Immediately after that happy week at the White House, I was stricken by a great sorrow, the death of my youngest son by an accident. My brother came to me at once, and sustained me as no one else could have done, and his one idea during those next weeks was to make me realize his constant thought and love, even in the midst of those thrilling last days at the White House, when among other events he welcomed home the great fleet which had completed its circle of the world. A few days before the death of my boy, and immediately after that enchanting last visit to the house we had learned to regard as Theodore’s natural home, he wrote me the last letter I received from him dated from the White House. It was written February 19, 1909: “Darling Corinne: Just a line to tell you what I have already told you, of how we shall always think of you and thank you when we draw on the ‘Pigskin Library’ in Africa. It was too dear of you to give it to me. That last night was the pleasantest function we had ever held at the White House, and I am so glad that you and Douglas were there. Tell Douglas he cannot imagine how I have enjoyed the rides with him.” The above was typewritten, but inserted in his own handwriting at the end of the note were the characteristic lines: “You blessèd person. I have revelled in having you down here. T. R.” XIII WALL STREET HOPES EVERY LION WILL DO ITS DUTY THE LION THAT ROOSEVELT SHOT Now in Elysian woods, at last foregathered, Comrades, we range together, sire and sire, We who on earth were kings, and nobly fathered, And, regally, wore each his earth attire. How proudly at his heel in dawn or gloaming, With him, the lion-hearted, I am roaming! --Isabel Fiske Conant. A great though quiet and personal demonstration came to Theodore Roosevelt just before he sailed for Africa. The heart of the people turned to him with overwhelming affection and he received, during the last week in his own country, between fifteen and twenty thousand farewell letters. Hundreds of mothers wrote him that they felt as if their own son were leaving them, and that their prayers would follow him in his wanderings; hundreds of others wrote that they would not feel that the country would be safe until he should return--but the “big business” men (not the “great” business men) of Wall Street, according to the “bon mot” of some wag, “hoped every lion would do its duty.”