo club.
But it may be mere accident that I have thus heard unfavorably about
it, and in thirty years the attitude of the best fellows in college to
such a thing as a freshman club may have changed so absolutely that my
experience can be of no value. Exercise your own best judgment and
form some idea of what the really best fellows in the class think on
the subject. Do not make the mistake of thinking that the men who are
merely undeveloped are really the best fellows, no matter how pleasant
and agreeable they are or how popular. Popularity is a good thing, but
it is not something for which to sacrifice studies or athletics or
good standing in any way; and sometimes to seek it overmuch is to lose
it. I do not mean this as applying to you, but as applying to certain
men who still have a great vogue at first in the class, and of whom
you will naturally tend to think pretty well.

In all these things I can only advise you in a very general way. You
are on the ground. You know the men and the general college sentiment.
You have gone in with the serious purpose of doing decently and
honorably; of standing well in your studies; of showing that in
athletics you mean business up to the extent of your capacity, and of
getting the respect and liking of your classmates so far as they can
be legitimately obtained. As to the exact methods of carrying out
these objects, I must trust to you.



                     INCIDENTS OF A SOUTHERN TRIP

White House, Nov. 1, 1905.

DEAR KERMIT:

I had a great time in the South, and it was very nice indeed having
Mr. John McIlhenny and Mr. John Greenway with me. Of course I enjoyed
most the three days when Mother was there. But I was so well received
and had so many things to say which I was really glad to say, that the
whole trip was a success. When I left New Orleans on the little
lighthouse tender to go down to the gulf where the big war ship was
awaiting me, we had a collision. I was standing up at the time and the
shock pitched me forward so that I dove right through the window,
taking the glass all out except a jagged rim round the very edge. But
I went through so quickly that I received only some minute scratches
on my face and hands which, however, bled pretty freely. I was very
glad to come up the coast on the squadron of great armored cruisers.

In the gulf the weather was hot and calm, but soon after rounding
Florida and heading northward we ran into a gale. Admiral Brownson is
a regular little gamecock and he drove the vessels to their limit. It
was great fun to see the huge warcraft pounding steadily into the gale
and forging onward through the billows. Some of the waves were so high
that the water came clean over the flying bridge forward, and some of
the officers were thrown down and badly bruised. One of the other
ships lost a man overboard, and although we hunted for him an hour and
a half we could not get him, and had a boat smashed in the endeavor.

When I got back here I found sister, very interesting about her
Eastern trip. She has had a great time, and what is more, she has
behaved mighty well under rather trying circumstances. Ethel was a
dear, as always, and the two little boys were as cunning as possible.
Sister had brought them some very small Japanese fencing armor, which
they had of course put on with glee, and were clumsily fencing with
wooden two-handed swords. And they had also rigged up in the dark
nursery a gruesome man with a pumpkin head, which I was ushered in to
see, and in addition to the regular eyes, nose, and saw-tooth mouth,
Archie had carved in the back of the pumpkin the words "Pumpkin
Giant," the candle inside illuminating it beautifully. Mother was
waiting for me at the Navy Yard, looking too pretty for anything, when
I arrived. She and I had a ride this afternoon. Of course I am up to
my ears in work.

The mornings are lovely now, crisp and fresh; after breakfast Mother
and I walk around the grounds accompanied by Skip, and also by
Slipper, her bell tinkling loudly. The gardens are pretty dishevelled
now, but the flowers that are left are still lovely; even yet some
honeysuckle is blooming on the porch.



                          POETS AND PRINCES

White House, November 6, 1905.

DEAR KERMIT:

Just a line, for I really have nothing to say this week. I have caught
up with my work. One day we had a rather forlorn little poet and his
nice wife in at lunch. They made me feel quite badly by being so
grateful at my having mentioned him in what I fear was a very
patronizing and, indeed, almost supercilious way, as having written an
occasional good poem. I am much struck by Robinson's two poems which
you sent Mother. What a queer, mystical creature he is! I did not
understand one of them--that about the gardens--and I do not know that
I like either of them quite as much as some of those in "The Children
of the Night." But he certainly has got the real spirit of poetry in
him. Whether he can make it come out I am not quite sure.

Prince Louis of Battenberg has been here and I have been very much
pleased with him. He is a really good admiral, and in addition he is a
well-read and cultivated man and it was charming to talk with him. We
had him and his nephew, Prince Alexander, a midshipman, to lunch alone
with us, and we really enjoyed having them. At the State dinner he sat
between me and Bonaparte, and I could not help smiling to myself in
thinking that here was this British Admiral seated beside the American
Secretary of the Navy--the American Secretary of the Navy being the
grandnephew of Napoleon and the grandson of Jerome, King of
Westphalia; while the British Admiral was the grandson of a Hessian
general who was the subject of King Jerome and served under Napoleon,
and then, by no means creditably, deserted him in the middle of the
Battle of Leipsic.

I am off to vote to-night.



                           NOVELS AND GAMES

White House, November 19, 1905.

DEAR KERMIT:

I sympathize with every word you say in your letter, about Nicholas
Nickleby, and about novels generally. Normally I only care for a novel
if the ending is good, and I quite agree with you that if the hero has
to die he ought to die worthily and nobly, so that our sorrow at the
tragedy shall be tempered with the joy and pride one always feels when
a man does his duty well and bravely. There is quite enough sorrow and
shame and suffering and baseness in real life, and there is no need
for meeting it unnecessarily in fiction. As Police Commissioner it was
my duty to deal with all kinds of squalid misery and hideous and
unspeakable infamy, and I should have been worse than a coward if I
had shrunk from doing what was necessary; but there would have been no
use whatever in my reading novels detailing all this misery and
squalor and crime, or at least in reading them as a steady thing. Now
and then there is a powerful but sad story which really is interesting
and which really does good; but normally the books which do good and
the books which healthy people find interesting are those which are
not in the least of the sugar-candy variety, but which, while
portraying foulness and suffering when they must be portrayed, yet
have a joyous as well as a noble side.

We have had a very mild and open fall. I have played tennis a good
deal, the French Ambassador being now quite a steady playmate, as he
and I play about alike; and I have ridden with Mother a great deal.
Last Monday when Mother had gone to New York I had Selous, the great
African hunter, to spend the day and night. He is a perfect old dear;
just as simple and natural as can be and very interesting. I took him,
with Bob Bacon, Gifford Pinchot, Ambassador Meyer and Jim Garfield,
for a good scramble and climb in the afternoon, and they all came to
dinner afterwards. Before we came down to dinner I got him to spend
three-quarters of an hour in telling delightfully exciting lion and
hyena stories to Ethel, Archie and Quentin. He told them most vividly
and so enthralled the little boys that the next evening I had to tell
them a large number myself.

To-day is Quentin's birthday and he loved his gifts, perhaps most of
all the weest, cunningest live pig you ever saw, presented him by
Straus. Phil Stewart and his wife and boy, Wolcott (who is Archie's
age), spent a couple of nights here. One afternoon we had hide-and-go-
seek, bringing down Mr. Garfield and the Garfield boys, and Archie
turning up with the entire football team, who took a day off for the
special purpose. We had obstacle races, hide-and-go-seek, blind-man's
buff, and everything else; and there were times when I felt that there
was a perfect shoal of small boys bursting in every direction up and
down stairs, and through and over every conceivable object.

Mother and I still walk around the grounds every day after breakfast.
The gardens, of course, are very, very dishevelled now, the snap-
dragons holding out better than any other flowers.



                  CHRISTMAS PRESENT TO HIS OLD NURSE

(To Mrs. Dora Watkins)

White House, December 19, 1905.

DEAR DOLLY:

I wish you a merry Christmas, and want you to buy whatever you think
you would like with the enclosed check for twenty dollars. It is now
just forty years since you stopped being my nurse, when I was a little
boy of seven, just one year younger than Quentin now is.

I wish you could see the children play here in the White House
grounds. For the last three days there has been snow, and Archie and
Quentin and their cousin, cunning little Sheffield Cowles, and their
other cousin, Mr. John Elliott's little girl, Helena, who is a perfect
little dear, have been having all kinds of romps in the snow--
coasting, having snowball fights, and doing everything--in the grounds
back of the White House. This coming Saturday afternoon I have agreed
to have a great play of hide-and-go-seek in the White House itself,
not only with these children but with their various small friends.



                        DICKENS AND THACKERAY

White House, February 3, 1906.

DEAR KERMIT:

I agree pretty well with your views of David Copperfield. Dora was
very cunning and attractive, but I am not sure that the husband would
retain enough respect for her to make life quite what it ought to be
with her. This is a harsh criticism and I have known plenty of women
of the Dora type whom I have felt were a good deal better than the men
they married, and I have seen them sometimes make very happy homes. I
also feel as you do that if a man had to struggle on and make his way
it would be a great deal better to have some one like Sophie. Do you
recollect that dinner at which David Copperfield and Traddles were,
where they are described as seated at the dinner, one "in the glare of
the red velvet lady" and the other "in the gloom of Hamlet's aunt"? I
am so glad you like Thackeray. "Pendennis" and "The Newcomes" and
"Vanity Fair" I can read over and over again.

Ted blew in to-day. I think he has been studying pretty well this term
and now he is through all his examinations but one. He hopes, and I
do, that you will pay what attention you can to athletics. Play
hockey, for instance, and try to get into shape for the mile run. I
know it is too short a distance for you, but if you will try for the
hare and hounds running and the mile, too, you may be able to try for
the two miles when you go to Harvard.

The weather was very mild early in the week. It has turned cold now;
but Mother and I had a good ride yesterday, and Ted and I a good ride
this afternoon, Ted on Grey Dawn. We have been having a perfect whirl
of dinner engagements; but thank heavens they will stop shortly after
Sister's wedding.



                         A TRIBUTE TO ARCHIE

White House, March 11, 1906.

DEAR KERMIT:

I agree pretty much to all your views both about Thackeray and
Dickens, although you care for some of Thackeray of which I am not
personally fond. Mother loves it all. Mother, by the way, has been
reading "The Legend of Montrose" to the little boys and they are
absorbed in it. She finds it hard to get anything that will appeal to
both Archie and Quentin, as they possess such different natures.

