There used to be much discussion as to who persuaded Roosevelt, although he detested Blaine, to stand by the Republicans in 1884. Those were the days when very few of his critics understood that, in spite of his youth, he had already thought for himself on politics and had reached certain conclusions as to fundamental principles. These critics assumed that he must have been won over by Henry Cabot Lodge, with whom he had been intimate since his Harvard days, and who was supposed to be his political mentor. The truth is, however, that Roosevelt had formed his own opinion about bolting, and that he and Lodge, in discussing possibilities before they went to the Chicago Convention, had independently agreed that they must abide by the choice of the party there. They held, and a majority of men in similar position still hold, that delegates cannot in honor abandon the nominee chosen by the majority in a convention which they attend as delegates. If the rule, "My man, or nobody," were to prevail, there would be no use in holding conventions at all. And after that of 1884, George William Curtis, one of the chief leaders of the Independents, admitted that Roosevelt, in staying with the Republican Party, played the game fairly. While Curtis himself bolted and helped to organize the Mugwumps, Roosevelt, after his trip to the West, returned to New York and took a vigorous part in the campaign. Nevertheless, Roosevelt's decision, in 1884, to cleave to the Republican Party disappointed many of us. We thought of him as a lost leader. Some critics in their ignorance were inclined to impute false motives to him; but in time, the cloud of suspicion rolled away and his action in that crisis was not laid up against him. The election of Cleveland relieved him of seeming perfunctorily to uphold Blaine. CHAPTER IV. NATURE THE HEALER