REFORMER AND PEACEMAKER 
73 
“I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the 
doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and 
strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the 
man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink 
from danger, from hardships, or from bitter toil, and who out of these 
wins the splendid ultimate triumph/’ 
It was the kind of life that Roosevelt loved. He was strenuous 
in everything, in his executive acts, his legislative demands, his exer¬ 
cises and pleasures, his walks and rides. An amusing example of his 
strenuosity in this direction is that long walk in which he led a party 
of army officers through a broken country, wading streams, climbing 
and descending hills, facing all sorts of difficulties, until they were 
utterly worn out, while their leader showed no trace of weariness. * 
Roosevelt, in addition to his Presidential term, had another life, 
that home life which all of us possess in some measure and which he 
thoroughly enjoyed. The society of his wife and children was more 
to him than all the stately show and empty adulation of his official 
position. His home at Oyster Bay, Long Island, is a place of great 
attraction and one which any man might well enjoy. Standing on the 
crest of a little hill and approached by a steep and winding roadway, 
part of which runs through a thick wood, it presents a picturesque 
aspect when first seen. From it appears a beautiful view in every 
direction, and especially that over the waters of the Sound. Shade 
trees of many kinds stud the lawn and a broad porch runs around three 
sides of the house, shaded in front by a luxuriant Virginia creeper. 
Within, the house is beautifully furnished, and in nearly every room 
are trophies of the hunter’s life on the Western plains or mementos 
of the soldier’s life on Cuban soil. President, or Governor, or Colonel, 
^or Commissioner Roosevelt, or whatever we may call him, is never so 
happy as when sitting quietly at home with his wife and children. 
Home is to him the dearest place on earth, and he never suffers the 
cares that fall upon him thickly without to invade its hallowed pre¬ 
cincts. Here he finds his one place of rest, of that relaxation of which 
he permits himself so little. With his wife—a woman of beauty and 
charm, one able to keep pace with him in his outdoor walks—his 
daughter Alice, the child of his first wife, and his five other children, 
