Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
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| So he saw it, and so he loved it; loved it when the work was hard and dangerous; when on the ranchman’s occasional holiday he lay stretched before the blazing log-fire reading Shakespeare to the cowboys and eliciting the patronizing comment from one who followed broncho-busting as a trade, that “that ’ere feller Shakespeare saveyed human nature some.” Loved the land and loved its people, as they loved him, a man among men. He has drawn a picture of them in his “Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail,” from which I have quoted, that will stand as a monument to them in the days that are to come when they shall be no more. In that day we will value, too, the book, as a marvelous picture of a vanished day. |
| “To appreciate properly his fine, manly qualities, the wild rough-rider of the plains should be seen in his own home. There he passes his days; there he does his life-work; there, when he meets death, he faces it as he faces many other evils, with quiet, uncomplaining fortitude. Brave, hospitable, hardy and adventurous, he is the grim pioneer of our race; he prepares the way for the civilization from before whose face he must himself disappear. |