I am quite proud of what Archie did the day before yesterday. Some of
the bigger boys were throwing a baseball around outside of Mr.
Sidwell's school and it hit one of them square in the eye, breaking
all the blood-vessels and making an extremely dangerous hurt. The
other boys were all rattled and could do nothing, finally sneaking off
when Mr. Sidwell appeared. Archie stood by and himself promptly
suggested that the boy should go to Dr. Wilmer. Accordingly he
scorched down to Dr. Wilmer's and said there was an emergency case for
one of Mr. Sidwell's boys, who was hurt in the eye, and could he bring
him. Dr. Wilmer, who did not know Archie was there, sent out word to
of course do so. So Archie scorched back on his wheel, got the boy (I
do not know why Mr. Sidwell did not take him himself) and led him down
to Dr. Wilmer's, who attended to his eye and had to send him at once
to a hospital, Archie waiting until he heard the result and then
coming home. Dr. Wilmer told me about it and said if Archie had not
acted with such promptness the boy (who was four or five years older
than Archie, by the way) would have lost his sight.

What a heavenly place a sandbox is for two little boys! Archie and
Quentin play industriously in it during most of their spare moments
when out in the grounds. I often look out of the office windows when I
have a score of Senators and Congressmen with me and see them both
hard at work arranging caverns or mountains, with runways for their
marbles.

Good-bye, blessed fellow. I shall think of you very often during the
coming week, and I am so very glad that Mother is to be with you at
your confirmation.



                     PILLOW FIGHTS WITH THE BOYS

White House, March 19, 1906.

DARLING KERMIT:

 . . . . .

During the four days Mother was away I made a point of seeing the
children each evening for three-quarters of an hour or so. Archie and
Quentin are really great playmates. One night I came up-stairs and
found Quentin playing the pianola as hard as he could, while Archie
would suddenly start from the end of the hall where the pianola was,
and, accompanied by both the dogs, race as hard as he could the whole
length of the White House clean to the other end of the hall and then
tear back again. Another evening as I came up-stairs I found Archie
and Quentin having a great play, chuckling with laughter, Archie
driving Quentin by his suspenders, which were fixed to the end of a
pair of woollen reins. Then they would ambush me and we would have a
vigorous pillow-fight, and after five or ten minutes of this we would
go into Mother's room, and I would read them the book Mother had been
reading them, "The Legend of Montrose." We just got through it the
very last evening. Both Skip and Jack have welcomed Mother back with
frantic joy, and this morning came in and lay on her bed as soon as
she had finished breakfast--for she did not come down to either
breakfast or lunch, as she is going to spend the night at Baltimore
with the Bonapartes.

I was so interested in your reading "Phineas Finn" that I ordered a
copy myself. I have also ordered DeQuincey's works, as I find we have
not got them at the White House.

 . . . . .



                           SORROWS OF SKIP

White House, April 1, 1906.

DARLING ARCHIE:

Poor Skip is a very, very lonely little dog without his family. Each
morning he comes up to see me at breakfast time and during most of
breakfast (which I take in the hall just outside my room) Skip stands
with his little paws on my lap. Then when I get through and sit down
in the rocking-chair to read for fifteen or twenty minutes, Skip hops
into my lap and stays there, just bathing himself in the companionship
of the only one of his family he has left. The rest of the day he
spends with the ushers, as I am so frightfully busy that I am nowhere
long enough for Skip to have any real satisfaction in my
companionship. Poor Jack has never come home. We may never know what
became of him.



                  "AN INTERESTING CIRCUS EXPERIENCE"

White House, April 1, 1906.

DARLING ETHEL:

I haven't heard a word from the two new horses, and I rather believe
that if there had been any marked improvement in either of them I
should have heard. I gather that one at least and probably both would
be all right for me if I were twenty years younger, and would probably
be all right for Ted now; but of course as things are at present I do
not want a horse with which I have an interesting circus experience
whenever we meet an automobile, or one which I cannot get to go in any
particular direction without devoting an hour or two to the job. So
that it looks as if old Rusty would be good enough for me for some
time to come. I am going out on him with Senator Lodge this afternoon,
and he will be all right and as fresh as paint, for he has been three
days in the stable. But to-day is just a glorious spring day--March
having ended as it began, with rain and snow--and I will have a good
ride. I miss Mother and you children very much, of course, but I
believe you are having a good time, and I am really glad you are to
see Havana.



                     A BIG AND LONELY WHITE HOUSE

White House, April 1, 1906.

DARLING QUENTY-QUEE:

Slipper and the kittens are doing finely. I think the kittens will be
big enough for you to pet and have some satisfaction out of when you
get home, although they will be pretty young still. I miss you all
dreadfully, and the house feels big and lonely and full of echoes with
nobody but me in it; and I do not hear any small scamps running up and
down the hall just as hard as they can; or hear their voices while I
am dressing; or suddenly look out through the windows of the office at
the tennis ground and see them racing over it or playing in the
sand-box. I love you very much.



                     A NEW PUPPY AND A NEW HORSE

White House, April 12, 1906.

DEAR KERMIT:

 . . . . .

Last night I played "tickley" in their room with the two little boys.
As we rolled and bounced over all three beds in the course of the
play, not to mention frantic chases under them, I think poor
Mademoiselle was rather appalled at the result when we had finished.
Archie's seven-weeks-old St. Bernard puppy has come and it is the
dearest puppy imaginable; a huge, soft thing, which Archie carries
around in his arms and which the whole family love.

Yesterday I took a first ride on the new horse, Roswell, Captain Lee
going along on Rusty as a kind of a nurse. Roswell is not yet four and
he is really a green colt and not quite the horse I want at present,
as I haven't time to fuss with him, and am afraid of letting the
Sergeant ride him, as he does not get on well with him, and there is
nobody else in our stable that can ride at all. He is a beautiful
horse, a wonderful jumper, and does not pull at all. He shies pretty
badly, especially when he meets an automobile; and when he leaves the
stable or strikes a road that he thinks will take him home and is not
allowed to go down it, he is apt to rear, which I do not like; but I
am inclined to think that he will get over these traits, and if I can
arrange to have Lee handle him a couple of months more, and if Ted and
I can regularly ride him down at Oyster Bay, I think that he will turn
out all right.

Mother and I walk every morning through the grounds, which, of course,
are lovely. Not only are the song-sparrows and robins singing, but the
white-throated sparrows, who will, I suppose, soon leave us for the
North, are still in full song, and this morning they waked us up at
daybreak singing just outside the window.



                          A QUENTIN ANECDOTE

White House, April 22, 1906.

DEAR KERMIT:

Ted has been as good and cunning as possible. He has completely
recovered from the effects of having his eye operated upon, and though
the eye itself is a somewhat gruesome object, Ted is in the highest
spirits. He goes back to Harvard to-day.

 . . . . .

As I write, Archie and Quentin are busily engaged in the sand-box and
I look out across the tennis-ground at them. If ever there was a
heaven-sent treasure to small boys, that sand-box is the treasure. It
was very cunning to see the delight various little children took in it
at the egg-rolling on Easter Monday. Thanks to our decision in keeping
out grown people and stopping everything at one o'clock, the egg-
rolling really was a children's festival, and was pretty and not
objectionable this year.

The apple trees are now coming into bloom, including that big arched
apple tree, under which Mother and I sit, by the fountain, on the
stone bench. It is the apple tree that Mother particularly likes. . .

Did Quentin write his poems after you had gone? I never can recollect
whether you have seen them or not. He is a funny small person if ever
there was one. The other day we were discussing a really dreadful
accident which had happened; a Georgetown young man having taken out a
young girl in a canoe on the river, the canoe upset and the girl was
drowned; whereupon the young man, when he got home, took what seemed
to us an exceedingly cold-blooded method of a special delivery letter
to notify her parents. We were expressing our horror at his sending a
special delivery letter, and Quentin solemnly chimed in with "Yes, he
wasted ten cents." There was a moment's eloquent silence, and then we
strove to explain to Quentin that what we were objecting to was not in
the least the young man's spendthrift attitude!

As I walk to and from the office now the terrace is fairly fragrant
with the scent of the many-colored hyacinths which Mother has put out
in boxes on the low stone walls.

 . . . . .



                  A VISIT TO WASHINGTON'S BIRTHPLACE

White House, April 30, 1906.

DEAR KERMIT:

On Saturday afternoon Mother and I started off on the /Sylph/, Mother
having made up her mind I needed thirty-six hours' rest, and we had a
delightful time together, and she was just as cunning as she could be.
On Sunday Mother and I spent about four hours ashore, taking our lunch
and walking up to the monument which marks where the house stood in
which Washington was born. It is a simple shaft. Every vestige of the
house is destroyed, but a curious and rather pathetic thing is that,
although it must be a hundred years since the place was deserted,
there are still multitudes of flowers which must have come from those
in the old garden. There are iris and narcissus and a little blue
flower, with a neat, prim, clean smell that makes one feel as if it
ought to be put with lavender into chests of fresh old linen. The
narcissus in particular was growing around everywhere, together with
real wild flowers like the painted columbine and star of Bethlehem. It
was a lovely spot on a headland overlooking a broad inlet from the
Potomac. There was also the old graveyard or grave plot in which were
the gravestones of Washington's father and mother and grandmother, all
pretty nearly ruined. It was lovely warm weather and Mother and I
enjoyed our walk through the funny lonely old country. Mocking-birds,
meadow-larks, Carolina wrens, cardinals, and field sparrows were
singing cheerfully. We came up the river in time to get home last
evening. This morning Mother and I walked around the White House
grounds as usual. I think I get more fond of flowers every year. The
grounds are now at that high stage of beauty in which they will stay
for the next two months. The buckeyes are in bloom, the pink dogwood,
and the fragrant lilacs, which are almost the loveliest of the bushes;
and then the flowers, including the lily-of-the-valley.

I am dictating in the office. Archie is out by the sandbox playing
with the hose. The playing consists in brandishing it around his head
and trying to escape the falling water. He escapes about twice out of
three times and must now be a perfect drowned rat. (I have just had
him in to look at him and he is even more of a drowned rat than I
supposed. He has gone out to complete his shower bath under strict
promise that immediately afterwards he will go in and change his
clothes.)

Quentin is the funniest mite you ever saw and certainly a very
original little fellow. He left at Mademoiselle's plate yesterday a
large bunch of flowers with the inscription that they were from the
fairies to her to reward her for taking care of "two /good/, /good/
boys." Ethel is a dear.



                          MORE ABOUT DICKENS

White House, May 20, 1906.

