EDITH KERMIT CAROW, the playmate of her husband in childhood and "perfect comrade" since their marriage in 1886, transformed the White House into an ideal American home. She was a model housekeeper, and in spite of the exactions of time and duties, tuned her household in perfect accord amid the unusual stir of young life there. She was splendidly equipped for her arduous task by her delightful charm of manner, tact, and an unusual ability to connect names, faces and incidents. She is endowed with rare good sense, to which, combined with many winning attributes and accomplishments, she owes her remarkable social success. She has a charming ally in her step-daughter, Miss Alice Lee Roosevelt, later, Mrs. Nicholas Longworth, a typical "out-of-doors" American girl, who shares. with Mrs. Roosevelt's five children a mother's full-hearted devotion.

ROOSEVELT

There are two kinds who seek a Presidency. One aims at eminence, the other hungers for fame. With one the White House is an object; with the other a method. The first, if made President, sits calmly down; he has had his victory and the White House is his. With him of the fame-hunger, it is the other way about. Given the White House his great work begins. He does not think to write his name with the immortals by simply signing himself "President." He can only achieve the purpose that has called him to the field, by labors of lasting good to the whole people. Of our entire line of Presidents no more than six were of the latter. Six there were who sought and found their wreaths. The others will live in history whenever and wherever Presidents are enumerated; not one by his record, however, bequeathed himself to fame.

It shone out as a best hope of the hour that Mr. Roosevelt was heart and soul a fame-hunter. The nobility of one's action is determined by the nobility of one's aspirations. Mr. Roosevelt did not rest content with being merely a President. He must go down the aisles of coming time a great President, or in his own conscience he would fail. To that end, he set before himself the examples of those mighty ones of time past. The Washingtons, the Jeffersons, the Jacksons, the Lincolns and the Grants were his exemplars. With such to be as guides to him—and because he was true and bold and wise, and no man owned him-it was not strange if he conquered entrance to Valhalla. Moreover, it is good for the public to know and say these things.

If there be any worth-while thing in mere experience, if reading and travel and the study of men be of good avail, Mr. Roosevelt had the making of a great President. Before he went to the White House he was taught how State laws were made as a member of the assembly at Albany, and subsequently took lessons in executing those laws as Governor. He was shown the inner workings of a great city as a Commissioner of Police. As Chief of Civil Service, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Soldier in the field, and Vice-President it was given him to look into every nook and corner of national government. Even as a Deputy Sheriff in the utter West it may safely be assumed that he was learning. Also his travels had been wide, and he knew from practical touch and observation not only Europe, but every phase of American existence. He had wandered East and West and North and South, and ate and drank and talked and slept with the peoples of those regions. He knew what they felt and thought and desired; he could gauge their needs, anticipate their drift of sentiment.

6636-C

Mr. Roosevelt intended the Panama Canal to be the great work of his regime. With all the power in his hands-and no one has measured the power of a President-he pushed the Panama business to its conclusion. By this or that, he meant to split the Isthmus with that Canal. American ships should translate themselves from one ocean to the other without troubling Cape Horn; upon that marine miracle he stood resolved. And it was likewise current that, as demanded by a long-ago Secretary of State, now dead and under the grass-roots, he was determined that both banks of the Canal should be part of the coast line of this country. Such decision was native to and in keeping with the Roosevelt character, which is American; and its carrying out by no means inconsistent with Roosevelt tastes, which never fail to favor boldness.

The propriety of the Canal, no one American-save the trans-Continental railways-was ever heard to deny. But to the last crowned head of them, every European ruler, and even the elected one of France had been opposed. They believed with Sir Walter Raleigh that he who held the Isthmus of Darien held the keys to the world, and were solicitous that no such lockopener should hang at the girdle of America. It was well for the world while Mr. Roosevelt abode in Washington. He was not duped abroad or deluded at home. The government was neither a plutocracy nor a mobocracy, but a democracy, while he prevailed. He was the friend of Capital, the friend of Labor, the fool and tool of neither. It was he who said that during his stay the door of the White House should yield as easily to the touch of Labor as to the touch of Capital, but no easier.

During those years of on-coming towards a Presidency, Mr. Roosevelt was not morally or mentally going backward or standing still. He ripened and rounded, and grew in wisdom as he grew in politics. With experience his prudence increased, while his courage was not diminished. Over all and beyond all, towered his indomitable honesty. He is a big man-big for the country, big for mankind. Whole peoples respect him, kings are, jealous of his fame. To-day, to that Fate which waits. ever at the elbow of time, the nation may say:

"Bring on the Hour; here stands the Man!"

