he made an address under the auspices of the Negro Circle, and again I
was to have been present and was prevented by my condition of health.
The following week when I was better I telegraphed to Oyster Bay to
ask him, if possible, to lunch with me in New York, and to my distress
received an answer that he was not well enough to come to New York,
but would I come out and spend the night at Oyster Bay instead? When I
arrived at Sagamore Hill, I could not but feel worried to find him in
bed, and in much pain, which, however, he entirely disregarded, and we
had one of the most delightful evenings that I ever remember spending
with him. I had brought, thinking that it might interest him, Professor
William Lyon Phelps’s book on “Modern Poetry,” and during the time that
I left his room to take dinner with my sister-in-law, he had read so
much and with such avidity that I felt on my return to his bedside that
he had assimilated the whole volume. In spite of pain and politics, he
threw himself into a discussion of modern American poetry, taking up
author after author and giving me rapid criticisms or appreciations. He
took much interest in both Edgar Lee Masters and Vachel Lindsay, struck
with the masterful story-telling quality of the one and the curious
rhythmic metre of the other, and the strong Americanism of both.
From poetry we wandered across political fields together, and he
discussed the armistice which had just been signed, and which he said
he could not but regret from the standpoint of the future. He felt
that for all the days to come it would have been better had Germany’s
army had to return to the Fatherland an insignificant and defeated
fraction of its original strength, and had the Allies entered Berlin
as victors. This opinion, although very strong, was not in any way
advanced as a criticism of the signing of the armistice, which he
appeared to feel had been inevitable. We talked until twelve o’clock
that night and I have always felt grateful to my sister-in-law for
having arranged for me to have that delightful communion with my
brother.
There was no serious apprehension about his health when I left the
next morning, and the news that he had been taken to the hospital the
following week came as a shock and surprise to me. All through those
late November and December days, when my brother was an invalid in
Roosevelt Hospital (except for a brief thirty-six hours when he was
threatened with pneumonia, which trouble he threw off with his usual
wonderful vitality), we were not seriously apprehensive of any fatal
outcome to his ill health, and, indeed, at times during that detention
in the hospital, he gave one the impression of a man fully able to
recuperate as he had always done before. Many were the happy hours of
quiet interchange of thought and affection passed by me with my brother
in the hospital. My sister-in-law had given the order to the nurses
that I should always be admitted, and I came and went in the sick-room
daily. Sometimes he was well enough to see visitors, and lines of
people of the most varied kinds were always waiting in the corridors in
the hope of a few words with him. I remember a long talk on American
literature to which I listened between Hamlin Garland and himself, and
in the middle of December he asked me to telegraph our dear friend
Senator Lodge to ask him to come on and discuss certain political
matters with him. The senator spent two days with me, and of those two
days two whole mornings in the Colonel’s room in the hospital. I was
with them during the first morning when they discussed the tentative
League of Nations, parts of which in problematical form were already
known to the public. The different reservations, insisted upon later
by Senator Lodge, when the League in its eventual form was presented
to the Senate of the United States, were tentatively formulated at
the bedside of the Colonel. I do not mean that definite clauses in
the League were definitely discussed, but many contingencies of the
document, contingencies which later took the form of definite clauses,
_were_ discussed, and the future attitude toward such contingencies
more or less mapped out. He took great pleasure in these talks with
Senator Lodge, for, although not always in accord in some of their
political views, I know no one in whose stimulating mentality my
brother took keener pleasure; and on the fundamental issues of “America
First,” and of deep-rooted patriotism and practical service to their
country, they stood invariably as one man.
One day--in fact, it was the last day that I sat with him in the
hospital--he seemed particularly bright and on the near road to
recovery. His left arm was still in bandages, but with his strong right
hand he gesticulated as of old, and sitting in his armchair, his eyes
clear and shining, his face ruddy and animated, he seemed to me to have
lost nothing of the vigorous and inspiring personality of earlier days.
As usual, he shared my every interest, reiterated his desire to have my
little grandson, Douglas, and his sisters pay a visit in the holidays
to Sagamore Hill, told me delightedly how he would show Douglas every
trophy in the large north room where his trophies were kept, and said
that he wanted to know all the children intimately. From family affairs
we branched off to public affairs, and speaking of the possibilities
of the future, he said he knew much depended upon his health, but that
he recognized that even amongst those who had been opposed to him in
the past, there was now a strong desire for him to be the Republican
candidate for President in 1920. Alluding to his birthday so lately
passed, he said: “Well, anyway, no matter what comes, I have kept the
promise that I made to myself when I was twenty-one.” “What promise,
Theodore?” I asked him. “You made many promises to yourself, and I am
sure have kept them all.” “I promised myself,” he said, bringing his
right fist down with emphasis on the arm of the chair, “that I would
work _up to the hilt_ until I was sixty, and I have done it. I have
kept my promise, and now, even if I should be an invalid--I should not
like to be an invalid--but even if I should be an invalid, or if I
should die [this with a snap of his finger and thumb], what difference
would it make?” “Theodore,” I said, “do you remember what you said
to me nearly a year ago when you thought you were dying in this same
hospital? You said that you were glad it was not one of your boys that
was dying at that time in this place, for _they_ could die for their
country. Do you feel the same way now?” “Yes,” he said, “just the same
way. I wish that I might, like Quentin, have died for my country.”
