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CHAPTER IV
A Brief Period of Private Life

MR. ROOSEVELT'S ELKHORN RANCH  BUILDINGS
(From a sketch by Remington, courtesy of Century Co.)

T
HE Western life that Mr. Roosevelt led in the eighties is not likely to be overestimated by any biographer as a formative influence in shaping his mature character, and as relating itself in many ways to his later career as leader of the nation. Its human contacts were direct, unconventional, and sincere. Mr. Roosevelt became hardy by long days in the saddle and the pursuit of game in the fastnesses of the mountains. His graduating theme at Harvard had been in the field of natural history; and the Western life made him a high authority upon the animals of the North American continent.
He found time in this period to read standard literature and become saturated with it; and he became firmly grounded in the habit of giving literary expression to his own observations and experiences. The years 1887 and 1888 were devoted to this Western life, to .historical study and writing, and to domestic life and the founding of a home and family.
The Roosevelt kith and kin had long been identified with the Oyster Bay neighborhood of Long Island, and it was natural and easy for Theodore Roosevelt to settle there and to build on the

THEODORE ROOSEVELT AS HE LOOKED IN RANCHING DAYS
top of his Sagamore Hill the modest but ample and comfortable home that has since become so famous, and that is pictured (as it then looked) at the end of this chapter.
Some years ago, at the request  of  the  writer  of  the

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A Cartoon History of Roosevelt's Career

MR. ROOSEVELT'S RANCH ON THE LITTLE MISSOURI, IN THE BAD LANDS

A SUCCESSFUL HUNTING TRIP (MR. ROOSEVELT  ON THE RIGHT)

A Brief Period of Private Life

19

present volume, the late Julian Ralph prepared an  admirable  character  sketch   of  Theodore
Roosevelt.   Much of it is in the form of direct \

ROOSEVELT AS A "BRONCHO BDSTBK "
statement by Mr. Roosevelt himself. One of the paragraphs sums up, in his own words, Roosevelt's period of life in Dakota. " A man with a horse and a gun is a picture or idea that has always appealed to me," he says. " Mayne Reid's heroes and the life out West also always appealed to me. I wanted to see the rude, rough, formative life in the Far West before it vanished. I went there just in time. I was in at the killing of the buffalo, in the last big hunt, in 1883, near Pretty Buttes, when the whites and the Sioux from Standing Rock and Pine Ridge were doing the killing. I went West while I was in the Assembly, in the long vacations—went hunting—went to the Bad Lands and shot elk, sheep, deer, buffalo, and antelope. I made two hunting trips, and in 1884 I started my cattle ranch. After my terms in the Legislature, and until I was appointed Civil Service Commissioner, I lived most of the time out West in the summers and spent only the winters in New York. I

YOU MAY MAKE THE HORSE NERVOUS, BOYS, BUT YOU CAN'T UNSEAT THE RIDER
(A typical later cartoon,.based upon Mr. Roosevelt's Western life, as a favorite theme.—Judge)
never was happier in my life. My house out there is a long low house of hewn logs, which I helped to build myself. It has a broad veranda and rocking chairs and a big fireplace and elk skins and wolf skins scattered about,-—on the brink of the Little Missouri, right in a clump of cotton woods; and less than three years ago I shot a deer from the veranda. I kept my books there,—such as I wanted, —and did a deal of writing, being the rest of the time out all day in every kind of weather."
These sentences, taken together with the pictures with which this brief chapter of our volume is embellished, enable one to understand quite clearly how it came about that the ranching period of his life entered into the very structure of Roosevelt's character and mind. And they also explain why in after years his frequent hunting trips were indispensable. The later quest of great game in Africa was in response to that persistent call of outdoor life, and love of wilderness adventure, that has always belonged to Mr. Roosevelt's essential nature.

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A Cartoon History of Roosevelt's Career

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VI

A Brief Period of Private Life

21

ONE OF MR. ROOSEVELT'S QUIET DAYS
(Three cartoons in this page are from drawings toy John T. McCutcheon for the Chicago Tribune. They are of a much later period, but are all illustrative of Roosevelt as a hunter in the Northwestern wilderness. See also next page.)

' THE PRESIDENT HAS BEEN ON THE TRAIL OF A GRIZZLY FOR  FOUR   DAYS.—[News  item.]

HURRY   UP,   BOYS,   I'VE  GOT   'EM  TREED! '

THE  REAL BRONCHO  BUSTER
Teddy Eoosevelt seems to stick pretty tight to his political
mount.
(Another later cartoon based on a favorite theme.) From the Journal  (Minneapolis)

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A Cartoon History of Roosevelt's Career

I   WISH   THE   BOYS'D   GET   UP.     HERB   I'VE   HAD BREAKFAST  READY AN  HOUR

' COME ON,  BOYS !     I'VE GOT 'EM  CORNERED '

(These two cartoons belong to the series from which reproductions are made on the previous page. Mr. McCutch-eon drew them for the Chicago Tribune when Mr. Roosevelt was taking a Presidential vacation in the Northwest country. Few cartoonists have understood Roosevelt in all his phases as well as Mr. McCutcheon, who has given us some of his best examples in a book called " T. R. in Cartoons."published by Messrs. A. C. McClurg & Co., of Chicago.)

"•-.•Jffl.   ..m	I/	•  «w»««i7""«	"	"'      '•  '•	,',  ;<.'.'. ::,'„:   • ,n,,     ,        '""
^_^^aWhi^:-V-.?iS;iu...>'4''V,;.'. ,   " '	*Kr**'     •'.•••'••••'^W^"''

MR. ROOSEVELT'S HOUSE AT OYSTER BAY   (NEW YORK)   AS ORIGINALLY BUILT BY HIM

THE   BRAVE   LITTLE   GIANT-KILLER
spoils-system  giant :   " Calm  yourself,   Theodore.    If you go too far, you'll find yourself jerked back mighty sudden by President Harrison! "
From Puck.    Copyright, 1889.    By permission