Part 9

The above letter shows how normal a life the young man was leading, how simply and naturally he was responding to the friendly hospitality of his new Boston friends. Boston had welcomed him originally for the sake of his older sister, who, during two charming summer visits to Bar Harbor, Maine, had made many New England friends. The Sunday-school which he mentions, and to which he gave himself very faithfully, proved a big test of character, for it was a great temptation to go with the other fellows on Saturday afternoons to Chestnut Hill or Brookline or Milton, where open house was kept by the Lees, Saltonstalls, Whitneys, and other friends, and it was very hard either to refuse their invitation from the beginning or to leave the merry parties early Sunday morning and return to Cambridge to be at his post to teach the unruly little people of the slums of Cambridge. So deeply, however, had the first Theodore Roosevelt impressed his son with the necessity of giving himself and the attainments with which his superior advantages had endowed him to those less fortunate than he, that all through the first three years of his college life he only failed to appear at his Sunday-school class twice, and then he arranged to have his class taken by a friend. Truly, when _he_ put his hand to the plough he never turned back.

On March 27 of his first year at college he writes again in his usual sweet way to his younger sister: “Little Pet Pussie: 95 per cent _will_ help my average. I want to pet you again awfully! You cunning, pretty, little, foolish Puss. My easy chair would just hold myself and Pussie.” Again on April 15: “Little Pussie: Having given Motherling an account of my doings up to yesterday, I have reserved the more frivolous part for little pet Pussie. Yesterday, in the afternoon, Minot Weld drove me over to his house and at six o’clock we sallied forth in festive attire to a matinée ‘German’ at Dorchester which broke up before eleven o’clock. This was quite a swell affair, there being about 100 couples.... I spent last night with the Welds and walked back over here to Forest Hill with Minot in the afternoon, collecting a dozen snakes and salamanders on the way.” Still the natural historian, even although on pleasure bent; so snakes and salamanders hold their own in spite of “swell matinée Germans.” From Forest Hill that same Sunday he writes a more serious letter to his father: “Darling Father: I am spending my Easter vacation with the Minots, who, with their usual kindness, asked me to do so. I did not go home for I knew I should never be able to study there. I have been working pretty steadily, having finished during the last five days, the first book of Horace, the sixth book of Homer, and the ‘Apology of Socrates.’ In the afternoon, some of the boys usually come out to see me and we spend that time in the open air, and on Saturday evening I went to a party, but during the rest of the time I have been working pretty faithfully. I spent today, Sunday, with the Welds and went to their church where, although it was a Unitarian Church, I heard a really remarkably good sermon about ‘The Attributes of a Christian.’ I have enjoyed all your letters very much and my conscience reproaches me greatly for not writing you before, but as you may imagine, I have had to study pretty hard to make up for lost time, and a letter with me is very serious work. Your loving son, T. R. Jr.”

On June 3, as his class day approaches, and after a visit to Cambridge on the part of my father, who had given me and my sister and friends Edith Carow and Maud Elliott the treat of accompanying him, Theodore writes: “Sweet Pussie: I enjoyed your visit so much and so did all of my friends. I am so glad you like my room, and next year I hope to have it even prettier when you all come on again.” His first class day was not specially notable, but he finished his freshman year standing high in his class and having made a number of good friends, although at that period I do not think that he was in any marked degree a leader amongst the young men of the class. He was regarded more as an all-round good sport, a fellow of high ideals from which he never swerved, and one at whom his companions, who, except Harry Minot, had not very strong literary affiliations, were always more or less surprised because of the way in which their otherwise perfectly normal comrade sank into complete oblivion when the magic pages of a book were unrolled before him.

That summer, shortly after class day, he and Harry Minot took their expedition to the Adirondacks with the following results, namely: a catalogue written in the mountains of “The Summer Birds of the Adirondacks in Franklin County, N. Y., by Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., and H. D. Minot.” This catalogue was sent to me by Mr. John D. Sherman, Jr., of Mt. Vernon, N. Y. He tells me that it was originally published in 1877 and favorably mentioned soon after publication in the _Nuttall Bulletin_. Mr. Sherman thinks that the paper was “privately” published, and it was printed by Samuel E. Casino, of Salem, who, when a mere boy, started in the natural-history-book business. The catalogue shows such careful observation and such perseverance in the accumulation of data by the two young college boys that I think the first page worthy of reproduction as one of the early evidences of the careful study Theodore Roosevelt had given to the subject which always remained throughout his life one of the nearest to his heart.

[Facsimile: THE SUMMER BIRDS

OF THE ADIRONDACKS IN FRANKLIN COUNTY, N. Y.

BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT, JR., AND H. D. MINOT

The following catalogue (written in the mountains) is based upon observations made in August, 1874, August, 1875, and June 22d to July 9th, 1877, especially about the Saint Regis Lakes, Mr. Minot having been with me, only during the last week of June. Each of us has used his initials in making a statement which the other has not verified.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT, Jr.

The general features of the Adirondacks, in those parts which we have examined, are the many lakes, the absence of _mountain_-brooks, the luxuriant forest-growth (the taller deciduous trees often reaching the height of a hundred feet, and the White Pines even that of a hundred and thirty), the sandy soil, the cool, invigorating air, and both a decided wildness and levelness of country as compared with the diversity of the White Mountain region.

The _avifauna_ is not so rich as that of the latter country, because wanting in certain “Alleghanian” birds found there, and also in species belonging especially to the Eastern or North-eastern Canadian fauna. Nests, moreover, seem to be more commonly inaccessible, and rarely built beside roads or wood-paths, as they often are in the White Mountains. M.

=1. Robin.= _Turdus migratorius_ (Linnæus). Moderately common. Sometimes found in the woods.

=2. Hermit Thrush.= _Turdus Pallasi_ (Cabanis). Common. Sings until the middle of August (R.).

=3. Swainson’s Thrush.= _Turdus Swainsoni_ (Cabanis). The commonest thrush.

=4. Cat-bird.= _Mimus Carolinensis_ (Linnæus). Observed beyond the mountains to the northward, near Malone.

=5. Blue Bird.= _Sialia sialis_ (Linnæus). Common near Malone.

=6. Golden-crowned “Wren.”= _Regulus satrapa_ (Lichten.). Quite common; often heard singing in June.

=7. Chickadee.= _Parus atricapillus_ (Linnæus). Rather scarce in June. Abundant in August (R.).

=8. Hudsonian Chickadee.= _Parus Hudsonicus_ (Forster). Found in small flocks at Bay Pond in the early part of August (R.).

=9. Red-bellied Nuthatch.= _Sitta Canadensis_ (Linnæus). Common. The White-bellied Nuthatch has not been observed here by us.

=10. Brown Creeper.= _Certhia familiaris_ (Linnæus). Common.

=11. Winter Wren.= _Troglodytes hyemalis_ (Vieillot). Moderately common.

FACSIMILE OF THE FIRST PAGE OF THE “CATALOGUE OF SUMMER BIRDS,” MADE IN 1877 BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT, JR., AND H. D. MINOT]

His love of poetry in those days became a very living thing, and the summer following his first college year was one in which the young people of Oyster Bay turned with glad interest to the riches not only of nature but of literature as well. I find among my papers, painstakingly copied in red ink in my brother’s handwriting, Swinburne’s poem “The Forsaken Garden.” He had sent it to me, copying it from memory when on a trip to the Maine woods. Later, on his return, we would row by moonlight to “Cooper’s Bluff” (near which spot he was eventually to build his beloved home, Sagamore Hill), and there, having climbed the sandy bulwark, we would sit on the top of the ledge looking out on the shimmering waters of the Sound, and he would recite with a lilting swing in the tone of his voice which matched the rhythm of the words:

“In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland, By the sea down’s edge, twixt windward and lee, Walled round by rocks like an inland island, The ghost of a garden fronts the sea. A girdle of brush-wood and thorn encloses The steep-scarred slope of the blossomless bed, Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses-- Now lie dead.”

He always loved the rhythm of Swinburne, just as he loved later the wonderful ringing lines of Kipling, which he taught to his children and constantly repeated to himself.

In the summer of 1877 the two brothers, Elliott and Theodore, decided to row from Oyster Bay in their small boats to Whitestone, near Flushing, where my aunt Mrs. Gracie was living in an old farmhouse. Elliott was really the sailor of the family, an expert sailor, too, and loved to manage his 20-footer, with able hand, in the stormiest weather, but Theodore craved the actual effort of the arms and back, the actual sense of meeting the wave close to and not from the more sheltered angle of a sailboat; and so the two young brothers who were perfectly devoted to each other started on the more adventurous trip together. They were caught in one of the sudden storms of the Long Island Sound, and their frail boats were very nearly swamped, but the luck which later became with Theodore Roosevelt almost proverbial, was with them, and the two exhausted and bedraggled, wave-beaten boys arrived sorely in need of the care of the devoted aunt who, as much as in the days when she taught their A B C’s to the children of the nursery of 20th Street, was still their guardian angel.

