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MY BROTHER THEODORE  ROOSEVELT BY CORINNE ROOSEVELT ROBINSON

CHAPTER 6
THE ELKHORN RANCH AND NEAR-ROUGHING IT IN YELLOWSTONE PARK
From the cloistered life of American college boys, sheltered from the ruder currents of the world by the ramparts of wealth and gentle nurture, he passed, still very young, to the wild and free existence of the plains and the hills. In the silence of those vast solitudes men grow to full stature, when the original stuff is good. He came back to the East, bringing with him, as Tennyson sang, "The wrestling thews that throw the world." From a speech by John Hay.
O lover of the things God made Hill, valley, mountain, plain: The lightning from the darkened cloud, The storm-burst with its rain.
Roosevelt, "Hymn of Molokai."
MY brother has written so much about his own ranch, and has given so vivid a description in his autobiography of the life led there, of the wonderful stretches of the Bad Lands, of the swaying cottonwood-trees, and the big fireplace in the Elkhorn Ranch sitting-room, around which he and his fellow ranchers gathered, exhausted by a long day's cattle-herding or deer-hunting, that it hardly seems possible that I can add much to the picture already painted by his own facile hand: ranch life, however, viewed from the standpoint of the outsider or from that of the insider has a different quality, and thus no reminiscences of mine would be in any way complete were I not to describe my first delightful visit paid to Me-dora, Dakota, and the surrounding country, in 1890. Our party consisted of my brother and sister-in-law, my sister Mrs. Cowles, then Anna Roosevelt, our friend Robert Munro Ferguson, my husband and myself, and young George Cabot Lodge. The latter was the sixteen-year-old son of our valued friend Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, and was truly the "gifted son of a gifted father," for later he was not only to earn fame as a poet, well known to his countrymen, but in his brief lifefor alas ! he died in the summer of 1909his talents were recognized in other lands as well.

I had been prepared by many tales for the charm and freedom and informal ease of life in the Bad Lands, and had often dreamed of going there; but, unlike most dreams, this one came true in an even more enchanting fashion than I had dared hope. Many had been the letters that my brother had written to me from Elkhorn Ranch several years previous to our journey. In June, 1886, he wrote: "I have never once had breakfast as late as four o'clock. Have been in the saddle all day, and have worked like a beaver, and am as rugged and happy as possible. While I do not see any very great future ahead, yet, if things go on as they are now going and have gone for the past three years, I think that each year I will net enough money to pay a good interest on the capital, and yet be adding slowly to my herd all the time. I think I have more than my capital on the ground, and this year I ought to be able to sell between two and three hundred head of steer and dry stock. I wish I could see all of you, but I certainly do enjoy the life. The other day while dining at the de Mores I had some cherries, the only fruit I have had since I left New York. I have lived pretty roughly."

I quote the above simply to show, what is not always understood, that my brother's ranching venture was, from his standpoint, a perfectly just business enterprise, and, had not the extraordinarily severe winters intervened, his capital would not have been impaired. Writing that same summer, shortly after hearing of the birth of my baby girl, he says in his loving way:

"My own darling Pussie, my sweetest little sister: How can I tell you the joy I felt when I received Douglas' first telegram; but I had not the heart to write you until I received the second the good old boy sent me, and knew you were all right. Just to think of there being a second wee, new Pussie in this big world! How I shall love to pet and prize the little thing! It will be very, very dear to Uncle Teddy's heart, which is quite large enough, however, not to lose an atom of affection for Teddy Douglas, the blessed little scamp. I have thought of you all the time for the last few weeks, and you can hardly imagine how overjoyed and relieved I felt, my own darling sister. I hope the little new Pussie will grow up like her dear mother, and that she will have many many loving ones as fond of her as her irrelevant old cowboy uncle is of Pussie, Senior. Will you be very much offended if I ask whether she now looks like a little sparsely-haired, pink polyp? My own offspring, when in tender youth, closely resembled a trilobite of pulpy consistency and shadowy outline. You dearest Pussie, you know I am just teasing you, and how proud and fond I am of the little thing even when I have never seen it. I wish I was where I could shake old Douglas by the hand and kiss you again and again.

