CHAPTER 10 Hermann Hagedorn’s: The Boy’s Life of Theodore Roosevelt.

HE BRINGS A GRAVEYARD TO LIFE AND INCIDENTALLY COMES  TO   CLOSE  GRIPS  WITH  A  BEAR

THEODORE ROOSEVELT plunged into his new work with vigor and enthusiasm.  There was much to be done.  The Civil Service Commission was still in its infancy.  Its friends looked upon it hopefully, but not with the burning hope of the earlier days of the "reform," for it had not revolutionized politics yet; its enemies, the spoilsmen, still nourished the belief that they could kill it.  The country at large, meanwhile, knew next to nothing about it. 

The commission, consisting of two Republicans and two Democrats, had been created six years previous, after a long struggle in which Roosevelt as an Assemblyman in New York had done his share.  Its purpose was to eradicate as far as possible the abuses which had grown since the days of President Jackson in the matter of appointments to offices under the government, by supplanting the "spoils system," based on favoritism, with the "merit system," based on character and ability.  Fourteen thousand minor offices had already been brought tinder the jurisdiction of the Civil Service Commission, but the old-time politicians who believed that "to the victor belong the spoils" yelped and howled like hungry wolves at every attempt made by the commission and its friends in Congress to extend what was known as the "classified service. "

Roosevelt saw at once that what the Civil Service Commission needed if it were to do effective work, if, in fact, it were to survive at all, was the support of an enlightened public opinion.  Roosevelt's predecessors on the commission, and one or two of the commissioners serving with him, had conducted their work with as little publicity as possible, fearing that public discussion would merely rouse the "spoilsmen" to fiercer opposition.  Roosevelt pursued the opposite theory.  No good cause, he believed, need fear the light of day.  In a democracy, moreover, where the people ruled, or were supposed to rule, it was, he was convinced, the duty of every public servant to keep in constant touch with the people and to keep the people in contact with all civic movements.  He therefore threw his doors wide to the correspondents of newspapers from every section of the country.  He took the people into his confidence.  He told them what civil-service reform meant to them; he told them what the "spoils system" was costing them.  He fought his battles with Congressmen and Senators in the open.  The whole country watched the sparks fly.  He advertised the merit system as it had never been advertised before, and Congressmen who in the past had opposed it began to hear protests from their districts 

Roosevelt on the Civil Service Commission did what Roosevelt in the Assembly had done.  He told the people what he was doing, why he was doing it, how he was doing it, and why and how other people were trying to prevent him from doing it.  He made the Civil Service Commission, which had been practically unknown outside a narrow circle of reformers and their enemies, the topic of dinner-table discussion over the length and breadth of the land; and so doing he made the American people his allies in the fight for good government. 

He met misrepresentation with a vigorous statement of facts and a challenge to the man who had questioned his motives.  He met frequent cuts in appropriations by the simple expedient of refusing to hold examinations for the civil service in the districts of Congressmen who advocated the cuts.  He found that he could safely rely on the Congressmen's constituents to bring their representatives to terms. 

He enjoyed the work, for there was fight in it, and the enemies of good government never left him alone long enough to allow the rather prosaic daily routine to become dull.  He fought certain Senators, like Gorman of Maryland, for instance, who told the Senate a pathetic story about an estimable young man who had been rejected for a position as letter-carrier because he did not know the shortest route from Baltimore to China; and when Roosevelt demanded the name and address of the poor victim was unable to produce them.  He fought local bosses in various parts of the country who tried in one way or another to evade the civil-service regulations; he fought department chiefs who insisted on giving the "plums" to personal friends; he fought a member of President Harrison's Cabinet, "the little gray man in the White House," as he wrote his sister, "looking on with cold and hesitating disapproval, but not seeing how he can interfere. "

During those years his sister Anna, the "Bamie" of his boyhood, was living in England and his correspondence with her reveals attractive glimpses of the life he was leading. 
Washington is just a big village [he writes in February, 1894], but it is a very pleasant big village.  Edith and I meet just the people we like to see.  This winter we have had a most pleasant time, socially and officially.  All I have minded is that, though my work is pleasant, I have had to keep at it so closely that I never get any exercise save an occasional ride with Cabot [Henry Cabot Lodge].  We dine out three or four times a week, and have people to dinner once or twice; so that we hail the two or three evenings when we are alone at home, and can talk or read, or Edith sews while I make ineffective bolts at my third volume.  The people we meet are mostly those who stand high in the political world, and who are therefore interested in the same subjects that interest us; while there are enough who are men of letters or of science to give a pleasant and needed variety.  . . .  It is pleasant to meet people from whom one really gets something; people from all over the Union with different pasts and varying interests, trained, able, powerful men, though often narrow-minded enough. 

