I went up-stairs, put on my “best bib and tucker,” and proceeded to go around the other way to the front door of the offices. As I rang the bell the dear old man who always opened the door greeted me warmly, and said: “Yes, Mrs. Douglas Robinson, your appointment is at 9. It is just time.” I went into the outer hall, where a number of the appointees of 9.15, 9.30, etc., were already waiting, to be surely on hand for their appointments, and in a moment or two Mr. Loeb opened the door of the private office of the President, and came out into the hall and said in a rather impersonal way, “Mrs. Douglas Robinson’s appointment,” and I was shown into the room. My brother was seated at a large table, and on it was every imaginable paper marked “Porto Rico.” As I entered he was still reading one of these papers. He looked up, and I almost felt a shock as I met what seemed to be a pair of perfectly opaque blue eyes. I could hardly believe they were the eyes of the brother with whom I had so lately parted, the eyes that had glistened as he recited the poems of Kipling and Swinburne, the eyes that had almost closed to see better the tiny breast-fluff of the fox-sparrow. These were rather cold eyes, the eyes of a just judge, eyes that were turned upon his sister as they would have been turned upon any other individual who came to him in connection with a question about which he must give his most careful and deliberate decision. He waved me to a chair, finished the paper he was reading, and then turning to me, his eyes still stern and opaque, he said: “I believe you have come to see me on business connected with Porto Rico. Kindly be as condensed as possible.” I decided to meet him on his own ground, and made my eyes as much like his as possible, and was as condensed as possible. Having listened carefully to my short story, he said: “Have you proof of this?” still rather sternly. Again I decided to answer as he asked, and I replied: “I should not be here, wasting your time and mine, did I not have adequate proof.” With that I handed him the notes made by the governor of Porto Rico, and proceeded to explain them. He became a little less severe after reading them, but no less serious, and turning to me more gently, said: “This is a very serious matter. I have got to be sure of the correctness of these statements. A man’s whole future hangs upon my decision.” For a moment I felt like an executioner, but realizing as I did the shocking and disgraceful behavior of the official in question, I knew that no sentimentality on my part should interfere with the important decision to be made, and I briefly backed up all that the governor had written. I can still hear the sound of the President’s pen as he took out the paper on which the man’s name was inscribed, and with one strong stroke effaced that name from official connection with Porto Rico forever. That was the way that Theodore Roosevelt did business with his sister.