"Today I went down to Dickerman to make the Fourth of July speech to a great crowd of cowboys and rangers, and after, stayed to see the horse races between the cowboys and Indians."

In another letter about the same time: "If I was not afraid of being put down as cold-blooded, I should say that I honestly miss greatly and all the time, and think lovingly of all you dear ones, yet I really enjoy this life. I have managed to combine an outdoor life possessing much variety and excitement, and now and then a little adventure, with a literary life also. Three out of four days I spend the morning and evening in the Ranch house writing, and working at various pieces of writing I have now on hand. They may come to nothing, however; but on the other hand they may succeed; at any rate, I am doing some honest work whatever the result is and I am really pretty philosophical about success or failure now. It often amuses me when I indirectly hear that I am supposed to be harboring secret and bitter regret for my political career, when, as a matter of fact, I have hardly ever, when alone, given two thoughts to it since it closed, and have been quite as much wrapped up in hunting, ranching, and book-making as I ever was in Politics. Give my best love to wee Teddy and dear old Douglas; do you know, I have an excessively warm feeling for your respected spouse. I have always admired Truth, Loyalty, and Courage; and though I am really having a lovely life, just the life I care for, please be sure that I am always thinking of my own, darling sister, whom I love so much and so tenderly. Ever your affectionate brother, Thee."

On August 7 of the same year he wrote again after having paid a brief visit to the East, and returned to Dakota: "Blessed little Pussie; Mother of an increasing and vocal Israel, I did enjoy my two visits to my dear sister, and that dear old piece of peripatetic bric-a-brac, her Caledonian spouse. Everything here is much as usual. The boys were, as always, genuinely glad to see me. I am greatly attached to the Ranch and the life out here, and am really fond of the men. It is in many ways ideal; we are so very rarely able to, actually and in real life, dwell in our ideal 'hero land.' The loneliness and freedom, and the half-adventurous nature of existence out here, appeals to me very powerfully. . . . Merrineld and I are now busily planning our hunt in the mountains."

Such letters as the above filled the members of his family with a strong desire to participate to some degree, at least, in the life which he loved so dearly; but the births of various small members of the family rendered such participation impossible until the late summer of 1890.

After a brief visit to St. Paul, Minn., we took train for Medora. My brother had heralded the fact that I (then a young woman of twenty-eight) was a mighty rider (I had followed the Essex County hounds in New Jersey)! And the cowboys were quite sure, I think, that I would leap from the locomotive to the back of a bucking bronco. Our train drew up, or I should say, approximately drew up, to the little station at Medora at four o'clock in the morning, in one of the most frightful storms that I ever remember. Rain fell in torrents, and we had to get out on an embankment composed of such slippery mud that before we actually plodded to the station, our feet and legs were encased in glutinous slime; but the calls of the cowboys undauntedly rang out in the darkness, and the neighing of horses and prancing of hoofs made us realize that civilization as well as convention was a thing of the past. Will Merrifield, the superintendent of Elkhorn Ranch, and Sylvane Ferris, his able lieutenant, fully expected me to mount the extremely dangerous-looking little animal which they held by a loose rope, and they were inordinately disappointed when I pleaded the fatigue of two nights on the train, and begged that I might drive with the other less-adventurous ladies to the ranch-house, forty miles away. Before starting on this long trip we were entertained by Joe Ferris, the brother of Sylvane, who having once also been one of Theodore's cowboys, had now decided upon a more sober type of life as storekeeper in the little town of Medora. Joe and his wife were most hospitable, and above his shop in their own rooms we were given a nice warm breakfast and an equally warm welcome. After breakfast, we came down to the shop, where our luggage had already been gathered, and there we began to sort what we would take to the Ranch and what we would leave. This required a certain amount of packing and unpacking, and I was on my knees "madly thrusting," as "Alice in Wonderland" puts it, "a right-hand foot into a left-hand shoe" when Joe came up to me and said: "Mrs. Douglas (they all decided to call me Mrs. Douglas, as more informal than Mrs. Robinson), it ain't worth while for you to tire yourself like that when the best packer in all Dakota is standin' in the doorway." I looked up and sure enough a huge man, who might have just walked out of one of Bret Harte's novels, was "standin' in the doorway." "There he is," continued Joe; "that's Hell-Roarin' Bill, the sheriff of the county; you heard tell of how he caught that lunatic; well, Bill's the best ladies' packer that ever was, and you had better leave all your bags to him to arrange." Fearing that "Bill" might be offended if I did not use him in the capacity of a French maid, and having frequently been told of the rapid results of hurt feelings on the part of "Bill," I suavely called him to my side, and telling him of the wonderful reputation which I had heard he enjoyed, I immediately put my wardrobe in his care, and to my infinite surprise the huge backwoodsman measured up to his reputation. Very soon the cavalcade was ready, the rain had ceased to fall in such torrents, the half-misty quality in the air lent a softer beauty to the arid landscape, and a sense of adventure was the finishing touch to our expectations as we started for Elkhorn Ranch. My disappointed friends, Merrifield and Sylvane, said that "they did not believe that Mrs. Douglas would like drivin' with a 'shotgun team' much better than ridin' a buckin' bronco, but, of course, if she thought she wanted to go that way, she could." An hour later "Mrs. Douglas" somewhat regretted her choice of progression; true enough, it was a shotgun team attached to that springless wagon in which we sat! The horses had never been hitched up together before, and their methods of motion were entirely at odds. The cowboy driver, however, managed eventually to get them started, and from that moment our progress, though irrelevant, was rapid beyond words.

