Every one should read his “Autobiography,” his “Hero Tales from American History” which he wrote in company with Senator Lodge, and his “Letters to His Children.”  His early accounts of hunting in the West make good reading, but in his book about his African hunt, and in the one on the South American trip, he probably reached his highest level as a writer.  If any American has written better books of travel than these, more continuously interesting, fuller of pleasing detail about the little incidents, the birds and tiny animals which he encountered, and at the same time with a stricter regard for accuracy of observation, I do not know where they are to be found.

This man of politics had a true poetic feeling for the countries he visited; time and again he moves his readers in describing the wonders of the great waste places, the melancholy deserts and wildernesses, the deadly fascination of the jungle, and the awful glory of the tropic dawns and sunsets.  When something awakened his imagination he could write passages full of the magic of poetry.  Witness this, it is not a description of scenery, but a vision of the true historian of the future: 

The true historian will bring the past before our eyes as if it were the present.  He will make us see as living men the hard-faced archers of Agincourt, and the war-worn spear-men who followed Alexander down beyond the rim of the known world.  We shall hear grate on the coast of Britain the keels of the Low-Dutch sea-thieves whose children’s children were to inherit unknown continents. ...  Beyond the dim centuries we shall see the banners float above armed hosts ...  Dead poets shall sing to us of the deeds of men of might and the love and beauty of women.  We shall see the dancing girls of Memphis.  The scent of the flowers in the hanging gardens of Babylon will be heavy to our senses.  We shall sit at feast with the kings of Nineveh when they drink from ivory and gold. ...  For us the war-horns of King Olaf shall wail across the flood, and the harps sound high at festivals in forgotten halls.  The frowning strongholds of the barons of old shall rise before us, and the white palace-castles from whose windows Syrian princes once looked across the blue AEgean. ...  We shall see the terrible horsemen of Timur the Lame ride over the roof of the world; we shall hear the drums beat as the armies of Gustavus and Frederick and Napoleon drive forward to victory. [Footnote:  “History as Literature,” p. 32, et seq.]

Here is one of Mr. Roosevelt’s anecdotes of an incident in the White House.  It shows why the people were interested in that house while he lived in it: