th men. Here is my friend in Congress who is a good man, a
strong man, but cannot be made to believe in some things which I trust.
It is too bad that he doesn't look at it as I do, but he DOES NOT, and
we have to work together as we can. There is a point, of course, where
a man must take the isolated peak and break with it all for clear
principle, but until it comes he must work, if he would be of use, with
men as they are. As long as the good in them overbalances the evil, let
him work with that for the best that can be got."

From the moment that he had learned this valuable lesson--and Roosevelt
never needed to learn a lesson twice--he had his course in public life
marked out before him. He believed ardently in getting things done. He
was no theoretical reformer. He would never take the wrong road; but, if
he could not go as far as he wanted to along the right road, he would
go as far as he could, and bide his time for the rest. He would
not compromise a hair's breadth on a principle; he would compromise
cheerfully on a method which did not mean surrender of the principle.
He perceived that there were in political life many bad men who
were thoroughly efficient and many good men who would have liked to
accomplish high results but who were thoroughly inefficient. He realized
that if he wished to accomplish anything for the country his business
was to combine decency and efficiency; to be a thoroughly practical
man of high ideals who did his best to reduce those ideals to actual
practice. This was the choice that he made in those first days, the
companionable road of practical idealism rather than the isolated peak
of idealistic ineffectiveness.

A hard test of his political philosophy came in 1884 just after he had
left the Legislature. He was selected as one of the four delegates at
large from New York to the Republican National Convention. There he
advocated vigorously the nomination of Senator George F. Edmunds for the
Presidency. But the more popular candidate with the delegates was James
G. Blaine. Roosevelt did not believe in Blaine, who was a politician of
the professional type and who had a reputation that was not immaculate.
The better element among the delegates fought hard against Blaine's
nomination, with Roosevelt wherever the blows were shrewdest. But
their efforts were of no avail. Too many party hacks had come to the
Convention, determined to nominate Blaine, and they put the slate
through with a whoo