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Home  »  Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen  »  Page 173

Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.

Page 173

with entire uprightness and cleanliness of character; it was a pleasure to deal with a man of high ideals who scorned everything mean and base, and who also possessed those robust and hardy qualities of body and mind, for the lack of which no merely negative virtue can ever atone”—he draws as good a picture of himself as his best friend could have done. While the Roosevelts and the Woods come when they are needed, as they always have come, our country is safe.
  Together they sailed away in the springtime, southward through the tropic seas, toward the unknown. “We knew not whither we were bound, nor what we were to do; but we believed that the nearing future held for us many chances of death and hardship, of honor and renown. If we failed, we would share the fate of all who fail; but we were sure that we would win, that we should score the first great triumph in a mighty world-movement.” The autumn days were shortening when I stood at Montauk Point scanning the sea for the vessels that should bring them back. Within the year one was to sit at Albany, the Governor of his own, the Empire State; the