In the lore of the Middle West brilliantly stands out the figure of
Johnny Appleseed, who traveled westward distributing apple-seeds to the
farmers and ranchers, from whence sprang up the great apple orchards
that have blessed these regions.
It was service of a similar kind that Roosevelt performed when he went
among these primitive people of the wilderness. Schools were scarce in
those days and opportunity for culture was almost entirely lacking. But
here had come among them a man who had graduated from one of the great
Eastern colleges, and who had brought with him a choice library of
books that contained characters and philosophy entirely comprehensible
by these untutored minds when interpreted by such an enthusiastic and
sympathetic expounder as young Roosevelt.
On the long winter evenings Roosevelt’s fireside became the rendezvous
for the ranchers and their wives. Roosevelt would select a classic
story and begin reading. The tale would be a familiar one to him, and
yet the genius of the author would again cast its spell over him, and
he would read with interest and expression that were magnetic. Swiftly
the night passed, and when in the late hours his hearers went to their
rest they lay awake remembering the poetry of “that chap Browning” or
the Rosalind or Lear of “Mr. Shakespeare,” conning them over in their
minds until they became part of their beings, to be transmitted later
to the minds and lips of their children, and thus to become a part of
the civilization of their section.
To the women, with their starved existence--so far as education was
concerned--Roosevelt proved a benefactor indeed; but no less did he
administer to the mental craving of his men comrades.
Monotonous and threadbare grew the conversation at a cow-camp. Seldom
did the talk vary from such topics as these, described by him:
“A bunch of steers had been seen traveling over the buttes to the head
of Elk Creek. A stray horse, with a blurred brand on the left hip,
had just joined the saddle ponies. The red F. V. cow had been bitten
by a wolf. The old mule, Sawback, was getting over the effects of the
rattlesnake bite. The river was going down, but the fords were still
bad, and the quicksand at the Caster Trail crossing had worked along
so that wagons had to be taken over opposite the blasted cottonwood.
Bronco Jim had tried to ride the big, bald-faced sorrel belonging to
the Oregon horse outfit and had been bucked off and his face smashed
in. It was agreed that Jim ‘wasn’t the sure-enough bronco-buster he
thought himself,’ and he was compared very unfavorably to various
heroes of the quirt and spurs who lived in Texas and Colorado.”
These topics having been exhausted, the rumor was discussed that the
vigilantes had given notice to quit to two men who had just built a
shack at the head of the Little Dry River, and whose horses included a
suspiciously large number of different brands, most of them blurred.
Then the talk became more personal. Roosevelt would be asked to write
or post letters for the cow-punchers. Then his companions, growing
friendly, would make him the confident of their love affairs, and make
him listen for an hour to the charms of their sweethearts.
Here Roosevelt’s books stood both him and his companions in good stead.
No matter what adverse conditions surrounded the young ranch-owner,
favorite volumes were at hand, and out they came at the first
opportunity.
On one occasion, while hunting on Beaver Creek for a lost horse, he
met a cowboy and made friends with him. Caught in a heavy snowstorm,
they lost themselves, and after eight or nine horns of drifting,
finally came across an empty hut near Sentinel Butte. Making their
horses comfortable in a sheltered nook with hay found in an old
stack, the two cold and tired men sat down to spend the long winter
evening together. Out of Roosevelt’s pocket came a small edition of
Hamlet. His cowboy companion was greatly interested in the reading,
and Roosevelt tells us that he commented very shrewdly on the parts he
liked, especially Polonius’s advice to Laertes. His final comment was
extremely gratifying to the man who had introduced to him the treasures
of the world’s greatest dramatist, and would doubtless have given great
pleasure to the immortal bard himself:
“Old Shakespeare saveyed human natur’ some!”
On another evening the men at the Roosevelt ranch began to discuss
the English soldiers. Thereupon Roosevelt got down “Napier” and read
them extracts from his descriptions of the fighting in the Spanish
peninsula. He also told them about the fine appearance and splendid
horses of the cavalry and hussars he had seen.
Thus when the East called Roosevelt home there was left behind in
the minds of the sons and daughters of the great West not only the
recollection of a tried and true comrade, but also the seeds of a
culture whose fruitage is still springing forth from the lives he
touched.
From a business standpoint Roosevelt’s ranching venture was a failure.
The country was poorly adapted to cattle-raising. His reviving interest
in politics and his engagement to Edith Carow came to draw him back to
the fields where happiness and success waited. Sewall and Dow returned
East with him.
The duty of a biographer is to record and not to speculate, yet as we
look at Roosevelt’s later life in his unpretentious home at Sagamore
Hill; when we think of the democratic sewing circle at Oyster Bay
to which Mrs. Roosevelt goes regularly to sew garments for crippled
children, and when we see the democratic simplicity with which
Roosevelt mingled with his neighbors and shared their experiences and
confidences; when we read of him or Captain Archie playing Santa Claus
to the village children, we are led to pronounce this judgment, which
we feel Roosevelt, if he were living, would heartily second--that while
he gave to the men and women of the West the best that was in him,
he also received from their kind hearts and frank and open natures a
deepening and ripening of his sense of brotherhood that was equivalent
in value to the finest gifts he gave these frontier folks.
V