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.



CHAPTER V. BACK TO THE EAST AND LITERATURE

One September day in 1886, Roosevelt was reading a New York
newspaper in his Elkhorn cabin, when he saw that he had been
nominated by a body of Independents as candidate for Mayor of New
York City. Whether he had been previously consulted or not, I do
not know, but he evidently accepted the nomination as a call, for
he at once packed up his things and started East. The political
situation in the metropolis was somewhat abnormal. The United
Democracy had nominated for Mayor Abram S. Hewitt, a merchant of
high standing, one of those decent persons whom Tammany Hall puts
forward to attract respectable citizens when it finds itself in a
tight place and likely to be defeated. At such a pinch, Tammany
even politely keeps in the background and allows it to appear
that the decent candidate is wholly the choice of decent
Democrats: for the Tammany Tiger wears, so to speak, a reversible
skin which, when turned inside out, shows neither stripes nor
claws. Mr. Hewitt's chief opponent was Henry George, put up by
the United Labor Party, which had suddenly swelled into
importance, and had discovered in the author of "Progress and
Poverty" and in the advocate of the Single Tax a candidate whose