order. Calahan felt that the jest had gone too far, and, by
way of protest, knocked Bourke down. This was an error
of judgment on his part, for when Bourke arose he knocked
Calahan down. The two then grappled and fell on the floor,
while the "friends of personal liberty" danced around the
fight and endeavoured to stamp on everything they thought
wasn't Calahan. However, Bourke, though pretty roughly
handled, got his man and shut the saloon. When he ap-
peared against the lawbreaker in court next day, he found
the court-room crowded with influential Tammany Hall
politicians, backed by one or two Republican leaders of the
same type; for Calahan was a baron of the underworld, and
both his feudal superiors and his feudal inferiors gathered to
the rescue. His backers in court included a Congressman
and a State Senator, and so deep-rooted was the police belief
in "pull" that his own superiors had turned against Bourke
and were preparing to sacrifice him.
Just at this time I acted on the information given me by
my newspaper friend by starting in person for the court.
The knowledge, that I knew what was going on, that I
meant what I said, and that I intended to make the affair
personal, was all that was necessary. Before I reached the
court all effort to defend Calahan had promptly ceased,
and Bourke had come forth triumphant. I immediately
promoted him to roundsman. He is a captain now. He has
been on the force ever since, save that when the Spanish
War came he obtained a holiday without pay for six months
and reentered the navy, serving as gun captain in one of the
gunboats, and doing his work, as was to be expected, in first-
rate fashion, especially when under fire.
PERSONAL QUALITIES 291
Roosevelt greatly rejoiced in his experience with
the Rough Riders ā not only in the serious and
soldierly part of it but in the human and humorous
part, as will be seen from this allusion to some of
the characters of the regiment :
The men speedily gave one another nicknames, largely
conferred in a spirit of derision, their basis lying in contrast.
A brave but fastidious member of a well-known Eastern
club who was serving in the ranks was christened "Tough
Ike"; and his bunkie, the man who shared his shelter-tent,
who was a decidedly rough cow-puncher, gradually acquired
the name of "The Dude." One unlucky and simple-minded
cow-puncher, who had never been east of the great plains in
his life, unwarily boasted that he had an aunt in New York,
and ever afterward went by the name of "Metropolitan Bill."
A huge red-headed Irishman was named "Sheeny Solomon."
A young Jew who developed into one of the best fighters in
the regiment accepted, with entire equanimity, the name of
"Pork-chop." We had quite a number of professional
gamblers, who, I am bound to say, usually made good soldiers.
One, who was almost abnormally quiet and gentle, was called
"Hell Roarer"; while another, who in point of language and
deportment was his exact antithesis, was christened "Prayer-
ful James."
One of the delightful qualities of his humour
was that he enjoyed a joke at his own expense quite
as much as one based on an oddity or quirk in some-
one else. Here is an example from the "Rough
Riders":
292 IMPRESSIONS OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT
There was a great deal of paper work to be done; but as I
still had charge of the brigade only a little of it fell on my
shoulders. Of this I was sincerely glad, for I knew as little
of the paper work as my men had originally known of drill.
We had all of us learned how to fight and march; but the
exact limits of our rights and duties in other respects were not
very clearly defined in our minds; and as for myself, as I
had not had the time to learn exactly what they were, I had
assumed a large authority in giving rewards and punishments.
In particular I had looked on court-martials much as Peter
Bell looked on primroses ā they were court-martials and
nothing more, whether resting on the authority of a lieuten-
ant-colonel or of a major-general. The mustering-out officer,
a thorough soldier, found to his horror that I had used the
widest discretion both in imposing heavy sentences which I
had no power to impose on men who shirked their duties,
and, where men atoned for misconduct by marked gallantry,
in blandly remitting sentences approved by my chief of divi-
sion. However, I had done substantial ā even though some-
what rude and irregular ā justice, and no harm could result,
as we were just about to be mustered out.
Another instance of his enjoyment of chaffing
himself that I often like to think of occurred in the
early days of my editorial association with him.
We used to meet at a weekly round-table confer-
ence in which Roosevelt regularly took part.
These meetings were generally held on Mondays
at eleven o'clock in the forenoon.
