All through the spring of 1908 the question as to his successor in the White House was constantly in his mind. After serious thought he had come to the conclusion that of the men closest to him, William Howard Taft, who had done splendid work as governor in the Philippines and had been an able lieutenant in the work of the Roosevelt administration, would most conscientiously carry out the policies he thought vital for the country. This belief did not in any way mean that he wished Mr. Taft to be an automaton or dummy, possible of manipulation, but he felt that his then secretary of war was more thoroughly in sympathy with the policies which he believed to be the right policies for our country than any other man except the secretary of state, Mr. Elihu Root, whose possible election to the presidency he felt would be very doubtful. Many have criticised in later years, especially after the trouble in 1912, his choice of Mr. Taft to succeed him. There came out at one time an article in the periodical _Life_ which, to my mind, explained well the confidence which my brother placed in almost every man who worked with him. The article said approximately: “The reason that Theodore Roosevelt occasionally made mistakes in feeling that some of his associates in the work of the government would continue to be what he believed them to be, is as follows: _While_ any individual was working with Mr. Roosevelt, in fact, _under_ Mr. Roosevelt, the latter had the power of inspiring the said individual with his own acuteness, his own energy, his own ability. The person, therefore, frequently shone with a reflex light, a light which seemed to Mr. Roosevelt to originate in him, but in fact, came from his own unfailing sources. The consequence is that when some official who had seemed to Mr. Roosevelt to be almost a _rara avis_, was left to his own devices, and without the magnetic personality of his chief to inspire in him qualities not really indigenous in him, the change in what that official could accomplish was very marked.” Theodore Roosevelt was convinced that Mr. Taft was entirely in accord with the policies in which he so fully believed, and he had absolute confidence that in leaving in his hands the work which he had striven so hard to perfect, he was doing the best thing possible for the United States. At that time the people wanted to renominate my brother as President. He, however, was convinced that a renomination would have defeated the spirit of the unwritten law that no man should succeed himself a third time in succession. I was present at the convention in Chicago in 1908, and have fortunately retained a letter written to my children the very morning of that convention, which runs as follows: