of an active public career as Civil
Service Commissioner, Police Commissioner, member of his state
legislature, Governor of New York, delegate to the National Republican
Convention, Colonel of Rough Riders, Assistant Secretary of the Navy,
Vice-President and President of the United States.

Perhaps in some distant future he may become a myth or symbol, like
other mighty hunters of the beast, Nimrod and Orion and Tristram of
Lyonesse. Yet not so long as "African Game Trails" and the "Hunting
Trips of a Ranchman" endure, to lift the imagination to those noble
sports denied to the run of mortals by poverty, feebleness, timidity,
the engrossments of the humdrum, everyday life, or lack of enterprise
and opportunity. Old scraps of hunting song thrill us with the great
adventure: "In the wild chamois' track at break of day"; "We'll chase
the antelope over the plain"; "Afar in the desert I love to ride"; and
then we go out and shoot at a woodchuck, with an old double-barrelled
shotgun--and miss! If Roosevelt ever becomes a poet, it is while he is
among the wild creatures and wild landscapes that he loved: in the
gigantic forests of Brazil, or the almost unnatural nature of the
Rockies and the huge cattle ranches of the plains, or on the limitless
South African veldt, which is said to give a greater feeling of infinity
than the ocean even.

Roosevelt was so active a person--not to say so noisy and conspicuous;
he so occupied the centre of every stage, that, when he died, it was as
though a wind had fallen, a light had gone out, a military band had
stopped playing. It was not so much the death of an individual as a
general lowering in the vitality of the nation. America was less
America, because he was no longer here. He should have lived twenty
years more had he been willing to go slow, to loaf and invite his soul,
to feed that mind of his in a wise passiveness. But there was no repose
about him, and his pleasures were as strenuous as his toils. John
Burroughs tells us that he did not care for fishing, the contemplative
man's recreation. No contemplation for him, but action; no angling in a
clear stream for a trout or grayling; but the glorious, dangerous
excitement of killing big game--grizzlies, lions, African buffaloes,
mountain sheep, rhinoceroses, elephants. He never spared himself: he
wore himself out. But doubtless he would have chosen the crowded hour of
glorious life--or strife, for life and strife were with him the s