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Home  »  Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen  »  Page 172

Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.

Page 172

studied and thought it all out, and when the chance came he was ready for it and took it. That is all there ever was in “Roosevelt’s luck”; and that is about all there is in this luck business, anyhow, as I have said before.
  The chance came to one man beside him who was ready, and the world is the better for it. I saw the growing friendship between the two that year in Washington, and was glad; for Leonard Wood is another man to tie to, as one soon finds out who knows him. They met there for the first time, but in one brief year they grew to be such friends that when the command of the regiment was offered Roosevelt, he asked for second place under Wood; for Wood had seen service in the field, as Roosevelt had not. He had earned the medal of honor for undaunted courage and great ability in the arduous campaigns against the Apaches. Both earned their promotion in battle afterward. I liked to see them together because they are men of the same strong type. When Roosevelt writes of his friend that, “like so many of the gallant fighters with whom it was later my good fortune to serve, he combined in a very high degree the qualities of entire manliness