My brother has written so much about his own ranch, and has given so vivid a description in his autobiography of the life led there, of the wonderful stretches of the Bad Lands, of the swaying cottonwood-trees, and the big fireplace in the Elkhorn Ranch sitting-room, around which he and his fellow ranchers gathered, exhausted by a long day’s cattle-herding or deer-hunting, that it hardly seems possible that I can add much to the picture already painted by his own facile hand: ranch life, however, viewed from the standpoint of the outsider or from that of the insider has a different quality, and thus no reminiscences of mine would be in any way complete were I not to describe my first delightful visit paid to Medora, Dakota, and the surrounding country, in 1890. Our party consisted of my brother and sister-in-law, my sister Mrs. Cowles, then Anna Roosevelt, our friend Robert Munro Ferguson, my husband and myself, and young George Cabot Lodge. The latter was the sixteen-year-old son of our valued friend Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, and was truly the “gifted son of a gifted father,” for later he was not only to earn fame as a poet, well known to his countrymen, but in his brief life--for alas! he died in the summer of 1909--his talents were recognized in other lands as well. I had been prepared by many tales for the charm and freedom and informal ease of life in the Bad Lands, and had often dreamed of going there; but, unlike most dreams, this one came true in an even more enchanting fashion than I had dared hope. Many had been the letters that my brother had written to me from Elkhorn Ranch several years previous to our journey. In June, 1886, he wrote: “I have never once had breakfast as late as four o’clock. Have been in the saddle all day, and have worked like a beaver, and am as rugged and happy as possible. While I do not see any very great future ahead, yet, if things go on as they are now going and have gone for the past three years, I think that each year I will net enough money to pay a good interest on the capital, and yet be adding slowly to my herd all the time. I think I have more than my capital on the ground, and this year I ought to be able to sell between two and three hundred head of steer and dry stock. I wish I could see all of you, but I certainly do enjoy the life. The other day while dining at the de Mores I had some cherries, the only fruit I have had since I left New York. I have lived pretty roughly.” I quote the above simply to show, what is not always understood, that my brother’s ranching venture was, from his standpoint, a perfectly just business enterprise, and, had not the extraordinarily severe winters intervened, his capital would not have been impaired. Writing that same summer, shortly after hearing of the birth of my baby girl, he says in his loving way: