We were on our way over to see Assistant Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt. He is not in the State, Army and Navy building where Mr. Denby is, but some ten minutes' walk away, in the long, rather fragile looking Navy Department building constructed during the War. Here numerous gold-braided officers continually come and go. The building is filled with very beautiful models of fighting ships. At one side of Roosevelt's door is a model of the _San Diego_, at the other side a "sample U. S. Navy Patrol Boat." As we gave him our cards a young man asked us if we knew "the Colonel." An old Washington newspaper man had told us that morning, "He will go far under his own hat." Several very large men, also waiting, were smoking very large cigars while we waited. While all male visitors to public offices in Washington appear to smoke continually, those in government positions apparently do not smoke during office hours. And government business hours there seem to be queer. The Senate goes into session at just about lunch time. The President seems to be around in his business office throughout the whole of the middle of the day. And the office of the Secretary of State telephones you at six o'clock Saturday night. The young man showed us in. Mr. Roosevelt arose from his desk, shook hands very cordially, said "How do you do?" sat down again and at the moment said nothing further. It was up to us to swing the conversation. So my friend launched out: We had nothing to do with affairs of state, had no design to interview him as to naval matters, simply were curious to see if we should find him eating an apple and wearing white sox, or what. With hearty good nature, Mr. Roosevelt replied that he was not eating an apple because he did not have one to eat, and that he had only once worn white sox, woolen ones, when a boy at school. He was very neatly dressed in a suit of quiet dark material, wore rich dark red tie, with a stick pin to it. Curiously weather beaten looking complexion. As he has just published a book we asked him if he intended to carry on more or less of a literary career together with his public life. He said, well, perhaps more or less. But he wouldn't have time for much such work. He "practised" writing on Saturdays and Sundays, but mainly for the purpose of attaining to clearness in expressing himself. He insisted that the great bulk of his father's writing had been done _before_ the full course of his political activities and _after_ he had retired from them. After we had arisen to go he walked up and down the room with us, with a somewhat arm-in-arm effect. Declared we should know a friend of his up in Boston, because we'd "like him." Said to look in on him again any time when in Washington. Very affable young man.