g is not
merely folly, but a peculiarly repulsive type of mean and selfish
wickedness." And again: "The man or woman who deliberately avoids
marriage ... is in effect a criminal against the race and should be an
object of contemptuous abhorrence by all healthy people."

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 Malthus 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, sporting 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.

Mr. Roosevelt produced much excellent literature, but no masterpieces
like Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural. Probably his
sketches of ranch life and of hunting trips in three continents will be
read longest and will keep their freshness after the public questions
which he discussed have lost interest and his historical works have been
in part rewritten. In these outdoor papers, besides the thrilling
adventures which they--very modestly--record, there are even passages of
descriptive beauty and chapters of graphic narrative, like the tale of
the pursuit and capture of the three robbers who stole the boats on the
Missouri River, which belonged to the Roosevelt ranch. This last would
be a capital addition to school readers and books of selected standard
prose.

Senator Lodge and other friends emphasize the President's sense of
humor. He had it, of course. He took pains to establish the true reading
of that famous retort, "All I want out of you is common civility and
damned little of that." He used to repeat with glee Lounsbury's
witticism about "the infinite capability of the human mind to resist