ld profit by the teachings in
such a story as this of "Mother."

Sincerely yours,

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

January 21, 1913.

_Colonel Theodore Roosevelt_:

My dear Sir--Your letter came as a surprise, for I wasn't expecting
an answer. The next day the book came, and I thank you for your ready
sympathy and understanding. I feel as though you and Mrs. Roosevelt
would think I was hardly loyal to my husband and children; but knowing
of no other way to bring the idea which was so strong in my mind to your
notice, I told my personal story. If it will, in a small measure, be the
means of helping some one else by molding public opinion, through you, I
shall be content. You have helped me more than you know. Just having you
interested is as good as a tonic, and braces me up till I feel as though
I shall refuse to be "laid on the shelf." . . . To think that you'd
bother to send me a book. I shall always treasure it both for the text
of the book and the sender. I read it with absorbing interest. The
mother was so splendid. She was ideal. The situations are so startlingly
real, just like what happens here every day with variations.

---- ----.

A narrative of facts is often more convincing than a homily; and these
two letters of my correspondent carry their own lesson.

Parenthetically, let me remark that whenever a man thinks that he
has outgrown the woman who is his mate, he will do well carefully to
consider whether his growth has not been downward instead of upward,
whether the facts are not merely that he has fallen away from his wife's
standard of refinement and of duty.

CHAPTER VI

THE NEW YORK POLICE

In the spring of 1895 I was appointed by Mayor Strong Police
Commissioner, and I served as President of the Police Commission of New
York for the two following years. Mayor Strong had been elected Mayor
the preceding fall, when the general anti-Democratic wave of that year
coincided with one of the city's occasional insurrections of virtue and
consequent turning out of Tammany from municipal control. He had been
elected on a non-partisan ticket--usually (although not always) the
right kind of ticket in municipal affairs, provided it represents not
a bargain among factions but genuine non-partisanship with the genuine
purpose to get the right men in control of the city government on a
platform which deals with the needs of the average men and women, the
men and women who work hard and who too often live hard