Chapter XI: Preface (11)

Father Grant smiled and sent his son off to another school. He knew it would be very wrong to expect a real man to work all his life at something he did not like. While Ulysses was away this time, his father obtained an appointment for his son to go to West Point. Ulysses himself has written about this:

“I was attending school at Ripley, only ten miles distant from
Georgetown, but spent the Christmas holidays at home. During this
vacation my father received a letter from the United States Senator
from Ohio. When he read it he said to me, ‘Ulysses, I believe you
are going to receive the appointment.’

“‘What appointment?’ I inquired.

“‘To West Point. I have applied for it.’

“‘But I won’t go,’ I said.

“He said _he_ thought I _would, and I thought so too, if he did_!”

Young Grant had such a high idea of the requirements at West Point that he was sure he could never pass the entrance examinations. He began to study algebra and other branches to fit him better, but he said he never gave up hoping something would happen--even that the Military Academy might burn down!--so he would not have to go. He was afraid he would fail. The neighbors also thought his father was making a mistake to send the boy to West Point when he seemed so little fitted for a soldier. But, soon after his seventeenth birthday, the neighbors bade Ulysses good-bye, expecting him to come home because he could not pass.

Ulysses found the West Point buildings still standing when he arrived. He registered, and, to his surprise, was permitted to enter as a cadet. They made a mistake in recording his name, writing it Ulysses _S_., instead of H. Ulysses Grant. He was tired of being called “Hug,” and, as it seemed too much trouble to correct the error, he let it go, accepting the S. for his middle initial. As his mother’s maiden name was Simpson, he let them name him Ulysses Simpson Grant, in honor of the U. S. government and his little mother. But even then the boys made fun of his initials, “U. S.,” calling him “United States” and “Uncle Sam” Grant. From this he was nicknamed “Sam.”

Cadet Ulysses did well enough in his studies, and developed a taste for drawing and painting. He thought he would rather be a water-color artist than a soldier. The idea of shooting at men was shocking to him. The sight of blood made him sick--“Just like a girl!” the fellows said. But there were horses at the Academy, so the young cadet managed to be quite happy. He learned to ride like an Indian and to leap from one horse to the back of another as he met it running in the opposite direction. The one thing for which he was remembered by the other cadets was the great feat of jumping York, a huge horse, over a bar. Every one was afraid the vicious horse, if forced to clear such a height, might kill his rider. “I can’t die but once,” remarked Cadet Grant coolly, and made the horse jump over the bar without the least harm to horse or rider. The record of “Grant on York,” then made, has never been beaten since.

The people of Ulysses’ home town had changed their minds about him when he came home after two years, in his mid-course furlough, as a cadet in full uniform with gold lace and gilt buttons. After he had been President of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant said this summer vacation was the happiest time in his whole life, because every one was so kind, and his family were so proud of him.

When he finished his course at the Military Academy and was graduated, it was said of him: “There is ‘Sam’ Grant. He is a splendid fellow; a good, honest man against whom nothing can be said, and from whom everything may be expected.”

Lieutenant Grant went home for a while, and then entered military service near St. Louis. Here he became acquainted with Miss Julia Dent, who afterward became Mrs. Grant, wife of the great general and President of the United States. He had the usual experiences of young army officers in the southwest, with wild beasts and savage Indians. He tells of being wakened early one morning by hearing shots near at hand. Getting up, he learned that two men had been fighting a duel. He afterward wrote:

“I don’t believe I ever could have the courage to fight a duel. If
I should do another man such a wrong as to justify him in killing
me, I would make any reasonable amends in my power, if convinced of
the wrong done. I place my opposition to dueling on higher grounds.
No doubt, most of the duels have been fought _for want of moral
courage_, on the part of those engaged, to decline.”

Lieutenant Grant’s friends thought it strange for the bravest man they ever met to say, “I don’t believe I ever could have the courage to fight a duel.” But some things that seemed heroic to others did not seem so to Ulysses S. Grant. He spoke almost with scorn of mere physical courage. It is moral courage that counts--the heroism that will face a sneer and bravely say, “That is not right and I will not do it.” He had shown this kind of courage as a boy, when other lads dared him to come out with them at night and disobey his little mother.

In the Mexican War, while fighting desperately in Monterey, the Americans ran short of powder. Who would dare to go back through the streets of the town held by the enemy, and carry the request for more ammunition and reinforcements? “Sam” Grant volunteered, and rode, Indian fashion, keeping his horse between him and the Mexicans’ bullets. He made the dangerous run with both his horse and himself unhurt, relieved the Americans, and thus helped to save the day at Monterey.

When the Civil War broke out, Captain Grant was in business. He had withdrawn from the army, and had been mentioned as a “military dead beat,” working in his father’s leather store at fifty dollars a month. He at once enlisted as a volunteer, and was sent to command a brigade in Missouri. Within a year the name of General U. S. Grant was on every tongue. He had won the battles of Fort Donelson and Fort Henry, and had made his famous demand of “Unconditional Surrender,” words which meant that they were to yield without asking any favors. After that, people said his initials, U. S., stood for “Unconditional Surrender” Grant. He went from one triumph to another until his enemies in the west were beaten. Then President Lincoln called him to end the war in the east, a thing which five northern generals before him had failed to do.