One Monday morning he went to Brooklyn with
some friends to inspect some model tenement
houses in that borough, and did not reach the con-
PERSONAL QUALITIES 293
ference until between twelve and one. When he
came in he was full of his experience and began to
tell us about it. He had gone quietly and wished
to avoid any publicity, "But," said he, "for some
reason or other which I do not quite understand,
the people recognized me, especially the children,
and a crowd of the latter gathered around me."
We all smiled, for it should be explained that his
characteristic feature, which was always seized
upon by the newspaper cartoonists, was a mouth-
ful of unusually fine and white teeth, which he un-
consciously displayed whenever he laughed or
talked emphatically.
r , Noticing the smiles on our faces he at once
addedl "Yes, I suppose there is something dis-
tinctive in my physiognomy. I remember that
when I was running for the vice-Presidency I had
to speak in a Western town where the crowd in the
hall was so dense that the officers in charge had
great difficulty in making a way for me through
the packed audience to get to the stage where I
was to speak. Mr. Dooley's comment was [Mr.
Dooley as every contemporary American knows
is the newspaper pseudonym of one of our most
delightful and accomplished humourists]: 'And
thin along came Teddy Rosenfeld and bit his way
to the platform !' "
294 IMPRESSIONS OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Roosevelt recalled this genial caricature with
evident gusto.
In June, 1910, the Roosevelt party arrived in
London very early in the morning, having travelled
from Berlin during the night by the Flushing-
Queensborough route. Mr. Roosevelt went to
Dorchester House where he was the guest of Am-
bassador Whitelaw Reid, while I took up my quar-
ters in a near-by hotel. Immediately after break-
fast and after having removed some of the stain
of travel, I went round to Dorchester House and
by ten or eleven o'clock was engaged with Colonel
Roosevelt over a great pile of accumulated mail,
in a sitting room or "study" which Mr. Reid had
placed at his disposal. It was a good deal of a task
and one that was usually irksome to Mr. Roosevelt,
although he performed it faithfully. A knock at
the half-open door, accompanied by laboured
breathing, showed that somebody was there in a
state of suppressed excitement. I said " Come in,"
when one of the liveried, silk-stockinged footmen
ā a typical before-the-war English flunky ā entered
and announced in an evidently awe-struck voice ā
for kings were not in the habit of calling on pri-
vate citizens at ten o'clock in the morning: "The
King of is below, sir."
PERSONAL QUALITIES 295
Mr. Roosevelt, of course, had to go down, not
only because it was a king, but because it was a
monarch (not the Kaiser, let me hasten to add!)
for whom he had formed a real respect and
friendship during his journey in northern Eu-
rope. Nevertheless, as the Colonel rose he threw
down his pen, with a mixture of annoyance (at being
interrupted) and amusement, and exclaimed: ' 'Con-
found these kings; will they never leave me alone!"
Another royal or semi-royal anecdote comes to
my mind. At Stockholm Mr. Roosevelt was a
guest in the palace, a fine and spacious edifice of
unusually large and impressive dimensions, where
the hospitality extended to the party was of the
most genuine and delightful kind. The suite of
apartments which had been placed at the disposal
of Mr. Roosevelt and his family was elaborate,
and I had assigned to me on another floor a bed-
room and a sitting room with a man-servant to
attend to my wants. My bath was brought in
each morning in a portable tub after the old-time
European fashion, but while every comfort was
provided, the palace, so far as I could find, lacked
the modern plumbing upon which Americans are so
accustomed to depend. When we left Stockholm
by train, which had been equipped with a private
saloon carriage and private dining car for Mr.
296 IMPRESSIONS OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Roosevelt by his royal host, I asked him whether
he had discovered any modern plumbing in the
palace. He replied, with a quizzical look: "No; I
don't like living in these palaces because you can't
ring your bell and complain of your room!"
