That Roosevelt was born to be an author as well as a statesman is proven by the fact that no matter how busy he was he always found time to write. In college and while he was reading law in his uncle’s office, he found time to write “The Naval War of 1812,” a standard work on the subject. He wrote his “Life of Thomas Hart Benton” and his “Hunting Trips of a Ranchman” while he was pursuing his arduous career as a rancher. When his duties as Civil Service Commissioner at Washington were pressing upon him he yet found time to write several books on hunting, as well as part of his splendid work “The Winning of the West.” Thus it was throughout his career. Greater and greater grew the demands upon his time, yet the number of volumes to his credit mounted steadily.
Since his cattle-raising venture had failed, and since he knew the income from any public positions he should hold would be inadequate to the expenses of the office and generally uncertain, he determined that his pen should support him. The fact that, when he died, his income from his writings was about one hundred thousand dollars a year shows how well he kept his resolution.
Mr. J. H. Whigham, publisher of the “Metropolitan Magazine,” thus interestingly describes the way in which Roosevelt formed and kept his literary decisions:
“His first coming to the ‘Metropolitan’ was in keeping with all the Colonel said and did. The thing that worried him most in making a connection was whether he could faithfully carry out his part of the bargain. I had known Roosevelt first in Cuba when I lived for some weeks with the Rough Riders and shared the precarious but precious potatoes of the Colonel’s own mess. It didn’t require much perspicacity to see that he was the sort of leader to tie to and cherish. Naturally, therefore, when the ‘Metropolitan Magazine’ came into my control I looked around for Roosevelt. He was contributing editor of ‘The Outlook’ then, and there is no need to say that he couldn’t be weaned away from his allegiance to the Abbotts, for whom he always had the greatest affection. I managed, however, to get him interested in what we were trying to do with the ‘Metropolitan,’ and he promised to let me know if he ever changed his plans.