Politics, when Mr. Roosevelt was active, were not dull. Few men
have ever made them so lively and interesting. Every activity in
life meant something to him, a chance for useful work or for good
fun. He had a perfectly "corking time," he said, when he was
President, and the words shocked a number of good people who had
pardoned or overlooked dirty actions by other public men, so long
as these other men kept up a certain copy-book behavior which they
thought was "dignity."
It is a question if any man ever had a better time, ever had more
real fun in his life, than did Mr. Roosevelt. In spite of the hard
work he put in, in spite of long days and weeks of drudgery he
knew how to get happiness out of every minute. He did not engage
in drinking and gambling for his amusements. He did not adopt a
priggish attitude on these matters,--he simply knew that there
were other things which were better sport. He was a religious man,
a member all his life of his father's church, but religion did not
sour him, make him gloomy, or cause him to interfere with other
people about their belief or lack of it.
He got an immense amount of pleasure in his family life, in half a
dozen kinds of athletic sports, especially the ones which led him
outdoors, and in books. In these things he was marvelously wise or
marvelously fortunate. Some men's lives are spent indoors, in an
office or in a study among books.
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