And so ended the brief and glorious career of the Rough Riders, a career which has about it a touch of Roland and Robin Hood. These letters, written _at the time_, are valuable refutations of some bruited questions, and the very people who criticised certain actions of my brother, _at the time_, would be the first, I verily believe, now, to wish they had withheld their criticism. The depleted regiment, emaciated beyond words, returned to Montauk Point on Long Island, and my husband and I came down from the Adirondack Mountains to meet them at Camp Wyckoff. What a night we spent in a Red Cross tent at the camp! How we talked! How good it was to greet the gallant men again, so many of whom we knew and loved, and how infinitely interesting to come in contact with the wild Westerners about whose courage and determination my brother had written such glowing accounts. In the last letter my brother wrote to my husband from Santiago, the sentence “As for the political effect of my actions, I never can get on in politics” was soon to be refuted, for hardly had he arrived at Montauk than the politicians flocked surreptitiously to sound him as to the possibility of his running for governor of New York State, but that’s another story! The throb of parting from their leader was soon to be experienced by the gallant men who had followed Theodore Roosevelt so eagerly in the Cuban jungles. Picturesque to the end, the mustering out of the Rough Riders, under blue autumnal skies at Montauk Point, was the culmination of its romantic career, and many a ferocious fighter and wild bronco-buster turned from the last hand-clasp of his colonel with tears in the eyes which had not flinched before the fiercest Spanish onslaught. IX THE ROUGH RIDER STORMS THE CAPITOL AT ALBANY THE MAN WHO CAN (Old Saxon for “The King”) WRITTEN OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT How shall we know “the man who can”? (That was the Saxon phrase, they say.) Nay, perchance we shall find the man Close to our hearts and lives to-day! Soldier and patriot, strong of hand, Keen of vision to know the time, Quick and true to the hour’s demand, Poet, too, without rune or rhyme! Poet, because through mists of sin He finds the best as it yet shall be. Faces evil, yet dares begin To _live_ the good that his soul can see. Speech like an arrow, swift and straight, Strength that smites to the core of wrong; Smile that mocks but an adverse fate, Heart of a boy, that leaps to song. Honor scornful of life or place, Courage brightest in sordid strife; Such is the man whose first, best grace Was the simple crown of a stainless life! --Marion Couthouy Smith.