Theodore Roosevelt, whose name later became the synonym of virile health and vigor, was a fragile, patient sufferer in those early days of the nursery in 20th Street. I can see him now struggling with the effort to breathe--for his enemy was that terrible trouble, asthma--but always ready to give the turbulent “little ones” the drink of water, book, or plaything which they vociferously demanded, or equally ready to weave for us long stories of animal life--stories closely resembling the jungle stories of Kipling--for Mowgli had his precursor in the brain of the little boy of seven or eight, whose knowledge of natural history even at that early age was strangely accurate, and whose imagination gave to the creatures of forest and field impersonations as vivid as those which Rudyard Kipling has made immortal for all time. We used to sit, Elliott and I, on two little chairs, near the higher chair which was his, and drink in these tales of endless variety, and which always were “to be continued in our next”--a serial story which never flagged in interest for us, though sometimes it continued from week to week, or even from month to month. It was in the nursery that he wrote, at the age of seven, the famous essay on “The Foregoing Ant.” He had read in Wood’s “Natural History” many descriptions of various species of ant, and in one instance on turning the page the author continued: “The foregoing ant has such and such characteristics.” The young naturalist, thinking that this particular ant was unique, and being specially interested in its forthgoing character, decided to write a thesis on “The Foregoing Ant,” to the reading of which essay he called in conclave “the grown people.” One can well imagine the tender amusement over the little author, an amusement, however, which those wise “grown people” of 28 East 20th Street never let degenerate into ridicule. No memories of my brother could be accurate without an analysis of the personalities who formed so big a part of our environment in childhood, and I feel that my father, the first Theodore Roosevelt, has never been adequately described. He was the son of Cornelius Van Shaack and Margaret Barnhill Roosevelt, whose old home on the corner of 14th Street and Broadway was long a landmark in New York City. Cornelius Van Shaack Roosevelt was a typical merchant of his day, fine and true and loyal, but ultraconservative in many ways; and his lovely wife, to whom he addressed, later, such exquisite poems that I have always felt that they should have been given more than private circulation, was a Pennsylvanian of Quaker blood. The first Theodore Roosevelt was the youngest of five sons, and I remember my mother used to tell me how friends of her mother-in-law once told her that Mrs. Cornelius Van Shaack Roosevelt was always spoken of as “that lovely Mrs. Roosevelt” with those “_five horrid boys_.”