investigation by a congressional committee. But the appearance
of Roosevelt before such an investigating body invariably resulted in
a "bully time" for him and a peculiarly disconcerting time for his
opponents.

One of the Republican floor leaders in the House in those days was
Congressman Grosvenor from Ohio. In an unwary moment Mr. Grosvenor
attacked the Commission on the floor of the House in picturesque
fashion. Roosevelt promptly asked that Mr. Grosvenor be invited to
meet him before a congressional committee which was at that moment
investigating the activities of the Commission. The Congressman did
not accept the invitation until he heard that Roosevelt was leaving
Washington for his ranch in the West. Then he notified the committee
that he would be glad to meet Commissioner Roosevelt at one of its
sessions. Roosevelt immediately postponed his journey and met him. Mr.
Grosvenor, says Roosevelt in his Autobiography, "proved to be a person
of happily treacherous memory, so that the simple expedient of arranging
his statements in pairs was sufficient to reduce him to confusion." He
declared to the committee, for instance, that he did not want to repeal
the Civil Service Law and had never said so. Roosevelt produced one of
Mr. Grosvenor's speeches in which he had said, "I will not only vote
to strike out this provision, but I will vote to repeal the whole law."
Grosvenor declared that there was no inconsistency between these two
statements. At another point in his testimony, he asserted that a
certain applicant for office, who had, as he put it, been fraudulently
credited to his congressional district, had never lived in that district
or in Ohio, so far as he knew. Roosevelt brought forth a letter in
which the Congressman himself had categorically stated that the man in
question was not only a legal resident of his district but was actually
living there then. He explained, says Roosevelt, "first, that he had
not written the letter; second, that he had forgotten he had written
the letter; and, third, that he was grossly deceived when he wrote
it." Grosvenor at length accused Roosevelt of a lack of humor in not
appreciating that his statements were made "in a jesting way," and
declared that "a Congressman making a speech on the floor of the House
of Representatives was perhaps in a little different position from
a witness on the witness stand." Finally he rose with dignity and,
asserting his constitutional right not to