78   My Brother Theodore Roosevelt

a refractory female, mouse in hand, corner her, and bang the mouse very near her face until she was thoroughly convinced of the wickedness of her actions. Here is a view of such a scene.

I am getting along very well with German and studying really hard. Your loving T. R., Secretary and Librarian of Roosevelt Museum. (Shall I soon hail you as a brother, I mean sister member of the Museum?)"

Evidently the carnivorous animal with horns was a steppingstone to membership in the exclusive Roosevelt Museum !

The Dresden memories include many happy excursions, happy in spite of the fact that they were sometimes taken because of poor "Teedie's" severe attacks of asthma. On June 29th he writes his father: "I have a conglomerate of good news and bad news to report to you; the former far outweighs the latter, however. I am at present suffering from a slight attack of asthma. However, it is only a small attack and except for the fact that I cannot speak without blowing like an abridged

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The Dresden Literary American Club 79

hippopotamus, it does not inconvenience me very much. We are

now studying hard and everything is systematized. Excuse

my writing, the asthma has made my hand tremble awfully."

The asthma of which he makes so light became unbearable, and

the next letter, on June 30 from the Bastei in Saxon Switzer

land, says: "You will doubtless be surprised at the heading of

this letter, but as the asthma did not get any better, I concluded

to come out here. Elliott and Corinne and Fraulein Anna and

Fraulein Emma came with me for the excursion. We started in the train and then got out at a place some distance below

these rocks where we children took horses and came up here, the two ladies following on foot. The scenery on the way and all about here was exceedingly bold and beautiful. All the mountains, if they deserve the name of mountains, have scarcely any gradual decline. They descend abruptly and precipitously to the plain. In fact, the sides of the mountains in most parts are bare while the tops are covered with pine forests with here and there jagged conical peaks rising from the foliage. There are no long ranges, simply a number of sharp high hills rising from a green fertile plain through which the river Elbe wanders. You can judge from this that the scenery is really magnificent. I have been walking in the forests collecting butterflies. I could not but be struck with the difference between the animal life of these forests and the palm groves of Egypt, (auld lang sync now). Although this is in one of the wildest parts of Saxony and South Germany, yet I do not think the proportion is as much as one here for twenty there or around Jericho, and the difference in proportion of species is even greater,-still the woods are by no means totally devoid of inhabitants. Most of these I had become acquainted with in Syria, and a few in Egypt. The only birds I had not seen before were a jay and a bullfinch."

The above letter shows how true the boy was to his marked tastes and his close observation of nature and natural history !

After his return from the Bastei my brother's asthma was somewhat less troublesome, and, to show the vital quality which

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