We forded the "Little Missouri" River twenty-three times on the way to the ranch-house, and as the banks of the river were extremely steep, it was always a question as to whether we could go fast enough down one bank to get sufficient impetus to enable us to go through the river and up the very steep bank on the other side; so that either coming or going we were in imminent danger of a complete somersault. However, we did accomplish that long, exhausting, springless drive, and gradually the buttes rose higher and higher around us, the strange formation of the Bad Lands, curious in color, became more and more marked, the cottonwood-trees more plentiful as the river broadened out, and suddenly we saw buried amidst the trees on the farther side of one of our fordings the substantially built, cosey-looking house called by my brother the Elkhorn Ranch.

In a letter written to my aunt, Mrs. Gracie, from the ranch-house I say:

"We are having the most delightful time at the Ranch. The little house is most cosey and comfortable, and Mrs. Merrifield had everything so neat and sweet for us, and as she has a girl to help her, we really do not have to rough it at all. We all make our beds and do up our rooms religiously, but even that they would willingly do for us if we would let them. We have had three cloudless days, the first of which was occupied in driving the forty miles down here, and a beautiful picturesque drive it is, winding in and out through these strange, bold Buttes, crossing the 'Little Missouri' twenty-three times! We ladies drove, but the men all rode, and very picturesque they looked filing across the river. We arrived at the Ranch house at twelve o'clock and ate a splendid dinner of Mrs. Merri-field's preparing, immediately after which we climbed up a Butte and walked to Prairie Dog town and saw the little prairie dogs. We then mounted horses and took a lovely ride, so you may imagine that we slept well.

"The next day we were all on horseback soon after breakfast, Ferris and Merrifield with us, and off we rode; this time with the intention of seeing Merrifield lasso a steer. When we came to a great bunch of cattle, the practised eyes of the two men at once discovered an unbranded heifer, which they immediately decided to lasso and brand. It was very exciting. Merrifield threw the rope, cleverly catching its legs, and then threw the heifer, which was almost the size of a cow, and then Ferris tied another rope around its neck. The ends of the ropes were slipped over the pommels of two ponies who, in the most sensible way, held the heifer while the two men built a little fire and heated the cinch ring with which they branded the creature. It was all intensely picturesque. In the afternoon, we again rode out to be with the men while they drove the deer on the bottom, and Merrifield shot one; so you see, we have had very typical experiences, especially at the round-up yesterday."

