claimed--"My bird, I believe?"

In a letter to John Hay, Roosevelt described that meeting.

When somebody asked Seth Bullock to meet us, he at first
expressed disinclination. Then he was told that I was the
Civil Service Commissioner, upon which he remarked genially,
"Well, anything civil goes with me," and strolled over to be
introduced.

During these years, while Roosevelt was working on the Civil Service
Commission, fighting the spoilsmen and rousing the conscience of the
American people with a new ideal of public service, even while he
stimulated their national pride with a fresh expression of the
American spirit, his old rival, the Marquis de Mores, was noticeably
stirring the Old World. A year in India had been succeeded by a long
stay in China, where the Marquis had conceived a scheme to secure
concessions for France, which somehow went the way of all the
Marquis's schemes; nothing came of it.

He returned to France. The French people were in a restless, unhappy
state. More than once, war with Germany seemed imminent. The
Government was shot through with intrigue and corruption. The Marquis,
with all the faults of his temperament, was an idealist, with a noble
vision for his country. He saw that it had fallen into the hands of
base, self-seeking men, and he grasped at every means that presented
itself to overthrow the powers that seemed to him to be corrupting and
enfeebling France. He became an enthusiastic follower of Boulanger;
when Boulanger fell, he became a violent anti-Semite, and shortly
after, a radical Socialist. Meanwhile, he fought one duel after
another, on one occasion killing his man. More than once he came into
conflict with the law, and once was imprisoned for three months,
accused of inciting the populace to violence against the army. There
were rumors of plots with the royalists and plots with the anarchists.
It did not apparently seem of particular importance to the Marquis by
whom the Government was overthrown, so it was overthrown.

His plans did not prosper. Anti-Semitism grew beyond his control. The
Dreyfus affair broke, and set the very foundations of France
quivering. What the Marquis's part in it was, is obscure, but it was
said that he was deeply involved.

His attention was turning in another direction. France and England
were struggling for the possession of Central Africa, and the Marquis
conceived the grandiose dream of uniting all the Mohammedans o