" *
* Washburn, 202-03.
I think that all of us will agree with Mr. Washburn, who adds
another story of the same purport, and told by Roosevelt himself.
Another old comrade wrote him from jail in Arizona: "Dear
Colonel: I am in trouble. I shot a lady in the eye, but I did not
intend to hit the lady; I was shooting at my wife." Roosevelt had
large charity for sinners of this type, but he would not tolerate
deceit or lying. Thus, when a Congressman made charges to him
against one of the Wild Western appointees whom he accused of
drinking and of gambling, the President remarked that he had to
take into consideration the moral standards of the section, where
a man who gambled or who drank was not necessarily an evil
person. Then the Congressman pressed his charges and said that
the fellow had been in prison for a crime a good many years
before. This roused Roosevelt, who said, "He never told me about
that," and he immediately telegraphed the accused for an
explanation. The man replied that the charge was true, whereupon
the President at once dismissed him, not for gambling or for
drinking, but for trying to hide the fact that he had once been
in jail.
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