i6   My Brother Theodore Roosevelt

' Thee' comes, for you can hardly imagine what a wanting feeling I have when you are gone.

"Mother is out in the entry talking to one of the `Crackers.' While I was dressing mother brought in a sweet rose and I have it in my breast pin. I have picked one of the leaves off just this moment and send it to you-for Thee-the roses are out in beautiful profusion and I wish you could see them...."

A year and a half in the cold North had not dimmed the ardor of affection between the young couple.

We children of the nursery in 28 East loth Street loved nothing better than to make my mother and aunt tell us the story of the gay wedding at the old home near Atlanta. I remember still the thrill of excitement with which I used to listen to the details of that wonderful week before the wedding when all the bridesmaids and ushers gathered at the homestead, and every imaginable festivity took place.

One of my mother's half-brothers had just returned from Europe, and fell in love at first sight with one of her beautiful bridesmaids, already, alas ! engaged to another and much older man, not a member of the wedding-party. My child's heart suffered unwarranted pangs at the story of the intense attraction of these two young people for each other, and I always felt that I could see the lovely bridesmaid riding back with the man to whom she had unwittingly given her heart, under the Southern trees dripping with hanging moss. The romantic story

ended tragically in an unwilling marriage, a duel, and much that was unfortunate.

But my mother and my father had no such complications in their own lives, and the Southern girl who went away with her Northern lover never regretted that step, although much that was difficult and troublous came into their early married life because of the years of war from 1861 to 1865, when Martha Bulloch's brothers fought for the South and Theodore Roosevelt did splendid and unselfish work in upholding the principles for which the North was giving its blood and brawn.

The Nursery and Its Deities   17

The fighting blood of James Dunwoody and Irvine Bulloch

was the same blood infused through their sister into the veins

of their young kinsman, the second Theodore Roosevelt, and

showed in him the same glowing attributes. The gallant atti

tude of their mother, Mrs. Stephens Bulloch, also had its share in the making of her famous grandson.

Her son Irvine was only a lad of sixteen, while her stepson, James, was much older and was already a famous naval blockaderunner when she parted from them. Turning to her daughter Anna she prayed that she might never live to know if Irvine were killed or Richmond taken by the Northern army. I cannot but rejoice that her life passed away before such news could come to her. It must have been bitter, indeed, for her under these circumstances to face the necessity of accepting the bread of her Northern son-in-law, and it speaks volumes for the characters of both that during the whole war there was never a moment of estrangement between them or between my father and his lovely sister-in-law, Anna Bulloch, who became, because of the fact that she lived with us during those early years of our lives, one of the most potent influences of our childhood.

I, myself, remember nothing of the strain of those troubled days; but my aunt has often told me of the bedtime hour in the nursery when a certain fair-haired, delicate little boy, hardly four years old, would kneel at her side to say his evening prayer, and feeling that she would not dare interrupt his petition to the Almighty, would call down in baby tones and with bent head the wrath of the Almighty upon the rebel troops. She said that she could never forget the fury in the childish voice when he would plead with Divine Providence to "grind the Southern troops to powder."

This same lovely aunt taught us our letters at her knee, in

that same nursery, having begged, in return for my father's hos

pitality, that she should be accepted as our first instructress,

and not only did she teach us the three R's, but many and many