At 15 or 16 years of age he became greatly interested in poetry. This perhaps corresponds to the period of development at which eccentricities are wont to appear.
He represents that in the saloon in which he worked he was chiefly engaged in supplying beer to residents of neighboring tenements; that there was no gambling or other immoral conduct practiced or encouraged in this business place. He went on for over 12 years as barkeeper. His uncle and aunt had during this time accumulated means for the purchase of a small tenement. At the death of the uncle and aunt in 1910 and 1911 the defendant came into possession of this property.
In the last year and a half has not been in any regular business or employment, and spent his time in long walks about New York and Brooklyn, during which he meditated upon poetical compositions, and political and historical questions, jotting down ideas upon loose slips of paper as they came to him, night or day, forming the basis of his poems. He spent his evenings in a saloon, retiring early. The average daily quantity of stimulants or beer taken by him was insufficient to produce intoxication. He also states that in 1902 and 1903, for a period of nearly 2 years, he drank no intoxicants at all.
He states that in 1901, between 1 and 2 o'clock in the morning of the day after President McKinley's death he experienced a vivid dream, in which he appeared to be in a room with many flowers and a casket, and saw a figure sit up in the casket, which he says was the form and figure of the assassinated President McKinley, who then pointed to a corner of the room, and said, "Avenge my death." He then looked where the finger pointed and saw a form clad in a Monkish garb, and recognized the form and face of this individual as the form and face of Theodore Roosevelt.
At the time this made a strong impression, but was not dwelt upon especially except in the light of later events.
Prior to the nomination of Colonel Roosevelt for the Presidency in the year 1912, he had felt great interest in the political campaign, and had read articles expressing great bitterness toward the idea of a third term, and toward Colonel Roosevelt personally in the newspapers of New York, and after the period when the nomination of Colonel Roosevelt began to be actively agitated, meditated more deeply upon these matters. He had always studied with the greatest interest the questions of free government, as illustrated by the Declaration of Independence, and Washington's Farewell Address. In this connection, the Monroe doctrine also assumed great importance in his mind, and the converse thereof, the duty of this nation to refrain from war of conquest; and out of these meditations grew what he elaborated into his declaration as to the unwritten laws, or "The Four Pillars of our Republic," namely (1) the Third Term Tradition, (2) the Monroe Doctrine, (3) that only a Protestant by creed can become president, (4) no wars of conquest. This document, hereunto annexed as Exhibit 1, fully sets forth his views on these subjects.
These "four unwritten laws" had assumed in his mind a character of sacredness. They were "sacred traditions" to be maintained at all hazards, and, as subsequently appeared, even the hazard of life.
The following are some quotations from this document:
"Tradition is an unwritten law."
"I would doubt the right of a court to have jurisdiction over a man who had defended tradition of his country against violation."