In September, 1877, Theodore returns as a sophomore to Cambridge and writes in October again: “Sweet Pussie: Thank you ever so much, darling, for the three, cunning, little books which I am going to call my ‘Pussie Books.’ They were just what I wanted. In answer to your question, I may say that it does not seem to make the slightest difference to Brooks and Hooper that they have been dropped, although Brooks is universally called ‘Freshie.’ My respect for the qualities of my classmates has much increased lately, by the way, as they now no longer seem to think it necessary to confine their conversation exclusively to athletic subjects. I was especially struck by this the other night, when, after a couple of hours spent in boxing and wrestling with Arthur Hooper and Ralph Ellis, it was proposed to finish the evening by reading aloud from Tennyson and we became so interested in ‘In Memoriam’ that it was past one o’clock when we separated.” (Evidently the lover of books was beginning to be a leader in making his associates share his love of the poets.)

In November he writes again: “I sat up last night until twelve, reading ‘Poems & Poets’; some of the boys came down to my room and we had a literary coffee party. They became finally interested in Edgar Poe--probably because they could not understand him.” My brother always had a great admiration for Edgar Allan Poe, and would chant “The Raven” and “Ulalume” in a strange, rather weird, monotonous tone. He especially delighted in the reference to “the Dank Tarn of Auber” and the following lines:

“I knew not the month was October, I knew not the day of the year,--”

Poe’s rhythm and curious, suggestive, melancholy quality of perfection affected strongly his imagination, and he placed him high in rank amongst the poets of his time.

One can picture the young men, strong and vigorous, wrestling and boxing together in Theodore Roosevelt’s room, and then putting aside their athletic contests, making their coffee with gay nonchalance, and settling down to a night of poetry, led in the paths of literature by the blue-eyed young “Berserker,” as my mother used to call Theodore in those college days.

During the summer of 1877 my father accompanied my sister Anna to Bar Harbor on one of her annual excursions to that picturesque part of the Maine coast, where they visited Mr. George Minot and his sisters. He writes to my mother in his usual vein of delightful interest in people, books, and nature, and seems more vigorous than ever, for he describes wonderful walks over the mountains and speaks of having achieved a reputation as a mountain-climber. How little any of the family who adored him realized that from a strain engendered by that climbing the seed of serious trouble had been sown in that splendid mechanism, and that in a few short months the vigorous and still young man of forty-six was to lay down that useful life which had been given so ardently and unselfishly for the good of his city and the joy and benefit of his family.

At this time, however, when Theodore went back to college as a sophomore, there was no apprehension about my father’s health, and the first term of the college year was passed in his usual happy activities.

Shortly after the New Year my father’s condition became serious, due to intestinal trouble, and the following weeks were passed in anxious nursing, the distress of which was greatly accentuated by the frightful suffering of the patient, who, however, in spite of constant agony, bore the sudden shattering of his wonderful health with magnificent courage. My brother Theodore could not realize, as did my brother Elliott, who was at home, the serious condition of our father, for it was deemed best that he should not return from college, where difficult examinations required all his application and energy. Elliott gave unstintedly a devotion which was so tender that it was more like that of a woman, and his young strength was poured out to help his father’s condition. The best physicians searched in vain for remedy for the hidden trouble, but in spite of all their efforts the first Theodore Roosevelt died, February 9, 1878, and the gay young college sophomore was recalled to a house of mourning. In spite of the sorrow, in spite of a sense of irreparable loss, there was something infinitely inspiring in the days preceding and following my father’s death. When New York City knew that its benefactor lay in extreme illness, it seemed as if the whole city came to the door of his home to ask news of him. How well I remember the day before his death, when the papers had announced that there was but little hope of his recovery. The crowd of individuals who filled 57th Street in their effort to hear the physicians’ bulletin concerning his condition was huge and varied. Newsboys from the West Side Lodging House, little Italian girls from his Sunday-school class, sat for hours on the stone steps of 6 West 57th Street, our second home, waiting with anxious intensity for news of the man who meant more to them than any other human being had ever meant before; and those more fortunate ones who had known him in another way drove unceasingly up in their carriages to the door and looked with sympathetic interest at the children of the slums who shared with them such a sense of bitter bereavement and loss in the premature death of one so closely connected with all sides of his beloved native city.

Meanwhile, the family of the first Theodore Roosevelt seemed hardly able to face the blank that life meant when he left them, but they also felt that the man who had preached always that “one must live for the living” would have wished “his own” to follow out his ideal of life, and so each one of us took up, as bravely as we could, our special duties and felt that our close family tie must be made stronger rather than weaker by the loss that we had sustained.

