Theodore Roosevelt | Page 8

happened when I was four
years old. I bit my elder sister's arm. I do not remember biting her arm,
but I do remember running down to the yard, perfectly conscious that I
had committed a crime. From the yard I went into the kitchen, got some
dough from the cook, and crawled under the kitchen table. In a minute
or two my father entered from the yard and asked where I was. The
warm-hearted Irish cook had a characteristic contempt for "informers,"
but although she said nothing she compromised between informing and
her conscience by casting a look under the table. My father
immediately dropped on all fours and darted for me. I feebly heaved the
dough at him, and, having the advantage of him because I could stand
up under the table, got a fair start for the stairs, but was caught halfway
up them. The punishment that ensued fitted the crime, and I hope--and
believe--that it did me good.
I never knew any one who got greater joy out of living than did my
father, or any one who more whole-heartedly performed every duty;
and no one whom I have ever met approached his combination of
enjoyment of life and performance of duty. He and my mother were
given to a hospitality that at that time was associated more commonly

with southern than northern households; and, especially in their later
years when they had moved up town, in the neighborhood of Central
Park, they kept a charming, open house.
My father worked hard at his business, for he died when he was forty-
six, too early to have retired. He was interested in every social reform
movement, and he did an immense amount of practical charitable work
himself. He was a big, powerful man, with a leonine face, and his heart
filled with gentleness for those who needed help or protection, and with
the possibility of much wrath against a bully or an oppressor. He was
very fond of riding both on the road and across the country, and was
also a great whip. He usually drove four-in-hand, or else a spike team,
that is, a pair with a third horse in the lead. I do not suppose that such a
team exists now. The trap that he drove we always called the high
phaeton. The wheels turned under in front. I have it yet. He drove
long-tailed horses, harnessed loose in light American harness, so that
the whole rig had no possible resemblance to anything that would be
seen now. My father always excelled in improving every spare
half-hour or three-quarters of an hour, whether for work or enjoyment.
Much of his four-in-hand driving was done in the summer afternoons
when he would come out on the train from his business in New York.
My mother and one or perhaps two of us children might meet him at
the station. I can see him now getting out of the car in his linen duster,
jumping into the wagon, and instantly driving off at a rattling pace, the
duster sometimes bagging like a balloon. The four-in-hand, as can be
gathered from the above description, did not in any way in his eyes
represent possible pageantry. He drove it because he liked it. He was
always preaching caution to his boys, but in this respect he did not
practice his preaching overmuch himself; and, being an excellent whip,
he liked to take chances. Generally they came out all right.
Occasionally they did not; but he was even better at getting out of a
scrape than into it. Once when we were driving into New York late at
night the leaders stopped. He flicked them, and the next moment we
could dimly make out that they had jumped. It then appeared that the
street was closed and that a board had been placed across it, resting on
two barrels, but without a lantern. Over this board the leaders had
jumped, and there was considerable excitement before we got the board

taken off the barrels and resumed our way. When in the city on
Thanksgiving or Christmas, my father was very apt to drive my mother
and a couple of friends up to the racing park to take lunch. But he was
always back in time to go to the dinner at the Newsboys'
Lodging-House, and not infrequently also to Miss Sattery's Night
School for little Italians. At a very early age we children were taken
with him and were required to help. He was a staunch friend of Charles
Loring Brace, and was particularly interested in the Newsboys'
Lodging-House and in the night schools and in getting the children off
the streets and out on farms in the West. When I was President, the
Governor of Alaska under me, Governor Brady,