Chapter 6

I have said that Roosevelt devoted the two years after he came back to New York to writing, but it would be a mistake to imagine that writing alone busied him. He was never a man who did or would do only one thing at a time. His immense energy craved variety, and in variety he found recreation. Now that the physical Roosevelt had caught up in relative strength with the intellectual, he could take what holidays requiring exhaustless bodily vigor he chose. The year seldom passed now when he did not go West for a month or two. Bill Sewall and Wilmot Dow were established with their families on the Elkhorn Ranch, which Roosevelt continued to own, although, I believe, like many ranches at that period, it ceased to be a good investment. Sometimes he made a hurried dash to southern Texas, or to the Selkirks, or to Montana in search of new sorts of game. In the mountains he indulged in climbing, but this was not a favorite with him because it offered less sport in proportion to the fatigue. While he was still a young man he had gone up the Matterhorn and Mont Blanc, feats which still required endurance, although they did not involve danger.

While we think of him, therefore, as dedicating himself to his literary work--the "Winning of the West" and the accounts of ranch life--we must remember that he had leisure for other things. He watched keenly the course of politics, for instance, and in 1888 when the Republicans nominated Benjamin Harrison as their candidate for President, Roosevelt supported him effectively and took rank with the foremost Republican speakers of the campaign. After his election Harrison, who both recognized Roosevelt's great ability and felt under obligation to him, wished to offer him the position of an under-secretary in the State Department; but Blaine, who was slated for Secretary of State, had no liking for the young Republican whose coolness in 1884 he had not forgotten. So Harrison invited Roosevelt to be a Civil Service Commissioner. The position had never been conspicuous; its salary was not large; its duties were of the routine kind which did not greatly tax the energies of the Commissioners, who could never hope for fame, but only for the approval of their own consciences for whatever good work they