Happy days, indeed, they were, full of varied excitements. Merrifield's little boy, Frank, only eleven years old, was the chief factor in finding the herd of ponies in the morning, for it was the custom to let them loose after twilight. Many and many a time I would hear him unslip the halter of the one small pony ("Little Moke" by name) which was still tied to the ranch-bouse steps and on which he would leap in the early dawn to go to round up the ponies for the day's work. I would jump up and look out of the ranch window, and see the independent little fellow fording the river, starting on his quest, and an hour or so later the splashing of many feet in the water heralded the approach of "Little Moke," his young rider, and the whole bunch of four-legged friends.

The relationship between my brother and his men was one of honest comradeship but of absolute respect, each for the other, and on the part of the cowboys there was, as well, toward their "Boss," a certain reverential attitude in spite of the "man to man" equality. How I loved that first night that we sat around the fire, when the men, in their effort to give my brother all the news of the vicinity during his absence, told the type of tale which has had its equivalent only in Owen Wister's "The Virginian." "There is a sky-pilot a good many miles from here, Mr. Roosevelt," said Sylvane, "who's bringin' a suit against you." Syl-vane announced this unpleasant fact with careless gaiety, stretching his long legs toward the fire. No one was ever so typically the ideal cowboy of one's wildest fancy as was Sylvane Ferris. Tall and slender, with strong fair hair and blue eyes of an almost unnatural clearness, and a splendid broad brow and aquiline nose, Sylvane looked the part. His leather chaps, his broad sombrero hat, his red handkerchief knotted carelessly around his strong, young, sunburned throat, all made him such a picture that one's eye invariably followed him as he rode a vicious pony, "wrastled" a calf, roped a steer, or branded a heifer; but now sitting lazily by the fire, such activities seemed a thing of the past, and Sylvane was ready for an hour's gossip.

"A sky-pilot? Why should a sky-pilot bring suit against me?" said my brother laughingly. [In telling this story he sometimes referred to this man as a professor.]

"Well," said Sylvane, "it was this way, Mr. Roosevelt. You see, we was all outside the ranch door when up drives the sky-pilot in a buggy. He was one of them wander in' ones that thought he could preach as he wandered, and just about as he drove up in front of our ranch his horse went dead lame on him and his old buggy just fell to pieces. He was in a bad fix, and he said he knew you never would let him be held up like that, because he had heard you was a good man too, and wouldn't we lend him a horse, or send him with the team to the next place he was going to, some forty miles away. We felt we had to be hospitable-like, with you so far away and the sky-pilot in such a fix, so we said 'Yes,' we would send him to where he wanted to go, and there he is now, lyin' in a hut with one leg broken and one arm nearly wrenched off his body, and he's bring in' suit against you, which ain't really fair, we think."

"What do you mean, Sylvane; what have I got to do with his broken leg and arm?" said my brother, beginning to feel a trifle nervous.

"Well, you see, it is this way," said Sylvane; "he says we sent him to where he is with a runaway team and he was thrown out and broken up in pieces-like; but we says how could that team we sent him with be a runaway team how could a team be called a runaway team when one of the horses ain't never been hitched up before, and the other ain't run away not more'n two or three times; but I guess sky-pilots are always unreasonable!"

This conclusion seemed to satisfy Sylvane entirely; the unfortunate condition of the much-battered sky-pilot aroused no sympathy in his adamantine heart, nor did he feel that the sky-pilot had the slightest cause for his suit, which later was settled in a satisfactory manner, but the conversation was typical of that evening's ranch news by the big wood-fire.

Our day at the round-up was one of the most fascinating days of my life, and I was proud to see that my city-bred brother was as agile and as active in the duties of rounding up the great steers of the plains as were the men brought up from their babyhood to such activities. We lunched at midday with the roundup wagon; rough life, indeed, but wonderfully invigorating, and as we returned in the evening, galloping over the grassy plateaus of the high buttes, I realized fully that the bridle-path would never again have for me the charm it once had had. Nothing in the way of riding has ever been so enchanting, and the curious formation of the Bad Lands, picturesque, indeed, almost grotesque in line, in conjunction with the wonderful climate of that period of the year and the mingling of tints in the sunset sky, resulted in a quality of color and atmosphere the like of which I only remember in Egypt, and made as lasting an impression upon my memory as did the land of the Nile.