DEAR TED:

Mother read us your note and I was interested in the discussion
between you and ----- over Dickens. Dickens' characters are really to
a great extent personified attributes rather than individuals. In
consequence, while there are not nearly as many who are actually like
people one meets, as for instance in Thackeray, there are a great many
more who possess /characteristics/ which we encounter continually,
though rarely as strongly developed as in the fictional originals. So
Dickens' characters last almost as Bunyan's do. For instance,
Jefferson Brick and Elijah Pogram and Hannibal Chollop are all real
personifications of certain bad tendencies in American life, and I am
continually thinking of or alluding to some newspaper editor or
Senator or homicidal rowdy by one of these three names. I never met
any one exactly like Uriah Heep, but now and then we see individuals
show traits which make it easy to describe them, with reference to
those traits, as Uriah Heep. It is just the same with Micawber. Mrs.
Nickleby is not quite a real person, but she typifies, in accentuated
form, traits which a great many real persons possess, and I am
continually thinking of her when I meet them. There are half a dozen
books of Dickens which have, I think, furnished more characters which
are the constant companions of the ordinary educated man around us,
than is true of any other half-dozen volumes published within the same
period.



                   85. NO PLACE LIKE SAGAMORE HILL

(To Ethel, at Sagamore Hill)

White House, June 11, 1906.

BLESSED ETHEL:

I am very glad that what changes have been made in the house are good,
and I look forward so eagerly to seeing them. After all, fond as I am
of the White House and much though I have appreciated these years in
it, there isn't any place in the world like home--like Sagamore Hill,
where things are our own, with our own associations, and where it is
real country.



                            ATTIC DELIGHTS

White House, June 17, 1906.

BLESSED ETHEL:

Your letter delighted me. I read it over twice, and chuckled over it.
By George, how entirely I sympathize with your feelings in the attic!
I know just what it is to get up into such a place and find the
delightful, winding passages where one lay hidden with thrills of
criminal delight, when the grownups were vainly demanding one's
appearance at some legitimate and abhorred function; and then the
once-beloved and half-forgotten treasures, and the emotions of peace
and war, with reference to former companions, which they recall.

I am not in the least surprised about the mental telepathy; there is
much in it and in kindred things which are real and which at present
we do not understand. The only trouble is that it usually gets mixed
up with all kinds of fakes.

I am glad the band had a healthy effect in reviving old Bleistein's
youth. I shall never forget the intense interest in life he always
used to gain when we encountered an Italian with a barrel organ and a
bear--a combination that made Renown seek instant refuge in attempted
suicide.

I am really pleased that you are going to teach Sunday school. I think
I told you that I taught it for seven years, most of the time in a
mission class, my pupils being of a kind which furnished me plenty of
vigorous excitement.



                   PRESIDENTIAL RESCUE OF A KITTEN

White House, June 24, 1906.

DARLING ETHEL:

To-day as I was marching to church, with Sloane some 25 yards behind,
I suddenly saw two terriers racing to attack a kitten which was
walking down the sidewalk. I bounced forward with my umbrella, and
after some active work put to flight the dogs while Sloane captured
the kitten, which was a friendly, helpless little thing, evidently too
well accustomed to being taken care of to know how to shift for
itself. I inquired of all the bystanders and of people on the
neighboring porches to know if they knew who owned it; but as they all
disclaimed, with many grins, any knowledge of it, I marched ahead with
it in my arms for about half a block. Then I saw a very nice colored
woman and little colored girl looking out of the window of a small
house with on the door a dressmaker's advertisement, and I turned and
walked up the steps and asked if they did not want the kitten. They
said they did, and the little girl welcomed it lovingly; so I felt I
had gotten it a home and continued toward church.

Has the lordly Ted turned up yet? Is his loving sister able,
unassisted, to reduce the size of his head, or does she need any
assistance from her male parent?

Your affectionate father,

    The Tyrant.



                     SPORTS OF QUENTIN AND ARCHIE

Oyster Bay, Aug. 18, 1906.

DEAR KERMIT:

 . . . . .

Quentin is the same cheerful pagan philosopher as ever. He swims like
a little duck; rides well; stands quite severe injuries without
complaint, and is really becoming a manly little fellow. Archie is
devoted to the /Why/ (sailboat). The other day while Mother and I were
coming in, rowing, we met him sailing out, and it was too cunning for
anything. The /Why/ looks exactly like a little black wooden shoe with a
sail in it, and the crew consisted of Archie, of one of his beloved
playmates, a seaman from the /Sylph/, and of Skip--very alert and
knowing.



                           SKIP AND ARCHIE

White House, October 23, 1906.

DEAR KERMIT:

Archie is very cunning and has handicap races with Skip. He spreads
his legs, bends over, and holds Skip between them. Then he says, "On
your mark, Skip, ready; go!" and shoves Skip back while he runs as
hard as he possibly can to the other end of the hall, Skip scrambling
wildly with his paws on the smooth floor until he can get started,
when he races after Archie, the object being for Archie to reach the
other end before Skip can overtake him.



                      A TURKEY HUNT AT PINE KNOT

White House, November 4, 1906.

DEAR KERMIT:

Just a line to tell you what a nice time we had at Pine Knot. Mother
was as happy as she always is there, and as cunning and pretty as
possible. As for me, I hunted faithfully through all three days,
leaving the house at three o'clock one day, at four the next, and at
five the next, so that I began my hunts in absolute night; but
fortunately we had a brilliant moon on each occasion. The first two
days were failures. I did not see a turkey, and on each occasion when
everybody was perfectly certain that I was going to see a turkey,
something went wrong and the turkey did not turn up. The last day I
was out thirteen hours, and you may imagine how hungry I was when I
got back, not to speak of being tired; though fortunately most of the
time I was rambling around on horseback, so I was not done out. But in
the afternoon at last luck changed, and then for once everything went
right. The hunter who was with me marked a turkey in a point of pines
stretching down from a forest into an open valley, with another forest
on its farther side. I ran down to the end of the point and hid behind
a bush. He walked down through the pines and the turkey came out and
started to fly across the valley, offering me a beautiful side shot at
about thirty-five yards--just the distance for my ten-bore. I killed it
dead, and felt mighty happy as it came tumbling down through the air.



                          PETS ON SHIPBOARD

In November, 1906, the President, accompanied by Mrs. Roosevelt, went
to the Isthmus of Panama, where he spent three days in inspecting the
work of building the Panama Canal, returning by way of Porto Rico. The
journey was taken on the naval vessel /Louisiana/, and many of his
letters to the children were written while on board that vessel and
mailed after reaching Colon.


On Board U. S. S. /Louisiana/,
  On the Way to Panama.
Sunday, November 11, 1906.

BLESSED QUENTIN:

You would be amused at the pets they have aboard this ship. They have
two young bull-dogs, a cat, three little raccoons, and a tiny Cuban
goat. They seem to be very amicable with one another, although I think
the cat has suspicions of all the rest. The coons clamber about
everywhere, and the other afternoon while I was sitting reading, I
suddenly felt my finger seized in a pair of soft black paws and found
the coon sniffing at it, making me feel a little uncomfortable lest it
might think the finger something good to eat. The two puppies play
endlessly. One of them belongs to Lieutenant Evans. The crew will not
be allowed ashore at Panama or else I know they would pick up a whole
raft of other pets there. The jackies seem especially fond of the
little coons. A few minutes ago I saw one of the jackies strolling
about with a coon perched upon his shoulder, and now and then he would
reach up his hand and give it a small piece of bread to eat.



                          NAMES OF THE GUNS

On Board U. S. S. /Louisiana/,
Sunday, November 11, 1906.

BLESSED ARCHIE:

I wish you were along with us, for you would thoroughly enjoy
everything on this ship. We have had three days of perfect weather,
while this great battleship with her two convoys, the great armored
cruisers, /Tennessee/ and /Washington/, have steamed steadily in
column ahead southward through calm seas until now we are in the
tropics. They are three as splendid ships of their class as there are
afloat, save only the English Dread-naught. The /Louisiana/ now has
her gun-sights and everything is all in good shape for her to begin
the practice of the duties which will make her crew as fit for man-of-
war's work as the crew of any one of our other first-class
battleships. The men are such splendid-looking fellows, Americans of
the best type, young, active, vigorous, with lots of intelligence. I
was much amused at the names of the seven-inch guns, which include
/Victor/, /Invincible/, /Peacemaker/, together with /Skidoo/, and also
one called /Tedd/ and one called /The Big Stick/.



                        REFLECTIONS ON THE WAY

On Board U. S. S. /Louisiana/,
Nov. 13.

DEAR KERMIT:

So far this trip has been a great success, and I think Mother has
really enjoyed it. As for me, I of course feel a little bored, as I
always do on shipboard, but I have brought on a great variety of
books, and am at this moment reading Milton's prose works, "Tacitus,"
and a German novel called "Jorn Uhl." Mother and I walk briskly up and
down the deck together, or else sit aft under the awning, or in the
after cabin, with the gun ports open, and read; and I also spend a
good deal of time on the forward bridge, and sometimes on the aft
bridge, and of course have gone over the ship to inspect it with the
Captain. It is a splendid thing to see one of these men-of-war, and it
does really make one proud of one's country. Both the officers and the
enlisted men are as fine a set as one could wish to see.

It is a beautiful sight, these three great war-ships standing
southward in close column, and almost as beautiful at night when we
see not only the lights but the loom through the darkness of the ships
astern. We are now in the tropics and I have thought a good deal of
the time over eight years ago when I was sailing to Santiago in the
fleet of warships and transports. It seems a strange thing to think of
my now being President, going to visit the work of the Panama Canal
which I have made possible.

Mother, very pretty and dainty in white summer clothes, came up on
Sunday morning to see inspection and review, or whatever they call it,
of the men. I usually spend half an hour on deck before Mother is
dressed. Then we breakfast together alone; have also taken lunch
alone, but at dinner have two or three officers to dine with us.
Doctor Rixey is along, and is a perfect dear, as always.



                  EVENTS SINCE COLUMBUS'S DISCOVERY

November 14th.