On March 3, 1878, my brother writes from Cambridge:

My own darling, sweet, little treasure of a Pussie: Oh! I have so longed for you at times during the last few days. Darling one, you can hardly know what an inestimable blessing to a fellow it is to have such a home as I have. Even now that our dear father has been taken away, it is such a great pleasure to look forward to a visit home; and indeed, he has only ‘gone before,’ and oh! what living and loving memories he has left behind him. I can _feel_ his presence sometimes when I am sitting alone in the evening; I have not felt nearly as sad as I expected to feel, although, of course, there are every now and then very bitter moments. I am going to bring home some of his sweet letters to show you. I shall always keep them, if merely as talismans against evil. Kiss little mother for me, and my love to Aunt Susie and Uncle Hill. [My mother and I were staying in Philadelphia with my aunt Mrs. West.] Tell the latter, Uncle Hill, I am looking forward to spending a month of nude happiness with him next summer among the wilds of Oyster Bay.

YOUR LOVING TEDDY.

When my brother speaks of keeping my father’s letters to him as “talismans against evil,” he not only expressed the feeling of desire to keep near him always the actual letters written by my father, but far more the spirit with which these letters are permeated. Years afterward, when the college boy of 1878 was entering upon his duties as President of the United States, he told me frequently that he never took any serious step or made any vital decision for his country without thinking first what position his father would have taken on the question. The day that he moved into the White House happened to be September 22, the day of my father’s birth, and dining with him that night in the White House for the first time, we all mentioned this fact and felt that it was a good omen for the future, and my brother said that every time he dated a letter that day he felt with a glow of tender memory the realization that it was his father’s birthday, and that his father’s blessing seemed specially to follow him on that first day when he made his home in the beautiful old white mansion which stands in the heart of America for all that America means to her sons and daughters.

Several other equally loving letters in that March of 1878 proved how the constant thoughts of the young sophomore turned to the family at home, and also his own sense of loss in his father’s death, but I think the many interests and normal surroundings brought their healing power to the boy of nineteen, and at the end of that year of his college life he had become a well-rounded character. His mind, intelligently focussed upon many intellectual subjects, had broadened in scope, and physically he was no longer the delicate, dreamy boy of earlier days. The period of his college life, although not one of as unusual interest as perhaps other periods in his life, was of inestimable value in the forming of his character. Had Theodore Roosevelt continued to be abnormally developed along the scientific and intellectual side of his nature, he would never have become the “All-American” which he was destined to be. It was necessary for him to fall into more commonplace grooves; it was necessary for him to meet the young men of his age on common ground, to get the “give-and-take” of a life very different from the more or less individual life which, owing to his ill health and intellectual aspirations, he had hitherto led, and already, by the end of the second year of college, he was beginning to take a place in the circle of his friends which showed in an embryonic way the leadership which later was to be so strongly evidenced.

On October 8, 1878, returning to Cambridge as a junior, he writes to his mother: “Darling, beloved, little motherling: I have just loved your dear, funny, pathetic, little letter, and I am now going to write you the longest letter I ever write, and if it is still rather short, you must recollect that it takes Teddy-boy a long time to write. I have enjoyed Charlie Dickey’s being here extremely, and I think I have been of some service to him. We always go to prayers together; for his own sake, I have not been much with him in the daytime, but every evening, we spend a good part of the time together in my room or his. He is just the same, honest, fine fellow as ever, and unless I am very much mistaken, is going to make a thorough success in every way of college. My studies do not come very well this year, as I have to work nearly as hard on Saturday as on any other day--six, seven or eight hours. Some of the studies are extremely interesting, however, especially Political Economy and Metaphysics. These are both rather hard, requiring a good deal of work, but they are even more interesting than my Natural History courses; and all the more so from the fact that I radically disagree on many points with the men whose books we are reading, (Mill and Ferrier). One of my zoological courses is rather dry, but the other I like very much, though it necessitates ten or twelve hours’ work a week. My German is not very interesting, but I expect that my Italian will be when I get further on. For exercise, I have had to rely on walking, but today I have regularly begun sparring. I practice a good deal with the rifle, walking to and from the range, which is nearly three miles off; my scores have been fair, although not very good. Funnily enough, I have enjoyed quite a burst of popularity since I came back, having been elected into several different clubs. My own friends have, as usual, been perfect trumps, and I have been asked to spend Sundays with at least a half-dozen of them, but I have to come back to Cambridge Sunday mornings on account of Sunday School, which makes it more difficult to pay visits. I indulged in a luxury the other day in buying ‘The Library of British Poets,’ and I delight in my purchase very much, but I have been so busy that I have hardly had time to read it yet. I shall really have to have a new bookcase for I have nowhere to put my books.... Your loving son, T. Jr.”