OUTDOORS AND INDOORS
There are men who love out-of-doors who yet never open a book; and other
men who love books but to whom the great book of nature is a
sealed volume, and the lines written therein blurred and illegible.
Nevertheless among those men whom I have known the love of books and the
love of outdoors, in their highest expressions, have usually gone hand
in hand. It is an affectation for the man who is praising outdoors to
sneer at books. Usually the keenest appreciation of what is seen in
nature is to be found in those who have also profited by the hoarded
and recorded wisdom of their fellow-men. Love of outdoor life, love of
simple and hardy pastimes, can be gratified by men and women who do
not possess large means, and who work hard; and so can love of good
books--not of good bindings and of first editions, excellent enough in
their way but sheer luxuries--I mean love of reading books, owning them
if possible of course, but, if that is not possible, getting them from a
circulating library.
Sagamore Hill takes its name from the old Sagamore Mohannis, who,
as chief of his little tribe, signed away his rights to the land two
centuries and a half ago. The house stands right on the top of the hill,
separated by fields and belts of woodland from all other houses, and
looks out over the bay and the Sound. We see the sun go down beyond long
reaches of land and of water. Many birds dwell in the trees round the
house or in the pastures and the woods near by, and of course in winter
gulls, loons, and wild fowl frequent the waters of the bay and the
Sound. We love all the seasons; the snows and bare woods of winter;
the rush of growing things and the blossom-spray of spring; the yellow
grain, the ripening fruits and tasseled corn, and the deep, leafy shades
that are heralded by "the green dance of summer"; and the sharp fall
winds that tear the brilliant banners with which the trees greet the
dying year.
The Sound is always lovely. In the summer nights we watch it from the
piazza, and see the lights of the tall Fall River boats as they steam
steadily by. Now and then we spend a day on it, the two of us together
in the light rowing skiff, or perhaps with one of the boys to pull an
extra pair of oars; we land for lunch at noon under wind-beaten oaks
on the edge of a low bluff, or among the wild plum bushes on a spit
of white sand, while the sails of the coasting schooners gleam in the
sunlight, and the tolling of the bell-buoy comes landward across the
waters.
Long Island is not as rich in flowers as the valley of the Hudson. Yet
there are many. Early in April there is one hillside near us which glows
like a tender flame with the white of the bloodroot. About the same time
we find the shy mayflower, the trailing arbutus; and although we rarely
pick wild flowers, one member of the household always plucks a little
bunch of mayflowers to send to a friend working in Panama, whose soul
hungers for the Northern spring. Then there are shadblow and delicate
anemones, about the time of the cherry blossoms; the brief glory of the
apple orchards follows; and then the thronging dogwoods fill the forests
with their radiance; and so flowers follow flowers until the springtime
splendor closes with the laurel and the evanescent, honey-sweet locust
bloom. The late summer flowers follow, the flaunting lilies, and
cardinal flowers, and marshmallows, and pale beach rosemary; and the
goldenrod and the asters when the afternoons shorten and we again begin
to think of fires in the wide fireplaces.
Most of the birds in our neighborhood are the ordinary home friends of
the house and the barn, the wood lot and the pasture; but now and then
the species make queer shifts. The cheery quail, alas! are rarely found
near us now; and we no longer hear the whip-poor-wills at night. But
some birds visit us now which formerly did not. When I was a boy neither
the black-throated green warbler nor the purple finch nested around us,
nor were bobolinks found in our fields. The black-throated green warbler
is now one of our commonest summer warblers; there are plenty of purple
finches; and, best of all, the bobolinks are far from infrequent. I had
written about these new visitors to John Burroughs, and once when he
came out to see me I was able to show them to him.
When I was President, we owned a little house in western Virginia; a
delightful house, to us at least, although only a shell of rough boards.
We used sometimes to go there in the fall, perhaps at Thanksgiving, and
on these occasions we would have quail and rabbits of our own shooting,
and once in a while a wild turkey. We also went there in the spring. Of
course many of the birds were different from our Long Island friends.
There were mocking-birds, the most attractive of all birds, and blue
grosbeaks, and cardinals and summer redbirds, instead of scarlet
tanagers, and those wonderful singers the Bewick's wrens, and Carolina
wrens. All these I was able to show John Burroughs when he came to visit
us; although, by the way, he did not appreciate as much as we did one
set of inmates of the cottage--the flying squirrels. We loved having the
flying squirrels, father and mother and half-grown young, in their nest
among the rafters; and at night we slept so soundly that we did not in
the least mind the wild gambols of the little fellows through the rooms,
even when, as sometimes happened, they would swoop down to the bed and
scuttle across it.
One April I went to Yellowstone Park, when the snow was still very deep,
and I took John Burroughs with me. I wished to show him the big game of
the Park, the wild creatures that have become so astonishingly tame and
tolerant of human presence. In the Yellowstone the animals seem always
to behave as one wishes them to! It is always possible to see the sheep
and deer and antelope, and also the great herds of elk, which are shyer
than the smaller beasts. In April we found the elk weak after the
short commons and hard living of winter. Once without much difficulty
I regularly rounded up a big band of them, so that John Burroughs could
look at them. I do not think, however, that he cared to see them as much
as I did. The birds interested him more, especially a tiny owl the size
of a robin which we saw perched on the top of a tree in mid-afternoon
entirely uninfluenced by the sun and making a queer noise like a cork
being pulled from a bottle. I was rather ashamed to find how much
better his eyes were than mine in seeing the birds and grasping their
differences.
When wolf-hunting in Texas, and when bear-hunting in Louisiana and
Mississippi, I was not only enthralled by the sport, but also by the
strange new birds and other creatures, and the trees and flowers I had
not known before. By the way, there was one feast at the White House
which stands above all others in my memory--even above the time when
I lured Joel Chandler Harris thither for a night, a deed in which to
triumph, as all who knew that inveterately shy recluse will testify.
This was "the bear-hunters' dinner." I had been treated so kindly by my
friends on these hunts, and they were such fine fellows, men whom I was
so proud to think of as Americans, that I set my heart on having them
at a hunters' dinner at the White House. One December I succeeded; there
were twenty or thirty of them, all told, as good hunters, as daring
riders, as first-class citizens as could be found anywhere; no finer set
of guests ever sat at meat in the White House; and among other game
on the table was a black bear, itself contributed by one of these same
guests.