The fourth day out was in some respects the most interesting. All the
forenoon we had Cuba on our right and most of the forenoon and part of
the afternoon Hayti on our left; and in each case green, jungly shores
and bold mountains--two great, beautiful, venomous tropic islands.
These are historic seas and Mother and I have kept thinking of all
that has happened in them since Columbus landed at San Salvador (which
we also saw), the Spanish explorers, the buccaneers, the English and
Dutch sea-dogs and adventurers, the great English and French fleets,
the desperate fighting, the triumphs, the pestilences, of all the
turbulence, the splendor and the wickedness, and the hot, evil,
riotous life of the old planters and slave-owners, Spanish, French,
English, and Dutch;--their extermination of the Indians, and bringing
in of negro slaves, the decay of most of the islands, the turning of
Hayti into a land of savage negroes, who have reverted to voodooism
and cannibalism; the effort we are now making to bring Cuba and Porto
Rico forward.

To-day is calm and beautiful, as all the days have been on our trip.
We have just sighted the highest land of Panama ahead of us, and we
shall be at anchor by two o'clock this afternoon; just a little less
than six days from the time we left Washington.



                           PRIDE IN AMERICA

On Board U. S. S. /Louisiana/,
Nov. 14.

DEAR TED:

I am very glad to have taken this trip, although as usual I am bored
by the sea. Everything has been smooth as possible, and it has been
lovely having Mother along. It gives me great pride in America to be
aboard this great battleship and to see not only the material
perfection of the ship herself in engines, guns and all arrangements,
but the fine quality of the officers and crew. Have you ever read
Smollett's novel, I think "Roderick Random" or "Humphrey Clinker," in
which the hero goes to sea? It gives me an awful idea of what a
floating hell of filth, disease, tyranny, and cruelty a war-ship was
in those days. Now every arrangement is as clean and healthful as
possible. The men can bathe and do bathe as often as cleanliness
requires. Their fare is excellent and they are as self-respecting a
set as can be imagined. I am no great believer in the superiority of
times past; and I have no question that the officers and men of our
Navy now are in point of fighting capacity better than in the times of
Drake and Nelson; and morally and in physical surroundings the
advantage is infinitely in our favor.

It was delightful to have you two or three days at Washington. Blessed
old fellow, you had a pretty hard time in college this fall; but it
can't be helped, Ted; as one grows older the bitter and the sweet keep
coming together. The only thing to do is to grin and bear it, to
flinch as little as possible under the punishment, and to keep pegging
steadily away until the luck turns.



                   WHAT THE PRESIDENT SAW AT PANAMA

U. S. S. /Louisiana/,
At Sea, November 20, 1906.

DEAR KERMIT:

Our visit to Panama was most successful as well as most interesting.
We were there three days and we worked from morning till night. The
second day I was up at a quarter to six and got to bed at a quarter of
twelve, and I do not believe that in the intervening time, save when I
was dressing, there were ten consecutive minutes when I was not busily
at work in some shape or form. For two days there were uninterrupted
tropic rains without a glimpse of the sun, and the Chagres River rose
in a flood, higher than any for fifteen years; so that we saw the
climate at its worst. It was just what I desired to do.

It certainly adds to one's pleasure to have read history and to
appreciate the picturesque. When on Wednesday we approached the coast,
and the jungle-covered mountains looked clearer and clearer until we
could see the surf beating on the shores, while there was hardly a
sign of human habitation, I kept thinking of the four centuries of
wild and bloody romance, mixed with abject squalor and suffering,
which had made up the history of the Isthmus until three years ago. I
could see Balboa crossing at Darien, and the wars between the
Spaniards and the Indians, and the settlement and the building up of
the quaint walled Spanish towns; and the trade, across the seas by
galleon, and over land by pack-train and river canoe, in gold and
silver, in precious stones; and then the advent of the buccaneers, and
of the English seamen, of Drake and Frobisher and Morgan, and many,
many others, and the wild destruction they wrought. Then I thought of
the rebellion against the Spanish dominion, and the uninterrupted and
bloody wars that followed, the last occurring when I became President;
wars, the victorious heroes of which have their pictures frescoed on
the quaint rooms of the palace at Panama city, and in similar palaces
in all capitals of these strange, turbulent little half-caste
civilizations. Meanwhile the Panama railroad had been built by
Americans over a half century ago, with appalling loss of life, so
that it is said, of course with exaggeration, that every sleeper laid
represented the death of a man. Then the French canal company started
work, and for two or three years did a good deal, until it became
evident that the task far exceeded its powers; and then to
miscalculation and inefficiency was added the hideous greed of
adventurers, trying each to save something from the general wreck, and
the company closed with infamy and scandal.

Now we have taken hold of the job. We have difficulties with our own
people, of course. I haven't a doubt that it will take a little longer
and cost a little more than men now appreciate, but I believe that the
work is being done with a very high degree both of efficiency and
honesty; and I am immensely struck by the character of American
employees who are engaged, not merely in superintending the work, but
in doing all the jobs that need skill and intelligence. The steam
shovels, the dirt trains, the machine shops, and the like, are all
filled with American engineers, conductors, machinists, boiler-makers,
carpenters. From the top to the bottom these men are so hardy, so
efficient, so energetic, that it is a real pleasure to look at them.
Stevens, the head engineer, is a big fellow, a man of daring and good
sense, and burly power. All of these men are quite as formidable, and
would, if it were necessary, do quite as much in battle as the crews
of Drake and Morgan; but as it is, they are doing a work of infinitely
more lasting consequence. Nothing whatever remains to show what Drake
and Morgan did. They produced no real effect down here, but Stevens
and his men are changing the face of the continent, are doing the
greatest engineering feat of the ages, and the effect of their work
will be felt while our civilization lasts. I went over everything that
I could possibly go over in the time at my disposal. I examined the
quarters of married and single men, white men and negroes. I went over
the ground of the Gatun and La Boca dams; went through Panama and
Colon, and spent a day in the Culebra cut, where the great work is
being done. There the huge steam-shovels are hard at it; scooping huge
masses of rock and gravel and dirt previously loosened by the drillers
and dynamite blasters, loading it on trains which take it away to some
dump, either in the jungle or where the dams are to be built. They are
eating steadily into the mountain, cutting it down and down. Little
tracks are laid on the side-hills, rocks blasted out, and the great
ninety-five ton steam-shovels work up like mountain howitzers until
they come to where they can with advantage begin their work of eating
into and destroying the mountainside. With intense energy men and
machines do their task, the white men supervising matters and handling
the machines, while the tens of thousands of black men do the rough
manual labor where it is not worth while to have machines do it. It is
an epic feat, and one of immense significance.

The deluge of rain meant that many of the villages were knee-deep in
water, while the flooded rivers tore through the tropic forests. It is
a real tropic forest, palms and bananas, breadfruit trees, bamboos,
lofty ceibas, and gorgeous butterflies and brilliant colored birds
fluttering among the orchids. There are beautiful flowers, too.

All my old enthusiasm for natural history seemed to revive, and I
would have given a good deal to have stayed and tried to collect
specimens. It would be a good hunting country too; deer, and now and
then jaguars and tapir, and great birds that they call wild turkeys;
there are alligators in the rivers. One of the trained nurses from a
hospital went to bathe in a pool last August and an alligator grabbed
him by the legs and was making off with him, but was fortunately
scared away, leaving the man badly injured.

I tramped everywhere through the mud. Mother did not do the roughest
work, and had time to see more of the really picturesque and beautiful
side of the life, and really enjoyed herself.

P. S. The Gatun dam will make a lake miles long, and the railroad now
goes on what will be the bottom of this lake, and it was curious to
think that in a few years great ships would be floating in water 100
feet above where we were.



                       ON THE WAY TO PORTO RICO

U. S. S. /Louisiana/,
At Sea, November 20, 1906.

DEAR TED:

This is the third day out from Panama. We have been steaming steadily
in the teeth of the trade wind. It has blown pretty hard, and the ship
has pitched a little, but not enough to make either Mother or me
uncomfortable.

Panama was a great sight. In the first place it was strange and
beautiful with its mass of luxuriant tropic jungle, with the
treacherous tropic rivers trailing here and there through it; and it
was lovely to see the orchids and brilliant butterflies and the
strange birds and snakes and lizards, and finally the strange old
Spanish towns and the queer thatch and bamboo huts of the ordinary
natives. In the next place it is a tremendous sight to see the work on
the canal going on. From the chief engineer and the chief sanitary
officer down to the last arrived machinist or time-keeper, the five
thousand Americans at work on the Isthmus seemed to me an
exceptionally able, energetic lot, some of them grumbling, of course,
but on the whole a mighty good lot of men. The West Indian negroes
offer a greater problem, but they are doing pretty well also. I was
astonished at the progress made. We spent the three days in working
from dawn until long after darkness--dear Dr. Rixey being, of course,
my faithful companion. Mother would see all she liked and then would
go off on a little spree by herself, and she enjoyed it to the full.



                      WHAT HE SAW IN PORTO RICO

U. S. S. /Louisiana/,
At Sea, November 23, 1906.

DEAR KERMIT:

We had a most interesting two days at Porto Rico. We landed on the
south side of the island and were received by the Governor and the
rest of the administration, including nice Mr. Laurance Grahame; then
were given a reception by the Alcalde and people of Ponce; and then
went straight across the island in automobiles to San Juan on the
north shore. It was an eighty mile trip and really delightful. The
road wound up to the high mountains of the middle island, through
them, and then down again to the flat plain on the north shore. The
scenery was beautiful. It was as thoroughly tropical as Panama but
much more livable. There were palms, tree-ferns, bananas, mangoes,
bamboos, and many other trees and multitudes of brilliant flowers.
There was one vine called the dream-vine with flowers as big as great
white water-lilies, which close up tight in the day-time and bloom at
night. There were vines with masses of brilliant purple and pink
flowers, and others with masses of little white flowers, which at
night-time smell deliciously. There were trees studded over with huge
white flowers, and others, the flamboyants such as I saw in the
campaign at Santiago, are a mass of large scarlet blossoms in June,
but which now had shed them. I thought the tree-ferns especially
beautiful. The towns were just such as you saw in Cuba, quaint,
brilliantly colored, with the old church or cathedral fronting the
plaza, and the plaza always full of flowers. Of course the towns are
dirty, but they are not nearly as dirty and offensive as those of
Italy; and there is something pathetic and childlike about the people.
We are giving them a good government and the island is prospering. I
never saw a finer set of young fellows than those engaged in the
administration. Mr. Grahame, whom of course you remember, is the
intimate friend and ally of the leaders of the administration, that is
of Governor Beekman Winthrop and of the Secretary of State, Mr. Regis
Post. Grahame is a perfect trump and such a handsome, athletic fellow,
and a real Sir Galahad. Any wrong-doing, and especially any cruelty
makes him flame with fearless indignation. He perfectly delighted the
Porto Ricans and also immensely puzzled them by coming in his Scotch
kilt to a Government ball. Accordingly, at my special request, I had
him wear his kilt at the state dinner and reception the night we were
at the palace. You know he is a descendant of Montrose, and although
born in Canada, his parents were Scotch and he was educated in
Scotland. Do tell Mr. Bob Fergie about him and his kilts when you next
write him.

