DEAR MR. BOK:—­

I have your letter of the 16th instant.  I hope the little fellow will soon be all right.  Instead of giving him my letter, give him a message from me based on the letter, if that will be better for him.  Tell Mrs. Bok how deeply Mrs. Roosevelt and I sympathize with her.  We know just how she feels.

Sincerely yours,

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

“That’s pretty fine consideration,” said the father.  He got the letter during a business conference and he read it aloud to the group of business men.  Some there were in that group who keenly differed with the President on national issues, but they were all fathers, and two of the sturdiest turned and walked to the window as they said: 

“Yes, that is fine!”

Then came the boy’s pleasure when he was handed the letter; the next few days were spent inditing an answer to “my friend, the President.”  At last the momentous epistle seemed satisfactory, and off to the busy presidential desk went the boyish note, full of thanks and assurances that he would come just as soon as he could, and that Mr. Roosevelt must not get impatient!

The “soon as he could” time, however, did not come as quickly as all had hoped!—­a little heart pumped for days full of oxygen and accelerated by hypodermic injections is slow to mend.  But the President’s framed letter, hanging on the spot on the wall first seen in the morning, was a daily consolation.

Then, in March, although four months after the promise—­and it would not have been strange, in his busy life, for the President to have forgotten or at least overlooked it—­on the very day that the book was published came a special “large-paper” copy of The Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter, and on the fly-leaf there greeted the boy, in the President’s own hand: 

To MASTER CURTIS BOK,

With the best wishes of his friend,

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

March 11, 1908.

The boy’s cup was now full, and so said his letter to the President.  And the President wrote back to the father:  “I am really immensely amused and interested, and shall be mighty glad to see the little fellow.”

In the spring, on a beautiful May day, came the great moment.  The mother had to go along, the boy insisted, to see the great event, and so the trio found themselves shaking the hand of the President’s secretary at the White House.

“Oh, the President is looking for you, all right,” he said to the boy, and then the next moment the three were in a large room.  Mr. Roosevelt, with beaming face, was already striding across the room, and with a “Well, well, and so this is my friend Curtis!” the two stood looking into each other’s faces, each fairly wreathed in smiles, and each industriously shaking the hand of the other.

“Yes, Mr. President, I’m mighty glad to see you!” said the boy.