Roosevelt went about the city at night, sometimes alone, sometimes with his friend Jacob Riis, a reporter who knew about police work and the slum districts of the city.  If he caught policemen off their beat, they were ordered to report at his office in the morning and explain.  When his friends were dancing at fashionable balls, he was apt to be looking after the police outside.

From about this time, Roosevelt began to be known all over the United States.  He had been heard of ever since he was in the Assembly, but only by those who follow politics closely.  Now, New York newspapers, with their cartoons, began to make him celebrated everywhere.  The fact that when he spoke emphatically, he showed his teeth for an instant, was enlarged upon in pictures and in newspaper articles, and it became connected with him henceforth.

We demand amusing newspapers; we like the fun in every subject brought out as no other nation does.  And we get it.  Our newspapers are by far the brightest and most readable in the world.  But we have to pay for it, and we often pay by having the real truth concealed from us in a mass of comedy.  Newspapers seize upon a man or woman who has something amusing in his life, manner, or speech, and play upon that peculiarity until at last the true character of the person is hidden.

This happened with Roosevelt.  About the time of his Police Commissionership, the newspaper writers and artists began to invent a grotesque and amusing character called “Teddy,” who was forever snapping his teeth, shouting “Bully!” or rushing at everybody, flourishing a big stick.  This continued for years and was taken for truth by a great many people.  To this day, this imaginary person is believed in by thousands.  And in the meantime, the genuine man, a brave high-minded American, loving his country ardently, and serving her to the utmost of his great strength and ability, was engaged in his work, known by all who had personal contact with him to be stern indeed against evil-doers, but tender and gentle to the unfortunate, to women and children and to animals.

CHAPTER VIII

THE ROUGH RIDER

In 1897 the Republican Party came again into power; Mr. McKinley was inaugurated as President.  Roosevelt was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and came with his family to Washington.  The Secretary of the Navy was Mr. John D. Long.

America was within a year of getting into war, and as usual was not ready for it.  There are men so foolish as to rejoice because we have never been ready for the wars in which we have taken part about every twenty or thirty years in our history.  This simply means that they rejoice at the unnecessary deaths of thousands of other Americans who die from disease in camp, or are killed in the field through neglect to prepare in advance.  Preparation for war is not wholly the matter of having weapons ready