Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
heard sing, though they played their part in the general chorus, were
performers of no especial note, like our tree-creepers, pine warblers,
and chipping sparrows. The great spring chorus had already begun to
subside, but the woods and fields were still vocal with beautiful bird
music, the country was very lovely, the inn as comfortable as possible,
and the bath and supper very enjoyable after our tramp; and altogether I
passed no pleasanter twenty-four hours during my entire European trip.
Ten days later, at Sagamore Hill, I was among my own birds, and was much
interested as I listened to and looked at them in remembering the notes
and actions of the birds I had seen in England. On the evening of the
first day I sat in my rocking-chair on the broad veranda, looking across
the Sound towards the glory of the sunset. The thickly grassed hillside
sloped down in front of me to a belt of forest from which rose the
golden, leisurely chiming of the wood thrushes, chanting their vespers;
through the still air came the warble of vireo and tanager; and after
nightfall we heard the flight song of an ovenbird from the same belt
of timber. Overhead an oriole sang in the weeping elm, now and then
breaking his song to scold like an overgrown wren. Song-sparrows and
catbirds sang in the shrubbery; one robin had built its nest over the
front and one over the back door, and there was a chippy's nest in the
wistaria vine by the stoop. During the next twenty-four hours I saw and
heard, either right around the house or while walking down to bathe,
through the woods, the following forty-two birds:
Little green heron, night heron, red-tailed hawk, yellow-billed cuckoo,
kingfisher, flicker, humming-bird, swift, meadow-lark, red-winged
blackbird, sharp-tailed finch, song sparrow, chipping sparrow, bush
sparrow, purple finch, Baltimore oriole, cowbunting, robin, wood thrush,
thrasher, catbird, scarlet tanager, red-eyed vireo, yellow warbler,
black-throated green warbler, kingbird, wood peewee, crow, blue jay,
cedar-bird, Maryland yellowthroat, chickadee, black and white
creeper, barn swallow, white-breasted swallow, ovenbird, thistlefinch,
vesperfinch, indigo bunting, towhee, grasshopper-sparrow, and screech
owl.
The birds were still in full song, for on Long Island there is little
abatement in the chorus until about the second week of July, when
the blossoming of the chestnut trees patches the woodland with frothy
greenish-yellow.[*]
[*] Alas! the blight has now destroyed the chestnut trees,
and robbed our woods of one of their distinctive beauties.
Our most beautiful singers are the wood thrushes; they sing not only in
the early morning but throughout the long hot June afternoons. Sometimes
they sing in the trees immediately around the house, and if the air is
still we can always hear them from among the tall trees at the foot of
the hill. The thrashers sing in the hedgerows beyond the garden, the
catbirds everywhere. The catbirds have such an attractive song that it
is extremely irritating to know that at any moment they may interrupt
it to mew and squeal. The bold, cheery music of the robins always seems
typical of the bold, cheery birds themselves. The Baltimore orioles nest
in the young elms around the house, and the orchard orioles in the apple
trees near the garden and outbuildings. Among the earliest sounds of
spring is the cheerful, simple, homely song of the song-sparrow; and in
March we also hear the piercing cadence of the meadow-lark--to us one
of the most attractive of all bird calls. Of late years now and then
we hear the rollicking, bubbling melody of the bobolink in the pastures
back of the barn; and when the full chorus of these and of many other
of the singers of spring is dying down, there are some true hot-weather
songsters, such as the brightly hued indigo buntings and thistlefinches.
Among the finches one of the most musical and plaintive songs is that of
the bush-sparrow--I do not know why the books call it field-sparrow,
for it does not dwell in the open fields like the vesperfinch, the
savannah-sparrow, and grasshopper-sparrow, but among the cedars and
bayberry bushes and young locusts in the same places where the prairie
warbler is found. Nor is it only the true songs that delight us. We love
to hear the flickers call, and we readily pardon any one of their number
which, as occasionally happens, is bold enough to wake us in the
early morning by drumming on the shingles of the roof. In our ears the
red-winged blackbirds have a very attractive note. We love the screaming
of the red-tailed hawks as they soar high overhead, and even the calls
of the night heron that nest in the tall water maples by one of the wood
ponds on our place, and the little green herons that nest beside the
salt marsh. It is hard to tell just how much of the attraction in any
bird-note lies in the music itself and how much in the associations.
This is what makes it so useless to try to compare the bird songs of one
country with those of another. A man who is worth anything can no more
be entirely impartial in speaking of the bird songs with which from
his earliest childhood he has been familiar than he can be entirely
impartial in speaking of his own family.
