ll be known for all time as one of the great men of America. I am only
giving you this personal recollection as a little contribution to his
memory, as one that I can make from personal knowledge and which is now
known only to myself. His conversation about birds was made interesting
by quotations from poets. He talked also about politics, and in the
whole of his conversation about them there was nothing but the motive of
public spirit and patriotism. I saw enough of him to know that to be
with him was to be stimulated in the best sense of the word for the
work of life. Perhaps it is not yet realised how great he was in the
matter of knowledge as well as in action. Everybody knows that he was a
great man of action in the fullest sense of the word. The Press has
always proclaimed that. It is less often that a tribute is paid to him
as a man of knowledge as well as a man of action. Two of your greatest
experts in natural history told me the other day that Colonel Roosevelt
could, in that department of knowledge, hold his own with experts. His
knowledge of literature was also very great, and it was knowledge of the
best. It is seldom that you find so great a man of action who was also a
man of such wide and accurate knowledge. I happened to be impressed by
his knowledge of natural history and literature and to have had
first-hand evidence of both, but I gather from others that there were
other fields of knowledge in which he was also remarkable. Not long ago
when an English friend of mine was dying, his business agent came over
to see him. One of the family asked the agent whether he had come on
important business. "No," he said, "I have come for a little
conversation because I was feeling depressed this morning and I wanted
to be made to feel two inches taller." That saying would, I think, have
been specially applicable to Colonel Roosevelt also. He could make
people feel bigger and stronger and better.

And now my last discourse shall be on one sentence from Colonel
Roosevelt which I saw quoted the other day. It is this: "He is not fit
to live who is not fit to die, and he is not fit to die who shrinks from
the joy of life or from the duty of life." Observe that the joy of life
and the duty of life are put side by side. Many people preach the
doctrine of the duty of life. It is comparatively seldom that you find
one who puts the joy of life as something to be cultivated, to be
encouraged on an equal footing with the duty