The Red Cross Girl | Page 4

with lightning flashes of
wit and character building and admiration or contempt. Until the
invention of moving pictures the world had nothing in the least like his
talk. His eye had photographed, his mind had developed and prepared
the slides, his words sent the light through them, and lo and behold,

they were reproduced on the screen of your own mind, exact in drawing
and color. With the written word or the spoken word he was the
greatest recorder and reporter of things that he had seen of any man,
perhaps, that ever lived. The history of the last thirty years, its manners
and customs and its leading events and inventions, cannot be written
truthfully without reference to the records which he has left, to his
special articles and to his letters. Read over again the Queen's Jubilee,
the Czar's Coronation, the March of the Germans through Brussels, and
see for yourself if I speak too zealously, even for a friend, to whom,
now that R. H. D. is dead, the world can never be the same again.
But I did not set out to estimate his genius. That matter will come in
due time before the unerring tribunal of posterity.
One secret of Mr. Roosevelt's hold upon those who come into contact
with him is his energy. Retaining enough for his own use (he uses a
good deal, because every day he does the work of five or six men), he
distributes the inexhaustible remainder among those who most need it.
Men go to him tired and discouraged, he sends them away glad to be
alive, still gladder that he is alive, and ready to fight the devil himself
in a good cause. Upon his friends R. H. D. had the same effect. And it
was not only in proximity that he could distribute energy, but from afar,
by letter and cable. He had some intuitive way of knowing just when
you were slipping into a slough of laziness and discouragement. And at
such times he either appeared suddenly upon the scene, or there came a
boy on a bicycle, with a yellow envelope and a book to sign, or the
postman in his buggy, or the telephone rang and from the receiver there
poured into you affection and encouragement.
But the great times, of course, were when he came in person, and the
temperature of the house, which a moment before had been too hot or
too cold, became just right, and a sense of cheerfulness and well-being
invaded the hearts of the master and the mistress and of the servants in
the house and in the yard. And the older daughter ran to him, and the
baby, who had been fretting because nobody would give her a double-
barrelled shotgun, climbed upon his knee and forgot all about the
disappointments of this uncompromising world.

He was touchingly sweet with children. I think he was a little afraid of
them. He was afraid perhaps that they wouldn't find out how much he
loved them. But when they showed him that they trusted him, and,
unsolicited, climbed upon him and laid their cheeks against his, then
the loveliest expression came over his face, and you knew that the great
heart, which the other day ceased to beat, throbbed with an exquisite
bliss, akin to anguish.
One of the happiest days I remember was when I and mine received a
telegram saying that he had a baby of his own. And I thank God that
little Miss Hope is too young to know what an appalling loss she has
suffered....
Perhaps he stayed to dine. Then perhaps the older daughter was
allowed to sit up an extra half-hour so that she could wait on the table
(and though I say it, that shouldn't, she could do this beautifully, with
dignity and without giggling), and perhaps the dinner was good, or R.
H. D. thought it was, and in that event he must abandon his place and
storm the kitchen to tell the cook all about it. Perhaps the gardener was
taking life easy on the kitchen porch. He, too, came in for praise. R. H.
D. had never seen our Japanese iris so beautiful; as for his, they
wouldn't grow at all. It wasn't the iris, it was the man behind the iris.
And then back he would come to us, with a wonderful story of his
adventures in the pantry on his way to the kitchen, and leaving behind
him a cook to whom there had been issued a new lease of life, and a
gardener who blushed and smiled in the darkness under the Actinidia
vines.
It was in our little house at Aiken, in South Carolina, that he was with
us most and we learned to know him best,