Shepard, Gustavus Tuckerman, S. H. Wales, W. H. Webb.

This list bears the names of at least two men who will be long
remembered. There are also several others which were doubtless of
more political value to the aspirant to office in 1881.

Just after the election Roosevelt wrote to his classmate, Charles
G. Washburn:

'Too true, too true; I have become a "political hack." Finding it
would not interfere much with my law, I accepted the nomination
to the Assembly and was elected by 1500 majority, leading the
ticket by 600 votes. But don't think I am going to go into
politics after this year, for I am not.'

Roosevelt's allusion to the law requires the statement that in
the autumn of 1880 he had begun to read law in the office of his
uncle, Robert Roosevelt; not that he had a strong leaning to the
legal profession, but that he believed that every one, no matter
how well off he might be, ought to be able to support himself by
some occupation or profession. Also, he could not endure being
idle, and he knew that the slight political work on which he
embarked when he joined the Twenty-first District Republican Club
would take but little of his time. During that first year out of
college he established himself as a citizen, not merely
politically, but socially. On his birthday in 1880 he married
Miss Lee and they set up their home at 6 West Fifty-seventh
Street; he joined social and literary clubs and extended his
athletic interests beyond wrestling and boxing to hunting, rifle
practice, and polo.