The Democrats nominated the courageous Governor of New York, Grover Cleveland.  Both before and after this, he and Mr. Roosevelt worked together for measures of good government, and respected each other, while belonging to different parties.  The presidential election turned out to be close, and in the end several incidents besides the split in the Republican party worked against Blaine.  He was narrowly defeated.  The change of a few hundred votes in the State of New York would have made Blaine the President.  As in later years large election frauds were discovered to have been going on in New York, some people contend with good show of reason, that Blaine and not Cleveland was really the choice of the voters.

Two years after this, in 1886, when Roosevelt was on his Dakota ranch, the Republicans nominated him for Mayor of New York City.  He was about twenty-eight years old, and it is evident that he had made a mark in politics.  He came East, accepted the nomination, and made the campaign.

The opponents were, first, Abram S. Hewitt, a respectable candidate nominated by Tammany Hall in its customary fashion of offering a good man, now and then, to pull the wool over the eyes of persons who naturally need some excuse for voting to put New York into the hands of the political organization whose existence has always been one of America’s greatest disgraces.

The other candidate was Henry George, a man of high character, nominated by the United Labor Party.  Mr. Hewitt was elected, with Mr. George second and Mr. Roosevelt third.

About a month after the election, Mr. Roosevelt went to England, where he married Miss Edith Kermit Carow, of New York.  She had been his friend and playmate when he was a boy, and was his sister’s friend.  The groomsman was a young Englishman, Mr. Cecil Spring-Rice.  Years later the groom and his “best man” came together again in Washington, when the American was President Roosevelt, and the Englishman was Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, the British Ambassador to the United States.

CHAPTER VI

FIGHTING OFFICE-SEEKERS

To tell the story of Roosevelt’s life it is necessary to talk much about politics, and that to some people is a dull subject.  But he was in political office over twenty years of his life, always interested and active in politics, and the vigor which he brought to his duties made public affairs attractive to thousands of Americans who had felt little concern about them.

This alone was a great service.  If a man is going the wrong way in political life, if he is trying to do unwise or evil things, he is a danger, but a danger which may be corrected.  He may be made to turn his efforts in useful directions.  But the man who takes no interest at all in the government of his city, state or nation, who is so feeble that he cannot even take the time to vote on election day, but goes hunting or fishing instead,—­this man is a hopeless nuisance, who does not deserve the liberty which he enjoys, nor the protection which his government gives him.