When I first visited California, it was my good fortune to see the "big
trees," the Sequoias, and then to travel down into the Yosemite, with
John Muir. Of course of all people in the world he was the one with whom
it was best worth while thus to see the Yosemite. He told me that when
Emerson came to California he tried to get him to come out and camp with
him, for that was the only way in which to see at their best the majesty
and charm of the Sierras. But at the time Emerson was getting old and
could not go. John Muir met me with a couple of packers and two mules
to carry our tent, bedding, and food for a three days' trip. The first
night was clear, and we lay down in the darkening aisles of the great
Sequoia grove. The majestic trunks, beautiful in color and in symmetry,
rose round us like the pillars of a mightier cathedral than ever was
conceived even by the fervor of the Middle Ages. Hermit thrushes sang
beautifully in the evening, and again, with a burst of wonderful music,
at dawn. I was interested and a little surprised to find that, unlike
John Burroughs, John Muir cared little for birds or bird songs, and knew
little about them. The hermit-thrushes meant nothing to him, the trees
and the flowers and the cliffs everything. The only birds he noticed
or cared for were some that were very conspicuous, such as the
water-ousels--always particular favorites of mine too. The second night
we camped in a snow-storm, on the edge of the canyon walls, under the
spreading limbs of a grove of mighty silver fir; and next day we went
down into the wonderland of the valley itself. I shall always be glad
that I was in the Yosemite with John Muir and in the Yellowstone with
John Burroughs.
Like most Americans interested in birds and books, I know a good
deal about English birds as they appear in books. I know the lark of
Shakespeare and Shelley and the Ettrick Shepherd; I know the nightingale
of Milton and Keats; I know Wordsworth's cuckoo; I know mavis and merle
singing in the merry green wood of the old ballads; I know Jenny Wren
and Cock Robin of the nursery books. Therefore I had always much desired
to hear the birds in real life; and the opportunity offered in June,
1910, when I spent two or three weeks in England. As I could snatch but
a few hours from a very exciting round of pleasures and duties, it was
necessary for me to be with some companion who could identify both song
and singer. In Sir Edward Grey, a keen lover of outdoor life in all
its phases, and a delightful companion, who knows the songs and ways of
English birds as very few do know them, I found the best possible guide.
We left London on the morning of June 9, twenty-four hours before I
sailed from Southampton. Getting off the train at Basingstoke, we drove
to the pretty, smiling valley of the Itchen. Here we tramped for three
or four hours, then again drove, this time to the edge of the New
Forest, where we first took tea at an inn, and then tramped through the
forest to an inn on its other side, at Brockenhurst. At the conclusion
of our walk my companion made a list of the birds we had seen, putting
an asterisk (*) opposite those which we had heard sing. There were
forty-one of the former and twenty-three of the latter, as follows:
* Thrush, * blackbird, * lark, * yellowhammer, * robin,
*wren, * golden-crested wren, * goldfinch, * chaffinch, *
*greenfinch, pied wagtail, sparrow, * dunnock (hedge,
accentor), missel thrush, starling, rook, jackdaw,
*blackcap, * garden warbler, * willow warbler, * chiffchaff,
* wood warbler, tree-creeper, * reed bunting, * sedge
warbler, coot, water hen, little grebe (dabchick), tufted
duck, wood pigeon, stock dove, * turtle dove, peewit, tit (?
coal-tit), * cuckoo, * nightjar, * swallow, martin, swift,
pheasant, partridge.
The valley of the Itchen is typically the England that we know from
novel and story and essay. It is very beautiful in every way, with a
rich, civilized, fertile beauty--the rapid brook twisting among its reed
beds, the rich green of trees and grass, the stately woods, the gardens
and fields, the exceedingly picturesque cottages, the great handsome
houses standing in their parks. Birds were plentiful; I know but few
places in America where one would see such an abundance of individuals,
and I was struck by seeing such large birds as coots, water hens,
grebes, tufted ducks, pigeons, and peewits. In places in America as
thickly settled as the valley of the Itchen, I should not expect to see
any like number of birds of this size; but I hope that the efforts of
the Audubon societies and kindred organizations will gradually make
themselves felt until it becomes a point of honor not only with the
American man, but with the American small boy, to shield and protect all
forms of harmless wild life. True sportsmen should take the lead in such
a movement, for if there is to be any shooting there must be something
to shoot; the prime necessity is to keep, and not kill out, even the
birds which in legitimate numbers may be shot.
The New Forest is a wild, uninhabited stretch of heath and woodland,
many of the trees gnarled and aged, and its very wildness, the lack of
cultivation, the ruggedness, made it strongly attractive in my eyes, and
suggested my own country. The birds of course were much less plentiful
than beside the Itchen.
The bird that most impressed me on my walk was the blackbird. I had
already heard nightingales in abundance near Lake Como, and had also
listened to larks, but I had never heard either the blackbird, the song
thrush, or the blackcap warbler; and while I knew that all three were
good singers, I did not know what really beautiful singers they were.
Blackbirds were very abundant, and they played a prominent part in the
chorus which we heard throughout the day on every hand, though perhaps
loudest the following morning at dawn. In its habits and manners the
blackbird strikingly resembles our American robin, and indeed looks
exactly like a robin, with a yellow bill and coal-black plumage. It
hops everywhere over the lawns, just as our robin does, and it lives
and nests in the gardens in the same fashion. Its song has a general
resemblance to that of our robin, but many of the notes are far
more musical, more like those of our wood thrush. Indeed, there were
individuals among those we heard certain of whose notes seemed to me
almost to equal in point of melody the chimes of the wood thrush; and
the highest possible praise for any song-bird is to liken its song to
that of the wood thrush or hermit thrush. I certainly do not think that
the blackbird has received full justice in the books. I knew that he was
a singer, but I really had no idea how fine a singer he was. I suppose
one of his troubles has been his name, just as with our own catbird.
When he appears in the ballads as the merle, bracketed with his cousin
the mavis, the song thrush, it is far easier to recognize him as the
master singer that he is. It is a fine thing for England to have such
an asset of the countryside, a bird so common, so much in evidence, so
fearless, and such a really beautiful singer.
The thrush is a fine singer too, a better singer than our American
robin, but to my mind not at the best quite as good as the blackbird at
his best; although often I found difficulty in telling the song of one
from the song of the other, especially if I only heard two or three
notes.
