He has six children—Alice Lee, Theodore, Kermit, Ethel Carow, Archibald Bullock, and Quentin. His home is at Sagamore Hill, Oyster Bay, Long Island.
In these pages the people of this land can read the thoughts that have been spun out by his brain during the last eighteen years, and can see what manner of man he is. They believe him to be honest, fearless, straightforward, a tireless worker, experienced in the administration of city, state, and national affairs, a careful student and writer of his country’s history, an American in every fibre, a man who holds his life at his country’s service whenever a war is on during his lifetime. In reading these books their belief in him will be justified and confirmed.
Francis V. Greene.
New York, July 16, 1900.
PREFACE
It is not difficult to be virtuous in a cloistered and negative way. Neither is it difficult to succeed, after a fashion, in active life, if one is content to disregard the considerations which bind honorable and upright men. But it is by no means easy to combine honesty and efficiency; and yet it is absolutely necessary, in order to do any work really worth doing. It is not hard, while sitting in one’s study, to devise admirable plans for the betterment of politics and of social conditions; but in practice it too often proves very hard to make any such plan work at all, no matter how imperfectly. Yet the effort must continually be made, under penalty of constant retrogression in our political life.
No one quality or one virtue is enough to insure success; vigor, honesty, common sense,—all are needed. The practical man is merely rendered more noxious by his practical ability if he employs it wrongly, whether from ignorance or from lack of morality; while the doctrinaire, the man of theories, whether written or spoken, is useless if he cannot also act.