Though he won great victories for his country and became the most successful general of his day, the greatest thing General Grant ever said was, “Let us have peace,” When Richmond was captured he refused to enter the city as its conqueror. When General Lee surrendered, the northern commander treated the enemy general as a friend and a brother.

A grateful nation elected General Grant twice to the presidency of the United States. After he left the White House, he and Mrs. Grant made a trip around the world and became the guests of kings, queens, princes, prime ministers, and peoples.

Wherever General Grant went, he went as a man of peace. When he visited Prince Bismarck, “the man of blood and iron” who taught the Germans that everything they did would be right if they only had the power to do it, General Grant apologized for his record as a soldier. In this way, the greatest living general became the foremost man in the world for peace. He had learned to regard war as a duel between nations. He thought that was quite as wrong as dueling between men, and that war was due to moral cowardice rather than to courage.

General Grant gave this as his belief:

“Though I have been trained as a soldier and have taken part in
many battles, there never has been a time when, in my opinion, some
way could not have been found to prevent the drawing of the sword.”

THE NOBLE SOUL OF ROBERT E. LEE

Robert E. Lee’s father, Colonel Henry Lee, was a hero of the Revolutionary War. He was commander of the famous company known as “Lee’s Legion.” He was called “Light-Horse Harry” because he was so ready and alert with his cavalry regiment. He was such a friend of the commander-in-chief that it was said: “General Washington loves Harry Lee as if he were his own son.”

Therefore, when the Father of his Country died, Robert E. Lee’s father was chosen by Congress to deliver the great oration in his memory. It was in this brilliant address that Colonel Henry Lee used the now familiar words describing Washington as “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

Like George Washington, Robert Lee was born in Virginia, near the Potomac River, in a huge brick house which looked like a mansion, a castle, and a fort, all in one. When Robert was four, his father moved to Alexandria, near the new city of Washington, to send the boy, with his brothers and sisters, to school.

The next year the War of 1812, often called the Second War for Independence, was declared. The father’s rank was raised at once from Colonel to General Henry Lee. But General Lee was badly hurt while defending a friend from a mob in Baltimore. It was very hard for a brave man like “Light-Horse Harry” to be sent away for his health instead of leading in another fight for his country’s liberties. The general did not become better and, after five years of absence and longing, he started home to die. But the end came while he was on his way, and the Lee children were told, one sad day, that they would never see the dear father’s face again.

Robert was now eleven, the same age as George Washington when he lost his father. Mrs. Lee was not left so poor as Washington’s mother, but she was an invalid.

The oldest Lee son was in Harvard College, and the next was a midshipman in the Naval Academy at Annapolis. So Robert was left at home to take care of his mother. He nursed her

“With a hand as gentle as woman’s,”

yet in his strong, manly arms he carried her out to the family coach, when she was well enough to go for a drive. No mother ever had more reason to be proud of her tall, handsome son than the widow of Henry Lee. Feeling that his mother could not afford to send him to college, young Robert studied hard to enter West Point Military Academy. Because the country was still new and settlers had to defend their homes and lives from Indians, and also because the nations were always at war, such boys as George Washington and Robert Lee said to themselves, “When I’m a man I’ll be a soldier.”

When Robert was eighteen he became a West Point cadet. After he left home his brave little mother exclaimed, “How _can_ I do without Robert? He is both son and daughter to me!”

Cadet Lee’s life was without doubt the bravest any young man ever led at West Point. Young Jefferson Davis, who was there at the same time, fell off a cliff and nearly lost his life while breaking the rules of the Academy. Young Ulysses Grant wrote home ten years later that it was impossible to get through at West Point without demerits. But Robert E. Lee went through the whole four years without a single “black mark”! More than this, he did

_From the painting by J. Steeple Davis, © 1897, by The Woolfall Co_]

not drink, though young gentlemen of that day thought the serving of wine necessary in polite society. He did not even smoke.

It was a wonder that the other cadets did not hate a young man who seemed to feel that he must behave better than the rest of them. What kept them all from calling him a “goody-goody boy,” a snob or a prig? It was the love of his kind heart, which they could see shining through his strange courage. Robert Lee fully realized that he had come to West Point to learn, at his country’s expense, how to be a soldier, and that the first duty of a soldier is to obey. If he had left his post and sneaked off the Academy grounds to drink, or gamble, or break some other rule, he would have been a deserter who, in real army life, would have deserved to be shot. But he never acted as if he felt above the rest, and so his fellow cadets did not sneer at Robert E. Lee. One of them said of him afterward:

“He was the only one of all the men I have known who could laugh at the faults and follies of others without losing their affection.”

At graduation, Lieutenant Lee was the most popular man at West Point; he ranked second in his class, and received the highest military honor in the course.