The larks were, of course, exceedingly attractive. It was fascinating
to see them spring from the grass, circle upwards, steadily singing and
soaring for several minutes, and then return to the point whence
they had started. As my companion pointed out, they exactly fulfilled
Wordsworth's description; they soared but did not roam. It is quite
impossible wholly to differentiate a bird's voice from its habits and
surroundings. Although in the lark's song there are occasional musical
notes, the song as a whole is not very musical; but it is so joyous,
buoyant and unbroken, and uttered under such conditions as fully to
entitle the bird to the place he occupies with both poet and prose
writer.
The most musical singer we heard was the blackcap warbler. To my ear
its song seemed more musical than that of the nightingale. It was
astonishingly powerful for so small a bird; in volume and continuity
it does not come up to the songs of the thrushes and of certain other
birds, but in quality, as an isolated bit of melody, it can hardly be
surpassed.
Among the minor singers the robin was noticeable. We all know this
pretty little bird from the books, and I was prepared to find him as
friendly and attractive as he proved to be, but I had not realized how
well he sang. It is not a loud song, but very musical and attractive,
and the bird is said to sing practically all through the year. The song
of the wren interested me much, because it was not in the least like
that of our house wren, but, on the contrary, like that of our winter
wren. The theme is the same as the winter wren's, but the song did not
seem to me to be as brilliantly musical as that of the tiny singer of
the North Woods. The sedge warbler sang in the thick reeds a mocking
ventriloquial lay, which reminded me at times of the less pronounced
parts of our yellow-breasted chat's song. The cuckoo's cry was
singularly attractive and musical, far more so than the rolling, many
times repeated, note of our rain-crow.
We did not reach the inn at Brockenhurst until about nine o'clock, just
at nightfall, and a few minutes before that we heard a nightjar. It did
not sound in the least like either our whip-poor-will or our night-hawk,
uttering a long-continued call of one or two syllables, repeated over
and over. The chaffinch was very much in evidence, continually chaunting
its unimportant little ditty. I was pleased to see the bold, masterful
missel thrush, the stormcock as it is often called; but this bird breeds
and sings in the early spring, when the weather is still tempestuous,
and had long been silent when we saw it. The starlings, rooks, and
jackdaws did not sing, and their calls were attractive merely as the
calls of our grackles are attractive; and the other birds that we
heard sing, though they played their part in the general chorus, were
performers of no especial note, like our tree-creepers, pine warblers,
and chipping sparrows. The great spring chorus had already begun to
subside, but the woods and fields were still vocal with beautiful bird
music, the country was very lovely, the inn as comfortable as possible,
and the bath and supper very enjoyable after our tramp; and altogether I
passed no pleasanter twenty-four hours during my entire European trip.
Ten days later, at Sagamore Hill, I was among my own birds, and was much
interested as I listened to and looked at them in remembering the notes
and actions of the birds I had seen in England. On the evening of the
first day I sat in my rocking-chair on the broad veranda, looking across
the Sound towards the glory of the sunset. The thickly grassed hillside
sloped down in front of me to a belt of forest from which rose the
golden, leisurely chiming of the wood thrushes, chanting their vespers;
through the still air came the warble of vireo and tanager; and after
nightfall we heard the flight song of an ovenbird from the same belt
of timber. Overhead an oriole sang in the weeping elm, now and then
breaking his song to scold like an overgrown wren. Song-sparrows and
catbirds sang in the shrubbery; one robin had built its nest over the
front and one over the back door, and there was a chippy's nest in the
wistaria vine by the stoop. During the next twenty-four hours I saw and
heard, either right around the house or while walking down to bathe,
through the woods, the following forty-two birds:
Little green heron, night heron, red-tailed hawk, yellow-billed cuckoo,
kingfisher, flicker, humming-bird, swift, meadow-lark, red-winged
blackbird, sharp-tailed finch, song sparrow, chipping sparrow, bush
sparrow, purple finch, Baltimore oriole, cowbunting, robin, wood thrush,
thrasher, catbird, scarlet tanager, red-eyed vireo, yellow warbler,
black-throated green warbler, kingbird, wood peewee, crow, blue jay,
cedar-bird, Maryland yellowthroat, chickadee, black and white
creeper, barn swallow, white-breasted swallow, ovenbird, thistlefinch,
vesperfinch, indigo bunting, towhee, grasshopper-sparrow, and screech
owl.
The birds were still in full song, for on Long Island there is little
abatement in the chorus until about the second week of July, when
the blossoming of the chestnut trees patches the woodland with frothy
greenish-yellow.[*]
[*] Alas! the blight has now destroyed the chestnut trees,
and robbed our woods of one of their distinctive beauties.
Our most beautiful singers are the wood thrushes; they sing not only in
the early morning but throughout the long hot June afternoons. Sometimes
they sing in the trees immediately around the house, and if the air is
still we can always hear them from among the tall trees at the foot of
the hill. The thrashers sing in the hedgerows beyond the garden, the
catbirds everywhere. The catbirds have such an attractive song that it
is extremely irritating to know that at any moment they may interrupt
it to mew and squeal. The bold, cheery music of the robins always seems
typical of the bold, cheery birds themselves. The Baltimore orioles nest
in the young elms around the house, and the orchard orioles in the apple
trees near the garden and outbuildings. Among the earliest sounds of
spring is the cheerful, simple, homely song of the song-sparrow; and in
March we also hear the piercing cadence of the meadow-lark--to us one
of the most attractive of all bird calls. Of late years now and then
we hear the rollicking, bubbling melody of the bobolink in the pastures
back of the barn; and when the full chorus of these and of many other
of the singers of spring is dying down, there are some true hot-weather
songsters, such as the brightly hued indigo buntings and thistlefinches.
Among the finches one of the most musical and plaintive songs is that of
the bush-sparrow--I do not know why the books call it field-sparrow,
for it does not dwell in the open fields like the vesperfinch, the
savannah-sparrow, and grasshopper-sparrow, but among the cedars and
bayberry bushes and young locusts in the same places where the prairie
warbler is found. Nor is it only the true songs that delight us. We love
to hear the flickers call, and we readily pardon any one of their number
which, as occasionally happens, is bold enough to wake us in the
early morning by drumming on the shingles of the roof. In our ears the
red-winged blackbirds have a very attractive note. We love the screaming
of the red-tailed hawks as they soar high overhead, and even the calls
of the night heron that nest in the tall water maples by one of the wood
ponds on our place, and the little green herons that nest beside the
salt marsh. It is hard to tell just how much of the attraction in any
bird-note lies in the music itself and how much in the associations.