We spent the night at the palace, which is half palace and half
castle, and was the residence of the old Spanish governors. It is
nearly four hundred years old, and is a delightful building, with
quaint gardens and a quaint sea-wall looking over the bay. There were
colored lanterns lighting up the gardens for the reception, and the
view across the bay in the moonlight was lovely. Our rooms were as
attractive as possible too, except that they were so very airy and
open that we found it difficult to sleep--not that that much mattered
as, thanks to the earliness of our start and the lateness of our
reception, we had barely four hours in which we even tried to sleep.

The next morning we came back in automobiles over different and even
more beautiful roads. The mountain passes through and over which we
went made us feel as if we were in a tropic Switzerland. We had to
cross two or three rivers where big cream-colored oxen with yokes tied
to their horns pulled the automobiles through the water. At one funny
little village we had an open air lunch, very good, of chicken and
eggs and bread, and some wine contributed by a wealthy young Spaniard
who rode up from a neighboring coffee ranch.

Yesterday afternoon we embarked again, and that evening the crew gave
a theatrical entertainment on the afterdeck, closing with three boxing
bouts. I send you the program. It was great fun, the audience being
equally enraptured with the sentimental songs about the flag, and the
sailor's true love and his mother, and with the jokes (the most
relished of which related to the fact that bed-bugs were supposed to
be so large that they had to be shot!) and the skits about the
commissary and various persons and deeds on the ship. In a way the
freedom of comment reminded me a little of the Roman triumphs, when
the excellent legendaries recited in verse and prose, anything they
chose concerning the hero in whose deeds they had shared and whose
triumphs they were celebrating. The stage, well lighted, was built on
the aftermost part of the deck. We sat in front with the officers, and
the sailors behind us in masses on the deck, on the aftermost turrets,
on the bridge, and even in the fighting top of the aftermost mast. It
was interesting to see their faces in the light.

 . . . . .

P. S. I forgot to tell you about the banners and inscriptions of
welcome to me in Porto Rico. One of them which stretched across the
road had on it "Welcome to Theodore and Mrs. Roosevelt." Last evening
I really enjoyed a rather funny experience. There is an Army and Navy
Union composed chiefly of enlisted men, but also of many officers, and
they suddenly held a "garrison" meeting in the torpedo-room of this
ship. There were about fifty enlisted men together with the Captain
and myself. I was introduced as "comrade and shipmate Theodore
Roosevelt, President of the United States." They were such a nice set
of fellows, and I was really so pleased to be with them; so self-
respecting, so earnest, and just the right type out of which to make
the typical American fighting man who is also a good citizen. The
meeting reminded me a good deal of a lodge meeting at Oyster Bay; and
of course those men are fundamentally of the same type as the
shipwrights, railroad men and fishermen whom I met at the lodge, and
who, by the way, are my chief backers politically and are the men who
make up the real strength of this nation.



                          SICKNESS OF ARCHIE

White House, March 3, 1907.

DEAR KERMIT:

Poor little Archie has diphtheria, and we have had a wearing forty-
eight hours. Of course it is harder upon Mother a good deal than upon
me, because she spends her whole time with him together with the
trained nurse, while I simply must attend to my work during these
closing hours of Congress (I have worked each day steadily up to half
past seven and also in the evening); and only see Archiekins for
twenty minutes or a half hour before dinner. The poor little fellow
likes to have me put my hands on his forehead, for he says they smell
so clean and soapy! Last night he was very sick, but this morning he
is better, and Dr. Rixey thinks everything is going well. Dr. Lambert
is coming on this afternoon to see him. Ethel, who is away at
Philadelphia, will be sent to stay with the Rixeys. Quentin, who has
been exposed somewhat to infection, is not allowed to see other little
boys, and is leading a career of splendid isolation among the ushers
and policemen.

Since I got back here I have not done a thing except work as the
President must during the closing days of a session of Congress.
Mother was, fortunately, getting much better, but now of course is
having a very hard time of it nursing darling little Archie. He is
just as good as gold--so patient and loving. Yesterday that scamp
Quentin said to Mademoiselle: "If only I had /Archie's/ nature, and
/my/ head, wouldn't it be great?"

In all his sickness Archie remembered that to-day was Mademoiselle's
birthday, and sent her his love and congratulations--which promptly
reduced good Mademoiselle to tears.



                     AT THE JAMESTOWN EXPOSITION

White House, April 29, 1907.

DEAREST KERMIT:

We really had an enjoyable trip to Jamestown. The guests were Mother's
friend, Mrs. Johnson, a Virginia lady who reminds me so much of Aunt
Annie, my mother's sister, who throughout my childhood was almost as
much associated in our home life as my mother herself; Justice Moody,
who was as delightful as he always is, and with whom it was a real
pleasure to again have a chance to talk; Mr. and Mrs. Bob Bacon, who
proved the very nicest guests of all and were companionable and
sympathetic at every point. Ethel was as good as gold and took much
off of Mother's shoulders in the way of taking care of Quentin. Archie
and Quentin had, of course, a heavenly time; went everywhere, below
and aloft, and ate indifferently at all hours, both with the officers
and enlisted men. We left here Thursday afternoon, and on Friday
morning passed in review through the foreign fleet and our own fleet
of sixteen great battleships in addition to cruisers. It was an
inspiring sight and one I would not have missed for a great deal. Then
we went in a launch to the Exposition where I had the usual experience
in such cases, made the usual speech, held the usual reception, went
to the usual lunch, etc., etc.

In the evening Mother and I got on the /Sylph/ and went to Norfolk to
dine. When the /Sylph/ landed we were met by General Grant to convoy us
to the house. I was finishing dressing, and Mother went out into the
cabin and sat down to receive him. In a minute or two I came out and
began to hunt for my hat. Mother sat very erect and pretty, looking at
my efforts with a tolerance that gradually changed to impatience.
Finally she arose to get her own cloak, and then I found that she had
been sitting gracefully but firmly on the hat herself--it was a crush
hat and it had been flattened until it looked like a wrinkled pie.
Mother did not see what she had done so I speechlessly thrust the hat
toward her; but she still did not understand and took it as an
inexplicable jest of mine merely saying, "Yes, dear," and with patient
dignity, turned and went out of the door with General Grant.

The next morning we went on the /Sylph/ up the James River, and on the
return trip visited three of the dearest places you can imagine,
Shirley, Westover, and Brandon. I do not know whether I loved most the
places themselves or the quaint out-of-the-world Virginia gentlewomen
in them. The houses, the grounds, the owners, all were too dear for
anything and we loved them. That night we went back to the /Mayflower/
and returned here yesterday, Sunday, afternoon.

To-day spring weather seems really to have begun, and after lunch
Mother and I sat under the apple-tree by the fountain. A purple finch
was singing in the apple-tree overhead, and the white petals of the
blossoms were silently falling. This afternoon Mother and I are going
out riding with Senator Lodge.



                            GENERAL KUROKI

White House, May 12, 1907.

DEAR KERMIT:

General Kuroki and his suite are here and dined with us at a formal
dinner last evening. Everything that he says has to be translated, but
nevertheless I had a really interesting talk with him, because I am
pretty well acquainted with his campaigns. He impressed me much, as
indeed all Japanese military and naval officers do. They are a
formidable outfit. I want to try to keep on the best possible terms
with Japan and never do her any wrong; but I want still more to see
our navy maintained at the highest point of efficiency, for it is the
real keeper of the peace.



                      TEMPORARY ABSENCE OF SKIP

The other day Pete got into a most fearful fight and was dreadfully
bitten. He was a very forlorn dog indeed when he came home. And on
that particular day Skip disappeared and had not turned up when we
went to bed. Poor Archie was very uneasy lest Skip should have gone
the way of Jack; and Mother and I shared his uneasiness. But about two
in the morning we both of us heard a sharp little bark down-stairs and
knew it was Skip, anxious to be let in. So down I went and opened the
door on the portico, and Skip simply scuttled in and up to Archie's
room, where Archie waked up enough to receive him literally with open
arms and then went to sleep cuddled up to him.



                            DEATH OF SKIP

Sagamore Hill, Sept. 21, 1907.

BLESSED ARCHIEKINS:

We felt dreadfully homesick as you and Kermit drove away; when we pass
along the bay front we always think of the dory; and we mourn dear
little Skip, although perhaps it was as well the little doggie should
pass painlessly away, after his happy little life; for the little
fellow would have pined for you.

Your letter was a great comfort; we'll send on the football suit and
hope you'll enjoy the football. Of course it will all be new and
rather hard at first.

The house is "put up"; everything wrapped in white that can be, and
all the rugs off the floors. Quentin is reduced to the secret service
men for steady companionship.



                      QUENTIN'S SNAKE ADVENTURE

White House, Sept. 28, 1907.

DEAREST ARCHIE:

Before we left Oyster Bay Quentin had collected two snakes. He lost
one, which did not turn up again until an hour before departure, when
he found it in one of the spare rooms. This one he left loose, and
brought the other one to Washington, there being a variety of exciting
adventures on the way; the snake wriggling out of his box once, and
being upset on the floor once. The first day home Quentin was allowed
not to go to school but to go about and renew all his friendships.
Among other places that he visited was Schmid's animal store, where he
left his little snake. Schmid presented him with three snakes, simply
to pass the day with--a large and beautiful and very friendly king
snake and two little wee snakes. Quentin came hurrying back on his
roller skates and burst into the room to show me his treasures. I was
discussing certain matters with the Attorney-General at the time, and
the snakes were eagerly deposited in my lap. The king snake, by the
way, although most friendly with Quentin, had just been making a
resolute effort to devour one of the smaller snakes. As Quentin and
his menagerie were an interruption to my interview with the Department
of Justice, I suggested that he go into the next room, where four
Congressmen were drearily waiting until I should be at leisure. I
thought that he and his snakes would probably enliven their waiting
time. He at once fell in with the suggestion and rushed up to the
Congressmen with the assurance that he would there find kindred
spirits. They at first thought the snakes were wooden ones, and there
was some perceptible recoil when they realized that they were alive.
Then the king snake went up Quentin's sleeve--he was three or four
feet long--and we hesitated to drag him back because his scales
rendered that difficult. The last I saw of Quentin, one Congressman
was gingerly helping him off with his jacket, so as to let the snake
crawl out of the upper end of the sleeve.