“I know you wish it,” I answered, “but I want to tell you something.
Every one of us--even those not as courageous, not as patriotic, as you
are--would, I feel sure, if our country were in peril, be willing to
bare our breasts to any bullet, could we, by so doing, protect and save
our country; but the trouble is that the very people who, in peril,
will give themselves, with absolute disregard of the consequences, to
their country’s service, fail, utterly, in times of peace, to sacrifice
anything whatsoever for their country’s good. The difference, Theodore,
between you and the majority of us is that you not only are willing and
anxious to _die_ for your country, but that you _live_ for your country
every day of your life.”
Within a few days, in fact on Christmas day, he was moved to Oyster
Bay, and at first seemed benefited by the change. On Friday, January 3,
I had arranged to go out and spend the day with him, but a message came
that he was not quite as comfortable and would I wait until Monday,
when he hoped to feel much better and enjoy my visit.
On the Sunday he seemed better again, my sister-in-law told me later,
and enjoyed the whole day. He loved, passionately, his home at Sagamore
Hill, and the view from it over the Sound on which he had rowed so
often from boyhood up. He loved the beauty of the shrubs and trees and
undulating wooded hills, and he loved best of all the sense of home
there, and the happy family life which, even with a vacant chair, he
knew would continue. He expressed his content that evening to Mrs.
Roosevelt, in whose companionship he took the same delight as when in
their youth he had brought her to be the adored mistress of that home.
Later in the evening he did not seem quite so well and she sent for
the doctor, who, after testing him in various ways, pronounced his
condition as very satisfactory. Relieved in mind, Mrs. Roosevelt left
him in charge of his faithful attendant, James Amos, and shortly after
she went out he turned to James and said, “Put out the light.” Once
again his devoted wife came to his bedside, thinking she heard him
stir, but found him sleeping peacefully. At four o’clock James detected
a change in the breathing, and realizing that all was not well, called
the trained nurse. In a few moments, as Senator Lodge said later in
his great oration on his friend before the joint houses of Congress
in Washington, “Valiant-for-Truth passed over, and all the trumpets
sounded for him on the other side.”
* * * * *
That Sunday evening, just before Theodore Roosevelt told his faithful
servant to “Put out the light,” there was a meeting held in New York
under the auspices of the American Defense Society, at which he had
hoped to be present. Not able to be there in person, he sent them a
letter, and at the moment that he, at his beloved home on the hill,
closed his eyes for the last time, his faithful followers listened
to his ringing exhortation that there should be “no sagging back in
Americanism.” The youth, twenty-three years of age, as an assemblyman
at Albany had come to his native city to make his maiden address on
that theme so near his heart, and the man, whose life-work, replete
with patriotism, was drawing to a close, sent the same fervent message
in his last hours to his fellow countrymen. All his life long he had
been for those fellow countrymen “the patriotic sentinel; pacing the
parapet of the Republic, alert to danger and every menace; in love
with duty and service, and always unafraid.”--From Senator Warren G.
Harding’s address on “Theodore Roosevelt” before the Senate and House
of Ohio, late in January, 1919.
* * * * *
At six o’clock on that very Monday morning when I was hoping to go to
him and enjoy his dear companionship, the telephone-bell in my room
rang and my sister-in-law’s voice, gentle and self-controlled, though
vibrant with grief, told me that he was gone, and that she wanted me
to come at once to Sagamore. It was not long before my eldest son and
I were climbing the familiar hill. As we neared the house, I could
not bring myself to believe that the great personality who had always
welcomed me there had passed away.
That afternoon Mrs. Roosevelt and I walked far and fast along the shore
and through the woodlands he had loved, and on our return in the waning
winter twilight we suddenly became conscious that airplanes were flying
low around the house. In a tone of deep emotion Mrs. Roosevelt said:
“They must be planes from the camp where Quentin trained. They have
been sent as a guard of honor for his father.”
That night as I stood alone in the room where my brother lay, these
lines came to me--I called them “Sagamore,” that old Indian word for
which my brother cared so much. It means chief or chieftain, and
Sagamore Hill, the chieftain’s hill.
SAGAMORE
At Sagamore the Chief lies low--
Above the hill in circled row
The whirring airplanes dip and fly,
A guard of honor from the sky;--
Eagles to guard the Eagle.--Woe
Is on the world. The people go
With listless footstep, blind and slow;--
For one is dead--who shall not die--
At Sagamore.
Oh! Land he loved, at last you know
The son who served you well below,
The prophet voice, the visioned eye.
Hold him in ardent memory,
For one is gone--who shall not go--
From Sagamore!
* * * * * *
Transcriber’s note:
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not
changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced
quotation marks retained. Apparent mis-spellings in letters written by
young children have not been changed; some are noted below.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.
Page 11: The first “a” in “Yes, S_a_rah” was printed in italics.
Page 39: “your own expresion” was printed with one “s”; “they trie” was
printed that way.
Page 67: “did not suceede” was printed that way.
Page 74: “The fisrt” was printed that way.
Page 100: The block of text labelled “[Facsimile: ]” contains the text
of a facsimile reproduced in the original book. It looks similar to a
long footnote. Within that text, the numbers preceding the species were
printed in boldface.
Page 149: “chicadee” was printed that way.