This is what makes it so useless to try to compare the bird songs of one
country with those of another. A man who is worth anything can no more
be entirely impartial in speaking of the bird songs with which from
his earliest childhood he has been familiar than he can be entirely
impartial in speaking of his own family.
At Sagamore Hill we love a great many things--birds and trees and books,
and all things beautiful, and horses and rifles and children and hard
work and the joy of life. We have great fireplaces, and in them the logs
roar and crackle during the long winter evenings. The big piazza is for
the hot, still afternoons of summer. As in every house, there are things
that appeal to the householder because of their associations, but
which would not mean much to others. Naturally, any man who has been
President, and filled other positions, accumulates such things, with
scant regard to his own personal merits. Perhaps our most cherished
possessions are a Remington bronze, "The Bronco Buster," given me by my
men when the regiment was mustered out, and a big Tiffany silver vase
given to Mrs. Roosevelt by the enlisted men of the battleship Louisiana
after we returned from a cruise on her to Panama. It was a real surprise
gift, presented to her in the White House, on behalf of the whole crew,
by four as strapping man-of-war's-men as ever swung a turret or pointed
a twelve-inch gun. The enlisted men of the army I already knew well--of
course I knew well the officers of both army and navy. But the enlisted
men of the navy I only grew to know well when I was President. On the
Louisiana Mrs. Roosevelt and I once dined at the chief petty officers'
mess, and on another battleship, the Missouri (when I was in company
with Admiral Evans and Captain Cowles), and again on the Sylph and on
the Mayflower, we also dined as guests of the crew. When we finished our
trip on the Louisiana I made a short speech to the assembled crew,
and at its close one of the petty officers, the very picture of what a
man-of-war's-man should look like, proposed three cheers for me in terms
that struck me as curiously illustrative of America at her best; he
said, "Now then, men, three cheers for Theodore Roosevelt, the typical
American citizen!" That was the way in which they thought of the
American President--and a very good way, too. It was an expression that
would have come naturally only to men in whom the American principles of
government and life were ingrained, just as they were ingrained in the
men of my regiment. I need scarcely add, but I will add for the
benefit of those who do not know, that this attitude of self-respecting
identification of interest and purpose is not only compatible with but
can only exist when there is fine and real discipline, as thorough
and genuine as the discipline that has always obtained in the most
formidable fighting fleets and armies. The discipline and the mutual
respect are complementary, not antagonistic. During the Presidency all
of us, but especially the children, became close friends with many of
the sailor men. The four bearers of the vase to Mrs. Roosevelt were
promptly hailed as delightful big brothers by our two smallest boys, who
at once took them to see the sights of Washington in the landau--"the
President's land-ho!" as, with seafaring humor, our guests immediately
styled it. Once, after we were in private life again, Mrs. Roosevelt
was in a railway station and had some difficulty with her ticket. A
fine-looking, quiet man stepped up and asked if he could be of help; he
remarked that he had been one of the Mayflower's crew, and knew us well;
and in answer to a question explained that he had left the navy in
order to study dentistry, and added--a delicious touch--that while thus
preparing himself to be a dentist he was earning the necessary money to
go on with his studies by practicing the profession of a prize-fighter,
being a good man in the ring.
There are various bronzes in the house: Saint-Gaudens's "Puritan," a
token from my staff officers when I was Governor; Proctor's cougar, the
gift of the Tennis Cabinet--who also gave us a beautiful silver bowl,
which is always lovingly pronounced to rhyme with "owl" because that was
the pronunciation used at the time of the giving by the valued friend
who acted as spokesman for his fellow-members, and who was himself the
only non-American member of the said Cabinet. There is a horseman by
Macmonnies, and a big bronze vase by Kemys, an adaptation or development
of the pottery vases of the Southwestern Indians. Mixed with all of
these are gifts from varied sources, ranging from a brazen Buddha sent
me by the Dalai Lama and a wonderful psalter from the Emperor Menelik to
a priceless ancient Samurai sword, coming from Japan in remembrance
of the peace of Portsmouth, and a beautifully inlaid miniature suit of
Japanese armor, given me by a favorite hero of mine, Admiral Togo, when
he visited Sagamore Hill. There are things from European friends; a
mosaic picture of Pope Leo XIII in his garden; a huge, very handsome
edition of the Nibelungenlied; a striking miniature of John Hampden from
Windsor Castle; editions of Dante, and the campaigns of "Eugenio von
Savoy" (another of my heroes, a dead hero this time); a Viking cup; the
state sword of a Uganda king; the gold box in which the "freedom of the
city of London" was given me; a beautiful head of Abraham Lincoln given
me by the French authorities after my speech at the Sorbonne; and many
other things from sources as diverse as the Sultan of Turkey and the
Dowager Empress of China. Then there are things from home friends: a
Polar bear skin from Peary; a Sioux buffalo robe with, on it, painted
by some long-dead Sioux artist, the picture story of Custer's fight; a
bronze portrait plaque of Joel Chandler Harris; the candlestick used in
sealing the Treaty of Portsmouth, sent me by Captain Cameron Winslow;
a shoe worn by Dan Patch when he paced a mile in 1:59, sent me by his
owner. There is a picture of a bull moose by Carl Rungius, which seems
to me as spirited an animal painting as I have ever seen. In the north
room, with its tables and mantelpiece and desks and chests made of woods
sent from the Philippines by army friends, or by other friends for other
reasons; with its bison and wapiti heads; there are three paintings by
Marcus Symonds--"Where Light and Shadow Meet," "The Porcelain Towers,"
and "The Seats of the Mighty"; he is dead now, and he had scant
recognition while he lived, yet surely he was a great imaginative
artist, a wonderful colorist, and a man with a vision more wonderful
still. There is one of Lungren's pictures of the Western plains; and a
picture of the Grand Canyon; and one by a Scandinavian artist who could
see the fierce picturesqueness of workaday Pittsburgh; and sketches of
the White House by Sargent and by Hopkinson Smith.
The books are everywhere. There are as many in the north room and in the
parlor--is drawing-room a more appropriate name than parlor?--as in the
library; the gun-room at the top of the house, which incidentally has
the loveliest view of all, contains more books than any of the other
rooms; and they are particularly delightful books to browse among, just
because they have not much relevance to one another, this being one of
the reasons why they are relegated to their present abode. But the books
have overflowed into all the other rooms too.
I could not name any principle upon which the books have been gathered.