At Sagamore Hill we love a great many things--birds and trees and books,
and all things beautiful, and horses and rifles and children and hard
work and the joy of life. We have great fireplaces, and in them the logs
roar and crackle during the long winter evenings. The big piazza is for
the hot, still afternoons of summer. As in every house, there are things
that appeal to the householder because of their associations, but
which would not mean much to others. Naturally, any man who has been
President, and filled other positions, accumulates such things, with
scant regard to his own personal merits. Perhaps our most cherished
possessions are a Remington bronze, "The Bronco Buster," given me by my
men when the regiment was mustered out, and a big Tiffany silver vase
given to Mrs. Roosevelt by the enlisted men of the battleship Louisiana
after we returned from a cruise on her to Panama. It was a real surprise
gift, presented to her in the White House, on behalf of the whole crew,
by four as strapping man-of-war's-men as ever swung a turret or pointed
a twelve-inch gun. The enlisted men of the army I already knew well--of
course I knew well the officers of both army and navy. But the enlisted
men of the navy I only grew to know well when I was President. On the
Louisiana Mrs. Roosevelt and I once dined at the chief petty officers'
mess, and on another battleship, the Missouri (when I was in company
with Admiral Evans and Captain Cowles), and again on the Sylph and on
the Mayflower, we also dined as guests of the crew. When we finished our
trip on the Louisiana I made a short speech to the assembled crew,
and at its close one of the petty officers, the very picture of what a
man-of-war's-man should look like, proposed three cheers for me in terms
that struck me as curiously illustrative of America at her best; he
said, "Now then, men, three cheers for Theodore Roosevelt, the typical
American citizen!" That was the way in which they thought of the
American President--and a very good way, too. It was an expression that
would have come naturally only to men in whom the American principles of
government and life were ingrained, just as they were ingrained in the
men of my regiment. I need scarcely add, but I will add for the
benefit of those who do not know, that this attitude of self-respecting
identification of interest and purpose is not only compatible with but
can only exist when there is fine and real discipline, as thorough
and genuine as the discipline that has always obtained in the most
formidable fighting fleets and armies. The discipline and the mutual
respect are complementary, not antagonistic. During the Presidency all
of us, but especially the children, became close friends with many of
the sailor men. The four bearers of the vase to Mrs. Roosevelt were
promptly hailed as delightful big brothers by our two smallest boys, who
at once took them to see the sights of Washington in the landau--"the
President's land-ho!" as, with seafaring humor, our guests immediately
styled it. Once, after we were in private life again, Mrs. Roosevelt
was in a railway station and had some difficulty with her ticket. A
fine-looking, quiet man stepped up and asked if he could be of help; he
remarked that he had been one of the Mayflower's crew, and knew us well;
and in answer to a question explained that he had left the navy in
order to study dentistry, and added--a delicious touch--that while thus
preparing himself to be a dentist he was earning the necessary money to
go on with his studies by practicing the profession of a prize-fighter,
being a good man in the ring.
There are various bronzes in the house: Saint-Gaudens's "Puritan," a
token from my staff officers when I was Governor; Proctor's cougar, the
gift of the Tennis Cabinet--who also gave us a beautiful silver bowl,
which is always lovingly pronounced to rhyme with "owl" because that was
the pronunciation used at the time of the giving by the valued friend
who acted as spokesman for his fellow-members, and who was himself the
only non-American member of the said Cabinet. There is a horseman by
Macmonnies, and a big bronze vase by Kemys, an adaptation or development
of the pottery vases of the Southwestern Indians. Mixed with all of
these are gifts from varied sources, ranging from a brazen Buddha sent
me by the Dalai Lama and a wonderful psalter from the Emperor Menelik to
a priceless ancient Samurai sword, coming from Japan in remembrance
of the peace of Portsmouth, and a beautifully inlaid miniature suit of
Japanese armor, given me by a favorite hero of mine, Admiral Togo, when
he visited Sagamore Hill. There are things from European friends; a
mosaic picture of Pope Leo XIII in his garden; a huge, very handsome
edition of the Nibelungenlied; a striking miniature of John Hampden from
Windsor Castle; editions of Dante, and the campaigns of "Eugenio von
Savoy" (another of my heroes, a dead hero this time); a Viking cup; the
state sword of a Uganda king; the gold box in which the "freedom of the
city of London" was given me; a beautiful head of Abraham Lincoln given
me by the French authorities after my speech at the Sorbonne; and many
other things from sources as diverse as the Sultan of Turkey and the
Dowager Empress of China. Then there are things from home friends: a
Polar bear skin from Peary; a Sioux buffalo robe with, on it, painted
by some long-dead Sioux artist, the picture story of Custer's fight; a
bronze portrait plaque of Joel Chandler Harris; the candlestick used in
sealing the Treaty of Portsmouth, sent me by Captain Cameron Winslow;
a shoe worn by Dan Patch when he paced a mile in 1:59, sent me by his
owner. There is a picture of a bull moose by Carl Rungius, which seems
to me as spirited an animal painting as I have ever seen. In the north
room, with its tables and mantelpiece and desks and chests made of woods
sent from the Philippines by army friends, or by other friends for other
reasons; with its bison and wapiti heads; there are three paintings by
Marcus Symonds--"Where Light and Shadow Meet," "The Porcelain Towers,"
and "The Seats of the Mighty"; he is dead now, and he had scant
recognition while he lived, yet surely he was a great imaginative
artist, a wonderful colorist, and a man with a vision more wonderful
still. There is one of Lungren's pictures of the Western plains; and a
picture of the Grand Canyon; and one by a Scandinavian artist who could
see the fierce picturesqueness of workaday Pittsburgh; and sketches of
the White House by Sargent and by Hopkinson Smith.