2   My Brother Theodore Roosevelt

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 loth 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 Nursery and Its Deities   3

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."

As far as I can see, the unpleasant adjective "horrid" was only adaptable to the five little boys from the usual standpoint of boyish mischief, untidiness, and general youthful irrepressibleness.

The youngest, my father, Theodore Roosevelt, often told us himself how he deplored the fate of being the "fifth wheel to the coach," and of how many a mortification he had to endure by wearing clothes cut down from the different shapes of his older brothers, and much depleted shoes about which, once, on overhearing his mother say, "These were Robert's, but will be a good change for Theodore," he protested vigorously, crying out that he was "tired of changes."

As the first Theodore grew older he developed into one of the most enchanting characters with whom I, personally, have ever come in contact; sunny, gay, dominant, unselfish, forceful, and versatile, he yet had the extraordinary power of being a focussed individual, although an "all-round" man. Nothing is as difficult as to achieve results in this world if one is filled full of great tolerance and the milk of human kindness. The person who achieves must generally be a one-ideaed individual, concentrated entirely on that one idea, and ruthless in his aspect toward other men and other ideas.

My father, in his brief life of forty-six years, achieved almost everything he undertook, and he undertook many things, but, although able to give the concentration which is necessary to achievement, he had the power of interesting himself in many things outside of his own special interests, and by the most delicate and comprehending sympathy made himself a factor in the lives of any number of other human beings.

My brother's great love for his humankind was a direct in-