The physical courage of Robert E. Lee was put to the supreme test in the Mexican War. On a dark night he found the way across a dangerous lava field cracked in all directions by deep crevices--“without light, without a companion or guide, where scarcely a step could be taken without fear of death.” General Scott, then chief in command, reported this act to be “the greatest feat of physical and moral courage performed by any one in the campaign.” In his official statement about the whole war, this general stated that the United States’ “success in Mexico was largely due to the skill, valor, and courage of Robert E. Lee, the greatest military genius in America.”

Colonel Lee’s high military reputation made it natural for President Lincoln to offer him the highest command of the United States army when the Civil War broke out. But Colonel Lee did not accept the honor. He did not believe in slavery, and did not think it was right for any of the states to secede, or leave the Union. But he was a Virginian, and he could not bring himself to lead an army to burn his own home or to kill or drive out his relatives, friends, and neighbors. He had heard his father, who was once governor of the state, say with deepest feeling, “Virginia is my country; her will I obey, no matter how sad my fate may be.” So, when his native state went out of the Union, Robert E. Lee resigned as colonel in the United States army and went with her.

The southern people soon made Lee their general and it became, as he thought, his duty to defend the homes and lives of the people not only of Virginia, but also of the other states of the south.

General Lee soon proved that he was, as General Scott had said, “the greatest military genius in America.” With smaller armies and poorer supplies and weapons than those of the north, he gained great victories--the second battle of Manassas, or Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville. He defeated five northern generals, one after another. It took Grant, the sixth general sent against him, a whole year to “hammer” and surround Lee’s ragged, starving heroes, and capture them at last, when they were almost as helpless as a little flock of shorn sheep. And so noble and dignified was his character that he was honored and admired by north and south alike.

The motto of West Point Military Academy is “Duty, Honor, Country.” All through his life, in all that he did, Robert E. Lee showed that he respected Honor, loved his Country, and almost worshiped Duty. He expressed this thought when he wrote, “Duty is the sublimest word in our language.”

DAVY FARRAGUT, THE HERO OF MOBILE BAY

After the War of Independence, there lived in a cabin among the mountains of Tennessee a Spaniard named Farragut, who had come to America to help the people in their fight for liberty. He had married a brave little Scotch woman. While her husband was away one day several skulking Indians hung around and watched for a chance to get into the cabin. The mother had seen them and sent her two little boys up under the roof, while she stood inside the door for hours, with an ax in her small hands, to kill the first Indian who tried to enter. After a long watch, the red men stole away, as much afraid of the fire in that little woman’s eye as of the ax in her hands. One of the two boys who crouched in almost breathless silence up in the cabin loft was Davy Farragut.

When this lad was seven his father was appointed sailing master in the navy, and moved with his family to live by the large lake near New Orleans. When off duty, Farragut took his boys sailing on the lake. One day when he was out fishing he found an old man lying in the bottom of a rowboat, alone and unconscious. Farragut took the sick man home for his wife to nurse. In a few days the stranger died of yellow fever. The good wife caught the dread disease and died, too. The poor father was left to care for five motherless children under ten years of age.

It turned out that Captain David Porter, who was then in command of the naval station at New Orleans, was the dead man’s son. In gratitude for the care of his dying father, Captain Porter offered to adopt one of the Farragut boys. David was chosen, and the naval officer took the sturdy little lad to his home in New Orleans, and afterward to Washington, where he was sent to a good school.

In Washington the Secretary of the Navy saw what a bright, honest, pleasant-faced lad Davy Farragut was and, when he was ten years old, appointed him a midshipman on his adopted father’s ship. This was early in the War of 1812. After Porter’s warship, the _Essex_, had captured a British ship, the _Alert_, Middy Davy, lying awake in his hammock, saw a sailor of the _Alert_ standing near, with a cocked pistol in his hand. Davy pretended to be asleep and the man passed on. The boy got up, crept into Captain Porter’s cabin, and whispered to him what he had just seen.

“Fire! Fire!” shouted the captain, and the sailors of the _Essex_ came scrambling up on deck. Porter ordered them down to capture the imprisoned sailors of the _Alert_, who were preparing to kill the American crew and take the ship to England. Before any damage was done, the astonished Britishers were all in irons, thanks to the wide-awake shrewdness of eleven-year-old Midshipman Farragut.

Captain Porter was ordered to sail around South America into the Pacific Ocean to warn American crews that there was a war going on between the United States and Great Britain. He was also to capture British ships as prizes. Over one of these ships he placed in command David Farragut--then a boy of twelve. When Davy ordered the British sailors to “fill away the maintopsail,” the former captain of the ship was angry. It was bad enough to be captured and have his ship taken into a South American port as a prize; but to have his crew ordered about by an American boy of twelve seemed too much for an English captain to bear.

Shouting that he would shoot any Englishman who dared to touch a rope without his orders, the former captain went below to get his pistols to carry out his threat. Captain Farragut sent one of his men to follow the swearing captain down and tell him that if he came back on deck with a pistol in his hand he would himself be shot and pitched overboard. The man decided not to come back. Young David brought the British ship into port and reported to his proud foster-father what he had done.