In the fall of 1907 the President made a tour through the West and
South and went on a hunting-trip in Louisiana. In accordance with his
unvarying custom he wrote regularly to his children while on his
journeyings.



                   TRIALS OF A TRAVELLING PRESIDENT

On Board U. S. S. /Mississippi/,
October 1, 1907.

DEAREST ETHEL:

The first part of my trip up to the time that we embarked on the river
at Keokuk was just about in the ordinary style. I had continually to
rush out to wave at the people at the towns through which the train
passed. If the train stopped anywhere I had to make a very short
speech to several hundred people who evidently thought they liked me,
and whom I really liked, but to whom I had nothing in the world to
say. At Canton and Keokuk I went through the usual solemn festivities
--the committee of reception and the guard of honor, with the open
carriage, the lines of enthusiastic fellow-citizens to whom I bowed
continually right and left, the speech which in each case I thought
went off rather better than I had dared hope--for I felt as if I had
spoken myself out. When I got on the boat, however, times grew easier.
I still have to rush out continually, stand on the front part of the
deck, and wave at groups of people on shore, and at stern-wheel
steamboats draped with American flags and loaded with enthusiastic
excursionists. But I have a great deal of time to myself, and by
gentle firmness I think I have succeeded in impressing on my good
hosts that I rather resent allopathic doses of information about
shoals and dykes, the amount of sand per cubic foot of water, the
quantity of manufactures supplied by each river town, etc.



                      CHANGES OF THREE CENTURIES

On Board U. S. S. /Mississippi/,
October 1, 1907.

DEAR KERMIT:

After speaking at Keokuk this morning we got aboard this brand new
stern-wheel steamer of the regular Mississippi type and started down-
stream. I went up on the texas and of course felt an almost
irresistible desire to ask the pilot about Mark Twain. It is a broad,
shallow, muddy river, at places the channel being barely wide enough
for the boat to go through, though to my inexperienced eyes the whole
river looks like a channel. The bottom lands, Illinois on one side and
Missouri on the other, are sometimes over-grown with forests and
sometimes great rich cornfields, with here and there a house, here and
there villages, and now and then a little town. At every such place
all the people of the neighborhood have gathered to greet me. The
water-front of the towns would be filled with a dense packed mass of
men, women, and children, waving flags. The little villages have not
only their own population, but also the farmers who have driven in in
their wagons with their wives and children from a dozen miles back--
just such farmers as came to see you and the cavalry on your march
through Iowa last summer.

It is my first trip on the Mississippi, and I am greatly interested in
it. How wonderful in its rapidity of movement has been the history of
our country, compared with the history of the old world. For untold
ages this river had been flowing through the lonely continent, not
very greatly changed since the close of the Pleistocene. During all
these myriads of years the prairie and the forest came down to its
banks. The immense herds of the buffalo and the elk wandered along
them season after season, and the Indian hunters on foot or in canoes
trudged along the banks or skimmed the water. Probably a thousand
years saw no change that would have been noticeable to our eyes. Then
three centuries ago began the work of change. For a century its
effects were not perceptible. Just nothing but an occasional French
fleet or wild half savage French-Canadian explorer passing up or down
the river or one of its branches in an Indian canoe; then the first
faint changes, the building of one or two little French fur traders'
hamlets, the passing of one or two British officers' boats, and the
very rare appearance of the uncouth American backwoodsman.

Then the change came with a rush. Our settlers reached the head-waters
of the Ohio, and flatboats and keel-boats began to go down to the
mouth of the Mississippi, and the Indians and the game they followed
began their last great march to the west. For ages they had marched
back and forth, but from this march there was never to be a return.
Then the day of steamboat traffic began, and the growth of the first
American cities and states along the river with their strength and
their squalor and their raw pride. Then this mighty steamboat traffic
passed its zenith and collapsed, and for a generation the river towns
have dwindled compared with the towns which took their importance from
the growth of the railroads. I think of it all as I pass down the
river.

October 4. . . . We are steaming down the river now between Tennessee
and Arkansas. The forest comes down a little denser to the bank, the
houses do not look quite so well kept; otherwise there is not much
change. There are a dozen steamers accompanying us, filled with
delegates from various river cities. The people are all out on the
banks to greet us still. Moreover, at night, no matter what the hour
is that we pass a town, it is generally illuminated, and sometimes
whistles and noisy greetings, while our steamboats whistle in equally
noisy response, so that our sleep is apt to be broken. Seventeen
governors of different states are along, in a boat by themselves. I
have seen a good deal of them, however, and it has been of real use to
me, especially as regards two or three problems that are up. At St.
Louis there was an enormous multitude of people out to see us. The
procession was in a drenching rain, in which I stood bareheaded,
smiling affably and waving my drowned hat to those hardy members of
the crowd who declined to go to shelter. At Cairo, I was also greeted
with great enthusiasm, and I was interested to find that there was
still extreme bitterness felt over Dickens's description of the town
and the people in "Martin Chuzzlewit" sixty-five years ago.



               PECULIARITIES OF MISSISSIPPI STEAMBOATS

On Board U. S. S. /Mississippi/,
Oct. 1, 1907.

DEAR ARCHIE:

I am now on what I believe will be my last trip of any consequence
while I am President. Until I got to Keokuk, Iowa, it was about like
any other trip, but it is now pleasant going down the Mississippi,
though I admit that I would rather be at home. We are on a funny,
stern-wheel steamer. Mr. John McIlhenny is with me, and Capt. Seth
Bullock among others. We have seen wild geese and ducks and cormorants
on the river, and the people everywhere come out in boats and throng
or cluster on the banks to greet us.

October 4. You would be greatly amused at these steamboats, and I
think you will like your trip up the Mississippi next spring, if only
everything goes right, and Mother is able to make it. There is no hold
to the boat, just a flat bottom with a deck, and on this deck a foot
or so above the water stands the engine-room, completely open at the
sides and all the machinery visible as you come up to the boat. Both
ends are blunt, and the gangways are drawn up to big cranes. Of course
the boats could not stand any kind of a sea, but here they are very
useful, for they are shallow and do not get hurt when they bump into
the bank or one another. The river runs down in a broad, swirling,
brown current, and nobody but an expert could tell the channel. One
pilot or another is up in the /Texas/ all day long and all night. Now
the channel goes close under one bank, then we have to cross the river
and go under the other bank; then there will come a deep spot when we
can go anywhere. Then we wind in and out among shoals and sand-bars.
At night the steamers are all lighted up, for there are a dozen of
them in company with us. It is nice to look back at them as they twist
after us in a long winding line down the river.



                       THE LONE CAT OF THE CAMP

Stamboul, La., Oct. 13, 1907.

DARLING QUENTIN:

When we shifted camp we came down here and found a funny little wooden
shanty, put up by some people who now and then come out here and sleep
in it when they fish or shoot. The only living thing around it was a
pussy-cat. She was most friendly and pleasant, and we found that she
had been living here for two years. When people were in the
neighborhood, she would take what scraps she could get, but the rest
of the time she would catch her own game for herself. She was pretty
thin when we came, and has already fattened visibly. She was not in
the least disconcerted by the appearance of the hounds, and none of
them paid the slightest attention to her when she wandered about among
them. We are camped on the edge of a lake. This morning before
breakfast I had a good swim in it, the water being warmer than the
air, and this evening I rowed on it in the moonlight. Every night we
hear the great owls hoot and laugh in uncanny fashion.


Camp on Tenesas Bayou,
Oct. 6, 1907.

DARLING ETHEL:

Here we are in camp. It is very picturesque, and as comfortable as
possible. We have a big fly tent for the horses; the hounds sleep with
them, or with the donkeys! There is a white hunter, Ben Lily, who has
just joined us, who is a really remarkable character. He literally
lives in the woods. He joined us early this morning, with one dog. He
had tramped for twenty-four hours through the woods, without food or
water, and had slept a couple of hours in a crooked tree, like a wild
turkey.

He has a mild, gentle face, blue eyes, and full beard; he is a
religious fanatic, and is as hardy as a bear or elk, literally caring
nothing for fatigue and exposure, which we couldn't stand at all. He
doesn't seem to consider the 24 hours' trip he has just made, any more
than I should a half hour's walk before breakfast. He quotes the
preacher Talmage continually.

This is a black belt. The people are almost all negroes, curious
creatures, some of them with Indian blood, like those in "Voodoo
Tales." Yesterday we met two little negresses riding one mule, bare-
legged, with a rope bridle.


Tenesas Bayou, Oct. 10, 1907.

BLESSED ARCHIE:

I just loved your letter. I was so glad to hear from you. I was afraid
you would have trouble with your Latin. What a funny little fellow
Opdyke must be; I am glad you like him. How do you get on at football?

We have found no bear. I shot a deer; I sent a picture of it to
Kermit.

A small boy here caught several wildcats. When one was in the trap he
would push a box towards it, and it would itself get into it, to hide;
and so he would capture it alive. But one, instead of getting into the
box, combed the hair of the small boy!

We have a great many hounds in camp; at night they gaze solemnly into
the fire.

Dr. Lambert has caught a good many bass, which we have enjoyed at the
camp table.


Bear Bayou, Oct. 16, 1907.

DARLING ARCHIE:

We have had no luck with the bear; but we have killed as many deer as
we needed for meat, and the hounds caught a wildcat. Our camp is as
comfortable as possible, and we have great camp fires at night.

One of the bear-hunting planters with me told me he once saw a bear,
when overtaken by the hounds, lie down flat on its back with all its
legs stretched out, while the dogs barked furiously all around it.

Suddenly the bear sat up with a jump, and frightened all the dogs so
that they nearly turned back somersaults.

At this camp there is a nice tame pussy-cat which lies out here all
the time, catching birds, mice, or lizards; but very friendly with any
party of hunters which happens along.

P. S.--I have just killed a bear; I have written Kermit about it.

The Bear Plays Dead.

The Bear Sits Up.



                          SHOOTING THE BEAR

En route to Washington, Oct. 22, 1907.

