hat he or any one ought to love, we would not fail to
agree that it is his love of his own goodness, such as it is, and his
holding on to it, and his love of other people's and his love of getting
his goodness and their goodness together, that has made him the most
unconcealed person in modern life. These qualities have established him,
with his ability raised to the n-th power of attracting attention to
anything he likes, as the world's greatest News Man--the world's
greatest living energy to-day in advertising what is good and what is
had in our American temperament.

Even the people who disagree with him or dislike him--many of them would
have to fall back on using the word roosevelt, or rather the verb to
roosevelt.

It does not seem to be because his goodness in itself is extraordinary.
It is even, for that matter, in the sense that anybody could have it, or
some more just like it, a little common.

What seems to be uncommon and really distinguished about Mr. Roosevelt
is the way he feels about his goodness, and the way he grips hold of it,
and the way he makes it grip hold of other people--practically anybody
almost, who is standing by. Even if they are merely going by in
automobiles, sometimes they catch some. I do not imagine that his worst
enemies, however seriously they may question the general desirability or
safety of having so much goodness roosevelting around, would fail to
admit his own real enthusiasm about goodness anywhere he finds it
indiscriminately, whether it is his own or other people's. He grips hold
of it, and grips like a cable car--instantly.

His enthusiasm is so great that many people are nonplussed by it. The
enthusiasm must really be in spite of appearances about something else,
something wicked in behind, they think, and not really about goodness.
An entire stranger would not quite believe it. It would be too original
in him, they would say, or in anybody, to care so about goodness.

If one could watch the expression in Mr. Roosevelt's face or his manner
while he is in the act of having a virtue and if one could not see
plainly from where one was, just what it was he was doing, one would at
once conclude that it must be some vice he is having. He looks happy and
as if it were some stolen secret. There is always that manner of his
when he is caught doing right, as if one were to say "Now, at last, I
have got it!" He does right like a boy with his mouth full of jam, and
this seems to b