And I answered: "Well, there is another tune about which I might say the same thing," meaning My Old Kentucky Home.
Neither of us was quite sincere. Both were unconsciously pleased to hear the familiar strains. At an open-air fiesta in Barcelona some American friends who made their home there put the bandmaster up to breaking forth with the dear old melody as I came down the aisle, and I was mightily pleased. Again at a concert in Lucerne, the band, playing a potpourri of Swiss songs, interpolated Kentucky's national anthem and the group of us stood up and sang the chorus.
I do not wonder that men march joyously to battle and death to drum and fife squeaking and rattling The Girl I Left Behind Me. It may be a long way to Tipperary, but it is longer to the end of the tether that binds the heart of man to the cradle songs of his nativity. With the cradle songs of America the name of Stephen Collins Foster "is immortal bound," and I would no more dishonor his memory than that of Robert Burns or the author of The Star-Spangled Banner.
Theodore Roosevelt--His Problematic Character--He Offers Me an Appointment--His _Bonhomie_ and Chivalry--Proud of His Rebel Kin
It is not an easy nor yet a wholly congenial task to write--truthfully, intelligently and frankly to write--about Theodore Roosevelt. He belonged to the category of problematical characters. A born aristocrat, he at no time took the trouble to pose as a special friend of the people; a born leader, he led with a rough unsparing hand. He was the soul of controversy. To one who knew him from his childhood as I did, always loving him and rarely agreeing with him, it was plain to see how his most obvious faults commended him to the multitude and made for a popularity that never quite deserted him.
As poorly as I rate the reign of majorities I prefer it to the one-man power, either elective or dynastic. The scheme of a third term in the presidency for General Grant seemed to me a conspiracy though with many of its leaders I was on terms of affectionate intimacy. I fought and helped to kill in 1896 the unborn scheme to give Mr. Cleveland a third term. Inevitably as the movement for the retention of Theodore Roosevelt beyond the time already fixed began to show itself in 1907, my pen was primed against it and I wrote variously and voluminously.