He saw much of his friend Lodge, whom he had known since his college days, when Lodge, ten years his senior, was an instructor in history at Harvard; learned to know and to cherish John Hay and greatly to respect "gruff old Olney," with whom he quarreled officially in the mornings over the construction of the civil-service law, and played tennis with in the afternoons, continuing the controversy between sets.  William Roscoe Thayer, in his Life of John Hay, tells how Roosevelt made a place for himself in Washington society, "mixing cheerily with all sorts of men, equally at home with Cabinet officers and cowboys, surprising some, puzzling others, amusing nearly all. " Rudyard Kipling used "to drop in at the Cosmos Club at half past ten or so in the evening," writes Thayer, "and presently young Roosevelt would come and pour out projects, discussions of men and politics, criticisms of books, in a swift and full-volumed stream, tremendously emphatic and enlivened by bursts of humor.  'I curled up in the seat opposite,' said Kipling, 'and listened and wondered, until the universe seemed to be spinning round and Theodore was the spinner. '"

As his letter to his sister indicates, Roosevelt was keeping up his historical writing, though not without difficulty for distractions were many. 

I am very glad to have been in this position; I think I have done good work, and a man ought to show that he can go out into the world and hold his own with other men; but I shall be glad when I get back to live at Sagamore and can devote myself to one definite piece of work.  We Americans are prone to divide our efforts too much. 

A little later he writes, out of a vague discontent with himself:
I have been going out too much.  I wish I had more chance to work at my books.  Here I am occupied, but never busy, all day, and go out in the evening; so I don't feel as if I were really working to lasting effect. 
Two years later he was writing in the same mood, still certain that the writing of books was his real career, "though I fear that only a very mild and moderate success awaits me. "

It was during these years in Washington that his elder children, now growing out of babyhood, began to have an increasingly important place in his life.  Every Sunday afternoon he took them to Rock Creek Park, a wilderness in those days, and scrambled up and over the crags with them.  He did not encourage any of his children to avoid the places of danger, though he generally carried a rope to help them over the steeper cliffs. 

Now and then, when Mrs.  Roosevelt was away, he had his responsibilities indoors and he took them with relish. 

All this last week [he writes] I have been here alone with the four younger bunnies.  . . .  At breakfast I generally have to tell Ted and Kermit stories of hunting and of ranch life; and then Ted walks part way down to the office with me.  In the evening I take my tea with Ted and Kermit and Ethel while they are having supper, and then I read, first to the two smallest, and afterwards to Ted.  As for Archie, he is the sweetest little fellow in the world and I play with him as much as I possibly can.  .  .  .  The children are just too sweet for anything.  The other day, discussing their futures, Ted said, "I'll be a soldier," to which Kermit solemnly answered, "I'll just be a plain man with bunnies, like Father!"
Meanwhile, the "plain man with bunnies" was righting the good fight vigorously and not without a certain delight in making the men of his own party toe the civil-service mark as strictly as the Democrats, who, under President Cleveland, were in power during the greater part of his period on the commission. 

I am trying to persuade the President [he wrote early in 1894] to make some real extensions of the classified service.  I only wish he would make all that are possible now.  If the Republicans do come in again, I hope they'll have as little patronage to quarrel over as possible. 

The American people, from Maine to California, watched the dramatic battle in which Roosevelt led the forces of honesty and fair play against the hordes of corruption and favoritism; and here and there young men who dreamed of cleaner politics and better government began to take hope, seeing that a man might be honest and have a high purpose and nevertheless be more than a match for the dishonest experts in guile.  Here and there young men began to realize that politics might offer a career that a self-respecting man might follow.  Roosevelt, endeavoring to interest the American people in a great and urgently necessary reform, unconsciously set in motion forces of progress which were gradually to revolutionize American politics. 

For six years he preached civil service reform to the American people.  The people listened to his words, and forgot them.  But they did not forget the ardent spirit who uttered them.  Words are cheap and perishable things, but a flaming spirit burns his mark on the hearts of men and is not forgotten.  Here and there young men awoke to a new vision of justice and service. 

And so, in work and struggle, six years went by.  If the Civil Service Commission was, as Roosevelt's friends had declared, "a political graveyard," it was during those years the liveliest and most inspiring graveyard the world has ever seen. 

