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Ho My Brother Theodore Roosevelt

Miss Rose Saltonstall and Miss Alice Lee, and drive home by moonlight after tea. I have begun studying fairly hard now, and shall keep it up until Christmas. I am afraid I shall not be able to come home for Thanksgiving; I really have my hands full, especially now that my Political Economy Professor wishes me to start a Finance Club, which would be very interesting indeed, and would do us all a great deal of good, but which will also take up a great deal of time. Of course, I spend a good deal of my spare time in the Porcellian Club which is great fun. Night before last, Harry Shaw and I gave a little supper up there, the chief items on the bill of fare were partridges and Burgundy, I, confining myself to the partridges. I am going to cut Sunday school today for the second time this year, but when the weather is so beautiful as this, I like every now and then to spend Sunday with a friend. Harry Chapin is going to take my class for me today. Good-bye sweet one,

YOUR LOVING TEDO.


Here again we see the growth of the young man, the growth of his influence in his class, for it is to him that the Political Economy professor turns to start a finance club, and we see also the proportionate all-round development, for not only does he read poetry, start finance clubs, differ with Mill and Ferrier on abstract subjects, but also joins with Harry Shaw in a little supper of partridges and Burgundy-he confining himself, I would have my readers know, to the partridges ! Theodore Roosevelt was growing in every way and especially becoming the more all-round man, and it was well that this growth should take place, for if the all-round man can still keep focussed ideals and strong determination to achieve in individual directions, it is because of the all-round qualities that he becomes the leader of men. Again the happy Christmas holidays came, but this time shadowed by the great blank made by my father's loss, and in February, 1879, he writes again-now of happy coastingparties at the Saltonstalls', where began his intimate relation

College Chums   III

Ship with lovely Alice Lee, who later became his wife. One can see the merry young people flying, as he says, "like the wind," on their long toboggans, and then having a gay dance at the hospitable house of Mrs. Lee.

In March he writes: "I only came out second best in the

sparring contest, but I do not care very much for I have had uncommonly good luck in everything this year from studies to society. I enjoyed my trip to Maine very much indeed; of course, I fell behind in my studies, but by working pretty hard last week, I succeeded in nearly catching up again." This trip to Maine cemented the great friendship between my brother and those splendid backwoodsmen, Bill Sewall and Will Dow, who were later to be partners in his ranching venture in the Far West. Bill Sewall was a strong influence in my brother's young manhood, and for him great admiration was conceived by the young city boy and, later, by the college student. The splendid, simple, strong man of the woods, though not having had similar educational advantages, was still so earnest a reader and so natural a philosopher that his attitude toward books and life had lasting influence over his young companion.

About this same time, March, 1879, my brother wrote me one of the sweetest and most characteristic of his little loveletters. It was dated from the Porcellian Club on March 28, and enclosed a diminutive birch-bark book of poetry, and the letter ran as follows: "Wee Pussy, I came across such a funny, wee book of poetry today, and I send it to a wee, funny Kitty Coo, with Teddy's best love." The page on which the sweet words are written is yellow, but the little birch-bark book is still intact, and the great love engendered by the tender thought of, and expression of that thought to, his sister is even deeper than when the sweet words were actually written.

On May 3 he writes in a humorous vein: "Pet Pussie: At last the deed is done and I have shaved off my whiskers ! The consequence, I am bound to add, is that I look like a dissolute democrat of the Fourth Ward; I send you some tintypes I had

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