Early in April, there is one hillside near us which glows like a tender flame with the white of the bloodroot. About the same time, we find the shy mayflower, the trailing arbutus. And although we rarely pick wild flowers, one member of the household always plucks a little bunch of mayflowers to send to a friend working in Panama, whose soul hungers for the northern Spring. Then there are shadblow and delicate anemones about the time of the cherry blossoms. The brief glory of the apple orchards follows. And then the thronging dogwoods fill the forests with their radiance. And so flowers follow flowers, until the springtime splendour closes with the laurel and the evanescent honey-sweet locust bloom. The late summer flowers follow, the flaunting lilies, and cardinal flowers, and marshmallows, and pale beach rosemary; and the goldenrod and the asters, when the afternoons shorten and we again begin to think of fires in the wide fireplaces. _Theodore Roosevelt_ THE CHILDREN OF SAGAMORE HILL Mrs. Roosevelt looked after the place itself. She supervised the farming, and the flower gardens were her especial care. The children were now growing up, and from the time when they could toddle, they took their place--a very large place--in the life of the home. Roosevelt described the intense satisfaction he had in teaching the boys what his father had taught him. As soon as they were large enough, they rode their horses, they sailed on the Cove and out into the Sound. They played boys’ games, and through him, they learned very young to observe nature. In his college days, he had intended to be a naturalist, and natural history remained his strongest avocation. And so he taught his children to know the birds and animals, the trees, plants, and flowers of Oyster Bay and its neighbourhood. They had their pets--Kermit, one of the boys, carried a pet rat in his pocket. Three things Roosevelt required of them all: obedience, manliness, and truthfulness. _William Roscoe Thayer_ OFF WITH JOHN BURROUGHS _From Roosevelt’s Autobiography_ One April, I went to Yellowstone Park, when the snow was still very deep, and I took John Burroughs with me. I wished to show him the big game of the Park, the wild creatures that have become so astonishingly tame and tolerant of human presence. In the Yellowstone, the animals seem always to behave as one wishes them to! It is always possible to see the sheep, and deer, and antelope, and also the great herds of elk, which are shyer than the smaller beasts. In April, we found the elk weak after the short commons and hard living of Winter. Once, without much difficulty, I regularly rounded up a big band of them so that John Burroughs could look at them. I do not think, however, that he cared to see them as much as I did.