U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [221]
their new uniforms in their shined Sam Browne belts in
-140-their shined tight leather puttees so this was overseas so this was the front wel wel Dick Norton adjusted his monocle and began to talk
about how as gentlemen volunteers he had signed us up and as gentlemen volunteers he bade us farewel Wham the first arrivé the smel of almonds the sunday feeling of no traffic on the road not a poilu in sight Dick Norton adjusted his monocle the Red Cross majors felt the
showering mud sniffed the lyddite swift whiff of
latrines and of huddled troops
Wham Wham Wham like the Fourth of July the
shel fragments sing our ears ring
the bridge is standing and Dick Norton adjusting his monocle is standing talking at length about gentlemen volunteers and ambulance service and la bel e France The empty staffcar is standing
but where are the majors taking over command
who were to make a speech in the name of the Red
Cross? The slowest and pudgiest and whitest of the
majors is stil to be seen on his hands and knees with mud al over his puttees crawling into the abris and that's the last we saw of the Red Cross Majors
and the last we heard of gentlemen
or volunteers
-141-THE HAPPY WARRIOR
The Roosevelts had lived for seven righteous gen-erations on Manhattan Island; they owned a big brick house on 20th Street, an estate up at Dobbs Ferry, lots in the city, a pew in the Dutch Reformed Church, inter-ests, stocks and bonds, they felt Manhattan was theirs, they felt America was theirs. Their son,
Theodore,
was a sickly youngster, suffered from asthma, was
very nearsighted; his hands and feet were so smal it was hard for him to learn to box; his arms were very short;
his father was something of a humanitarian, gave
Christmas dinners to newsboys, deplored conditions, slums, the East Side, Hel 's Kitchen.
Young Theodore had ponies, was encouraged to
walk in the woods, to go camping, was instructed in boxing and fencing (an American gentleman should
know how to defend himself) taught Bible Class, did mission work (an American gentleman should do his
best to uplift those not so fortunately situated);
righteousness was his by birth;
he had a passion for nature study, for reading
about birds and wild animals, for going hunting; he got to be a good shot in spite of his glasses, a good walker in spite of his tiny feet and short legs, a fair horseman, an aggressive scrapper in spite of his short reach, a crack politician in spite of being the son of one of the owning Dutch families of New York.
In 1876 he went up to Cambridge to study at
Harvard, a wealthy talkative erratic young man with sidewhiskers and definite ideas about everything under the sun,
at Harvard he drove around in a dogcart, col ected
-142-stuffed birds, mounted specimens he'd shot on his trips in the Adirondacks; in spite of not drinking and being somewhat of a christer, having odd ideas about reform and remedying abuses, he made Porcel ian and the
Dickey and the clubs that were his right as the son of one of the owning Dutch families of New York.
He told his friends he was going to devote his life to social service: 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.
From the time he was eleven years old he wrote
copiously, fil ed diaries, notebooks, loose leaves with a big impulsive scrawl about everything he did and
thought and said;
natural y he studied law.
He married young and went to Switzerland to
climb the Matterhorn; his first wife's early death broke him al up. He went out to the badlands of western
Dakota to become a rancher on the Little Missouri
River;
when he came back to Manhattan he was Teddy,
the straight shooter from the west, the elkhunter, the man in the Stetson hat, who'd roped steers, fought a grizzly hand to hand, acted as Deputy Sheriff,
(a Roosevelt has a duty to his country; the duty of a Roosevelt is to uplift those not so fortunately situated, those who have come more recently to our shores) in the west, Deputy Sheriff Roosevelt felt the