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Home  »  Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen  »  Page 274

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

Page 274

Testament, the Maccabees and the rest, with their battles in chronological order, and what they were about. The old warrior’s eyes kindled.
  “Well, I never!” he said, and took the paper up with an evident respect that contrasted comically with his gingerly way of before. The General of the Army will forgive me for telling on him. He has my heartiest friendship and regard. I expect to see him yet conduct a Sunday-school on Maccabean lines, and we shall all be glad. For that is what we and the Sunday-school want.
  But though ordinarily President Roosevelt is the most democratic of men, he does not lack a full measure of dignity when occasion requires it. The man whom I had seen telling stories of his regiment to a school full of little Italian boys in the Sullivan Street slum, had, a little while after the interview with the generals, to receive a delegation from the French people, and it happened that one of the guests of that day was present. He told me that he never was prouder of the President and of his people than when he saw him meet the distinguished strangers. And so were they. They