THEODORE ROOSEVELT, the twenty-sixth President of the United States, was born in the city of New York, October 27, 1858. His ancestors on the paternal side were of an old Dutch family, and on the maternal side, of Scotch-Irish descent. His early education was received under private tuition. He was graduated from Harvard College in 1880, and spent the following year in study and travel. From 1882 to 1884 he was a member of the Assembly of the State of New York as an independent Republican, and gained a wide reputation for his work for political reform, particularly in the field of the civil service. In 1884 he was chairman of the New York delegation to the National Republican Convention, and two years later was an unsuccessful candidate as an independent Republican for the office of Mayor of New York. He was made a member of the National Civil Service Commission by President Harrison in 1889, and served as president of the board until May, 1895, when he resigned to become president of the board of Police Commissioners of the city of New York. In 1897 he was made Assistant Secretary of the Navy by President McKinley, but on the breaking out of the Spanish-American War, in 1898, he resigned and organized the First United States Volunteer Regiment of Cavalry, popularly known as the "Rough Riders," of which he was made lieutenant-colonel. He was attached to the army of General Shafter, for the invasion of Cuba, and participated in every engagement preceding the fall of Santiago. He won distinction at the Battle of San Juan Hill, on July 1, 1898, and was promoted to the rank of colonel on July 11, for conspicuous bravery in action. He received the nomination for governor of New York on the Republican ticket, September 27, 1898, and was elected by a large plurality. At the Republican National Convention held in Philadelphia, in June, 1900, he was nominated for Vice-President of the United States, William McKinley being the candidate for President, and was elected. The shooting of President McKinley on September 6, 1901, proved fatal on September 14 following, and Roosevelt took the oath of President at Buffalo, N. Y., on that day. He was elected in 1904 to fill the President's chair again, but in 1908 refused again to be a candidate, successfully urging that William H. Taft receive the Republican nomination. After a hunting trip in Africa and a triumphal progress through Europe at its conclusion, he returned to the United States only to break with President Taft, on the ground that the latter was failing to carry out the Rooseveltian policies. In 1912, Roosevelt attempted again to gain the Republican nomination for President, but in spite of the great popular support afforded him in his campaign was rejected by the national Republican convention. Claiming

215

6637

that he had been deprived of the nomination by fraud, he seceded from the Republican Party and formed the Progressive Party to contest the election of 1912. Although defeated by Wilson, the Democratic nominee, Roosevelt ran second, gaining more popular and electoral votes than the regular Republican nominee, Taft. With the outbreak of the World War, Roosevelt soon took a strong anti-German position, bitterly criticizing the Wilson administration for delay in calling Germany to account. He became active in the movements for preparedness and universal military training. After the United States entered the war, he tried unsuccessfully to be given command of a volunteer regiment in France. He died suddenly at his home at Oyster Bay, New York, on January 6,

1919.

INAUGURAL ADDRESS AS VICE-PRESIDENT.

THE history of free government is in large part the history of those representative legislative bodies in which, from the earliest times, free government has found its loftiest expression. They must ever hold a peculiar and exalted position in the record which tells how the great nations of the world have endeavored to achieve and preserve orderly freedom. No man can render to his fellows greater service than is rendered by him who, with fearlessness and honesty, with sanity and disinterestedness, does his life work as a member of such a body. Especially is this the case when the legislature in which the service is rendered is a vital part in the governmental machinery of one of those world powers to whose hands, in the course of the ages, is intrusted a leading part in shaping the destinies of mankind. For weal or for woe, for good or for evil, this is true of our own mighty nation. Great privileges and great powers are ours, and heavy are the responsibilities that go with these privileges and these powers. Accordingly as we do well or ill, so shall mankind in the future be raised or cast down. We belong to a young nation, already of giant strength, yet whose political strength is but a forecast of the power that is to come. We stand supreme in a continent, in a hemisphere. East and west we look across the two great oceans toward the larger world life in which, whether we will or not, we must take an everincreasing share. And as, keen-eyed, we gaze into the coming years, duties, new and old, rise thick and fast to confront us from within and from without. There is every reason why we should face these duties with a sober appreciation alike of their importance and of their difficulty. But there is also every reason for facing them with highhearted resolution and eager and confident faith in our capacity to do them aright. A great work lies already to the hand of this genera tion; it should count itself happy, indeed, that to it is given the