So for almost six years pretty nearly everybody worth knowing crossed the Roosevelts' threshold, and they themselves quickly took their place in Washington society. Roosevelt's humor, his charm, his intensity, his approachableness, attracted even those who rejected his politics and his party. Bright sayings cannot be stifled, and his added to the gayety of more than one group. He was too discreet to give utterance to them all, but his private letters at that time, and always, glistened with his remarks on public characters. He said, for instance, of Senator X, whom he knew in Washington: He "looks like Judas, but unlike that gentleman, he has no capacity for remorse." When the Roosevelts returned to New York, where he became Police Commissioner in 1895, they made their home again at Oyster Bay. This was thirty miles by rail from the city, near enough to be easily accessible, but far enough away to deter the visits of random, curious, undesired callers. Later, when automobiles came in, Roosevelt motored to and from town. Mrs. Roosevelt looked after the place itself; she supervised the farming, and the flower gardens were her especial care. The children were now growing up, and from the time when they could toddle they took their place--a very large place--in the life of the home. Roosevelt described the intense satisfaction he had in teaching the boys what his father had taught him. As soon as they were large enough, they rode their horses, they sailed on the Cove and out into the Sound. They played boys' games, and through him they learned very young to observe nature. In his college days he had intended to be a naturalist, and natural history remained his strong est avocation. And so he taught his children to know the birds and animals, the trees, plants, and flowers of Oyster Bay and its neighborhood. They had their pets--Kermit, one of the boys, carried a pet rat in his pocket. Three things Roosevelt required of them all; obedience, manliness, and truthfulness. And I imagine that all these virtues were taught by affection and example, rather than by constant correction. For the family was wholly united, they did everything together; the children had no better fun than to accompany their father and mother, and there were a dozen or more young cousins and neighbors who went out with them too, forming a large, delighted family for whom "Uncle" or "Cousin Theodore " was leader and idol. And just as formerly, in the long winter nights on his ranch at Medora, he used to read aloud to the cowboys and hunters of what was then the Western Wilderness, so at Sagamore Hill, in the days of their childhood, he read or told stories to the circle of boys and girls.