the radiant center of the group of boys and girls with whom he had "run" during his Harvard years. They went to Europe, where Theodore Roosevelt climbed the Matterhorn for no particular reason except that a pair of Englishmen with whom he had talked seemed to think that they were the only ones who had ever climbed it or ever would; and returned to America, more ardently American than ever, and settled in New York.

He had long given up his intention of becoming a naturalist, without, however, being able to decide what he would become. With no great enthusiasm for the law, he entered the Columbia Law School and, at the same time, the law office of his uncle, Robert Roosevelt. Meanwhile he completed a history of "The Naval War of 1812" which he had begun in college, looked about in the political world of his native city, and joined the Republican Club of the Twenty-first Assembly District.

He became a factor, if not a power, there at once, and on the initiative of a shrewd, keen-witted Irishman named "Joe" Murray, a local "boss," was nominated for the Assembly within a year, and elected.

In Albany he sprang almost at once into leadership. Before his first term was over he was a national figure, at the end of his third he was a force to be reckoned with in the Republican Party, head of his State dele

gation to the National Convention, the hero of young men, the hope of all who were working for the triumph of the better elements in American politics. He gained his first fame through a fearless attack on a corrupt judge whom the leaders of his own party were seeking to shelter; but the real confidence of the public he won by solid and persistent work against odds for honest government and progressive legislation.

A personal catastrophe cut off completely and, it seemed forever, his political career. In February, 1884, his mother died suddenly. The same night his daughter Alice was born, and twelve hours later his wife died. He finished his term in the Assembly, did what he could to nominate the man of his choice at the Republican Convention in Chicago, failed, and hid himself, disheartened, on the ranch he had purchased the preceding autumn on the banks of the Little Missouri River, in Dakota.

II

For the two years or more that followed, the gay world of New York City, and that other complex and tumultuous world of politics through which he had passed like a cyclone, saw Theodore Roosevelt only for hurried glimpses, if at all. He had altogether resigned whatever political ambitions he might have had. He wanted to write; and he did write an enter

taining book of hunter's tales, a fresh and authoritative biography of Thomas H. Benton, another of Gouverneur Morris, a volume concerning ranch-life; but these were incidental. He had bought a great herd of cattle, he had associated himself with a quintette of gay-hearted cowboys, two from Maine, three from New Brunswick, and with them had established two ranches, one called the Chimney Butte, the other Elkhorn; and he was now a ranchman whose life was bounded by the circle of cares and wholesome hardships and pleasures and perils that make up a ranchman's days. The bleak and savage country and the primitive conditions of life fascinated his imagination; the hardy men who were his companions gripped his affections and held them. The "women-folk" in Maine joined their husbands and took charge of Elkhorn, and for two years made a home where the days passed in a round of manly endeavor and simple-hearted fellowship that in the memory of all who were a part of it lingered as a kind of pastoral idyll.

His natural quality of leadership asserted itself instantly, and he had not been in the Bad Lands six months before he had become the leader of the forces of order. It happened that the leader of the forces of violence was a French nobleman named the Marquis de Mores. They had more than one abrupt encounter, and on one occasion the Marquis challenged Roosevelt

to a duel. But the duel was never fought. When Roosevelt named the conditions the Marquis withdrew.

Working on the round-up, riding for days on end after stray cattle, hunting over the bare prairies and up the jagged peaks, Theodore Roosevelt won at last the strength of body he had set out to gain fifteen years before. He won much else an understanding of the common man and of the West, a deeper appreciation of the meaning of democracy, a revived interest in life. His career as a ranchman came to an end in the autumn of 1886, when he went East to accept the Republican nomination for Mayor of New York.

He ran against Abram S. Hewitt, the Tammany nominee, and Henry George, the candidate of a shortlived United Labor Party, and was disastrously defeated in spite of a lively campaign. He went to Europe, and in London married the friend of his childhood, Edith Kermit Carow.

He returned with his wife to America the following Spring and moved into the new house on Sagamore Hill which he had set about to build before his departure. There he gave himself to the writing of books, notably "The Winning of the West," a history of the frontier, which was to be his greatest work. A Republican victory in 1888, however, brought him again into public affairs. He was appointed a member

of the U. S. Civil Service Commission in Washington, and for six years thereafter fought the battle of civil service reform against the corrupt or foolish advocates of favoritism who still affirmed that "to the victor belong the spoils." It was a perilous position for a public man with political ambitions, for the work of the Civil Service Commission was unpopular with the leaders of both parties and to administer it ably meant to antagonize the most powerful forces in Congress. Roosevelt carried the fight into the very Cabinet of the Republican President, and even while he drew the fire of the spoilsmen won the quick applause of men near and far who admired courage and skill in combat.

A reform victory in New York City in the autumn of 1894 brought him, six months later, again to the city of his birth as President of the Police Board. The police department of the city was demoralized, favoritism and corruption were rampant, laws were unequally enforced, and vice and crime flourished openly to the scandal of respectable citizens, who were helpless it seemed to cope with the forces of disorder. Into these Augean stables Theodore Roosevelt courageously turned the flood of his turbulent energy and cleansing love of justice. He abolished at once the system of admission and promotion by pay or influence; he stood by his men when influential