Wusopore Roossverr. An Intimate Biography. By William Roscoe Thayer. Houghton Mif lin Ca., New York. 8vo. 474 pp.
1919.
In the year since the death of ex-president Roosevelt there has been a flood of articles and dresses relating to him, and sever al books of importance. To these is to be added the volume under review, by a college classmate and lifelong friend, though notably not of the same political part The result is a biography which may rightly be styled "intimate," in many respects supplementing Mr. Roosevelt's Autobiography originally published several years ago in the New York "Outlook," of which journal Mr. Rooseve't was for a considerable time an associate editor, Few men in America, and certainly no former president of the United States ever touched human life at so many points and in so many different ways as Theodore Roosevelt. His father was the head of one of the old families in the City of New York, and among that selected aristocracy his son was bred. By marvellous will power in one thus born and traiaed he overcome what seemed for many years the fatal physical handicap of asthmatic weakness, and ecame.a stout, well set up, and physically powerful man." This bodily evolution was matched by his mental alertness and all round activities, such as few men in his generation could equal, His years at Harvard University brought him into a wide range of association with cultivated and literary men which he never lost, becoming himself a conspicuous member of the group. His contact with Mother Nature in search.of health in the Black Hills centry of North Dakota made him intimately familiar with a type of American of whom presidents seldom know anything at all, and with whom they would certainly never have anything to do. His sudden nomination as mayor of New York City (an office to which he was not, however, elected) thrust him into politics, where he immediately found his natural field of action, When President.
Harrison appointed him a member of the Civil Service Commission of three, he at once made it apparent that he regarded it not as an office to hold, but a duty to perform. It was he, the youngest member, who did most of the work, and his decisions shaped the common policy. As affording an insight into the operation of party machinery this was an invaluable experience of which he subsequently made the fullest use. His service as Police Commissioner of the New York Police Department was a memorable event in the history of that misgoverned city. By the timely and most appreciated. helo
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.