8o   My Brother Theodore Roosevelt

could never be downed, I quote a letter from "Ellie" to his aunt: "Suddenly an idea has got hold of Teedie that we did not know enough German for the time that we have been here, so he has asked Miss Anna to give him larger lessons and of course I could not be left behind so we are working harder than ever in our lives." How unusual the evidence of leadership is in this young boy of not yet fifteen, who already inspires his pleasureloving little brother to work "harder than ever before in our lives." Many memories crowd back upon me as I think of those days in the kind German family. The two sons, Herr Oswald and Herr Ulrich, would occasionally return from Leipsig where they were students, and always brought with them an aroma of duels and thrilling excitement. Ulrich, in college, went by the nickname of "Der Rothe Herzog," The Red Duke, the appellation being applied to him on account of his scarlet hair, his equally rubicund face, and a red gash down the left side of his face from the sword of an antagonist. Oswald had a very extraordinary expression due to the fact that the tip end of his nose had been nearly severed from his face in one of these same, apparently, every-day affairs, and the physician who had restored the injured feature to its proper environment had made the mistake of sewing it a little on the bias, which gave this kind and gentle young man a very sinister expression. In spite of their practice in the art of duelling and a general ferocity of appearance, they were sentimental to the last extent, and many a time when I have been asked by Herr Oswald and Herr Ulrich to read aloud to them from the dear old books "Gold Elsie" or "Old Mam'selle's Secret," they would fall upon the sofa beside me and dissolve in tears over any melancholy or romantic situation. Their sensibilities and sentimentalities were perfectly incomprehensible to the somewhat matter-of-fact and distinctly courageous trio of young Americans, and while we could not understand the spirit which made them willing, quite casually, to cut off each other's noses, we could even less understand their lachrymose response to sentimental tales and their genuine terror

The Dresden Literary American Club 8 i

should a thunder-storm occur. "Ellie" describes in another letter how all the family, in the middle of the night, because of a sudden thunder-storm, crawled in between their mattresses and woke the irrelevant and uninterested small Americans from their slumbers to incite them to the same attitude of mind and body. His description of "Teedie" under these circumstances is very amusing, for he says: "Teedie woke up only for one minute, turned over and said, 'Oh-it's raining and my hedgehog will be all spoiled."' He was speaking of a hedgehog that he had skinned the day before and hung out of his window, but even his hedgehog did not keep him awake and, much to the surprise of the frightened Minckwitz family, he fell back into a heavy sleep.

In spite of the sentimentalities, in spite of the racial differences of attitude about many things, the American children owe much to the literary atmosphere that surrounded the family life of their kind German friends. In those days in Dresden the most beautiful representations of Shakespeare were given in German, and, as the hour for the theatre to begin was six o'clock in the evening, and the plays were finished by nine o'clock, many were the evenings when we enjoyed "Midsummer Night's Dream," "Twelfth Night," "The Taming of the Shrew," and many more of Shakespeare's wonderful fanciful creations, given as they were with unusual sympathy and ability by the actors of the German Theatre.

Perhaps because of our literary studies and our ever-growing interest in our own efforts in the famous Dresden Literary American Club, we decided that the volume which became so precious to us should, after all, have no commercial value, and in July I write to my aunt the news which I evidently feel will be a serious blow to her-that we have decided that we cannot sell the poems and stories gathered into that immortal volume

About the middle of the summer there was an epidemic of smallpox in Dresden and my mother hurriedly took us to the Engadine, and there, at Samaden, we lived somewhat the life