Books are almost as individual as friends. There is no earthly use in
laying down general laws about them. Some meet the needs of one person,
and some of another; and each person should beware of the booklover's
besetting sin, of what Mr. Edgar Allan Poe calls "the mad pride of
intellectuality," taking the shape of arrogant pity for the man who does
not like the same kind of books. Of course there are books which a man
or woman uses as instruments of a profession--law books, medical books,
cookery books, and the like. I am not speaking of these, for they are
not properly "books" at all; they come in the category of time-tables,
telephone directories, and other useful agencies of civilized life. I
am speaking of books that are meant to be read. Personally, granted that
these books are decent and healthy, the one test to which I demand
that they all submit is that of being interesting. If the book is not
interesting to the reader, then in all but an infinitesimal number of
cases it gives scant benefit to the reader. Of course any reader ought
to cultivate his or her taste so that good books will appeal to it, and
that trash won't. But after this point has once been reached, the needs
of each reader must be met in a fashion that will appeal to those needs.
Personally the books by which I have profited infinitely more than
by any others have been those in which profit was a by-product of the
pleasure; that is, I read them because I enjoyed them, because I liked
reading them, and the profit came in as part of the enjoyment.
Of course each individual is apt to have some special tastes in which
he cannot expect that any but a few friends will share. Now, I am very
proud of my big-game library. I suppose there must be many big-game
libraries in Continental Europe, and possibly in England, more extensive
than mine, but I have not happened to come across any such library in
this country. Some of the originals go back to the sixteenth century,
and there are copies or reproductions of the two or three most famous
hunting books of the Middle Ages, such as the Duke of York's translation
of Gaston Phoebus, and the queer book of the Emperor Maximilian. It is
only very occasionally that I meet any one who cares for any of these
books. On the other hand, I expect to find many friends who will turn
naturally to some of the old or the new books of poetry or romance or
history to which we of the household habitually turn. Let me add that
ours is in no sense a collector's library. Each book was procured
because some one of the family wished to read it. We could never afford
to take overmuch thought for the outsides of books; we were too much
interested in their insides.
Now and then I am asked as to "what books a statesman should read," and
my answer is, poetry and novels--including short stories under the
head of novels. I don't mean that he should read only novels and modern
poetry. If he cannot also enjoy the Hebrew prophets and the Greek
dramatists, he should be sorry. He ought to read interesting books on
history and government, and books of science and philosophy; and really
good books on these subjects are as enthralling as any fiction ever
written in prose or verse. Gibbon and Macaulay, Herodotus, Thucydides
and Tacitus, the Heimskringla, Froissart, Joinville and Villehardouin,
Parkman and Mahan, Mommsen and Ranke--why! there are scores and scores
of solid histories, the best in the world, which are as absorbing as
the best of all the novels, and of as permanent value. The same thing
is true of Darwin and Huxley and Carlyle and Emerson, and parts of Kant,
and of volumes like Sutherland's "Growth of the Moral Instinct," or
Acton's Essays and Lounsbury's studies--here again I am not trying to
class books together, or measure one by another, or enumerate one in a
thousand of those worth reading, but just to indicate that any man or
woman of some intelligence and some cultivation can in some line or
other of serious thought, scientific or historical or philosophical or
economic or governmental, find any number of books which are charming to
read, and which in addition give that for which his or her soul hungers.
I do not for a minute mean that the statesman ought not to read a great
many different books of this character, just as every one else should
read them. But, in the final event, the statesman, and the publicist,
and the reformer, and the agitator for new things, and the upholder of
what is good in old things, all need more than anything else to know
human nature, to know the needs of the human soul; and they will find
this nature and these needs set forth as nowhere else by the great
imaginative writers, whether of prose or of poetry.
The room for choice is so limitless that to my mind it seems absurd to
try to make catalogues which shall be supposed to appeal to all the best
thinkers. This is why I have no sympathy whatever with writing lists of
the One Hundred Best Books, or the Five-Foot Library. It is all right
for a man to amuse himself by composing a list of a hundred very good
books; and if he is to go off for a year or so where he cannot get
many books, it is an excellent thing to choose a five-foot library of
particular books which in that particular year and on that particular
trip he would like to read. But there is no such thing as a hundred
books that are best for all men, or for the majority of men, or for
one man at all times; and there is no such thing as a five-foot library
which will satisfy the needs of even one particular man on different
occasions extending over a number of years. Milton is best for one mood
and Pope for another. Because a man likes Whitman or Browning or Lowell
he should not feel himself debarred from Tennyson or Kipling or Korner
or Heine or the Bard of the Dimbovitza. Tolstoy's novels are good at one
time and those of Sienkiewicz at another; and he is fortunate who can
relish "Salammbo" and "Tom Brown" and the "Two Admirals" and "Quentin
Durward" and "Artemus Ward" and the "Ingoldsby Legends" and "Pickwick"
and "Vanity Fair." Why, there are hundreds of books like these, each one
of which, if really read, really assimilated, by the person to whom
it happens to appeal, will enable that person quite unconsciously to
furnish himself with much ammunition which he will find of use in the
battle of life.
A book must be interesting to the particular reader at that particular
time. But there are tens of thousands of interesting books, and some of
them are sealed to some men and some are sealed to others; and some stir
the soul at some given point of a man's life and yet convey no message
at other times. The reader, the booklover, must meet his own needs
without paying too much attention to what his neighbors say those needs
should be. He must not hypocritically pretend to like what he does not
like. Yet at the same time he must avoid that most unpleasant of all
the indications of puffed-up vanity which consists in treating mere
individual, and perhaps unfortunate, idiosyncrasy as a matter of pride.
I happen to be devoted to Macbeth, whereas I very seldom read Hamlet
(though I like parts of it). Now I am humbly and sincerely conscious
that this is a demerit in me and not in Hamlet; and yet it would not do
me any good to pretend that I like Hamlet as much as Macbeth when, as
a matter of fact, I don't. I am very fond of simple epics and of ballad
poetry, from the Nibelungenlied and the Roland song through "Chevy
Chase" and "Patrick Spens" and "Twa Corbies" to Scott's poems and
Longfellow's "Saga of King Olaf" and "Othere." On the other hand, I
don't care to read dramas as a rule; I cannot read them with enjoyment
unless they appeal to me very strongly. They must almost be AEschylus
or Euripides, Goethe or Moliere, in order that I may not feel after
finishing them a sense of virtuous pride in having achieved a task. Now
I would be the first to deny that even the most delightful old English
ballad should be put on a par with any one of scores of dramatic
works by authors whom I have not mentioned; I know that each of these
dramatists has written what is of more worth than the ballad; only, I
enjoy the ballad, and I don't enjoy the drama; and therefore the ballad
is better for me, and this fact is not altered by the other fact that
my own shortcomings are to blame in the matter. I still read a number of
Scott's novels over and over again, whereas if I finish anything by Miss
Austen I have a feeling that duty performed is a rainbow to the soul.
