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Home  »  Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen  »  Page 82

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

Page 82

believe it true upon such evidence, and that he would follow his note in person within the hour. He despatched the letter to Medora, where the Marquis was, by one of his men, and, true to his word, started himself immediately after. Before he came in sight of the little cow-town he was met by a courier traveling in haste from the Marquis with a gentleman’s apology and a cordial invitation to dine with him in town. And that was all there was of the sensational “duel” with the French nobleman.
  How small this world is, to be sure, that we make so much of! It was only yesterday that a woman whom I had never seen spoke to me on a Third Avenue street-car and told me that she had been in the house of the Marquis de Mores at that very time. She was a Mrs. Price, a nurse, she told me. Of course she knew Roosevelt. “The cowboys loved him,” she said, and added: “Poor Marquis, he was a nice gentleman, but he was not so level-headed a man as Mr. Roosevelt.”
  The physical vigor for which he had longed and labored had come to him in full measure now, and with it the confidence that comes of being prepared to defend one’s rights. The