During the journey through Europe the English
king, Edward VII, had died, and Mr. Roosevelt
was appointed by Mr. Taft as special ambassador
to the funeral. One of the things he had to do
while in London was to attend the elaborate public
ceremonies of this funeral. Captain (now Lieu-
tenant-Colonel) Bentley Mott, then our Military
Attache at Paris, was assigned to Mr. Roosevelt
as his personal attache in the performance of his
ambassadorial duties. The Earl of Dundonald
and Commander Cunninghame-Graham were as-
signed by the King to perform for Mr. Roosevelt
the functions of what I suppose would be called in
the case of royal personages, " Gentlemen in wait-
ing." The arrangements had to be made by these
three gentlemen for Mr. Roosevelt's part in the
solemn and splendid procession which proceeded
through vast crowds from Buckingham Palace to
Windsor. As Secretary to Mr. Roosevelt I was
called into the conference. Captain Mott felt that
Colonel Roosevelt should ride a horse, dressed in
the conventional long riding trousers, frock coat,
PERSONAL QUALITIES 297
and high hat. The Earl of Dundonald and Com-
mander Cunninghame-Graham courteously agreed
that this was most desirable, but regretted that the
Earl of Norfolk, the prerogative of whose family
was to have charge of all English coronations and
royal funerals, was insistent that Mr. Roosevelt
should wear "ambassadorial dress" ā this being,
according to American precedent, a swallow-tail
evening suit.
Finally, Captain Mott insisted that Colonel
Roosevelt should be called into the conference.
He came, the matter was laid before him, and he
said: "Why, Mott, I appreciate your thoughtful-
ness, but I am here as an ambassador not to do
what I like but what the English people like as the
contribution of my country to the respect which
the world is paying to the memory of the King. If
the English people want me to, I'll wear a pink coat
and green-striped trousers!"
The result was that he did wear American eve-
ning dress and rode in the procession in a carriage
with M. Pichon, the French Ambassador, to the
funeral, these two, I believe, being the only foreign
representatives who were " common ers." Mr.
Roosevelt told me that during the long drive he had
all he could do to appease M. Pichon, because ac-
cording to the exacting rules of precedence, their
298 IMPRESSIONS OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT
carriage had been placed after that of the King of
Siam. This question of precedence gave Roose-
velt no end of amusement. He saw its necessity,
for all social conventions are based on some kind of
necessity, but its extreme rigour struck him, as
it does every American I suppose, as sometimes
ludicrous.
He told me that at the funeral banquet given
to the foreign representatives in Buckingham Pal-
ace the evening before the procession and cere-
monies at Windsor ā a dinner which he somewhat
disrespectfully referred to as "the wake" ā the
Kaiser told him an anecdote of precedence con-
nected with the funeral, which indicates that the
Kaiser himself was capable of perceiving the arti-
ficiality of certain monarchical customs. It seems
that two royal personages of eastern Europe ā I
think one was from a Balkan kingdom and the
other from an Austrian principality ā met with their
private cars or saloon carriages at Vienna to take
the Orient Express for Paris and London. They
quarrelled as to whose rank entitled him to be first
on the train, but the aide-de-camp, let us say of the
Balkan personage, was clever enough to get his
master's car coupled directly on the engine. The
Austrian, therefore, had, willynilly, to take second
place. Then came the regular dining car of the
PERSONAL QUALITIES 299
train. When dinner was served the Balkan High-
ness sent his aide into the private car of the Aus-
trian Highness with his compliments and might
he pass through to the dining car. No, he might
not. So he had to wait until the train came to a
station, get out, walk around his rivaPs car into
the dining car, eat his dinner, stay there until an-
other station was reached, and then walk around
his rival's car again into his own. As the Orient
Express makes very long non-stop runs it may
easily be imagined that although the Balkan celeb-
rity got the first place on the train it was not by
any means the most comfortable. This incident
Roosevelt recounted with the greatest glee.
I have already referred to the fact that in the
summer of 19 14, just before the European war broke
out, I returned from England, with a party of
friends on the steamship Imperator, in company
with Roosevelt. We had been over to play golf;
he had been to England to lecture before the Royal
Geographical Society. He was sitting with us one
afternoon in the smoking room, although he did
not smoke himself, and fell to talking on one of his
favourite topics ā Americanism. He was denounc-
ing a certain man in Boston who during the Span-
ish War, although purporting to be an American,
endeavoured to raise money to help Spain build a
3 oo IMPRESSIONS OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT
battleship. The enormity of this offence grew
upon Roosevelt as he talked and finally he raised
his clenched fist in the air and almost at a loss for
words, exclaimed, "Such a man as that should be
ā should be ā should be ā hanged, drawn, and
quartered!''
