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.
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