Theodore Roosevelt, government official and plague of the spoilsmen, was, for all the prickings of his conscience, not neglectful of what he regarded as his real profession, the making of books.  In 1891 he had published a history of New York City; two years later The Wilderness Hunter, a stirring narration of his hunting experiences here and there through the West; and the same year American Big Game Hunting, the book of the Boone and Crockett Club.  Two years later, again, he published Hunting in Many Lands, likewise for the club; and in collaboration with Henry Cabot Lodge, then a member of the House of Representatives, Hero Tales from American History.  During the later years of his commissioner-ship he occupied himself, whenever occasion offered, with The Winning of the West.  He was quite sure that writing, and not politics, was his true vocation. 

I have really enjoyed my work [he writes to his sister, Mrs.  Douglas Robinson, of his Civil Service activities].  I feel it incumbent on me to try to amount to something either in politics or literature, because I have deliberately given up the hope of going into a money-making business.  Of course, my political life is but an interlude it is quite impossible long to do much between two such sets of kittle-cattle as the spoilsmen and the mugwumps.  

He lived mainly in Washington, remaining at his desk even through the scorching summers, with only occasional brief vacations at Oyster Bay.  Every autumn, however, he went West for a month, for half his heart was always in Dakota. 

I go on for a hack at the bears in the Rockies [he wrote his younger sister in 1889].  I am so out of training that I look forward with acute physical terror to going up my first mountain. 

He took his "hack" in September, just west of Yellowstone Park, in Idaho.  His companion was a crabbed, rheumatic old mountain hunter named Hank Griffin, who had an extraordinary gift for finding game, but also a surly temper and profound contempt for " tenderfeet," especially "tenderfeet" who wore spectacles.  He had never "trundled a tenderfoot" before, he remarked, and gave the impression that he considered Roosevelt in the light of one who had blackened his otherwise spotless record.  He took his revenge by lying abed late and letting Roosevelt do all the work about the camp. 

Finally, one day, he refused altogether to go out on the day's hunt.  He had a pain, he said. 

Roosevelt went out by himself, returning at dusk, to find that the "pain " had during his absence flourished on a flask of whisky which he kept in his kit for emergencies.  Hank was sitting very erect on a tree-stump, with his rifle across his knees.  Roosevelt nodded in greeting.  The guide leered at him.  He was evidently very drunk. 

Roosevelt leaned his rifle against a tree near the cooking-things and walked over to where his bedding lay.  He suspected that his flask had been tapped.  He rummaged among his belongings.  The flask was there, but the whisky was gone. 

He turned on the man swiftly.  "Hank, you've emptied my flask!" he cried. 

The guide chuckled drunkenly.  "Suppose I have," he said.  "What are ye going to do about it?"

"I'll tell you what I am going to do about it," answered Roosevelt, hotly.  '' I am going to take one of the horses and go on by myself. "

Hank stiffened up and cocked his rifle.  "You can go alone," he muttered, "but you won't take a horse. "

Roosevelt saw that the man was in a dangerous mood.  "All right!" he said.  "If I can't, I can't, I suppose. " Then he began to move about, in search of some flour and salt pork.  The guide, misled by his apparent acceptance of the situation stared straight ahead drunkenly. 

Hank Griffin's cocked rifle lay across his knees, the muzzle pointing to the left; Roosevelt's rifle stood toward the right.  Roosevelt worked his way unobtrusively toward it.  Then suddenly he whipped it up and threw the bead on the old hunter. 

"Hands up!"

The man put up his hands.  "Oh come!" he said.  "I was only joking. "

"Well, I'm not!" Roosevelt replied.  "Straighten your legs and let your rifle go to the ground. "

"It '11 go off. "

"Let it go off!"

But the gun did not go off, after all, for the guide straightened his legs with care so that it slipped to the ground without a jar. 

"Move back!"

The guide obeyed and Roosevelt picked up the rifle.  The crabbed old man was quite sober now, and quizzical instead of angry. 

'' Give me back my rifle,'' he remarked, in a conciliatory tone, "an' we'll call it quits an' go on together. "

"I guess we won't do that," said Roosevelt.  "The hunt's about through anyway, and I think I'll go home. " He pointed to a blasted pine on an eminence about a mile from camp.  "Do you see that pine? If I see you in camp when I reach there, I'll leave your rifle there for you.  If you try to come after me, I'll take it for granted that you mean to get me if you can, and I'll shoot. "

"I'm not coming after you," grumbled the guide. 

