The above is a most characteristic letter. Those who were nearest to him, like myself and my husband, and even Senator Lodge, were doubtful of his wisdom in leaving his important position (I mean important for the affairs of the country, not for himself) as assistant secretary of the navy to take active part in the war, should war come, but he himself knew quite well that being made of the fibre that he was, he must act up to what he had preached. Nothing is more absolutely Theodore Roosevelt, was ever more thoroughly Theodore Roosevelt, than that sentence. “I have a horror of the people who bark but don’t bite. If I am ever to accomplish anything worth doing in politics, or ever have accomplished it, it is because I act up to what I preach, and it does not seem to me that I would have the right in a big crisis not to act up to what I preach. At least I want you to believe that I am doing this conscientiously and not from merely selfish reasons or from an impulse of levity.” No sentence ever written by my brother more fitly expressed his attitude toward conviction and acting up to conviction. VIII COWBOY AND CLUBMAN A RHYME OF THE ROUGH RIDERS The ways of fate they had trod were as wide As the sea from the shouting sea, But when they had ranged them side by side, Strenuous, eager, and ardent-eyed, They were brothers in pluck, they were brothers in pride, As the veriest brethren be. They heard no bugle-peal to thrill As they crouched in the tangled grass, But the sound of bullets whirring shrill From hidden hollow and shrouded hill; And they fought as only the valiant will In the glades of Guasimas. Aye, they fought, let their blood attest!-- The blood of their comrades gone; Fought their bravest and fought their best, As when, like a wave, in their zealous zest They swept and surged o’er the sanguine crest Of the heights of San Juan. So here’s to them all--a toast and a cheer!-- From the greatest down to the least, The heroes who fronted the deadliest fear, Leader and lad, each volunteer, The men whom the whole broad land holds dear From the western sea to the east! --Clinton Scollard, 1898.