impossible things they do believe, I have consoled myself by
thinking of Uncle Jimmy Bulloch's perfectly sincere conviction
that Gladstone was a man of quite exceptional and nameless infamy
in both public and private life."

Theodore Roosevelt grew up to be not only a stanch but an
uncompromising believer in the Union Cause; but the fact that his
parents came from the North and from the South, and that, from
his earliest memory, the Southern kindred were held in affection
in his home, must have helped him towards that non-sectional,
all-American point of view which was the cornerstone of his
patriotic creed.

The Roosevelt house was situated at No. 28 East Twentieth Street,
New York City, and there Theodore was born on October 27, 1858.
He passed his boyhood amid the most wholesome family life.
Besides his brother Elliott and two sisters, as his Uncle Robert
lived next door, there were cousins to play with and a numerous
kindred to form the background of his young life. He was,
fortunately, not precocious, for the infant prodigies of seven,
who become the amazing omniscients of twenty-three, are seldom
heard of at thirty. He learned very early to read, and his
sisters remember that when he was still in starched white
petticoats, with a curl carefully poised on top of his head, he
went about the house lugging a thick, heavy volume of
Livingstone's "Travels" and asking some one to tell him about the
"foraging ants" described by the explorer. At last his older
sister found the passage in which the little boy had mistaken
"foregoing" for "foraging." No wonder that in his mature years he
became an advocate of reformed spelling. His sense of humor,