During our stay, my original failure to leap, on my arrival, "from the locomotive to the back of a bucking bronco" had more or less been effaced from the memory of the cowboys by subsequent adventures, and the last day that we spent under the cottonwood-trees, by the banks of the Little Missouri, was made significant by the "surprise" gotten up by Merrifield and Sylvane for the special edification of my brother and husband. The surprise took the form of the "wrastling" of a calf by no less a person than myself ! Merrifield had taught me to rope an animal, Sylvane had shown me with praiseworthy regularity the method of throwing a calf, and the great occasion was heralded amongst the other members of the party by an invitation to sit on the fence of the corral at three o'clock, the last afternoon of our visit to Elkhorn, and thus witness the struggle between a young woman of the East and a bovine denizen of the Western prairies. The corral, a plot of very muddy ground (having been watered by a severe rain the night before), was walled in by a fence, and generally used when we wished to keep the ponies from straying. On this occasion, however, it was emptied of all but the calf, which was to be the object of my efforts and prowess. I was then introduced by Merrifield, very much as the circus rider used to be introduced in the early Barnum and Bailey days; then followed a most gruelling pantomime the calf, which was of an unusually unpleasant size, galloped around the corral and I, knee-deep in mud, galloped after it, and finally succeeded in achieving the first necessity, which was to rope it around the neck. After that, the method of procedure was as follows: The "wrastler" on this occasion my unfortunate self was supposed to get dose enough to the animal in question to throw himself or herself across the back of the galloping calf, with the purpose of catching the left leg of the animal, the leg, in fact, farthest away from one's right arm. If this deed could be accomplished and the leg forcibly bent under the calf, both calf and rider would go down in an inextricable heap, and the "wrastling" of the calf would be complete.

I can feel now the mud in my boots as I floundered with agonized effort after that energetic animal. I can still sense the strain in every nerve of my body as I finally flung myself across its back, and still, also, as if it were only yesterday, do I remember the jellied sensation within me, as for some torturing minutes I lay across the heifer's spine, before, by a final Herculean effort, I caught that left leg with my right arm. The cries of "stay with him!" from the fence, the loud hand-clapping of the enthusiastic cowboys, the shrieks of laughter of my brother and my husband, all still ring in my ears, and when the deed was finally accomplished, when the calf, with one terrible lurch, actually "wrastled," so to speak, fell over on its head in the mud, all sensation left me and 1 only remember being lifted up, bruised and encased in an armor of oozing dirt, and being carried triumphantly on the shoulders of the cowboys into the ranch-house, having redeemed, in their opinion, at least, the reputation which my brother had given me before I visited the Bad Lands.

Years later, when the young owner of Elkhorn Ranch had reached the higher estate of President of the United States, I, as the sister of the President, was receiving with my sister-in-law at the breakfast in the White House, at his Inaugural in 1905, and was attired in my best black velvet gown and "presidential sister" white plumes; I was surrounded by senators and ambassadors, when suddenly, coming toward me, I recognized the lithe figure of my brother's quondam cowboy, Will Merrifield. He, too, had climbed the rungs of the ladder of fame, and now, as marshal of Montana, he had been intrusted by the State of Montana with the greetings of that state for the newly inaugurated President. Coming toward me with a gay smile of recognition, he shook me warmly by the hand and said: "Well, now, Mrs. Douglas, it's a sight for sore eyes to see you again; why, almost the last time I laid eyes on you, you were standing on your head in that muddy corral with your legs waving in the air." Senators and ambassadors seemed somewhat surprised, but Will Merrifield and the President's sister shook hands gaily together, and reminisced over one of the latter's most thrilling life victories. But to return to our farewell to Elkhorn Ranch in 1890.
The three weeks' visit to the ranch-house had passed on fleet wings, and it was a very sad little party that turned its face toward Medora again, in preparation for the specially planned trip to Yellowstone Park. Theodore Roosevelt, as one may well imagine, was making a very real concession to family affection by arranging this trip for us and accompanying us upon it. What he loved was roughing it; near-roughing it was not his "metier," nor, frankly, was it his "metier" to arrange a comfortable trip of any kind. He loved wild places and wild companions, hard tramps and thrilling adventure, and to be a part of the type of trip which women who were not accustomed to actual hunting could take, was really an act of unselfishness on his part. We paid huge sums for no comforts, and although supposed to goas we were riding where the ordinary travellers in stage-coach could not go in Yellowstone Park, yet there were times when we seemed to be constantly camping in the vicinity of tomato cans I

