I go   My Brother Theodore Roosevelt

dow while General Wheeler, son of the South, veteran of the Civil War, and Theodore Roosevelt, son of the North, who had so lately led his famous regiment through the Cuban jungles in close proximity to General Wheeler, told story after story of the way in which, shoulder to shoulder, they had buried the old differences in the new co-operation.

In May, 1899, I received one of the comparatively few letters which came to me while my brother was governor, for we met so frequently that we rarely wrote. The following letter, coming as it did at the end of his first year of service as governor of New York State, is of special interest.

"Darling Corinne," he says, "your letter touched me deeply. It was so good to catch a glimpse of you the other day. I have accomplished a certain amount for good this year. I want to see you and go over it all at length with you. In a way, there is a good deal that is disappointing about it because I had to act, especially towards the end, against the wishes of the machine people who have really given me my entire support, and with the reformers, labor and otherwise, who are truly against me whenever it comes down to anything really important to me. We have just returned from a really delightful driving trip to a quaint, clean, little inn at Crooked Lake, some eighteen miles off. We drove out there Saturday with every child except Quentin, and back again on Sunday. Everything went off without a hitch and Edith and I enjoyed it as much as the children. ... My love to Douglas and to blessed little Corinne. Ever yours, T. R."

Nothing was more discouraging to my brother during his long and varied career than the fact that the so-called reformers were frequently so visionary that they were rarely, if ever, to be counted upon where an effort to achieve a distinct practical purpose was concerned, but the disappointments which he perpetually endured from this attribute never induced him to yield to the machine politicians unless he felt that by so doing he could achieve the higher end for which he always worked.

The Rough Rider Storms the Capitol igi

A little later in May of that same year, 1899, he writes me in patient answer to various questions: "In reference to my attitude on the bills that have not passed, there are hundreds of people to whom, if I had time, I should explain my attitude, but I have not the time. I have the gravest kind of doubts, for instance, as to the advantages to the State of our High School system, as at present carried out. . . . I strongly believe that there has been a tendency amongst some of the best educators recently to divert from mechanical trades, people who ought, for their own sake, to keep in at the mechanical trades." He was always so willing to answer my questions, even when pressed by many harassing affairs.

From Oyster Bay, on July 17, 1899, he writes as one freed temporarily from the cares of state, and speaking of my eldest boy, who was then sixteen, he says: "I am afraid it is dull here for Teddy. You see, we have no one here quite his age and he has passed the time when such a simple pleasure as a scramble dawn Cooper's Bluff appears enthralling, although I take him down it nevertheless. He is a very fine fellow.... I have been giving him information about his hunting trip." Again the painstaking effort to be helpful to me and mine, and, indeed, all those who needed his help or advice.

On December 18, having returned to Albany, he plans a hurried trip to New York, and writes characteristically: "On Thursday, December 21st, may I have dinner at seven o'clock? If you are going out, do remember, that seriously, I am quite as happy with bread and milk as with anything else. Ever yours, Theodore Roosevelt." What could be more unusual than the governor of New York State being "quite as happy with bread and milk as with anything else" ! And I really think he was rather happier with bread and milk than with anything else, much to the occasional discomfort of the fastidious companions who sometimes ran across his rather primitive path.

My last letter of that year, and, indeed, of the period during which he was governor, was late in December, 1899, and it ran