To spend Christmas there, with his family, even though he had to spend it very quietly, delighted him. For ten days he seemed to be gaining, he read much, and dictated a good deal. On January 5th, he reviewed a book on pheasants and wrote also a little message to be read at the meeting of the American Defense Society, which he was unable to attend. That evening he spent with the family, going to bed at eleven o'clock. "Put out the light, please," he said to his attendant, James Amos, and no one heard his voice again. A little after four o'clock the next morning, Amos, noticing that he breathed strangely, called the nurse, and when they reached his bedside, Roosevelt was dead. A blood clot in his heart had killed him. Death had unbound Prometheus.
By noon on that day, the 6th of January, 1919, the whole world knew of his death, and as the news sank in, the sense of an unspeakable void was felt everywhere. He was buried on January 8th, on a knoll in the small country graveyard, which he and Mrs. Roosevelt had long before selected, overlooking Oyster Bay and the waters of the Sound. His. family and relatives and dear friends, and a few persons who represented State and Nation, the Rough Riders, and learned societies, attended the services in the little church. Just as the coffin was being borne in, the sun came out and streamed through the stained-glass windows. "The services were most impressive in their simplicity, in their sense of intimacy, in the sentiment that filled the hour and the place of personal loss and of pride of possession of a priceless memory." The bearers took the coffin through the grove, with its bare trees and light sifting of snow, to the grave; and as it was committed, there were many sobs and tears of old and young. Rough Riders, who had fought by his side, cabinet ministers who had served with him, companions of his work and of his playtime, were all mourners now, and some of those men of affairs, who had done their utmost to wreck him eight years before, now knew that they had loved him, and they grieved as they realized what America and the world had lost. "Death had to take him sleeping," said Vice-President Marshall; "for if Roosevelt had been awake, there would have been a fight."
———————-
The evil men do lives after them; so does the good. With the passing of years, a man's name and fame either drift into oblivion, or they are seen in their lasting proportions. You must sail fifty miles over the Ionian Sea and look back before you can fully measure the magnitude and majesty of Mount Aetna.
Not otherwise, I believe, will it be with Theodore Roosevelt, when the people of the future look back upon him. The blemishes due to misunderstanding will have faded away; the transient clouds will have vanished; the world will see him as he was.
I do not mean that it will reduce him to an abstraction of perfection, as ill-judged worshipers of George Washington attempted to do with him. Theodore Roosevelt was so vastly human, that no worshiper can make him abstract and retain recognizable features. We have reached the time when we will not suffer anybody to turn our great ones into gods or demigods, and to remove them far from us to dwell, like absentee deities, on a remote Olympus, or in an unimaginable Paradise; we must have them near, intimates whom our souls can converse with, and our hearts love. Such an intimate was Roosevelt living, and such an intimate will he be dead. Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt—those are the three whom Americans will cherish and revere; each of them a leader and representative and example in a structural crisis in our national life.
Those of us who knew him, knew him as the most astonishing human expression of the Creative Spirit we had ever seen. His manifold talents, his protean interests, his tireless energy, his thunderbolts which he did not let loose, as well as those he did, his masterful will sheathed in self-control like a sword in its scabbard, would have rendered him superhuman, had he not possessed other qualities which made him the best of playmates for mortals. He had humor, which raises every one to the same level. He had loyalty, which bound his friends to him for life. He had sympathy, and capacity for strong, deep love. How tender he was with little children! How courteous with women! No matter whether you brought to him important things or trifles, he understood.
I can think of no vicissitude in life in which Roosevelt's participation would not have been welcome. If it were danger, there could be no more valiant comrade than he; if it were sport, he was a sports man; if it were mirth, he was a fountain of mirth, crystal pure and sparkling. He would have sailed with Jason on the ship Argo in quest of the Golden Fleece, and he would have written a vivid description of the adventure. I can imagine the delight he would have taken, as the comrade of Ulysses, on his voyage through the Midland Sea, looking with unjaded curiosity on strange towns and into strange faces, and steering fearlessly out to the Hesperides, and beyond the baths of all the western stars. What a Crusader he would have been! How he would have smitten the Paynim with his sword, and then unvisored and held chivalrous interview with Saladin!
Had he companioned Columbus, he would not have been one of those who murmured and besought the great Admiral to turn back, but would have counseled, "On! On! It is of little matter whether any one man fails or succeeds; but the cause shall not fail, for it is the cause of mankind." I can see him with the voyageurs of New France, exploring the Canadian Wilderness, and the rivers and forests of the North west. I can see him with Lasalle, beaming with exultation as they looked on the waters of the Mississippi; and I can think of no battle for man's welfare in which he would not have felt at home. But he would have taken equal, perhaps greater, delight in meeting the authors, sages, and statesmen, whose words were his daily joy, and whose deeds were his study and incentive. I can hear him question Thucydides for further details as to the collapse of the Athenians at Syracuse; or cross-examine Herodotus for information of some of his incredible but fascinating stories. What hours he would have spent in confabulation with Gibbon! What secrets he would have learned, without asking questions, from Napoleon and Cavour!
His interest embraced them all, some of them he could have taught, many of them would have welcomed him as their peer. As he mixed with high and low in his lifetime, so would it have been in the past; and so will it be in the future, if he has gone into a world where personal identity continues, and the spiritual standards and ideals of this world persist. But yesterday, he seemed one who embodied Life to the utmost. With the assured step of one whom nothing can frighten or surprise, he walked our earth, as on granite. Suddenly, the granite grew more unsubstantial than a bubble, and he dropped beyond sight into the Eternal Silence. Happy we who had such a friend! Happy the American Republic which bore such a son!
Mr. John Woodbury, Secretary of the Harvard Class of 1880, in sending to his classmates a notice of Theodore Roosevelt's death on January 6, 1919, added this quotation from the second part of Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress:"
"After this it was noised abroad that Mr. Valiant for-truth was taken with a summons by the same post as the other, and had this for a token that the summons was true, 'That his pitcher was broken at the fountain.' When he understood it, he called for his friends and told them of it. Then he said, 'I am going to my Father's, and though with great difficulty I have got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought His battles who now will be my rewarder.'"