The _Essex_ fought a great battle with two British warships, and Farragut himself has left a description of the sights in his first great sea fight:

“I shall never forget the horrid impression made upon me at the
sight of the first man I had ever seen killed. It staggered me at
first, but they soon began to fall so fast that it all appeared
like a dream, and produced no effect on my nerves.

“Some gun-primers [for loading the cannon] were wanted and I was
sent after them. In going below, while I was on the ward-room
ladder, the captain of the gun directly opposite the hatchway was
struck full in the face by an eighteen-pound shot, and fell back on
me. We tumbled down the hatch together.

“I lay for some moments stunned by the blow, but soon recovered
consciousness enough to rush up on deck. The captain, seeing me
covered with blood, asked if I were wounded; to which I replied, ‘I
believe not, sir.’

“‘Then,’ said he, ‘where are the primers?’ This brought me to my
senses, and I ran below again and brought up the primers.”

After being powder boy and doing all sorts of service on a man-of-war, the little middy was taken prisoner, but was released at the close of the war.

When Farragut was fifteen he went on a cruise in the _Washington_ to watch for pirates in the Mediterranean Sea. While anchored off Naples he witnessed an eruption of the great volcano, Vesuvius. A naval chaplain, then American consul at Tunis, begged to have the Farragut youth stay with him, and study French, Italian, literature, and mathematics. While on a horseback journey to the Desert of Sahara, David suffered a sunstroke, which hurt his eyes so that he was unable to read much afterwards.

On his return home, Farragut passed the necessary examinations and at eighteen received the rank of lieutenant in the navy. Then he went to New Orleans and found that his father was dead and that his own sister did not know him. Here he was exposed to yellow fever and was very ill of it in a hospital after his return to Washington.

Lieutenant Farragut was married, soon after his recovery, and spent most of his time on shore until the breaking out of the Civil War. At that time he was living in Norfolk, Virginia. He did not, however, approve of the act of Virginia in withdrawing from the Union. People told him, that if he thought that, it would not be safe for him to live in Virginia. He replied coolly, “Well then, I can live somewhere else”; and he and his wife packed up and went to live on the Hudson River above New York City.

Though born and bred in the South, Farragut was a Union man and offered his services to his country. He was appointed to take New Orleans. It was the largest city in the South, and an important seaport. Its capture would cut short the war by preventing the South from selling cotton. Also, it would open the Mississippi, so that the western states could have that outlet to the sea. It was a dangerous undertaking, but Farragut was glad of the chance to risk his life for his country. He said as he started out, “If I die in the attempt, it will only be what every officer has to expect.”

Captain Farragut now commanded a fleet of forty-eight ships, carrying over two hundred guns. In six days and nights his mortars threw nearly six thousand shells on the two forts barring his way, one on each side of the Mississippi. The enemy sent five blazing rafts to set fire to his fleet, but Farragut’s men either dodged the burning craft or towed them out of the way. One heroic deed was the cutting, under fire from the forts, of the great chain which had been stretched across the Mississippi to keep the ships from coming up to New Orleans.

This was one of the greatest naval battles in the war; for, with a few wooden ships, Farragut ran against the current and past the two forts, meeting fire-rafts and fighting with a large fleet above the forts. Two of the enemy’s warships were ironclads. He finally captured the city of New Orleans after great loss of life on both sides. The next day the happy victor wrote home:

“MY DEAREST WIFE AND BOY:

“I am so agitated that I can scarcely write, and shall only tell
you that it pleased Almighty God to preserve my life through a fire
such as the world has scarcely known. He has permitted me to make a
name for my dear boy’s inheritance, as well as for my comfort and
that of my family.”

“The Hero of New Orleans” was soon made Rear Admiral for this, splendid service to the country. But there was to be still another test of the courage of David Glasgow Farragut. It came two years later in Mobile Bay, which he entered with fourteen ships and four monitors, or small ironclad boats. He saw his monitor, the _Tecumseh_, sinking with all on board.

“What’s the trouble?” came through his speaking trumpet to the men on the monitor nearest the sinking craft.

“Torpedoes!” was the reply.

What was to be done? Should he risk the whole fleet in a harbor filled with lurking mines? The good admiral sought help from above. “O God,” he whispered, “direct me what to do.”

Farragut heard the answer in his heart. Without an instant’s delay he shouted to the captain of his own ship, the _Hartford_, “Go ahead! give her all the steam you’ve got.”

The _Hartford_ took the lead and became the chief target of forts and batteries on shore as well as of the Southern gunboats in the harbor. As if that was not dangerous enough, the heroic admiral took his place in plain sight high above the deck, where he could better direct the battle; and so that he could still keep his commanding place if struck by a cannon-ball, his devoted men lashed him to the rigging.

That is one of the heroic pictures in the history of patriotism: Admiral Farragut tied up in the rigging of his flagship and borne amid the whizzing of cannon-balls and the bursting of shells, carrying the Stars-and-Stripes through the fire and smoke of battle to one of the grandest victories ever won in naval warfare.

