On another occasion the same gentleman came to an issue with me in a debate, and wound up his speech by explaining that I occupied what “lawyers would call a quasi position on the bill.”  His rival was a man of totally different type, a man of great natural dignity, also born in Ireland.  He had served with gallantry in the Civil War.  After the close of the war he organized an expedition to conquer Canada.  The expedition, however, got so drunk before reaching Albany that it was there incarcerated in jail, whereupon its leader abandoned it and went into New York politics instead.  He was a man of influence, and later occupied in the Police Department the same position as Commissioner which I myself at one time occupied.  He felt that his rival had gained too much glory at my expense, and, walking over with ceremonious solemnity to where the said rival was sitting close beside me, he said to him:  “I would like you to know, Mr. Cameron [Cameron, of course, was not the real name], that Mr. Roosevelt knows more law in a wake than you do in a month; and, more than that, Michael Cameron, what do you mane by quoting Latin on the floor of this House when you don’t know the alpha and omayga of the language?”

There was in the Legislature, during the deadlock above mentioned, a man whom I will call Brogan.  He looked like a serious elderly frog.  I never heard him speak more than once.  It was before the Legislature was organized, or had adopted any rules; and each day the only business was for the clerk to call the roll.  One day Brogan suddenly rose, and the following dialogue occurred: 

     Brogan.  Misther Clu-r-r-k! 
     The Clerk.  The gentleman from New York. 
     Brogan.  I rise to a point of ordher under the rules! 
     The Clerk.  There are no rules. 
     Brogan.  Thin I object to them! 
     The Clerk.  There are no rules to object to. 
     Brogan.  Oh! [nonplussed; but immediately recovering himself]. 
     Thin I move that they be amended until there ar-r-re!

The deadlock was tedious; and we hailed with joy such enlivening incidents as the above.

During my three years’ service in the Legislature I worked on a very simple philosophy of government.  It was that personal character and initiative are the prime requisites in political and social life.  It was not only a good but an absolutely indispensable theory as far as it went; but it was defective in that it did not sufficiently allow for the need of collective action.  I shall never forget the men with whom I worked hand in hand in these legislative struggles, not only my fellow-legislators, but some of the newspaper reporters, such as Spinney and Cunningham; and then in addition the men in the various districts who helped us.  We had made up our minds that we must not fight fire with fire, that on the contrary the way to win out was to equal our foes in practical efficiency and yet to stand at the opposite plane from them in applied morality.