The history of the last thirty years, its manners and customs
and its leading events and inventions, cannot be written
truthfully without reference to the records which he has left,
to his special articles and to his letters. Read over again
the Queen's Jubilee, the Czar's Coronation, the March of the
Germans through Brussels, and see for yourself if I speak too
zealously, even for a friend, to whom, now that R. H. D. is
dead, the world can never be the same again.
But I did not set out to estimate his genius. That matter
will come in due time before the unerring tribunal of
posterity.
One secret of Mr. Roosevelt's hold upon those who come into
contact with him is his energy. Retaining enough for his own
use (he uses a good deal, because every day he does the work
of five or six men), he distributes the inexhaustible
remainder among those who most need it. Men go to him tired
and discouraged, he sends them away glad to be alive, still
gladder that he is alive, and ready to fight the devil himself
in a good cause. Upon his friends R. H. D. had the same
effect. And it was not only in proximity that he could
distribute energy, but from afar, by letter and cable. He had
some intuitive way of knowing just when you were slipping into
a slough of laziness and discouragement.
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