THE STRENUOUS LIFE OF ROOSEVELT

Theodore Roosevelt’s father was a well-to-do business man in New York City. His forefathers were Dutchmen from Holland, who had come over when the country was new. The Roosevelts had been wealthy and well known for two hundred years. Though Theodore’s

father was able to give his family everything they needed or desired, he could not give this little son health and strength, for the baby was born frail and weakly. He suffered so with asthma that his anxious parents feared he could not live long. One dark night when Baby Teddy was gasping for breath, they took him driving fifteen miles into the country where he could have pure air.

While yet in his childhood, Theodore Roosevelt began the long, sturdy fight to conquer his weak body and “make the most of himself.” He was a “self-made man” even more than if he had been born poor but healthy in a log cabin. As a tiny child he tried to do what he saw well, strong boys do. As soon as he could run about the house he would climb up and perform such daring feats that the neighbors were often frightened. His father fitted up a gymnasium on a porch for him so that he could have fresh air while taking his health exercises.

It was a long, hard fight, but young Theodore’s brave spirit won the victory over his frail body. While his body grew big and strong his brave heart seemed to grow larger too, and he showed a broad, unselfish spirit. Thus his big, warm, strong heart conquered his poor, puny body.

Almost in babyhood Teddy began to read. His sister tells how he came to her one day, still wearing a stiff white dress and his curly hair long, dragging a book that was too big to carry in his little arms, to ask her what “foraging ants” were. While learning to walk, ride horseback, and swim, Theodore Roosevelt was reading books and finding out all he could about birds, butterflies, and other insects by watching and catching them. He and several other small boys at Oyster Bay, where the family spent many summers, collected and mounted specimens, and started what the boys called the “Roosevelt Museum of Natural History.”

While preparing a butterfly for his “museum,” Theodore happened to look at it through a small glass and found that he could not see as well as other boys. His father had spectacles fitted to his eyes, and everything looked so much clearer and brighter that he went about laughing and shouting “I can _see_!--_I can see!_”

The year when Theodore was eleven, the family traveled in Europe and Egypt. During their trip up the Nile he made quite a collection of the bright birds of that country for his “museum.” His brother scolded because Theodore kept live specimens and mounting materials in the washbowls and pitchers in the rooms of the hotels where they were staying. The boys lived and studied in Germany long enough for Theodore to learn to speak German quite well.

At sixteen, young Roosevelt went to Harvard University. He was a good student, yet he spent much of his time in athletic sports. He would tie his glasses tight to his head and box with the biggest fellows he could find who would fight with him. Of these “misfit matches” the other students said, “Roosevelt has a bad handicap, but what he lacks in size and strength he makes up in pluck.”

He spent his college vacations in the backwoods of Maine, and when he was graduated, at twenty-one, he had not only shown himself to be a good student, but he had gained much in health and strength. Also he read much more than was required in his college studies, and had begun to write his first big book, “The History of the Naval War of 1812.”

After graduation, Theodore began to study law, and decided to go into politics. Many of the ward headquarters of New York City were in saloons. As he went about with the ward workers, they expected their “silk stocking” candidate, as they called young Roosevelt, to favor the saloons and to use his “roll” (of money) freely. But instead of this, Theodore Roosevelt told them plainly that, if elected, he would fight against them and their bad methods.

He was elected and he kept his word. He began as a reformer, exposing and opposing bribery and other wicked things that were being carried on in politics. As Police Commissioner of New York he found much that was wrong and fought and struggled to make it right. He was Assistant Secretary of the Navy when the war was declared against Spain. He could not rest day or night because he found so much to do in getting ready to carry on the war. It was he who sent the word to Admiral Dewey on the other side of the world which prepared him for battle and helped the United States with the famous victory of Manila Bay. He was so keen and active that President McKinley said to his Cabinet: “Roosevelt has the whole program of the war mapped out.” But he resigned from his office to become a colonel of the Rough Riders, and was soon leading his brave company of cowboys and college men up San Juan Hill in the face of a blazing Spanish battery.

Although Colonel Roosevelt was by no means highest in military rank, he became the hero of the United States’ war with Spain. When that war was over he was elected governor of New York. All the “bosses” hated this man who would not consent to their robbing or cheating the people. They asked him to run for Vice-President of the United States, thinking that his hands would be tied, for a vice-president has very little to say as to how the government shall be conducted. But in a few months President McKinley, with whom Roosevelt was elected Vice-President, was shot and killed. This made Theodore Roosevelt President of the United States. Four years later he was elected President again. His courageous spirit and true heart, with his active brain and tireless body, made him one of the greatest presidents of the United States.

He had kept himself in good health and spirits by his constant labors and many risks as a cowboy on his own ranches, and by hunting grizzly bears and other big game in the Far West. Even while living in the White House, he showed his friends and fellow-workers in the government what he meant by “the strenuous life.”

Many expressions first used by Theodore Roosevelt are now heard in common conversation. This is the first use he made of the words, “the strenuous life”:

“I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the
doctrine of the strenuous life--the life of toil and effort.”