DEAR TED:

"Bad old father" is coming back after a successful trip. It was a
success in every way, including the bear hunt; but in the case of the
bear hunt we only just made it successful and no more, for it was not
until the twelfth day of steady hunting that I got my bear. Then I
shot it in the most approved hunter's style, going up on it in a
canebrake as it made a walking bay before the dogs. I also killed a
deer--more by luck than anything else, as it was a difficult shot.



                      QUENTIN'S "EXQUISITE JEST"

White House, Jan. 2, 1908.

DEAR ARCHIE:

Friday night Quentin had three friends, including the little Taft boy,
to spend the night with him. They passed an evening and night of
delirious rapture, it being a continuous rough-house save when they
would fall asleep for an hour or two from sheer exhaustion. I
interfered but once, and that was to stop an exquisite jest of
Quentin's, which consisted in procuring sulphureted hydrogen to be
used on the other boys when they got into bed. They played hard, and
it made me realize how old I had grown and how very busy I had been
these last few years, to find that they had grown so that I was not
needed in the play. Do you recollect how we all of us used to play
hide-and-go-seek in the White House? and have obstacle races down the
hall when you brought in your friends?

Mother continues much attached to Scamp, who is certainly a cunning
little dog. He is very affectionate, but so exceedingly busy when we
are out on the grounds, that we only catch glimpses of him zigzagging
at full speed from one end of the place to the other. The kitchen cat
and he have strained relations but have not yet come to open
hostility.


White House, Jan. 27, 1908.

DEAR ARCHIE:

Scamp is really a cunning little dog, but he takes such an extremely
keen interest in hunting, and is so active, that when he is out on the
grounds with us we merely catch glimpses of him as he flashes by. The
other night after the Judicial Reception when we went up-stairs to
supper the kitchen cat suddenly appeared parading down the hall with
great friendliness, and was forthwith exiled to her proper home again.



                              TOM PINCH

White House, February 23, 1908.

DEAREST KERMIT:

I quite agree with you about Tom Pinch. He is a despicable kind of
character; just the kind of character Dickens liked, because he had
himself a thick streak of maudlin sentimentality of the kind that, as
somebody phrased it, "made him wallow naked in the pathetic." It
always interests me about Dickens to think how much first-class work
he did and how almost all of it was mixed up with every kind of cheap,
second-rate matter. I am very fond of him. There are innumerable
characters that he has created which symbolize vices, virtues,
follies, and the like almost as well as the characters in Bunyan; and
therefore I think the wise thing to do is simply to skip the bosh and
twaddle and vulgarity and untruth, and get the benefit out of the
rest. Of course one fundamental difference between Thackeray and
Dickens is that Thackeray was a gentleman and Dickens was not. But a
man might do some mighty good work and not be a gentleman in any
sense.



                         "MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT"

White House, February 29, 1908.

DEAREST KERMIT:

Of course I entirely agree with you about "Martin Chuzzlewit." But
the point seems to me that the preposterous perversion of truth and
the ill-nature and malice of the book are of consequence chiefly as
indicating Dickens' own character, about which I care not a rap;
whereas, the characters in American shortcomings and vices and follies
as typified are immortal, and, moreover, can be studied with great
profit by all of us to-day. Dickens was an ill-natured, selfish cad
and boor, who had no understanding of what the word gentleman meant,
and no appreciation of hospitality or good treatment. He was utterly
incapable of seeing the high purpose and the real greatness which (in
spite of the presence also of much that was bad or vile) could have
been visible all around him here in America to any man whose vision
was both keen and lofty. He could not see the qualities of the young
men growing up here, though it was these qualities that enabled these
men to conquer the West and to fight to a finish the great Civil War,
and though they were to produce leadership like that of Lincoln, Lee,
and Grant. Naturally he would think there was no gentleman in New
York, because by no possibility could he have recognized a gentleman
if he had met one. Naturally he would condemn all America because he
had not the soul to see what America was really doing. But he was in
his element in describing with bitter truthfulness Scadder and
Jefferson Brick, and Elijah Pogram, and Hannibal Chollup, and Mrs.
Hominy and the various other characters, great and small, that have
always made me enjoy "Martin Chuzzlewit." Most of these characters we
still have with us.



                      GOOD READING FOR PACIFISTS

March 4, 1908.

DEAREST KERMIT:

You have recently been writing me about Dickens. Senator Lodge gave me
the following first-class quotation from a piece by Dickens about
"Proposals for Amusing Posterity":

"And I would suggest that if a body of gentlemen possessing their full
phrenological share of the combative and antagonistic organs, could
only be induced to form themselves into a society for Declaiming about
Peace, with a very considerable war-whoop against all non-declaimers;
and if they could only be prevailed upon to sum up eloquently the many
unspeakable miseries and horrors of War, and to present them to their
own country as a conclusive reason for its being undefended against
War, and becoming a prey of the first despot who might choose to
inflict those miseries and horrors--why then I really believe we
should have got to the very best joke we could hope to have in our
whole Complete Jest-Book for Posterity and might fold our arms and
rest convinced that we had done enough for that discerning Patriarch's
amusement."

This ought to be read before all the tomfool peace societies and anti-
imperialist societies of the present-day.



                       QUENTIN AS A BALL-PLAYER

White House, March 8, 1908.

DEAREST ARCHIE:

Yesterday morning Quentin brought down all his Force School baseball
nine to practise on the White House grounds. It was great fun to see
them, and Quentin made a run. It reminded me of when you used to come
down with the Friend's School eleven. Moreover, I was reminded of the
occasional rows in the eleven by an outburst in connection with the
nine which resulted in their putting off of it a small boy who Quentin
assured me was the "meanest kid in town." I like to see Quentin
practising baseball. It gives me hopes that one of my boys will not
take after his father in this respect, and will prove able to play the
national game!

Ethel has a delightful new dog--a white bull terrier--not much more
than a puppy as yet. She has named it Mike and it seems very
affectionate. Scamp is really an extraordinary ratter, and kills a
great many rats in the White House, in the cellars and on the lower
floor and among the machinery. He is really a very nice little dog.


White House, March 15, 1908.

DEAREST ARCHIE:

Quentin is now taking a great interest in baseball. Yesterday the
Force School nine, on which he plays second base, played the P Street
nine on the White House grounds where Quentin has marked out a
diamond. The Force School nine was victorious by a score of 22 to 5. I
told Quentin I was afraid the P Street boys must have felt badly and
he answered, "Oh, I guess not; you see I filled them up with lemonade
afterward!"

Charlie Taft is on his nine.

Did you hear of the dreadful time Ethel had with her new bull terrier,
Mike? She was out riding with Fitz Lee, who was on Roswell, and Mike
was following. They suppose that Fidelity must have accidentally
kicked Mike. The first they knew the bulldog sprang at the little
mare's throat. She fought pluckily, rearing and plunging, and shook
him off, and then Ethel galloped away. As soon as she halted, Mike
overtook her and attacked Fidelity again. He seized her by the
shoulder and tried to seize her by the throat, and twice Ethel had to
break away and gallop off, Fitz Lee endeavoring in vain to catch the
dog. Finally he succeeded, just as Mike had got Fidelity by the hock.
He had to give Mike a tremendous beating to restore him to obedience;
but of course Mike will have to be disposed of. Fidelity was bitten in
several places and it was a wonder that Ethel was able to keep her
seat, because naturally the frightened little mare reared and plunged
and ran.



                       FOUR SHEEPISH SMALL BOYS

White House, April 11, 1908.

DEAREST ARCHIE:

Ethel has bought on trial an eight-months bulldog pup. He is very
cunning, very friendly, and wriggles all over in a frantic desire to
be petted.

Quentin really seems to be getting on pretty well with his baseball.
In each of the last two games he made a base hit and a run. I have
just had to give him and three of his associates a dressing down--one
of the three being Charlie Taft. Yesterday afternoon was rainy, and
four of them played five hours inside the White House. They were very
boisterous and were all the time on the verge of mischief, and finally
they made spit-balls and deliberately put them on the portraits. I did
not discover it until after dinner, and then pulled Quentin out of bed
and had him take them all off the portraits, and this morning required
him to bring in the three other culprits before me. I explained to
them that they had acted like boors; that it would have been a
disgrace to have behaved so in any gentleman's house; that Quentin
could have no friend to see him, and the other three could not come
inside the White House, until I felt that a sufficient time had
elapsed to serve as punishment. They were four very sheepish small
boys when I got through with them.



               JOHN BURROUGHS AND THE FLYING SQUIRRELS

White House, May 10, 1908.

DEAREST ARCHIE:

Mother and I had great fun at Pine Knot. Mr. Burroughs, whom I call
Oom John, was with us and we greatly enjoyed having him. But one night
he fell into great disgrace! The flying squirrels that were there last
Christmas had raised a brood, having built a large nest inside of the
room in which you used to sleep and in which John Burroughs slept. Of
course they held high carnival at night-time. Mother and I do not mind
them at all, and indeed rather like to hear them scrambling about, and
then as a sequel to a sudden frantic fight between two of them,
hearing or seeing one little fellow come plump down to the floor and
scuttle off again to the wall. But one night they waked up John
Burroughs and he spent a misguided hour hunting for the nest, and when
he found it took it down and caught two of the young squirrels and put
them in a basket. The next day under Mother's direction I took them
out, getting my fingers somewhat bitten in the process, and loosed
them in our room, where we had previously put back the nest. I do not
think John Burroughs profited by his misconduct, because the squirrels
were more active than ever that night both in his room and ours, the
disturbance in their family affairs having evidently made them
restless!



                    BEAUTY OF WHITE HOUSE GROUNDS

White House, May 17, 1908.

DEAREST ARCHIE:

Quentin is really doing pretty well with his baseball, and he is
perfectly absorbed in it. He now occasionally makes a base hit if the
opposing pitcher is very bad; and his nine wins more than one-half of
its games.

The grounds are too lovely for anything, and spring is here, or rather
early summer, in full force. Mother's flower-gardens are now as
beautiful as possible, and the iron railings of the fences south of
them are covered with clematis and roses in bloom. The trees are in
full foliage and the grass brilliant green, and my friends, the
warblers, are trooping to the north in full force.



                        QUENTIN AND A BEEHIVE

White House, May 30, 1908.

