Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
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| Royal Navy,” and there it stands to-day, unchallenged. |
| So with work and with play and with the class politics in which Theodore took a vigorous hand, the four years wore away as one. He was, by the way, not a good speaker in those days, I am told; but such speeches as he made—and he never farmed the duty out when it was his to do—were very much to the point. One is remembered yet with amusement by a distinguished lawyer in this city. He had been making an elaborate and as he thought lucid argument in class-meeting, and sat down, properly proud of the impression he must have made; when up rose Theodore Roosevelt. |
| “I have been listening, Mr. Chairman,” he spoke, “and, so far as I can see, not one word of what Mr.—-has said has any more to do with this matter than has the man in the moon. It is—” but the class was in a roar, and what “it was” the indignant previous speaker never learned. |
| But, as I said, the years passed, and, having graduated, Roosevelt went abroad to spend a year with alternate study in Germany and mountain-climbing in Switzerland by way of |