Theodore Roosevelt | Page 5

in her relations with
her husband and sons. Although she was not herself Dutch, it was she
who taught me the only Dutch I ever knew, a baby song of which the
first line ran, "Trippe troppa tronjes." I always remembered this, and
when I was in East Africa it proved a bond of union between me and
the Boer settlers, not a few of whom knew it, although at first they
always had difficulty in understanding my pronunciation--at which I do
not wonder. It was interesting to meet these men whose ancestors had
gone to the Cape about the time that mine went to America two
centuries and a half previously, and to find that the descendants of the
two streams of emigrants still crooned to their children some at least of
the same nursery songs.
Of my great-grandfather Roosevelt and his family life a century and
over ago I know little beyond what is implied in some of his books that
have come down to me--the Letters of Junius, a biography of John Paul

Jones, Chief Justice Marshall's "Life of Washington." They seem to
indicate that his library was less interesting than that of my wife's
great-grandfather at the same time, which certainly included such
volumes as the original /Edinburgh Review/, for we have them now on
our own book-shelves. Of my grandfather Roosevelt my most vivid
childish reminiscence is not something I saw, but a tale that was told
me concerning him. In /his/ boyhood Sunday was as dismal a day for
small Calvinistic children of Dutch descent as if they had been of
Puritan or Scotch Covenanting or French Huguenot descent--and I
speak as one proud of his Holland, Huguenot, and Covenanting
ancestors, and proud that the blood of that stark Puritan divine Jonathan
Edwards flows in the veins of his children. One summer afternoon,
after listening to an unusually long Dutch Reformed sermon for the
second time that day, my grandfather, a small boy, running home
before the congregation had dispersed, ran into a party of pigs, which
then wandered free in New York's streets. He promptly mounted a big
boar, which no less promptly bolted and carried him at full speed
through the midst of the outraged congregation.
By the way, one of the Roosevelt documents which came down to me
illustrates the change that has come over certain aspects of public life
since the time which pessimists term "the earlier and better days of the
Republic." Old Isaac Roosevelt was a member of an Auditing
Committee which shortly after the close of the Revolution approved the
following bill:
The State of New York, to John Cape Dr.
To a Dinner Given by His Excellency the Governor and Council to
their Excellencies the Minnister of France and General Washington &
Co. 1783 December To 120 dinners at 48: 0:0 To 135 Bottles Madira
54: 0:0 " 36 ditto Port 10:16:0 " 60 ditto English Beer 9: 0:0 " 30 Bouls
Punch 9: 0:0 " 8 dinners for Musick 1:12:0 " 10 ditto for Sarvts 2: 0:0 "
60 Wine Glasses Broken 4:10:0[oops, broken--dag] " 8 Cutt decanters
Broken 3: 0:0 " Coffee for 8 Gentlemen 1:12:0 " Music fees &ca 8: 0:0
" Fruit & Nuts 5: 0:0 156:10:0 By Cash . . . 100:16:0 55:14:0 WE a
Committee of Council having examined the above account do certify it

(amounting to one hundred and fifty-six Pounds ten Shillings) to be just.
December 17th 1783. ISAAC ROOSEVELT JAS. DUANE EGBT.
BENSON FRED. JAY Received the above Contents in full New York
17th December 1783 JOHN CAPE
Think of the Governor of New York now submitting such a bill for
such an entertainment of the French Ambassador and the President of
the United States! Falstaff's views of the proper proportion between
sack and bread are borne out by the proportion between the number of
bowls of punch and bottles of port, Madeira, and beer consumed, and
the "coffee for eight gentlemen"--apparently the only ones who lasted
through to that stage of the dinner. Especially admirable is the
nonchalant manner in which, obviously as a result of the drinking of
said bottles of wine and bowls of punch, it is recorded that eight
cut-glass decanters and sixty wine-glasses were broken.
During the Revolution some of my forefathers, North and South, served
respectably, but without distinction, in the army, and others rendered
similar service in the Continental Congress or in various local
legislatures. By that time those who dwelt in the North were for the
most part merchants, and those who dwelt in the South, planters.
My mother's people were predominantly of Scotch, but also of
Huguenot and English, descent. She was a Georgian, her people having
come to Georgia from South Carolina before the Revolution. The
original Bulloch was