But other booklovers who are very close kin to me, and whose taste
I know to be better than mine, read Miss Austen all the time--and,
moreover, they are very kind, and never pity me in too offensive a
manner for not reading her myself.
Aside from the masters of literature, there are all kinds of books which
one person will find delightful, and which he certainly ought not
to surrender just because nobody else is able to find as much in the
beloved volume. There is on our book-shelves a little pre-Victorian
novel or tale called "The Semi-Attached Couple." It is told with much
humor; it is a story of gentlefolk who are really gentlefolk; and to me
it is altogether delightful. But outside the members of my own family
I have never met a human being who had even heard of it, and I don't
suppose I ever shall meet one. I often enjoy a story by some living
author so much that I write to tell him so--or to tell her so; and at
least half the time I regret my action, because it encourages the writer
to believe that the public shares my views, and he then finds that the
public doesn't.
Books are all very well in their way, and we love them at Sagamore
Hill; but children are better than books. Sagamore Hill is one of three
neighboring houses in which small cousins spent very happy years of
childhood. In the three houses there were at one time sixteen of these
small cousins, all told, and once we ranged them in order of size and
took their photograph. 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. It may be true that
he travels farthest who travels alone; but the goal thus reached is not
worth reaching. And as for a life deliberately devoted to pleasure as
an end--why, the greatest happiness is the happiness that comes as a
by-product of striving to do what must be done, even though sorrow is
met in the doing. There is a bit of homely philosophy, quoted by Squire
Bill Widener, of Widener's Valley, Virginia, which sums up one's duty in
life: "Do what you can, with what you've got, where you are."
The country is the place for children, and if not the country, a city
small enough so that one can get out into the country. When our own
children were little, we were for several winters in Washington, and
each Sunday afternoon the whole family spent in Rock Creek Park, which
was then very real country indeed. I would drag one of the children's
wagons; and when the very smallest pairs of feet grew tired of trudging
bravely after us, or of racing on rapturous side trips after flowers and
other treasures, the owners would clamber into the wagon. One of these
wagons, by the way, a gorgeous red one, had "Express" painted on it in
gilt letters, and was known to the younger children as the "'spress"
wagon. They evidently associated the color with the term. Once while we
were at Sagamore something happened to the cherished "'spress" wagon to
the distress of the children, and especially of the child who owned it.
Their mother and I were just starting for a drive in the buggy, and we
promised the bereaved owner that we would visit a store we knew in East
Norwich, a village a few miles away, and bring back another "'spress"
wagon. When we reached the store, we found to our dismay that the wagon
which we had seen had been sold. We could not bear to return without
the promised gift, for we knew that the brains of small persons are much
puzzled when their elders seem to break promises. Fortunately, we saw in
the store a delightful little bright-red chair and bright-red table,
and these we brought home and handed solemnly over to the expectant
recipient, explaining that as there unfortunately was not a "'spress"
wagon we had brought him back a "'spress" chair and "'spress" table.
It worked beautifully! The "'spress" chair and table were received with
such rapture that we had to get duplicates for the other small member
of the family who was the particular crony of the proprietor of the new
treasures.
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 enjoyment 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 particular object; and when
the word "stage-coach" is mentioned, 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 mentioned "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
children who had gone down.
No man or woman will ever forget the time when some child lies sick of a
disease that threatens its life. Moreover, much less serious sickness is
unpleasant enough at the time. Looking back, however, there are elements
of comedy in certain of the less serious cases. I well remember one such
instance which occurred when we were living in Washington, in a small
house, with barely enough room for everybody when all the chinks were
filled. Measles descended on the household. In the effort to keep the
children that were well and those that were sick apart, their mother and
I had to camp out in improvised fashion. When the eldest small boy was
getting well, and had recovered his spirits, I slept on a sofa beside
his bed--the sofa being so short that my feet projected over anyhow. One
afternoon the small boy was given a toy organ by a sympathetic friend.
Next morning early I was waked to find the small boy very vivacious
and requesting a story. Having drowsily told the story, I said, "Now,
father's told you a story, so you amuse yourself and let father go to
sleep"; to which the small boy responded most virtuously, "Yes, father
will go to sleep and I'll play the organ," which he did, at a distance
of two feet from my head. Later his sister, who had just come down with
the measles, was put into the same room. The small boy was convalescing,
and was engaged in playing on the floor with some tin ships, together
with two or three pasteboard monitors and rams of my own manufacture. He
was giving a vivid rendering of Farragut at Mobile Bay, from memories
of how I had told the story. My pasteboard rams and monitors were
fascinating--if a naval architect may be allowed to praise his own
work--and as property they were equally divided between the little girl
and the small boy. The little girl looked on with alert suspicion from
the bed, for she was not yet convalescent enough to be allowed down on
the floor. The small boy was busily reciting the phases of the fight,
which now approached its climax, and the little girl evidently suspected
that her monitor was destined to play the part of victim.
Little boy. "And then they steamed bang into the monitor."
Little girl. "Brother, don't you sink my monitor!"
Little boy (without heeding, and hurrying toward the climax). "And the
torpedo went at the monitor!"
Little girl. "My monitor is not to sink!"
Little boy, dramatically: "And bang the monitor sank!"
Little girl. "It didn't do any such thing. My monitor always goes to bed
at seven, and it's now quarter past. My monitor was in bed and couldn't
sink!"
When I was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Leonard Wood and I used
often to combine forces and take both families of children out to walk,
and occasionally some of their playmates. Leonard Wood's son, I found,
attributed the paternity of all of those not of his own family to me.
Once we were taking the children across Rock Creek on a fallen tree.
I was standing on the middle of the log trying to prevent any of the
children from falling off, and while making a clutch at one peculiarly
active and heedless child I fell off myself. As I emerged from the water
I heard the little Wood boy calling frantically to the General: "Oh! oh!
