Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
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| that sat upon the faces of the gold-laced company of distinguished citizens. |
| But I was thinking of President Roosevelt’s affection for children. It is just the experience of an unspoiled nature that reaches out for what is pure and natural. I remember that the day we were making the trip of the tenement-house sweat-shops together, we came, in one of the Italian flats, upon a little family scene. A little girl was going to confirmation, all dressed in white, with flowers and veil. She stood by her grandmother’s chair in the dingy room, a radiant vision, with reverently bowed head as the aged hand was laid in trembling benediction upon her brow. The Governor stopped on the threshold and surveyed the scene with kindling eyes. |
| “Sweet child,” he said, and learned her name and age from the parents, who received us with the hospitable courtesy of their people. “Tell them,” to the interpreter, “that I am glad I came in to see her, and that I believe she will be always as good and innocent as she is now, and a very great help to her mother and her venerable grandmother.” That time I did get a chance to tell them who it was |