DEAREST ARCHIE:

Quentin has met with many adventures this week; in spite of the fact
that he has had a bad cough which has tended to interrupt the variety
of his career. He has become greatly interested in bees, and the other
day started down to get a beehive from somewhere, being accompanied by
a mongrel looking small boy as to whose name I inquired. When repeated
by Quentin it was obviously an Italian name. I asked who he was and
Quentin responded: "Oh, his father keeps a fruit-stand." However, they
got their bees all right and Quentin took the hive up to a school
exhibit. There some of the bees got out and were left behind ("Poor
homeless miserables," as Quentin remarked of them), and yesterday they
at intervals added great zest to life in the classroom. The hive now
reposes in the garden and Scamp surveys it for hours at a time with
absorbed interest. After a while he will get to investigating it, and
then he will find out more than he expects to.

This afternoon Quentin was not allowed to play ball because of his
cough, so he was keeping the score when a foul tip caught him in the
eye. It was quite a bad blow, but Quentin was very plucky about it and
declined to go in until the game was finished, an hour or so later. By
that time his eye had completely shut up and he now has a most
magnificent bandage around his head over that eye, and feels much like
a baseball hero. I came in after dinner to take a look at him and to
my immense amusement found that he was lying flat on his back in bed
saying his prayers, while Mademoiselle was kneeling down. It took me a
moment or two to grasp the fact that good Mademoiselle wished to
impress on him that it was not right to say his prayers unless he
knelt down, and as that in this case he could not kneel down she would
do it in his place!



                          QUENTIN AND TURNER

(To Mrs. Nicholas Longworth, Cincinnati, Ohio)

Oyster Bay, June 29, 1908.

 . . . . .

Quentin is really too funny for anything. He got his legs fearfully
sunburned the other day, and they blistered, became inflamed, and
ever-faithful Mother had to hold a clinic on him. Eyeing his blistered
and scarlet legs, he remarked, "They look like a Turner sunset, don't
they?" And then, after a pause, "I won't be caught again this way!
quoth the raven, 'Nevermore!'" I was not surprised at his quoting Poe,
but I would like to know where the ten-year-old scamp picked up any
knowledge of Turner's sunsets.



                         QUENTIN AND THE PIG

White House, October 17, 1908.

DEAREST KERMIT:

 . . . . .

Quentin performed a characteristic feat yesterday. He heard that
Schmidt, the animal man, wanted a small pig, and decided that he would
turn an honest penny by supplying the want. So out in the neighborhood
of his school he called on an elderly darkey who, he had seen,
possessed little pigs; bought one; popped it into a bag; astutely
dodged the school--having a well-founded distrust of how the boys
would feel toward his passage with the pig--and took the car for home.
By that time the pig had freed itself from the bag, and, as he
explained, he journeyed in with a "small squealish pig" under his arm;
but as the conductor was a friend of his he was not put off. He bought
it for a dollar and sold it to Schmidt for a dollar and a quarter, and
feels as if he had found a permanent line of business. Schmidt then
festooned it in red ribbons and sent it to parade the streets. I
gather that Quentin led it around for part of the parade, but he was
somewhat vague on this point, evidently being a little uncertain as to
our approval of the move.



                         A PRESIDENTIAL FALL

White House, Nov. 8, 1908.

DEAREST ARCHIE:

Quentin is getting along very well; he plays centre on his football
eleven, and in a match for juniors in tennis he got into the semi-
finals. What is more important, he seems to be doing very well with
his studies, and to get on well with the boys, and is evidently
beginning to like the school. He has shown himself very manly. Kermit
is home now, and is a perfect dear.

The other day while taking a scramble walk over Rock Creek, when I
came to that smooth-face of rock which we get round by holding on to
the little bit of knob that we call the Button, the top of this button
came off between my thumb and forefinger. I hadn't supposed that I was
putting much weight on it, but evidently I was, for I promptly lost my
balance, and finding I was falling, I sprang out into the creek. There
were big rocks in it, and the water was rather shallow, but I landed
all right and didn't hurt myself the least bit in the world.



                          MORE ABOUT QUENTIN

White House, Nov. 22, 1908.

DEAREST ARCHIE:

I handed your note and the two dollar bill to Quentin, and he was
perfectly delighted. It came in very handy, because poor Quentin has
been in bed with his leg in a plaster cast, and the two dollars I
think went to make up a fund with which he purchased a fascinating
little steam-engine, which has been a great source of amusement to
him. He is out to-day visiting some friends, although his leg is still
in a cast. He has a great turn for mechanics.


White House, Nov. 27, 1908.

BLESSED ARCHIE:

It is fine to hear from you and to know you are having a good time.
Quentin, I am happy to say, is now thoroughly devoted to his school.
He feels that he is a real Episcopal High School boy, and takes the
keenest interest in everything. Yesterday, Thanksgiving Day, he had
various friends here. His leg was out of plaster and there was nothing
he did not do. He roller-skated; he practised football; he had
engineering work and electrical work; he went all around the city; he
romped all over the White House; he went to the slaughter-house and
got a pig for Thanksgiving dinner.

Ethel is perfectly devoted to Ace, who adores her. The other day he
was lost for a little while; he had gone off on a side street and
unfortunately saw a cat in a stable and rushed in and killed it, and
they had him tied up there when one of our men found him.

In a way I know that Mother misses Scamp, but in another way she does
not, for now all the squirrels are very tame and cunning and are
hopping about the lawn and down on the paths all the time, so that we
see them whenever we walk, and they are not in the least afraid of us.


White House, Dec. 3, 1908.

DEAREST ARCHIE:

I have a very strong presentiment that Santa Claus will not forget
that watch! Quentin went out shooting with Dr. Rixey on Monday and
killed three rabbits, which I think was pretty good. He came back very
dirty and very triumphant, and Mother, feeling just as triumphant,
brought him promptly over with his gun and his three rabbits to see me
in the office. On most days now he rides out to school, usually on
Achilles. Very shortly he will begin to spend his nights at the
school, however. He has become sincerely attached to the school, and
at the moment thinks he would rather stay there than go to Groton; but
this is a thought he will get over--with Mother's active assistance.
He has all kinds of friends, including some who are on a hockey team
with him here in the city. The hockey team apparently plays hockey now
and then, but only very occasionally, and spends most of the time
disciplining its own members.



                          TRIBUTE TO KERMIT

In 1909, after retiring from the Presidency, Colonel Roosevelt went on
a hunting trip in Africa, writing as usual to his children while away.


On the 'Nzor River, Nov. 13, 1909.

DARLING ETHEL:

Here we are, by a real tropical river, with game all around, and no
human being within several days' journey. At night the hyenas come
round the camp, uttering their queer howls; and once or twice we have
heard lions; but unfortunately have never seen them. Kermit killed a
leopard yesterday. He has really done so very well! It is rare for a
boy with his refined tastes and his genuine appreciation of literature
--and of so much else--to be also an exceptionally bold and hardy
sportsman. He is still altogether too reckless; but by my hen-with-
one-chicken attitude, I think I shall get him out of Africa uninjured;
and his keenness, cool nerve, horsemanship, hardihood, endurance, and
good eyesight make him a really good wilderness hunter. We have become
genuinely attached to Cunninghame and Tarleton, and all three
naturalists, especially Heller; and also to our funny black
attendants. The porters always amuse us; at this moment about thirty
of them are bringing in the wood for the camp fires, which burn all
night; and they are all chanting in chorus, the chant being nothing
but the words "/Wood/--plenty of wood to burn!"

A Merry Christmas to you! And to Archie and Quentin. How I wish I were
to be with you all, no matter how cold it might be at Sagamore; but I
suppose we shall be sweltering under mosquito nets in Uganda.



                           LONGING FOR HOME

Campalla, Dec. 23, 1909.

BLESSEDEST ETHELY-BYE:

Here we are, the most wise Bavian--particularly nice--and the Elderly
Parent, on the last stage of their journey. I am enjoying it all, but
I think Kermit regards me as a little soft, because I am so eagerly
looking forward to the end, when I shall see darling, pretty Mother,
my own sweetheart, and the very nicest of all nice daughters--you
blessed girlie. Do you remember when you explained, with some
asperity, that of course you wished Ted were at home, because you
didn't have anybody as a really intimate companion, whereas Mother had
"old Father"? It is a great comfort to have a daughter to whom I can
write about all kinds of intimate things!

This is a most interesting place. We crossed the great Nyanza Lake, in
a comfortable steamer, in 24 hours, seeing a lovely sunset across the
vast expanse of waters; and the moonlight later was as lovely. Here it
is as hot as one would expect directly on the Equator, and the
brilliant green landscape is fairly painted with even more brilliant
flowers, on trees, bush, and vines; while the strange, semi-civilized
people are most interesting. The queer little king's Prime Minister,
an exceedingly competent, gorgeously dressed, black man, reminds
Kermit of a rather civilized Umslopagaar--if that is the way you spell
Rider Haggard's Zulu hero.

In this little native town we are driven round in rickshaws, each with
four men pushing and pulling, who utter a queer, clanging note of
exclamation in chorus, every few seconds, hour after hour.



                            THE LAST HUNT

Gondokoro, Feb. 27, 1910.

DEAREST ARCHIE:

Here, much to my pleasure, I find your letter written after the snow-
storm at Sagamore. No snow here! On two or three days the thermometer
at noon has stood at 115 degrees in the shade. All three naturalists
and Mr. Cunninghame, the guide, have been sick, and so Kermit and I
made our last hunt alone, going for eight days into the Lado. We were
very successful, getting among other things three giant eland, which
are great prizes. We worked hard; Kermit of course worked hardest, for
he is really a first-class walker and runner; I had to go slowly, but
I kept at it all day and every day. Kermit has really become not only
an excellent hunter but also a responsible and trustworthy man, fit to
lead; he managed the whole caravan and after hunting all day he would
sit up half the night taking care of the skins. He is also the nicest
possible companion. We are both very much attached to our gun-bearers
and tent boys, and will be sorry to part with them.



                           QUENTIN GROWN-UP

New York, Dec. 23, 1911.

DEAR ARCHIE:

Quentin turned up last night. He is half an inch taller than I am, and
is in great shape. He is much less fat than he was, and seems to be
turning out right in every way. I was amused to have him sit down and
play the piano pretty well. We miss you dreadfully now that Christmas
has come. The family went into revolt about my slouch hat, which
Quentin christened "Old Mizzoura," and so I have had to buy another
with a less pronounced crown and brim. We all drank your good health
at dinner.





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