Life — October 13, 1898 — page 14: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

AN UP.TO.DATE RESTORATION, A Modern Drug Store Ad. UST drop into our storo to-day And soo the prices fall, ‘Our peorless bargains bring discase Within the reach of all! Theodore. HHEODORE ROOSEVELT is a very unconventional per- son; tart, terse, tumultuous. He has an embarrassing way of looking persons in the eye, through his glasses darkly; he tells the truth shamelessly; despises shams and humbugs openly; boasts of being an American; sniffs at the Prince of Wales; and makes the average old woman of both sexes feel uncomfortable. He has a strange habit of calling a spade a spade, which, however commendable from an ethical point of view, is very anvoying—for the spade. A graduate of Harvard, Theodore’s vivacious frankness makes college professors grieve and his respectable alma mater squirm, Asa ranchman his titles, in the fresh, free communities of the West, vary from ‘‘ The Four-eyed Dude” to “ Teddy the Terror,” these extremes indicating the character and result of his personal interviews with the citizens of the Rocky Moun- tain region. In Theodore’s bright lexicon there is no such word as scoot; he understood the term shout, however. As a Civil Service reformer he reformed both reform and reformers; he flouted the Senate; sniffed at the House; looked at Tom Reed without winking; and hurled defiance around promiscuously, In the cop business he discouraged the small economies of Tammany; abolished the rake-off; introduced iosomnia to the force; snorted at the pull; and took a fall out of everybody who came along. Just as he was about to strangle the New York goose, which had so persistently mislaid its golden eggs, and when the asylums and workhouses were yawning for municipal patriots, Theodore gave up his club and star and joined the navy. In the navy he said nothing, but sawed wood; he sat up nights chewing tar and sampling armor plate; he put steam pressure on a lot of. old barnacles, and nearly brought John Long to nervous prostration. Just as the boiler was about to burst, Spain threw a brick at Uncle Sam; and Theodore took off his coat and went out to see what the trouble was for. He organized a Wild West show right off; he gave peace to a hundred Western communities by annexing thcir pet slaugh- terers; he depressed the football, polo and boxing industries of the colleges; made a collection of black sheep and arid palates; and started for Cuba to locate the Spanish fleet and dislocate the Spanish Army. With bis customary vivacious unconventionality, he avoided the military style of Von