The “square deal” was another expression of his, as in this statement:

“The labor unions shall have a square deal, and the corporations
shall have a square deal, and, in addition, all private citizens
shall have a square deal.”

The “big stick,” another phrase of Roosevelt’s, was not so well understood. He said of this:

“There is a homely old adage which runs, ‘Speak softly and carry a
big stick and you will go far.’”

Other words of his--such as “mollycoddle,” “pussyfoot,” “hit the line hard,” and “one hundred per cent American”--almost explain their own meanings.

A year after leaving the White House, Colonel Roosevelt went hunting big game--elephants, lions, rhinos, and so forth--through the heart of Africa. On the way back he was the guest of kings, emperors, and important citizens of Europe.

After his return home he went on a dangerous trip of adventure and discovery in South America. From all these hunting trips he brought home many rare specimens for collections called by his name in the finest Natural History museum in the United States. It was even proposed to name the wonderful Panama Canal, which he did most to put through, the “Roosevelt Canal.”

His last years were spent in urging the patriotic men and women of America to take the part of human freedom, and force the “square deal” among the nations of Europe. Among his last words were: “He who is not willing to die for his country is not worthy to live in his country.”

He believed in preventing war by being fit and prepared to fight. One of the best things he did was to help in arranging the peace treaty between Japan and Russia. Theodore Roosevelt’s life motto, as expressed by his actions, was:

“In time of peace prepare for war; and in time of war prepare for
peace.”

CLARA BARTON, “THE ANGEL OF THE BATTLEFIELD”

Miss Clara Barton, a quiet little old lady, used to tell stories of her childhood among the hills of central Massachusetts. She remembered how she was taken to the village school for the first time, and how the teacher, a tall, kind-looking man, put her in the spelling class with the smallest children, to study such words as _dog_ and _cat_.

“I don’t spell there,” said little Clara; “I spell in _Artichoke_.” And the small three-year-old showed her contempt for words of three letters by turning the leaves of her spelling book till she came to a page of wide three-syllable columns beginning with “Artichoke.” The teacher had to hide his smile from the small girl who could spell such long words.

Clara was very fond of her handsome big brother. “My brother David was very fond of horses,” she said, telling about him in later life. “He was the ‘Buffalo Bill’ of that part of the country. It was his delight to take me, a little girl five years old, to the field, seize a couple of beautiful young horses, and, gathering the reins of both bridles in one hand, throw me on the back of one colt, then spring upon the other himself; catching me by one foot, and bidding me ‘cling fast to the mane,’ we would go galloping away over field and fen, in and out among the other colts, in wild glee like ourselves.

“They were merry rides we took. This was my riding school. I never had any other, but it served me well. To this day my seat on a saddle or on the bare back of a horse is as secure and tireless as in a rocking-chair--and far more fun!

“Sometimes, in later years, when I found myself suddenly on a strange horse in a trooper’s saddle, flying for life or liberty, I blessed my baby lessons and wild gallops among the beautiful colts.”

By the words, “riding for life on a strange horse in a trooper’s saddle,” Miss Barton referred to her life as an army nurse, when she, with the mounted soldiers, sometimes found herself in great danger when the enemy’s cavalry was close behind.

At the age of eleven, Clara had her first chance to learn to be a nurse and fit herself for her life work. Her brother

David, then a young man, fell from the ridgepole of a large barn he was helping to build. The shock of this fall affected his mind, besides making him ill in body. He wanted no one near him but the brave little sister he had taught “to ride like the wind.”

So Clara stayed with her big brother, day and night, for two long years. She was thirteen when he was well again. Miss Barton told, long afterward, of the strange feeling she had at that time:

“I was again free, my work done, I wondered that my father took me to ride so much, and that my mother hoped she could make me some new clothes now--for in those two years I had not grown an inch!

“My shut-in life had made me the more bashful. I had grown even more timid, shrinking, and sensitive in the presence of others; also I was afraid of giving trouble by making my wants known. Instead of feeling that my freedom gave me time for play, it seemed to me like time wasted, and I looked about, anxious to find something useful to do.”

Then the family sent Clara away to school, hoping to conquer her painful shyness. She studied so hard that, at the age of fifteen, she became a teacher. There were not many public schools in those days, twenty-five years before the Civil War; and the few free schools were looked down on by well-to-do people as “charity” schools.

Clara Barton began with one of these schools where she had at first only six poor children to teach. But she was such a good teacher that before long six hundred came there to be pupils under her charge. She tried very hard to help everyone she could; at the end of eighteen years’ service as a teacher she had become almost an invalid and had lost her voice.

Still she could not bear to be idle while she had the use of her hands. From early girlhood her handwriting had been plain and neat. This, with her great desire to work, helped her to find a place in the Patent Office in Washington. Clara Barton was one of the first women to hold a position in the employ of the United States government. This gave offense to some of the men in that department. In those days most people thought it improper for a woman to work in an office; so these men stared at the new clerk, making remarks in her hearing about “brazen, strong-minded, ‘woman’s-rights’ women,” adding that such a creature was not fit to associate with gentlemen like themselves.

