Four Americans

Excerpt from Four Americans: Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman

Now, I am not myself an advocate of race suicide but I confess to a feeling of sympathy with the lady thus denounced, whose point of view is, at least, comprehensible. Old Mal thus was not such an ass as some folks think. It is impossible not to admire Roosevelt's courage, honesty, and wonderful energy impossible to keep from liking the man for his boyish impulsiveness, camaraderie, sport ing blood, and hatred of a rascal. But it is equally impossible for a man of any spirit to keep from resenting his bullying ways, his intolerance of quiet, peaceable people and persons of an opposite temperament to his own. Even nice, timid little men who have let their bodies get soft do not like to be bullied. It puts their backs up. His ideal of character was manliness, a sound ideal, but he insisted too much upon the physical side of it, red-bloodedness and all that. Those poor old fat generals in Washington who had been enjoying themselves at their clubs, playing bridge and drinking Scotch highballs He made them all turn out and ride fifty miles a day.

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