The father of all the children fell into the creek!"--which made me feel
like an uncommonly moist patriarch. Of course the children took much
interest in the trophies I occasionally brought back from my hunts. When
I started for my regiment, in '98, the stress of leaving home, which
was naturally not pleasant, was somewhat lightened by the next to
the youngest boy, whose ideas of what was about to happen were hazy,
clasping me round the legs with a beaming smile and saying, "And is my
father going to the war? And will he bring me back a bear?" When, some
five months later, I returned, of course in my uniform, this little boy
was much puzzled as to my identity, although he greeted me affably
with "Good afternoon, Colonel." Half an hour later somebody asked him,
"Where's father?" to which he responded, "I don't know; but the Colonel
is taking a bath."
Of course the children anthropomorphized--if that is the proper
term--their friends of the animal world. Among these friends at one
period was the baker's horse, and on a very rainy day I heard the little
girl, who was looking out of the window, say, with a melancholy shake of
her head, "Oh! there's poor Kraft's horse, all soppin' wet!"
While I was in the White House the youngest boy became an _habitue_ of
a small and rather noisome animal shop, and the good-natured owner would
occasionally let him take pets home to play with. On one occasion I was
holding a conversation with one of the leaders in Congress, Uncle
Pete Hepburn, about the Railroad Rate Bill. The children were strictly
trained not to interrupt business, but on this particular occasion the
little boy's feelings overcame him. He had been loaned a king-snake,
which, as all nature-lovers know, is not only a useful but a beautiful
snake, very friendly to human beings; and he came rushing home to show
the treasure. He was holding it inside his coat, and it contrived to
wiggle partly down the sleeve. Uncle Pete Hepburn naturally did not
understand the full import of what the little boy was saying to me as
he endeavored to wriggle out of his jacket, and kindly started to help
him--and then jumped back with alacrity as the small boy and the snake
both popped out of the jacket.
There could be no healthier and pleasanter place in which to bring up
children than in that nook of old-time America around Sagamore Hill.
Certainly I never knew small people to have a better time or a better
training for their work in after life than the three families of cousins
at Sagamore Hill. It was real country, and--speaking from the somewhat
detached point of view of the masculine parent--I should say there was
just the proper mixture of freedom and control in the management of the
children. They were never allowed to be disobedient or to shirk lessons
or work; and they were encouraged to have all the fun possible. They
often went barefoot, especially during the many hours passed in various
enthralling pursuits along and in the waters of the bay. They swam,
they tramped, they boated, they coasted and skated in winter, they were
intimate friends with the cows, chickens, pigs, and other live stock.
They had in succession two ponies, General Grant and, when the General's
legs became such that he lay down too often and too unexpectedly in
the road, a calico pony named Algonquin, who is still living a life of
honorable leisure in the stable and in the pasture--where he has to be
picketed, because otherwise he chases the cows. Sedate pony Grant used
to draw the cart in which the children went driving when they were very
small, the driver being their old nurse Mame, who had held their mother
in her arms when she was born, and who was knit to them by a tie as
close as any tie of blood. I doubt whether I ever saw Mame really
offended with them except once when, out of pure but misunderstood
affection, they named a pig after her. They loved pony Grant. Once I
saw the then little boy of three hugging pony Grant's fore legs. As
he leaned over, his broad straw hat tilted on end, and pony Grant
meditatively munched the brim; whereupon the small boy looked up with
a wail of anguish, evidently thinking the pony had decided to treat him
like a radish.
The children had pets of their own, too, of course. Among them guinea
pigs were the stand-bys--their highly unemotional nature fits them
for companionship with adoring but over-enthusiastic young masters and
mistresses. Then there were flying squirrels, and kangaroo rats, gentle
and trustful, and a badger whose temper was short but whose nature was
fundamentally friendly. The badger's name was Josiah; the particular
little boy whose property he was used to carry him about, clasped firmly
around what would have been his waist if he had had any. Inasmuch as
when on the ground the badger would play energetic games of tag with
the little boy and nip his bare legs, I suggested that it would be
uncommonly disagreeable if he took advantage of being held in the little
boy's arms to bite his face; but this suggestion was repelled with
scorn as an unworthy assault on the character of Josiah. "He bites legs
sometimes, but he never bites faces," said the little boy. We also had
a young black bear whom the children christened Jonathan Edwards, partly
out of compliment to their mother, who was descended from that great
Puritan divine, and partly because the bear possessed a temper in
which gloom and strength were combined in what the children regarded as
Calvinistic proportions. As for the dogs, of course there were many,
and during their lives they were intimate and valued family friends,
and their deaths were household tragedies. One of them, a large yellow
animal of several good breeds and valuable rather because of psychical
than physical traits, was named "Susan" by his small owners, in
commemoration of another retainer, a white cow; the fact that the cow
and the dog were not of the same sex being treated with indifference.
Much the most individual of the dogs and the one with the strongest
character was Sailor Boy, a Chesapeake Bay dog. He had a masterful
temper and a strong sense of both dignity and duty. He would never let
the other dogs fight, and he himself never fought unless circumstances
imperatively demanded it; but he was a murderous animal when he did
fight. He was not only exceedingly fond of the water, as was to be
expected, but passionately devoted to gunpowder in every form, for
he loved firearms and fairly reveled in the Fourth of July
celebrations--the latter being rather hazardous occasions, as the
children strongly objected to any "safe and sane" element being injected
into them, and had the normal number of close shaves with rockets, Roman
candles, and firecrackers.
One of the stand-bys for enjoyment, especially in rainy weather, was the
old barn. This had been built nearly a century previously, and was as
delightful as only the pleasantest kind of old barn can be. It stood
at the meeting-spot of three fences. A favorite amusement used to be an
obstacle race when the barn was full of hay. The contestants were timed
and were started successively from outside the door. They rushed inside,
clambered over or burrowed through the hay, as suited them best, dropped
out of a place where a loose board had come off, got over, through, or
under the three fences, and raced back to the starting-point. When they
were little, their respective fathers were expected also to take part
in the obstacle race, and when with the advance of years the fathers
finally refused to be contestants, there was a general feeling of pained
regret among the children at such a decline in the sporting spirit.
Another famous place for handicap races was Cooper's Bluff, a gigantic
sand-bank rising from the edge of the bay, a mile from the house. If
the tide was high there was an added thrill, for some of the contestants
were sure to run into the water.
As soon as the little boys learned to swim they were allowed to go off
by themselves in rowboats and camp out for the night along the Sound.
Sometimes I would go along so as to take the smaller children. Once
a schooner was wrecked on a point half a dozen miles away. She
held together well for a season or two after having been cleared of
everything down to the timbers, and this gave us the chance to make
camping-out trips in which the girls could also be included, for we put
them to sleep in the wreck, while the boys slept on the shore; squaw
picnics, the children called them.