One of the group, a great admirer and political
follower of Roosevelt who had met him personally,
I believe, for the first time on this voyage, leaned
forward and said with a chuckle: "At least, Colo-
nel!" Quick as a flash the Colonel turned, took
his hand, and said: "I am delighted to meet a man,
Mr. Erickson, who thinks my language is too mod-
erate !" He did not go on with his denunciation.
Two years afterward Mr. Erickson, who had
become actively interested in the formation of the
Roosevelt League which was urging the nomina-
tion of Roosevelt for the Presidency of 1916, went
to the office of the Colonel, who was then associ-
ated with the Metropolitan Magazine, to consult
him about some campaign matters. He sent in
his card, and when he entered the Colonel's room
he remarked that, although probably the Colonel
did not remember him, he had had the pleasure of
crossing with him on the Imperator two years
before. "Not remember you!" exclaimed Mr.
Roosevelt, "I most certainly do ā and most pleas-
PERSONAL QUALITIES 301
antly. You are the man who thinks my language
is too moderate I"
These rambling and detached stories, I am
afraid, give a very inadequate impression of what
I think was the most lovable of Roosevelt's quali-
ties. I am not sure but that it was the most im-
portant of his qualities. He could be stern; he
could be severe; he was occasionally biting al-
though never bitter; he had a certain touch of bull-
dog pugnacity; but underlying it all was a reser-
voir of humour, not a careless or indifferent hu-
mour, not a mere jocosity, but humour which has
its source in a spirit of sympathetic and joyous
understanding of men and things ā a spirit of
which Emerson said in a Eulogy of Sir Walter
Scott before the Massachusetts Historical Society:
"What an ornament and safeguard is humour!
Far better than wit for a poet and writer. It is a
genius itself, and so defends from the insani-
ties. "
The fourth notable quality in Roosevelt's person-
ality that impressed me was his Gentleness.
Early in his presidential career he uttered one of
those epigrammatic phrases for which he has become
famous: "Speak softly, but carry a big stick."
The big-stick half of this phrase caught the pub-
lic fancy and many people, forgetting that he put
302 IMPRESSIONS OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT
"speaking softly" first, pictured him as a kind of
glorified Irishman carrying a shillalah in a uni-
versal Donnybrook Fair and joyously hitting
every head he saw. Those who knew him best
knew that this was a totally false conception ā
that one of his pronounced characteristics was a
spirit of gentle consideration for others.
A man's general attitude toward his fellow beings
can be pretty well determined if you can find out
what he thinks of children and how he treats them.
What Roosevelt thought of children is expressed
in this paragraph from his Autobiography:
There are many kinds of success in life worth having. It is
exceedingly interesting and attractive to be a successful
business man, or railroad man, or farmer, or a successful
lawyer, or doctor, or a writer, or a president, or a ranchman,
or the colonel of a fighting regiment, or to kill grizzly bears
and lions. But for unflagging interest and enjoyment, a
household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly
makes all other forms of success and achievement lose their
importance by comparison.
I am inclined to think that Roosevelt was gener-
ally regarded by the public as preeminently a man's
man. He was so much in the public mind as a
bear killer, a lion hunter, a jungle explorer, a Rough
Rider, a "trust buster," and a fighter of male-
factors that many people are astonished when
PERSONAL QUALITIES 303
they are told that he was also a children's man.
Nobody can detect a counterfeit child lover as
quickly as a child itself. Normal children respect
and admire their superiors, especially in physical
prowess, without regard to age; but they despise
and resent patronage. The man who assumes a
patronizing air toward children is very soon avoided
by them, but with magnetic rapidity they cluster
round a man who understands them, who sym-
pathizes with them ā a very different thing by
the way from sentimentalizing over them ā and
who can do things with them. This was the way
Roosevelt treated children, and the result was that
they often followed him as if he had been a modern
Pied Piper of Hamelin. It is easy to imagine the
atmosphere in which his own children were brought
Ā»
up in the family homestead, Sagamore Hill, at
Oyster Bay. They swam, rowed, went barefoot,
or camped in the woods or on the beach of Long
Island Sound. They learned to shoot ā for there
was a rifle-range at Sagamore Hill. They made pets
of the various animals on the home farm in the
summer, and they coasted and skated in the
winter. In this bringing up of the children in the
vigour of outdoor life Mrs. Roosevelt was an active
partner, as will be seen by referring to another
passage in the colonel's Autobiography:
3o 4 IMPRESSIONS OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT
When their mother and I returned from a row, we would
often see the children waiting for us, running like sand-spiders
along the beach. They always liked to swim in company
with a grown-up of buoyant temperament and inventive
mind, and the float offered limitless opportunities for enjoy-
ment while bathing.
