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Home  »  Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen  »  Page 287

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

Page 287

from Women’s Christian Temperance Union branches East and West until Secretary Loeb published the facts, which were these: that no sideboard had ever been presented to Mrs. Hayes, but an ice-pitcher with stand, long since placed in a Cincinnati museum, where it now is. The sideboard was a piece of furniture bought in the ordinary avenues of trade during President Arthur’s term, and of no account on any ground. But long after the true story had been told the resolutions kept coming; for all I know, another one is being prepared now in some place which the lie on its travels has just reached.
  I know what it was that hurt, for I had seen Roosevelt recoil from the offer to strike an enemy in the Police Department a foul blow, as from an unclean thing, though that enemy never fought fair. He does. “I never look under the table when I play,” he said, when the spoilsmen beset him in their own way at Albany; “they can beat me at that game every time. Face to face, I can defend myself and make a pretty good fight, but any weakling can murder me. Remember this, however, that if I am hit that way very often, I will take to