"Yes, and I your nurse," laughed Mrs. Roosevelt.
When I left, Roosevelt gave me a list of the birds that we had seen while at Pine Knot and hoped that I would sometime write up the trip; in fact, for years after, whenever we would meet, almost the first thing he would say was, "Have you written up our Pine Knot trip yet, Oom John?" And his disappointment at my failure to do so was always unmistakable.[2]
[2] The following letter may be of interest in this connection.
C. B.
Dear Oom John:
Did you ever get the pamphlet on Concealing Coloration? If not, I will send you another. I do hope that you will include in your coming volume of sketches a little account of the time you visited us at Pine Knot, our little Virginia camp, while I was President. I am very proud of you, Oom John, and I want the fact that you were my guest when I was President, and that you and I looked at birds together, recorded there—and don't forget that I showed you the blue grosbeak and the Bewick's wren, and almost all the other birds I said I would!
Ever yours,
Theodore Roosevelt
VIII
A STRENUOUS HOLIDAY
One August a few years ago (1918) I set out with some friends for a two weeks' automobile trip into the land of Dixie—joy-riders with a luxurious outfit calculated to be proof against any form of discomfort.
We were headed for the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina. I confess that mountains and men that do not smoke suit me better. Still I can stand both, and I started out with the hope that the great Appalachian range held something new and interesting for me. Yet I knew it was a risky thing for an octogenarian to go a-gypsying, and with younger men. Old blood has lost some of its red corpuscles, and does not warm up easily over the things that moved one so deeply when one was younger. More than that, what did I need of an outing? All the latter half of my life has been an outing, and an "inning" seemed more in order. Then, after fourscore years, the desire for change, for new scenes and new people, is at low ebb. The old and familiar draw more strongly. Yet I was fairly enlisted and bound to see the Old Smokies.