Sensitive and shrinking though she was, Miss Barton kept on. She was soon promoted to a position of trust. It was not long before she found that some of the very men who had insulted her were “patent thieves,” guilty of selling government secrets. Her duty to the country, rather than a wish for revenge, obliged her to report the wrongs that these ungallant “gentlemen” had done, and they were promptly dismissed from the service they had betrayed.

During the years of her humdrum life as a government clerk, Miss Barton was thrilled by the stories she read in the newspapers of the noble work of Florence Nightingale, the famous nurse in the Crimean War between Great Britain and Russia. It was said that the English soldiers adored Nurse Nightingale almost as if she were an angel from heaven, and some of them kissed her shadow when it fell upon their pillows as she passed by.

When Fort Sumter was fired on and President Lincoln began calling for soldiers to defend the country, Clara Barton was soon found at the front, in places of great danger. Fitting up a house or even an old barn for a hospital, she went about on the battlefields looking for wounded men, and doing all she could to relieve and help them. She ministered to the dying, writing many a last letter to give comfort to the sorrowing ones at home. Corresponding with newspapers in the north, she did wonders in obtaining medicines, hospital supplies, and comforts for her sick and wounded brothers in the army. She was appointed “lady manager” of all the hospitals at the front in Virginia. Those who knew most about her great work declared that her services to her country were wider reaching even than those of Florence Nightingale, the greatest nurse the world had yet known. Then it was that the grateful soldiers called Clara Barton “the Angel of the Battlefield.”

During the last weeks of his life, President Lincoln sent for Miss Barton and asked her to undertake the difficult task of finding out in as many cases as possible what had become of the eighty thousand soldiers reported missing from the Union army. At this memorable meeting the Great Heart of the White House stood face to face with one of the greatest-hearted women in the world of that day.

Clara Barton spent four years more tracing out the fate of thirty thousand missing men. To her great joy she learned that thousands upon thousands of those who had been reported as deserters had bravely given their lives for their country.

Miss Barton then went to Europe to rest awhile and regain the health she had lost by overwork. While there she studied the work of a Swiss who was trying to found a new society for nursing and caring for the sick and wounded soldiers of all nations. Because it had a red cross on a white ground for badge and flag, it was named the Red Cross Society.

When war broke out between France and Prussia, Clara Barton became known as “the Angel of the Battlefields” of France. After her return to the United States she began to organize the American Red Cross Society, which has since become the greatest power in the world for the relief of suffering.

Wherever there was a calamity or a pestilence--the great forest fire in Michigan; the earthquake at Charleston, South Carolina; yellow fever in Florida; the Johnstown flood in Pennsylvania; the Turkish massacres in Armenia--there Clara Barton, though now an old woman, was always “the first to come and the last to go.”

Though she was seventy-seven in the year of the war with Spain, she was active in sharing the hardships of the American soldiers in Cuba, nursing Roosevelt’s Rough Riders along with the rest of the sick and wounded at the front.

Though she lived to be over ninety, honored and beloved by millions for her constant labors of love and mercy, Clara Barton did not live to see, in the World War, the most wonderful carrying out of all her plans for soldiers on the field and in the hospital. The beautiful woman known as “the World Mother,” pictured on the poster displayed to raise money and supplies for the Red Cross work in America, might well have been the portrait of Clara Barton, for no woman in all history has done more to relieve and heal the sufferings of mankind. The millions upon millions of men, women, and children now numbered in the membership of the American Red Cross Society, by giving, knitting, rolling bandages, or buying Red Cross stamps and Christmas seals, are carrying on the work begun by the frail, sickly, bashful little girl whose yearning heart and busy hands gave her the name of the “Angel of the Battlefield.”

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW, THE AMERICAN CHILDREN’S POET

Living in Portland, Maine, a town of rare beauty, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow could hardly have helped being a poet, even if he had tried. He was born in a big, square, three-story house, close to the edge of Casco Bay, one of the largest and loveliest harbors in the world. Portland stands on several wooded hills, overlooking the bay, which is said to contain three hundred and sixty-five small islands--one for every day in the year. On the blue water the green islands sparkle like emeralds on a shining sea of sapphire.

From the highest point on Great Diamond, one of the larger islands in the harbor, little Henry could see, sometimes, as the sun was setting behind the hills of Portland, the hazy blue and pink outlines of the White Mountains, more than a hundred miles away. Any boy with eyes and heart to take in the deep meaning of it all would have wanted to be a poet. Henry’s inner nature throbbed in response to the beauties of Nature without, and because he had the gift of putting his feelings into words, he was a poet long before he or those around him realized it.

Like the boy Benjamin Franklin and the boy George Washington, who lived about a hundred years before him, the Longfellow boy had the best chances to hear the sailors who came into port tell their tales of the sea--of pirates and hairbreadth adventures.

