were given a clean bed in a warm room for five cents, a fraction of what was charged by the lowest kind of commercial flophouse.

As we grew older, he made us understand that the same standard of clean living was demanded for the boys as for the girls; that what was wrong in a woman could not be right in a man.

He was a big, powerful man, with a leonine face, and his heart filled with gentleness for those who needed help or protection, and with the possibility of much wrath against a bully or an oppressor.

It sounds a little like cant to say what I am going to say, but he did combine the strength and courage and will and energy of the strongest man with the tenderness, cleanness, and purity of a woman.

He not only took great and untiring care of me—some of my earliest remembrances are of nights when he would walk up and down with me for an hour at a time in his arms when I was a wretched mite suffering acutely with asthma—but he also most wisely refused to coddle me, and made me feel that I must force myself to hold my own with other boys and prepare to do the rough work of the world.

In all my childhood he never laid hand on me but once, but I always knew perfectly well that in case it became necessary he would not have the slightest hesitancy in doing so again, and alike from my love and respect, and in a certain sense, my fear of him, I would have hated and dreaded beyond measure to have him know that I had been guilty of a lie, or of cruelty, or of bullying, or of uncleanness or cowardice.

During the war, he and two friends, William Earl Dodge Jr. and Theodore B. Bronson, drew up an Allotment System, which amounted to a soldier's payroll deduction program to support families back home.

In 1864, the Union League Club recruited money and food to send Thanksgiving Dinner to the entire Army of the Potomac.

The elder Roosevelt meticulously listed every donation received in a Union League Report dated December 1864.

His younger daughter Corinne wrote this account of its origins: Bamie was born with a curved spine, and Roosevelt found a young doctor, Charles Fayette Taylor, who had developed groundbreaking methods of treating physical defects in children, including braces and other equipment.

Moved to tears by the sight, one of the wealthiest socialites, Charlotte Augusta Gibbes (wife of financier/philanthropist John Jacob Astor III) said, "Theodore, you are right; these children must be restored and made into active citizens again, and I for one will help you in your work."

[9] In October 1877, Roosevelt was nominated by President Rutherford Hayes to the position of Collector of Customs at the Port of New York.

Conkling, as a member of the Senate committee tasked with considering the appointment, used endless delaying tactics, and the resulting battle made national headlines and left Roosevelt Sr. feeling humiliated and disillusioned.

[10] As the process of nomination for the Collector of the Port of New York dragged on, Roosevelt started experiencing severe stomach cramps caused by a gastrointestinal tumor, misdiagnosed as peritonisis.

In February, however, 19-year-old Theodore Jr. was informed and immediately took a train from Cambridge to New York, where he missed his father's death by a few hours.

A devout Christian who led his children in daily prayers, Roosevelt's funeral was held in Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, which was filled to overflowing.

[1] Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was profoundly affected by the early death of his father and spent months in a deep state of grief.

Indeed, if I could have one wish for you the reader, it would be that you come away from the book with a strong sense of what a great man Theodore Roosevelt, Sr.