I write again to my aunt two weeks after we start our Yellowstone experiences:

"We have had a most delightful two weeks' camping and have enjoyed every moment. The weather has been cloudless, and though the nights were cold, we were only really uncomfortable one night. We were all in the best of health and the best of spirits, and ate without a murmur the strange meals of ham, tomatoes, greasy cakes and coffee prepared by our irresistible Chinese cook. Breakfast and dinner were always the same, and lunch was generally bread and cheese carried in our pockets and eaten by the wayside. We have really had great comfort, however, and have enjoyed the pretense of roughing it and the delicious, free, open-air life hugely, and such scenery! Nothing in my estimation can equal in unique beauty the Yellowstone canyon, the wonderful shapes of the rocks, some like peaks and turrets, others broken in strange fantastic jags, and then the marvellous colors of them all. Pale greens and yellows, vivid reds and orange, salmon pinks and every shade of brown are strewn with a lavish hand over the whole Canyon,-and the beautiful Falls are so foamy and white, and leap with such exultation from their rocky ledge 360 feet down.

"We had one really exciting ride. We had undertaken too long an expedition, namely, the ascent of Mt. Washburn, and then to Towers' Falls in one day, during which, to add to the complications, Edith had been thrown and quite badly bruised. We found ourselves at Towers' Falls at six o'clock in the evening instead of at lunch time, and realized we were still sixteen miles from Camp, and a narrow trail only to lead us back, a trail of which our guide was not perfectly sure. We galloped as long as there was light, but the sun soon set over the wonderful mountains, and although there was a little crescent moon, still, it soon grew very dark and we had to keep close behind each other, single file, and go very carefully as the trail lay along the mountainside. Often we had to traverse dark woods and trust entirely to the horses, who behaved beautifully and stepped carefully over the fallen logs. Twice, Dodge, our guide, lost the trail, and it gave one a very eerie feeling, but he found it again and on we went. Once at about n p. m., Theodore suggested stopping and making a great fire, and waiting until daylight to go on, for he was afraid that we would be tired out, but we all preferred to continue, and about 11130, to our great joy, we heard the roar of the Falls and suddenly came out on the deep Canyon, looking very wonderful and mysterious in the dim starlight. We reached our Camp after twelve o'clock, having been fifteen hours away from it, thirteen and a half of which we had been in the saddle. It was really an experience."

It was a hazardous ride and I did not terrify my aunt by some of the incidents such as the severe discomfort suffered by Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt when she was thrown and narrowly escaped a broken back, and when a few hours later my own horse sank in a quicksand and barely recovered himself in time to struggle to terra firma again, not to mention the dangers of the utter darkness when the small, dim crescent moon faded from the horizon. My brother was the real leader of the cavalcade, for the guide, Ira Dodge, proved singularly incompetent. Theodore kept up our flagging spirits, exhausted as we were by the long rough day in the saddle, and although furious with Dodge because of his ignorance of the trail through which he was supposed to guide us, he still gave us the sense of confidence, which is one's only hope on such an adventure. Looking back over that camping trip in the Yellowstone, the prominent figure of the whole holiday was, of course, my brother. He was a boy in his tricks and teasing, crawling under the tent flaps at night, pretending to be the unexpected bear which we always dreaded. He was a real inspiration in his knowledge of the fauna and birds of the vicinity and his willingness to give us the benefit of that knowledge.

I find in my diary of that excursion a catalogue of the birds and other animals which he himself had pointed out to me, making me marvel again at the rapid observation which he had made part of his physical equipment. I note: "During the first four days we have been in the Park, we have seen chipmunk, red squirrel, little black bear, elk watering with the horses, musk-rat in the streams, golden eagle, Peregrine falcon and other varieties, red-tailed hawk and pigeon hawk, Clark's crow, Canada jay, raven, bittern, Canada goose, mallard and teal ducks, chica-dee, nuthatch, dwarf-thrush, robin, water oozel, sunbird, long-spur, grass finch, yellow-crowned warbler, Rocky Mountain white-throated sparrow, song-sparrow, and wren."

