“Darling Corinne,” he says, “your letter touched me deeply. It was so good to catch a glimpse of you the other day. I have accomplished a certain amount for good this year. I want to see you and go over it all at length with you. In a way, there is a good deal that is disappointing about it because I had to act, especially towards the end, _against_ the wishes of the machine people who have really given me my entire support, and _with_ the reformers, labor and otherwise, who are truly against me whenever it comes down to anything really important to me. We have just returned from a really delightful driving trip to a quaint, clean, little inn at Crooked Lake, some eighteen miles off. We drove out there Saturday with every child except Quentin, and back again on Sunday. Everything went off without a hitch and Edith and I enjoyed it as much as the children.... My love to Douglas and to blessed little Corinne. Ever yours, T. R.” Nothing was more discouraging to my brother during his long and varied career than the fact that the so-called reformers were frequently so visionary that they were rarely, if ever, to be counted upon where an effort to achieve a distinct practical purpose was concerned, but the disappointments which he perpetually endured from this attribute never induced him to yield to the machine politicians unless he felt that by so doing he could achieve the higher end for which he always worked. A little later in May of that same year, 1899, he writes me in patient answer to various questions: “In reference to my attitude on the bills that have not passed, there are hundreds of people to whom, if I had time, I should explain my attitude, but I have not the time. I have the gravest kind of doubts, for instance, as to the advantages to the State of our High School system, as at present carried out.... I strongly believe that there has been a tendency amongst some of the best educators recently to divert from mechanical trades, people who ought, for their own sake, to keep in at the mechanical trades.” He was always so willing to answer my questions, even when pressed by many harassing affairs. From Oyster Bay, on July 17, 1899, he writes as one freed temporarily from the cares of state, and speaking of my eldest boy, who was then sixteen, he says: “I am afraid it is dull here for Teddy. You see, we have no one here quite his age and he has passed the time when such a simple pleasure as a scramble down Cooper’s Bluff appears enthralling, although I take him down it nevertheless. He is a very fine fellow.... I have been giving him information about his hunting trip.” Again the painstaking effort to be helpful to me and mine, and, indeed, all those who needed his help or advice.