pleasant for you for once
or twice, and you will just have to bear it; for you can never in the
world afford to let them drive you away from anything you intend to do,
whether it is football or anything else, and by going about your own
business quietly and pleasantly, doing just what you would do if they
were not there, generally they will get tired of it, and the boys
themselves will see that it is not your fault, and will feel, if
anything, rather a sympathy for you. Meanwhile I want you to know that
we are all thinking of you and sympathizing with you the whole time; and
it is a great comfort to me to have such confidence in you and to know
that though these creatures can cause you a little trouble and make you
feel a little downcast, they can not drive you one way or the other, or
make you alter the course you have set out for yourself.

We were all of us, I am almost ashamed to say, rather blue at getting
back in the White House, simply because we missed Sagamore Hill so much.
But it is very beautiful and we feel very ungrateful at having even a
passing fit of blueness, and we are enjoying it to the full now. I have
just seen Archie dragging some fifty foot of hose pipe across the tennis
court to play in the sand-box. I have been playing tennis with Mr.
Pinchot, who beat me three sets to one, the only deuce-set being the one
I won.

This is just an occasion to show the stuff there is in you. Do not
let these newspaper creatures and kindred idiots drive you one hair's
breadth from the line you had marked out in football or anything else.
Avoid any fuss, if possible.

White House, October 11, 1905.

DEAR TED:

I was delighted to find from your last letters that you are evidently
having a pretty good time in spite of the newspaper and kodak creatures.
I guess that nuisance is now pretty well abated. Every now and then
they will do something horrid; but I think you can safely, from now on,
ignore them entirely.

I shall be interested to hear how you get on, first of all with your
studies, in which you seem to have started well, and next with football.
I expected that you would find it hard to compete with the other
candidates for the position of end, as they are mostly heavier than you;
especially since you went off in weight owing to the excitement of your
last weeks of holiday in the summer. Of course the fact that you are
comparatively light tells against you and gives you a good deal to
overcome; and und