Each one of the above I saw with the eyes of Theodore Roosevelt, and can still hear the tones of his voice as he described to me their habits of life and the differences between them and others of their kind. To him this trip must, of necessity, have been somewhat dull, based as it was upon the companionship of three women who were not hunters; but never once during those weeks did he seem anything but happy, and as far as we were concerned, to see the beauties of nature through those ardent eyes, to hear the bird-notes through those ears, attuned to each song, and to listen constantly to his stories of wood and plain, his interpretation of the lives of those mighty pioneer men of the Westall of this comes back to me, as a rare experience which I have gladly stored away in what Emerson calls "the amber of memory." How we laughed over the strange rules and regulations of the park! Fierce bears were trapped, but could not be killed without the kind permission of one of the secretaries in Washington, the correspondence on the subject affording my brother infinite amusement. His methods under like circumstances would have been so very different!

   The experiences at Elkhorn Ranch and again in the Yellowstone Park were of special benefit to me from the standpoint of the comprehension which they gave me of the absolute sympathy which my brother felt both with the nature and the human nature of the great West. No period of the life of Theodore Roosevelt seems to me quite as important, in the influence which it was to bear upon his future usefulness to his country, as was /'that period in which, as man to man, he shared the vigorous work and pastimes of the men of that part of our country. Had he not actually lived the life not only of the hunter and cattleman, but had he not taken actual part as sheriff in the methods of government of that part of our country, he would never have been able to interpret the spirit of the West as he did. He would never have been recognized as such an interpreter, and when the time came that America could no longer look from an uninterested distance at the Spanish iniquities in Cuba, the fact that Theodore Roosevelt had become so prominent a figure in the West proved the essential factor in the flocking to his standard of that mass of virile manhood which, under his leadership, and that of the then army doctor, Leonard Wood, became the picturesque, well-known "Rough Rider" Volunteer Cavalry of the Spanish-American War.

At Elkhorn Ranch, also, the long silences and stretches of solitude had much to do with the mental growth of the young man. There he read and wrote and thought deeply. His old guide Bill Sewall was asked not long since about his opinion of my brother as a religious man. His answer was as follows: "I think he read the Bible a great deal. I never saw him in formal prayer, but as prayer is the desire of the heart, I think he prayed without ceasing, for the desire of his heart was always to do right." Thus, sharing the hardships and the joys of their primitive life with his comrades of the West, the young rancher became an integral part of that country, which never failed to rouse in him the spirit of high adventure and romance.

Theodore Roosevelt, himself, in a letter to John Hay, written long after our visit to his ranch and our gay excursion to the Yellowstone, describes the men of that part of the world. He was taking an extended trip, as President, in 1903, on the first part of which journey Mr. Hay had accompanied him, and at Oyster Bay, on his return, he writes to his secretary of state in order to give him further details of the trip:

"From Washington, I turned southward, and when I struck northern Montana, again came to my old stamping grounds and among my old friends. I met all kinds of queer characters with whom I had hunted and worked and slept and sometimes fought. From Helena, I went southward to Butte, reaching that city in the afternoon of May 27th. By this time, Seth Bullock had joined us, together with an old hunting friend, John Willis, a Donatello of the Rocky Mountains, wholly lacking, however, in that morbid self-consciousness which made Hawthorne's 'faun' go out of his head because he had killed a man. Willis and I had been in Butte some seventeen years before, at the end of a hunting trip in which we got dead broke, so that when we struck Butte, we slept in an outhouse and breakfasted heartily in a two-bit Chinese restaurant. Since then I had gone through Butte in the campaign of 1900, the major part of the inhabitants receiving me with frank hostility, and enthusiastic cheers for Bryan.

"However, Butte is mercurial, and its feelings had changed. The wicked, wealthy, hospitable, full-blooded, little city, welcomed me with wild enthusiasm of a disorderly kind. The mayor, Pat Muffins, was a huge, good-humored creature, wearing, for the first time in his life, a top hat and a frock coat, the better to do honor to the President.