Roosevelt started off, taking his little mare, his bed roll, and half the remaining supply of flour, bacon, and tea.  At the blasted pine he stopped and looked around.  Old Hank was still in camp.  Roosevelt left the rifle at the tree and pressed on.  At dusk he stopped and cooked his supper.  He did not believe that the old hunter would follow him, but there was just a chance that he might.  So he made use of a familiar trick of the trappers in the old Indian days.  Leaving his camp-fire burning brightly, he pushed ahead until darkness made further progress impossible.  Picketing the mare, but building no fire, he lay down and slept until the first streak of dawn, then again pushed on for two hours or more before halting to cook breakfast.  

There was no trail, but he kept his course along the foot-hills where glades and little prairies broke the pine forest; and it was not until the end of this, the second day of his solitary journeying, that he had difficulty finding his way.  That afternoon, however, he became enmeshed in a tangle of winding valleys at the foot of the steep mountains.  Dusk was coming on.  For the moment he was "lost. " He decided to camp where he was.  He threw his pack and his buffalo sleeping-bag on the soft pine needles and strolled off through the frosty gloaming with his rifle on his shoulder, to see if he could pick up a grouse for his supper. 

He found no grouse.  Among the tall, slender pines the daylight was rapidly fading and he turned toward his camp again at last. 

Suddenly, as he stole noiselessly up to the crest of a ridge, he caught the loom of a large, dark object. 

It was a great grizzly, walking slowly off with his head down. 

Roosevelt fired.  The bear uttered a loud, moaning grunt and plunged forward at a heavy gallop.  Roosevelt ran to cut him off.  The bear entered a laurel thicket, and for a time remained hidden in the jungle of twisted stems and foliage, now and again uttering a strange, savage whine.  Roosevelt began to skirt the edge, peering anxiously through the dusk. 

The bear plunged out of the laurel on the farther side, wheeled, and stood for a moment broadside to the hunter.  Stiffly he turned his head.  Scarlet strings of froth hung from his lips; his eyes burned like embers in the gloom  Roosevelt fired again.  Instantly the great bear turned with a harsh roar of fury and challenge, blowing the bloody foam from his mouth.  Roosevelt saw his white fangs gleam as the grizzly charged straight at him, crashing and bounding through the laurel-bushes.  He did not fire at once.  The raging animal came plunging on.  As he topped a fallen tree, Roosevelt fired again.  The ball went through the bear's chest, but the grizzly neither swerved nor flinched, but came steadily on.  Roosevelt had only one more shot in his magazine, and in a second the bear would be upon him. 

He fired for the beast's forehead, but his bullet went low, smashing the bear's lower jaw and entering his neck.  Roosevelt leaped aside even as he pulled the trigger.  The smoke hung for an instant, and through it he saw a great paw striking viciously at him.  He flung himself back, hurriedly jamming a couple of cartridges into his rifle.  The rush of the grizzly's charge carried him past his pursuer.  As he struck he lurched forward, recovered himself, and made two or three leaps onward; then suddenly collapsed, rolling over and over. 

Roosevelt's "hack at the bears" had been successful. 
For a time he had still kept cattle on his ranges in the Bad Lands, with Merrifield and the Ferrises in charge at Elkhorn.  In 1890 he was at the ranch with Mrs.  Roosevelt; a year later he hunted elk with an Englishman named Ferguson, now his ranch partner, at Two-Ocean Pass in the Shoshones in northwestern Wyoming.  That autumn he closed the ranch-house.  A year later he returned to Elk-horn for a week's hunting.  The wild forces of nature had already taken possession.  The ranch grass grew tall in the yard and on the sodded roofs of the stables and sheds; the weather-beaten log walls of the house itself were one in tint with the trunks of the gnarled cottonwoods by which it was shaded. 

"The ranch-house is in good repair," he wrote to Bill Sewall, "but it is melancholy to see it deserted. "

His life had wonderfully expanded since the golden days of the ranch, seven years before; but those days had held a zest and glory which no success or family happiness could ever crowd from their unique place in his memory. 

The men and women who had been his companions in hardship and adventure were scattered.  The Ferrises had retired on their earnings, Merrifield had moved to Oregon, the Sewalls had settled down again to the life of the Maine backwoodsman, Will Dow was dead. 

A year or two later the waters of the Little Missouri rose and flooded the banks and carried away the ranch-house, and that was the end of that chapter in the life of Theodore Roosevelt.