Even after he became President of the United States, I can no
more imagine that he felt embarrassment in meeting any one, high
or low, than that he scrutinized the coat on a man's back in
order to know how to treat him.
To have gained solid health, to have gained mastery of himself,
and to have put his social nature to the severest test and found
it flawless, were valid results of his life on the Elkhorn Ranch.
It imparted to him also a knowledge which was to prove most
precious to him in the unforeseen future. For it taught him the
immense diversity of the people, and consequently of the
interests, of the United States. It gave him a national point of
view, in which he perceived that the standards and desires of the
Atlantic States were not all-inclusive or final. Yet while it
impressed on him the importance of geographical considerations,
it impressed, more deeply still, the fact that there are moral
fundamentals not to be measured by geography, or by time, or by
race. Lincoln learned this among the pioneers of Illinois; in
similar fashion Roosevelt learned it in the Bad Lands of Dakota
with their pioneers and exiles from civilization, and from
studying the depths of his own nature.
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