Nothing was more discouraging to my brother during his long and varied career than the fact that the so-called reformers were frequently so visionary that they were rarely, if ever, to be counted upon where an effort to achieve a distinct practical purpose was concerned, but the disappointments which he perpetually endured from this attribute never induced him to yield to the machine politicians unless he felt that by so doing he could achieve the higher end for which he always worked.
A little later in May of that same year, 1899, he writes me in patient answer to various questions: “In reference to my attitude on the bills that have not passed, there are hundreds of people to whom, if I had time, I should explain my attitude, but I have not the time. I have the gravest kind of doubts, for instance, as to the advantages to the State of our High School system, as at present carried out.... I strongly believe that there has been a tendency amongst some of the best educators recently to divert from mechanical trades, people who ought, for their own sake, to keep in at the mechanical trades.” He was always so willing to answer my questions, even when pressed by many harassing affairs.
From Oyster Bay, on July 17, 1899, he writes as one freed temporarily from the cares of state, and speaking of my eldest boy, who was then sixteen, he says: “I am afraid it is dull here for Teddy. You see, we have no one here quite his age and he has passed the time when such a simple pleasure as a scramble down Cooper’s Bluff appears enthralling, although I take him down it nevertheless. He is a very fine fellow.... I have been giving him information about his hunting trip.” Again the painstaking effort to be helpful to me and mine, and, indeed, all those who needed his help or advice.
On December 18, having returned to Albany, he plans a hurried trip to New York, and writes characteristically: “On Thursday, December 21st, may I have dinner at seven o’clock? If you are going out, do remember, that seriously, I am quite as happy with bread and milk as with anything else. Ever yours, Theodore Roosevelt.” What could be more unusual than the governor of New York State being “quite as happy with bread and milk as with anything else”! And I really think he was rather happier with bread and milk than with anything else, much to the occasional discomfort of the fastidious companions who sometimes ran across his rather primitive path.
My last letter of that year, and, indeed, of the period during which he was governor, was late in December, 1899, and it ran as follows: “On Saturday I find Senator Platt wants me to breakfast with him at the Fifth Avenue.” That was one of the rare occasions when the unfortunate senator induced the governor to part from his sister, and the inevitable presence of that sister at the conferences which Senator Platt quite naturally preferred to have alone with the governor. The letter continues: “On Friday, at half past eight, General Greene, Mr. F. S. Witherbee, Mr. Fox and Mr. MacFarlane will give you the unexpected pleasure of breakfasting with you. Is this all right?” Needless to say, it was all right; only, if I remember correctly, a large number were added equally unexpectedly to the four above-mentioned gentlemen. Those breakfasts were the most delightful of meals. My brother’s friend Professor William M. Sloane in later days was frequently a member of the breakfast-parties at my house, and he used, laughingly, to remark that he wondered why we were all bidden so promptly at half past eight when the gentleman who so sternly called others from their comfortable beds on cold winter mornings at that matutinal hour seemed always able to sit over the breakfast-table until about eleven! That, however, was not the case in those early gubernatorial days, for the young governor was pressed with too many affairs to yield to his Southern inclination to “brood” over the breakfast-table.
In later days at the rare periods of comparative leisure, between 1910 and 1912, the “half-hours at the breakfast-table” were prolonged into several whole hours, and many a time my friend Mrs. Parsons and I have listened to the most enchanting discussions on the part of Colonel Roosevelt and Professor Sloane, dealing occasionally with Serb or Rumanian literature or the intricacies of Napoleonic history.
One luncheon during the time that my brother was governor stands out clearly in my mind, owing to an amusing incident connected with it. My dining-room at 422 Madison Avenue was small, and fourteen people were the actual limit that it could hold. One day, he having told me that he was bringing ten people to lunch, and realizing his hospitable inclinations, I had had the table set for the limit of fourteen. We were already thirteen in the sitting-room when the door-bell rang and, looking out of the window, he turned to me with a troubled expression and said: “I think I see two people coming up the front steps, and that will make fifteen.” I suddenly decided to be unusually firm and said: “Theodore, I have not places for fifteen; you said there would only be ten. I am delighted to have fourteen, but you will have to tell one of those two people that they will have to go somewhere else for lunch.” He went out into the hall, and in a moment returned with one of his beloved Rough Riders and an air of triumph on his face. I whispered, “Were there really two, and who was the other, and what has happened to him?” and he whispered back, like a child who has had a successful result in some game, “Yes, there were two—the other was the president of the University of ——. I told them they had to toss up, and the Rough Rider won”—this with a chuckle of delight!