Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
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Archie heard him out. Appeal to his father direct was cut off—the policeman knew why. But Senator Lodge, who is next friend of the President and is supposed to have a “pull,” lives in Massachusetts Avenue, opposite Archie’s school. That was it.
“You come around,” were Archie’s directions to his friend, “to the Force School tomorrow, and we will see what Lodge can do about it.”
What “Lodge did” I don’t know. I know it would have been hard for me to resist.
It was the privilege of Mr. Roosevelt, when he was nearer home, to give the children at the Cove school their Christmas gifts, and the memory of those occasions is very lively in Oyster Bay. Mr. Roosevelt made a good Santa Claus, never better than when he was just home from the war, with San Juan hill for a background. That time he nearly took the boys’ breath away. Nowadays some one else has to take his place; the gifts come, as in the past, and the little “coves” are made happy. But the President comes into their lives only twice or three times a year—at Christmas and when he comes home for his vacation; perhaps on the Fourth of
