“On April 30th, there came out of the seething jungles of Brazil to a river port 1000 miles up the Amazon, a man who was heralded by cable dispatches as broken in body and permanently impaired in mind.... On his arrival at home, there were grave dicta from former critics that never again would this man be a force in public life. The solemnity of these pronouncements scarcely concealed the gratification which they gave to some who promulgated them. Unbiassed stories of the hardships suffered in the tropical forests appeared to be cumulative evidence to support the belief that Theodore Roosevelt was ‘done for’ as a factor in public life.
“A sick man had virtually dragged himself through the most obdurate jungle still unmapped.... It had looked as if the entire party might be sacrificed and he had begged his followers to go on and leave him to take care of himself. On his return, he was warned by an eminent specialist that he must eschew speech-making if he hoped to avoid permanent injury to his throat. Another specialist warned him that impaired vital organs necessitated his withdrawing altogether from public activities. This was the Roosevelt who went to Pittsburgh to speak to the Progressives of Pennsylvania this week. What was it the Progressives gathered there to hear? Was it a swan song,—was it the plea of a broken man,—what was the character of the gathering? Was it a congregation of saddened and disheartened people, come to pay a kindly tribute to a passing leader? It was none of these things. The demonstration for Roosevelt and Progressive principles surpassed anything in the 1912 campaign, and the Roosevelt who greeted this great demonstration was the vigorous, fighting Roosevelt who so long had led the people’s battles. He was never received with more enthusiasm. The New York Times, not a paper in favor of Colonel Roosevelt, said: ‘The Pennsylvania Progressives gave Colonel Roosevelt a welcome tonight which must have reminded him of 1912. The demonstration was a remarkable one.’ And The World said: ‘The Colonel enjoyed every minute. Malaria was forgotten and all physical weakness along with it as he stood at the vortex of the night’s enthusiasm.’
“No one can read the speech which Roosevelt made that night without being convinced that the dismal forebodings that came out of that Amazon port last April, have already been discredited, and that the man who in 1912 stood with an assassin’s bullet near his heart, and insisted upon delivering a message which might be his last, is not to be broken or even impaired in 1914 by the hardships of a South American jungle. It is but another example of the amazing Roosevelt.”
That same autumn of 1914 he came to our old home in Herkimer County once more, but this time he was the guest of my son Theodore Douglas Robinson, and stayed at his house, which adjoins the old home. From there Mrs. Parsons and he and I joined the candidate for governor on the Progressive ticket, State Senator Frederick A. Davenport, and former State Senator Newcomb, for a short speaking tour to uphold the candidacy of Senator Davenport. We knew there was very little hope of success, but my brother had recuperated apparently from the Brazilian trip, and we spent two merry days dashing through Herkimer and Otsego counties. In spite of anxiety and a deep sense of distress about Old World conditions, for a brief moment we threw off all care, and in the glorious autumn sunshine, followed by cheering crowds, we enjoyed one of the triumphal processions which were almost always a sine qua non wherever he appeared. One specially merry afternoon and evening was spent at the home of James Fenimore Cooper. My brother was to speak at Cooperstown in the afternoon, and Mr. Cooper invited us to dinner, but I told him that the party must reach Oneonta for dinner, so that we could only take afternoon tea at his house. I had not confided this refusal to Theodore, simply taking it for granted that it would be impossible for us to accept the Cooper invitation and reach Oneonta in time for his evening speech. The Cooper home, full of treasures that had descended from Mr. Cooper’s grandfather, the author of “The Last of the Mohicans,” etc., and equally full of charming people, gave us so warm a welcome, and we had such an agreeable time there, that my brother was very loath to leave, but at 6.30 I insisted that we must start for Oneonta. We were already in the motors when Mr. Cooper, leaning over to say good-by, assured Colonel Roosevelt of his regret that he could not stay to dinner. “Dinner?” said my brother. “I didn’t know I was asked to dinner.” “Yes, you were, of course,” said Mr. Cooper; “but your sister, Mrs. Robinson, refused to let you stay for dinner, saying that you would have to reach Oneonta at 8 o’clock.” “May I ask,” said my brother in a high falsetto, “what business my sister, Mrs. Robinson, had to refuse a dinner invitation for me?” And, with a bound, he leaped from the automobile, shaking, laughingly, his fist at me, and said, “Dinner with the Coopers! Well, of course, I am going to stay to dinner,” and returned rapidly to the house, followed meekly by his party. The hospitable and resourceful Coopers, who naturally, after my refusal, had not expected seven extra people to dinner, turned in, assisted by Theodore himself, and proceeded to scramble eggs and broil bacon, much to the amusement and delight of the cook, who had never had an ex-President in her kitchen before, and of all the merry dinner-parties that I have ever attended, that one, forced upon the delightful Fenimore Coopers, was about the merriest.
Senator Davenport had been in poor health at the time, and my brother called him entirely “Little Eva,” after the angel child of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” both because of his rather transparent appearance and his high-minded principles (upon which the Colonel dilated in his speeches). He called himself “Uncle Tom,” and Senator Newcomb “Simon Legree,” and those cognomens and no others were used throughout the entire trip, which proved a veritable holiday.
But neither that trip nor any other trip could have changed the fate of the Progressive candidates in 1914, and New York State showed at election time, as did various other states in the country, that America was not prepared for a third party, even though that party stood, more than did any other party, for the practical common sense and high idealism of Theodore Roosevelt.
Just before Election day I accompanied him to Princeton, where Doctor John Grier Hibben, president of the university, received him with distinction, and asked him to speak to the body of students there not only on political faiths but on “Preparedness.” Unless I am very much mistaken, the first speech on that subject in the United States during the Great War was that very address made in the auditorium of Princeton in November, 1914, by my brother. His young and eager listeners among the student body applauded him to the echo. The cause of preparedness and true Americanism had no stancher upholder at that time, nor in the difficult years to come, than President Hibben of Princeton University. Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, Leonard Wood, John Grier Hibben, Augustus P. Gardner, and other far-seeing patriots, stood from the beginning for the Allies against the Huns, and for “Preparedness” of a thorough kind. Had their advice been followed, Germany would very soon have sensed how formidable an influence in the war America could be. I am convinced there would have been no sinking of the Lusitania, and hundreds of thousands of gallant young men would not have lost their lives on Flanders Fields.
On November 12, 1914, after Election day, my brother writes me: “Darling Corinne:—That is a very dear letter of yours! I shall make no further statement. Did you see my quotation from Timothy II, Chapter 4, verses 3 and 4? It covers the whole situation. Ever yours, Theodore Roosevelt.”
The verses referred to are as follows:
(3) For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;