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Home  »  Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children  »  (To Mrs. Dora Watkins)

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children. 1919.

Christmas Present to His Old Nurse

(To Mrs. Dora Watkins)

White House, December 19, 1905.

DEAR DOLLY:
I wish you a merry Christmas, and want you to buy whatever you think you would like with the enclosed check for twenty dollars. It is now just forty years since you stopped being my nurse, when I was a little boy of seven, just one year younger than Quentin now is.

I wish you could see the children play here in the White House grounds. For the last three days there has been snow, and Archie and Quentin and their cousin, cunning little Sheffield Cowles, and their other cousin, Mr. John Elliott’s little girl, Helena, who is a perfect little dear, have been having all kinds of romps in the snow—coasting, having snowball fights, and doing everything—in the grounds back of the White House. This coming Saturday afternoon I have agreed to have a great play of hide-and-go-seek in the White House itself, not only with these children but with their various small friends.