All dutiful parents know the game of stage-coach. Each
child is given a name, such as the whip, the nigh-leader, the
off-wheeler, the old-lady passenger, and, under penalty of
paying a forfeit, must get up and turn round when the grown-
up, who is improvising a thrilling story, mentions that par-
ticular object; and when the word "stage-coach" is men-
tioned, everybody has to get up and turn round. Well, we
used to play stage-coach on the float while in swimming, and
instead of tamely getting up and turning round, the child
whose turn it was had to plunge overboard. When I men-
tioned "stage-coach," the water fairly foamed with vigorously
kicking little legs; and then there was always a moment of
interest while I counted, so as to be sure that the number of
heads that came up corresponded with the number of chil-
dren who had gone down.
I am puzzled to know whether Roosevelt's
attitude toward his youngest boy, Quentin, whose
body lies in his soldier's grave in France, should be
put under the head of courage or gentleness. The
father who has the most gentle love for his child
really wants that child to make the most of its
life, not merely to vegetate, protected from every
kind of danger, trial, or obstacle. Quentin's death
was a blow to Roosevelt, but I think he never re-
gretted the encouragement and support which he
PERSONAL. QUALITIES 365
gave his youngest son in making the Great Adven-
ture. Quentin, then nineteen years old, was com-
pleting his sophomore year in Harvard. When
this country declared war on Germany he tele-
graphed his mother that he was leaving college
to come to New York to enlist. During a visit
at Sagamore Hill in the summer of 1917, after
Quentin had gone to the French front, I asked Mr.
and Mrs. Roosevelt whether they did not feel
it to be a special hardship that, at so early an age,
Quentin should have to give up his education and
many of his associations at Harvard which he
could never renew even if the war left him un-
scathed. They both replied that they were par-
ticularly glad that, on his own initiative, he had
taken the exact course which would put him in one
of the most dangerous branches of the service.
"I would not have stopped him if I could,"
added Mr. Roosevelt; "and I could not have
stopped him if I would. The more American boys
from nineteen to twenty-one join the army the
better it is for the country. To take them out
of our civil life entails the smallest economic loss
upon the Nation, and because of their elasticity
and powers of recuperation they are its greatest
military asset."
Nevertheless, if Roosevelt could have given him-
3 o6 IMPRESSIONS OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT
self and saved Quentin he would gladly have done
so. Just before Quentin's death Mr. Stephane
Lauzanne ā the editor of the Paris Matin, then in
this country 1 ā was returning to Paris; he asked
Roosevelt for a message to take back to his coun-
trymen. This was Roosevelt's response:
"I have no message for France; I have already
given her the best I had. But if, over there, they
speak of me, tell them that my only regret is that
I could not give myself."
One of my pleasantest recollections of Roosevelt
is connected with this gentle side of his character.
Preceding and during the Progressive campaign of
19 1 2 he used to lunch weekly with his editorial
colleagues at the National Arts Club in Gramercy
Park. There were usually several guests. On a
certain one of these luncheon days there were to be
two distinguished foreign diplomats as the guests of
honour, the ambassadors from Brazil and Argen-
tina, and I had gone around from our office, a few
blocks away, to the club just ahead of Mr. Roose-
velt, to make sure that all the arrangements were
complete. We did not often have foreign ambassa-
dors at our table and I felt a desire, which house-
wives who read these lines will understand, to see
that the flowers and napery and spoons and forks
were properly arranged.
PERSONAL QUALITIES 307
As I approached the club I saw a lady standing
on the sidewalk stooping over to talk to a small
boy about ten years old, who was crying bitterly.
The boy was sobbing so convulsively that it was
impossible to understand what he was saying;
but on stopping to see if I could be of any assistance
the lady, seeing that the boy was being attended
to, went on her way. I managed to extract from
the little, quivering figure the information that
he was lost. His father was a Hungarian miner
from Pennsylvania; that family had arrived that
Ā»
morning in New York on their way back to Hun-
gary; the ship was to sail the next day; he had just
stepped out of the house where they were stopping