Henry’s grandfather--his mother’s father--was bluff old General Peleg Wadsworth, a hero of the Revolutionary War. He could tell stories of the struggle for independence that would have fired the soul of any boy.

In the War of 1812, when the little Longfellow lad was only five, a company of American soldiers was stationed in the fort at Portland to defend the town against attacks from British warships. Young as Henry was, he understood what all the excitement meant. When he was in his seventh year, he heard the booming of the cannon in the great sea battle between the American brig _Enterprise_ and the British schooner _Boxer_. Both commanders were killed and buried on one of the hills of Portland. There was a sensation when the _Enterprise_ towed the _Boxer_ into port as a prize of war. In the poem, “My Lost Youth,” nearly fifty years after the battle, Longfellow wrote:

“I remember the sea-fight far away
How it thundered o’er the tide!
And the dead captains as they lay
In their graves o’erlooking the tranquil bay
Where they in battle died.”

Out near Hiram, Maine, where the Wadsworth family lived, there was a little lake known as Lovell’s Pond. On one of his visits to his grandfather’s, young Henry heard the story of a battle which had taken place there during the French and Indian War. When he was thirteen he wrote four stanzas which he named “The Battle of Lovell’s Pond.” Signing it “Henry,” he left it at the office of the Portland _Gazette_, telling only his sister what he had done. A writer has told a story of the way Henry’s first published poem was received:

“In the morning how slowly the father unfolded the damp sheet, and how carefully he dried it at the open fire before he began to read it! And how much foreign news there seemed to be in it!

“At last, Henry and the sister who shared his secret peeped over their parent’s shoulder--and the poem was there! They spent most of the day reading it. In the evening they went to play with a son of Judge Mellen, and while the judge was sitting by the fire in the twilight with the young folk and a few older neighbors around him, he said,

“Did you see the piece in to-day’s paper? Very stiff, remarkably stiff! Moreover, it is all borrowed--every word of it!”

When Henry was fifteen, his father sent him to Bowdoin College, at Brunswick, Maine, with his older brother, Stephen. Though the father was himself a graduate of Harvard, he was a director of this new college in his own state. Henry was graduated at eighteen and, young though he was, the trustees of the college invited him to come back, a few years later, as their professor of modern languages.

So the young graduate traveled in Europe to gain a speaking knowledge of all the languages he would have to teach. At the age of twenty-two, he became a professor at Bowdoin.

After five years at his own college, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was chosen Professor of Modern Languages at Harvard. He spent the first year in Europe. The next year he began his work as a Harvard professor. He boarded at the Craigie mansion, which had been General Washington’s headquarters during the first year of the War for Independence, sixty years before. Indeed, he slept in the same room occupied by the Father of his Country as a bedroom.

Although he had published several books of poetry, Longfellow’s poems did not begin to be popular till “A Psalm of Life” was published, in his thirty-third year. This poem made many people talk about him. Ministers preached about it, and the lines were set to music. Here is one stanza of this famous poem:

“Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints in the sands of time.”

Then such short poems as “Excelsior,” “The Village Blacksmith,” “The Rainy Day,” “The Arrow and the Song,” “The Day Is Done,” and many others, were recited in schools and sung in thousands of homes.

Of Longfellow’s longer poems, “Evangeline” and “The Courtship of Miles Standish” are, perhaps, the most popular. It is said that more people know of the Pilgrim Fathers of Plymouth through the latter poem than by reading the history of the country. It is a story of the lovely Priscilla and her true lover, John Alden, who came to ask her to marry Miles Standish. That little captain was brave enough to fight with savages, but he shrank from the bright eyes of Priscilla Mullens. John Alden was a true soldier and delivered his captain’s message, but Priscilla, knowing his loyal heart, only smiled at him and asked: “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?” And one of the great-great-great-grandsons of John Alden and his lovely wife, Priscilla, was the poet Longfellow!

“Hiawatha,” the poem about the Indian tribes, is also a great favorite, especially with the children. This is because of its descriptions of Indian customs and legends. It is the life history of the Indian boy, Hiawatha, from the time when he was a funny little papoose till he had grown to sturdy manhood.

When the little Indian boy was old enough he was sent out on a lone hunt through the wilderness to fit himself to become a true Indian brave. Here is what he did and saw and heard at that time:

“Forth into the forest straightway
All alone walked Hiawatha
Proudly, with his bow and arrows;
And the birds sang round him, o’er him:
‘Do not shoot us, Hiawatha!’
Sang the robin, the Opeechee,
Sang the bluebird, the Owaissa,
‘Do not shoot us, Hiawatha!’

“Up the oak-tree close behind him,
Sprang the squirrel, Adjidaumo,
In and out among the branches,
Coughed and chattered from the oak-tree,
Laughed, and said between his laughing,
‘Do not shoot me, Hiawatha!’”

Some of the Indian tribes of the Great Northwest were so delighted with “Hiawatha” that they voted to make the poet one of their great chiefs; and after Longfellow himself had gone to the “Happy Hunting Grounds” across the River of Death, the Indians went through a formal service making the poet’s daughter Alice a girl chief.