My children, when young, went to the public school near us, the little
Cove School, as it is called. For nearly thirty years we have given
the Christmas tree to the school. Before the gifts are distributed I am
expected to make an address, which is always mercifully short, my own
children having impressed upon me with frank sincerity the attitude of
other children to addresses of this kind on such occasions. There are of
course performances by the children themselves, while all of us parents
look admiringly on, each sympathizing with his or her particular
offspring in the somewhat wooden recital of "Darius Green and his Flying
Machine" or "The Mountain and the Squirrel had a Quarrel." But the tree
and the gifts make up for all shortcomings.
We had a sleigh for winter; but if, when there was much snow, the whole
family desired to go somewhere, we would put the body of the farm wagon
on runners and all bundle in together. We always liked snow at Christmas
time, and the sleigh-ride down to the church on Christmas eve. One
of the hymns always sung at this Christmas eve festival begins, "It's
Christmas eve on the river, it's Christmas eve on the bay." All good
natives of the village firmly believe that this hymn was written here,
and with direct reference to Oyster Bay; although if such were the case
the word "river" would have to be taken in a hyperbolic sense, as the
nearest approach to a river is the village pond. I used to share this
belief myself, until my faith was shaken by a Denver lady who wrote that
she had sung that hymn when a child in Michigan, and that at the present
time her little Denver babies also loved it, although in their case the
river was not represented by even a village pond.
When we were in Washington, the children usually went with their mother
to the Episcopal church, while I went to the Dutch Reformed. But if any
child misbehaved itself, it was sometimes sent next Sunday to church
with me, on the theory that my companionship would have a sedative
effect--which it did, as I and the child walked along with rather
constrained politeness, each eying the other with watchful readiness
for the unexpected. On one occasion, when the child's conduct fell just
short of warranting such extreme measures, his mother, as they were on
the point of entering church, concluded a homily by a quotation
which showed a certain haziness of memory concerning the marriage and
baptismal services: "No, little boy, if this conduct continues, I shall
think that you neither love, honor, nor obey me!" However, the culprit
was much impressed with a sense of shortcoming as to the obligations he
had undertaken; so the result was as satisfactory as if the quotation
had been from the right service.
As for the education of the children, there was of course much of it
that represented downright hard work and drudgery. There was also
much training that came as a by-product and was perhaps almost as
valuable--not as a substitute but as an addition. After their supper,
the children, when little, would come trotting up to their mother's
room to be read to, and it was always a surprise to me to notice the
extremely varied reading which interested them, from Howard Pyle's
"Robin Hood," Mary Alicia Owen's "Voodoo Tales," and Joel Chandler
Harris's "Aaron in the Wild Woods," to "Lycides" and "King John." If
their mother was absent, I would try to act as vice-mother--a poor
substitute, I fear--superintending the supper and reading aloud
afterwards. The children did not wish me to read the books they desired
their mother to read, and I usually took some such book as "Hereward the
Wake," or "Guy Mannering," or "The Last of the Mohicans" or else some
story about a man-eating tiger, or a man-eating lion, from one of the
hunting books in my library. These latter stories were always favorites,
and as the authors told them in the first person, my interested auditors
grew to know them by the name of the "I" stories, and regarded them as
adventures all of which happened to the same individual. When Selous,
the African hunter, visited us, I had to get him to tell to the younger
children two or three of the stories with which they were already
familiar from my reading; and as Selous is a most graphic narrator, and
always enters thoroughly into the feeling not only of himself but of
the opposing lion or buffalo, my own rendering of the incidents was cast
entirely into the shade.
Besides profiting by the more canonical books on education, we profited
by certain essays and articles of a less orthodox type. I wish to
express my warmest gratitude for such books--not of avowedly didactic
purpose--as Laura Richards's books, Josephine Dodge Daskam's "Madness of
Philip," Palmer Cox's "Queer People," the melodies of Father Goose and
Mother Wild Goose, Flandreau's "Mrs. White's," Myra Kelly's stories of
her little East Side pupils, and Michelson's "Madigans." It is well to
take duties, and life generally, seriously. It is also well to remember
that a sense of humor is a healthy anti-scorbutic to that portentous
seriousness which defeats its own purpose.
Occasionally bits of self-education proved of unexpected help to the
children in later years. Like other children, they were apt to take to
bed with them treasures which they particularly esteemed. One of the
boys, just before his sixteenth birthday, went moose hunting with the
family doctor, and close personal friend of the entire family, Alexander
Lambert. Once night overtook them before they camped, and they had to
lie down just where they were. Next morning Dr. Lambert rather enviously
congratulated the boy on the fact that stones and roots evidently
did not interfere with the soundness of his sleep; to which the boy
responded, "Well, Doctor, you see it isn't very long since I used to
take fourteen china animals to bed with me every night!"
As the children grew up, Sagamore Hill remained delightful for them.
There were picnics and riding parties, there were dances in the north
room--sometimes fancy dress dances--and open-air plays on the green
tennis court of one of the cousin's houses. The children are no longer
children now. Most of them are men and women, working out their own
fates in the big world; some in our own land, others across the great
oceans or where the Southern Cross blazes in the tropic nights. Some of
them have children of their own; some are working at one thing, some at
another; in cable ships, in business offices, in factories, in newspaper
offices, building steel bridges, bossing gravel trains and steam
shovels, or laying tracks and superintending freight traffic. They have
had their share of accidents and escapes; as I write, word comes from
a far-off land that one of them, whom Seth Bullock used to call "Kim"
because he was the friend of all mankind, while bossing a dangerous
but necessary steel structural job has had two ribs and two back teeth
broken, and is back at work. They have known and they will know joy and
sorrow, triumph and temporary defeat. But I believe they are all the
better off because of their happy and healthy childhood.
It is impossible to win the great prizes of life without running risks,
and the greatest of all prizes are those connected with the home. No
father and mother can hope to escape sorrow and anxiety, and there are
dreadful moments when death comes very near those we love, even if for
the time being it passes by. But life is a great adventure, and the
worst of all fears is the fear of living. There are many forms of
success, many forms of triumph. But there is no other success that in
any shape or way approaches that which is open to most of the many, many
men and women who have the right ideals. These are the men and the women
who see that it is the intimate and homely things that count most. They
are the men and women who have the courage to strive for the happiness
which comes only with labor and effort and self-sacrifice, and only to
those whose joy in life springs in part from power of work and sense of
duty.