te, he stood for the associative
principle as opposed to an extreme individualism. He was a practical
politician and therefore an honest partisan, feeling that he could work
more efficiently for good government within party lines than outside
them. He resigned from the Free Trade League because his party was
committed to the policy of protection. In 1884 he supported his party's
platform and candidate, instead of joining the Mugwumps and voting for
Cleveland, though at the National Republican Convention, to which he
went as a delegate, he had opposed the nomination of Blaine. I do not
believe that his motive in this decision was selfish, or that he quailed
under the snap of the party lash because he was threatened with
political death in case he disobeyed. Theodore Roosevelt was nobody's
man. He thought, as he frankly explained, that one who leaves his
faction for every slight occasion, loses his influence and his power for
good. Better to compromise, to swallow some differences and to stick to
the crowd which, upon the whole and in the long run, embodies one's
convictions. This is a comprehensible attitude, and possibly it is the
correct one for the man in public life who is frequently a candidate for
office. Yet I wish he could have broken with his party and voted for
Cleveland. For, ironically enough, it was Roosevelt himself who
afterward split his party and brought in Wilson and the Democrats.

Disregarding his political side and considering him simply as man of
letters, one seeks for comparisons with other men of letters who were at
once big sportsmen and big writers; Christopher North, for example:
"Christopher in his Aviary" and "Christopher in his Shooting Jacket."
The likeness here is only a very partial one, to be sure. The American
was like the Scotchman in his athleticism, high spirits, breezy
optimism, love of the open air, intense enjoyment of life. But he had
not North's roystering conviviality and uproarious Toryism; and the
kinds of literature that they cultivated were quite unlike.

Charles Kingsley offers a closer resemblance, though the differences
here are as numerous as the analogies. Roosevelt was not a clergyman,
and not a creative writer, a novelist, or poet. His temperament was not
very similar to Kingsley's. Yet the two shared a love for bold
adventure, a passion for sport, and an eager interest in the life of
animals and plants. Sport with Kingsley took the shape of trout fishing
and of rid