IX
THE ROUGH RIDER STORMS THE CAPITOL AT ALBANY

THE MAN WHO CAN
(Old Saxon for “The King”)
Written of Theodore Roosevelt

How shall we know “the man who can”?
(That was the Saxon phrase, they say.)
Nay, perchance we shall find the man
Close to our hearts and lives to-day!

Soldier and patriot, strong of hand,
Keen of vision to know the time,
Quick and true to the hour’s demand,
Poet, too, without rune or rhyme!

Poet, because through mists of sin
He finds the best as it yet shall be.
Faces evil, yet dares begin
To live the good that his soul can see.

Speech like an arrow, swift and straight,
Strength that smites to the core of wrong;
Smile that mocks but an adverse fate,
Heart of a boy, that leaps to song.

Honor scornful of life or place,
Courage brightest in sordid strife;
Such is the man whose first, best grace
Was the simple crown of a stainless life!

—Marion Couthouy Smith.

It could not have been a pleasant thought to Mr. Thomas Platt (the acknowledged Republican boss of New York State, and a most interesting and unusual personality) when he realized that the tremendous popularity of the colonel of the Rough Riders would force him to accept the suggestion of some of the Republican leaders that this same colonel should be the Republican nominee for governor that autumn of 1898. The dash of the Rough Riders up San Juan Hill was not more strenuous than Theodore Roosevelt’s sudden and unexpected storming of the Albany Capitol. What an autumn it was! Every imaginable obstacle was put in the way of his success. He was accused of not having paid his taxes; he was bitterly impugned by a certain number of his former friends and adherents—Independents—who did not believe that he should accept the “regular” nomination, and many and varied were the battles fought about and around his personality.

The whole campaign had to be arranged so suddenly and hurriedly that all kinds of amusing, although sometimes unpleasant, contretemps occurred. One remains clearly in my mind. There was to be held near Troy a country fair. Its date had apparently not been determined upon before my brother had agreed to speak at what promised to be a large colored meeting the evening of the same day on which the fair was to be held. My brother had not expected to have to go to the fair, but a sudden summons came, saying that it was very important that he should appear and make an out-of-door speech to a large concourse of up-state farmers. He was torn from Oyster Bay at an abnormally early hour and dashed up to Troy. Meanwhile, the newspapers of Albany and Troy had announced that he could not be present owing to his engagement for the evening in New York. The consequence was that the attendance at the fair at the time he was supposed to speak was almost nil, and he returned to New York much depressed at the apparent lack of interest. I came in from my country home to dine with him and go to the colored meeting. The colored people were especially enthusiastic about my brother’s candidacy, because the Tenth Regiment of regulars, a colored regiment, had stormed San Juan Hill side by side with the Rough Riders. The meeting scheduled had been widely heralded, and we started for the hall with the conviction that although the day had been a failure the night was going to justify our highest expectations. Arriving at the hall, one old man with a long gray beard, sitting in the front seat, was apparently the total of the great audience that had been promised. My brother and I waited in the little room near the platform, anxiously peering out every now and then, hoping that the hall would soon be filled to overflowing, but no one came, and after an hour and a half of disheartening disappointment, we shook hands warmly with the faithful elderly adherent—who had remained silently in his seat during this period of waiting—and left the hall. My brother, in spite of distinct distress of mind, turned laughingly to me as we walked rapidly away and said, quoting from Maria Edgeworth’s immortal pages: “Little Rosamund’s day of misfortunes!” The next day the morning newspapers announced that the evening newspapers had given the misinformation that the Republican candidate for governor would not be able to return from the Troy fair in time for the colored meeting, an announcement which had so discouraged the colored folk that only one old man had been true to his colors!

From that day on, through the strenuous campaign, my brother was known by the family entirely as “Little Rosamund.”

Another evening comes back to my mind. My husband and my brother had left me in my country home on the hill at Orange, and they were supposed to return at eleven o’clock that night. The last train arrived and my carriage returned from it empty. I was worried, for they were so thoughtful that I felt they would surely have telephoned to relieve my possible anxiety, and when at twelve o’clock the telephone-bell rang, I ran to the instrument expecting to hear a familiar voice, instead of which “I am a World reporter” was what I heard, “and I would like to know where Colonel Roosevelt and Mr. Douglas Robinson are.” “I cannot give you any information,” I replied discreetly, and more truthfully than usual, I confess. “It is very strange,” said the voice—a distant unknown voice at twelve o’clock at night, when you are the sole occupant of a remote country house, always has a somewhat eerie effect—“for we have traced them up to within the last hour and we cannot find them anywhere.” A slight wave of apprehension passed over me, but at the same time I was sufficiently confident of my two stalwart gentlemen not to have any serious fear concerning their whereabouts, and suddenly seized with an irresistible desire to be “funny”—a perfectly inexcusable inclination in a political campaign—I said to the reporter: “Wait one moment, please. Should you by any chance discover the whereabouts of Colonel Roosevelt and Mr. Robinson, would you be kind enough to let me know where they are?” I have always remembered the sound of the distant laugh of the man as I hurriedly put down the telephone-receiver, fully realizing my mistake in becoming jocose, and sure enough the next morning, in large headlines, appeared on the front page of the World: “Mrs. Douglas Robinson has no knowledge where Colonel Roosevelt and Mr. Douglas Robinson have spent the night.”

Another incident that comes back into my memory was an evening in Chickering Hall, almost immediately before Election day, at which many well-known speakers were to make their plea for the election of Theodore Roosevelt, and at which, also, that most brilliant of speakers and charming of men, Mr. Joseph H. Choate, was to bring the evening to a climax. As Election day drew near, the great boss of Tammany Hall, Richard Croker, forsook his usual methods of strict silence, and began to be loquacious. Croker, when running a candidate, was always very careful indeed to keep the mystery of the Wigwam (Tammany) wrapped closely about him, but as the fight waxed hot and heavy, he lost his control and said many a foolish thing, and the Republican papers jubilantly announced that when Croker began to talk, it meant that he knew that his cause was lost.

At the meeting at Chickering Hall, when Mr. Choate rose to make the final speech of the evening, he said:

“Ladies and gentlemen, it is late; you have heard many speakers and I shall be brief. All that I wish to do is to recall to your minds a certain Bible story—you may not have the incident clear in your memory. I refer to the story of Balaam and his ass!” Here the learned speaker paused and his audience concentrated their attention upon him, somewhat puzzled as to what he was about to say. He continued: “You may remember that Balaam was riding upon the ass through a dark forest, and that suddenly the ass stopped, and even more suddenly, the ass spoke!” Mr. Choate paused again, and the audience suddenly rippled out their mirth and their realization that the “ass” who spoke had a distinct reference to the utterances of Croker. As the laughter grew louder, Mr. Choate suddenly lifted his hand in the most impressive manner, and continued in a serious tone full of dramatic power: “But, ladies and gentlemen, you have perhaps forgotten why the ass spoke. The reason that he did so was because directly in his path, in shining garments, stood a young man with a flaming sword in his hand!” As one man the audience rose to its feet! Simultaneously, a great cheer rose to the lips of every one present, for the figure of speech had done its work, and each person in the house visualized the figure of Theodore Roosevelt, ardent and young, courageous and honest, truly “a young man with a flaming sword in his hand!”

Election day came and with it an overwhelming victory for the man who so lately had written to Douglas Robinson: “As for the political effect of my actions, I never can get on in politics.”