"National party lines counted very little in Butte where the fight was Heinze and anti-Heinze, Ex-Senator Carter and Senator Clark being in the opposition. Neither side was willing to let the other have anything to do with the celebration, and they drove me wild with their appeals, until I settled that the afternoon parade and speech was to be managed by the Heinze group of people, and the evening speech by the anti-Heinze people; and that the dinner should contain fifty of each faction and should be presided over in his official capacity by the mayor. The ordinary procession, in barouches, was rather more exhilarating than usual, and reduced the faithful secret service men very nearly to the condition of Bedlamites. The crowd was filled with whooping enthusiasm and every kind of whiskey, and in their desire to be sociable, broke the lines and jammed right up to the carriage. . . . Seth Bullock, riding close beside the rear wheel of my carriage, for there were hosts of so-called 'rednecks' or 'dynamiters' in the crowd, was such a splendid looking fellow with his size and supple strength, his strangely marked aquiline face, with its big moustache, and the broad brim of his soft dark hat drawn down over his dark eyes. However, no one made a motion to attack me. . . .

"My address was felt to be honor enough for one hotel, so the dinner was given in the other. When the dinner was announced, the Mayor led me in! to speak more accurately, tucked me under one arm and lifted me partially off the ground so that I felt as if I looked like one of those limp dolls with dangling legs, carried around by small children, like Mary Jane in the 'Gollywoge,' for instance. As soon as we got in the banquet hall and sat at the end of the table, the Mayor hammered lustily with the handle of his knife and announced, 'Waiter, bring on the feed.' Then, in a spirit of pure kindliness, 'Waiter, pull up the curtains and let the people see the President eat'; but to this, I objected. The dinner was soon in full swing, and it was interesting in many respects. Besides my own party, including Seth Bullock and Willis, there were fifty men from each of the Butte factions.

"In Butte, every prominent man is a millionaire, a gambler, or a labor leader, and generally he has been all three. Of the hundred men who were my hosts, I suppose at least half had killed their man in private war or had striven to compass the assassination of an enemy. They had fought one another with reckless ferocity. They had been allies and enemies in every kind of business scheme, and companions in brutal revelry. As they drank great goblets of wine, the sweat glistened on their hard, strong, crafty faces. They looked as if they had come out of the pictures in Aubrey Beardsley's Yellow Book. The millionaires had been laboring men once, the labor leaders intended to be millionaires in their turn, or else to pull down all who were. They had made money in mines, had spent it on the races, in other mines or in gambling and every form of vicious luxury, but they were strong men for all that. They had worked, and striven, and pushed, and trampled, and had always been ready, and were ready now, to fight to the death in many different kinds of conflicts. They had built up their part of the West, they were men with whom one had to reckon if thrown in contact with them. . . . But though most of them hated each other, they were accustomed to take their pleasure when they could get it, and they took it fast and hard with the meats and wines."

The above description by the pen of my brother is the most vivid that could be given of a certain type of man of the West. The types were many. . . . The Sylvane Ferrises and the Will Merrifields were as bold and resourceful as these inhabitants of the city of Butte and its vicinity, but for the former, life was an adventure in which the spirit of beauty and kindness had its share in happy contrast to the aims and objects of the men described by my brother in this extraordinary pen-picture. The picture is so forcibly painted that it brings before one's mind, almost as though it were an actual stage-setting, this type of American, who would appear to be a belated brother of the men of the barbaric period of the Middle Ages in the Old World, in their case, however, rendered even more formidable by a New World enterprise and acumen, strangely unlike what has ever been produced before.

It was because of his knowledge of just such men, and of the fact that they knew, although his aims were so different and his ideals so alien to theirs, that the courage of his mental and physical equipment could meet them on their own ground, that Theodore Roosevelt was respected and admired, although sometimes hated, by this type of humanity so opposed to the goals, actual and spiritual, for which he worked so faithfully during his whole valiant existence. They knew him for what he was, and feared him for the qualities which he possessed in common with them, and even more for the traits that they did not understand, and which, to them, made him inevitably and forever "The Mysterious Stranger.”