HEROES: The Turning Point

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abode of iron desolation, the great rivers in their beds like frosted steel; or the children at Christmas in the White House, "a thrill of ... exaltation and rapture ... to see all the gifts like a materialized fairyland arrayed"; or a trip in a battleship to Panama, and a petty officer's cry for "Three cheers for Theodore Roosevelt—the typical American citizen!" T.R. had liked that—"the way in which they thought of the American President."

His health grew poor. He was now blind in one eye and half deaf. He would try summer evenings to be quiet, sitting on the porch with Mrs. Roosevelt beneath the stars, watching the lights of the Fall River boats glistening on Long Island Sound—but into the Trophy Room at Sagamore Hill the nation and world kept crowding at the rate of 2.000 or 3.000 letters a week. Theodore Roosevelt had said: "The world has set its face hopefully toward our democracy, and. oh my fellow citizens, each one of you carries on your shoulders the burden of doing well for the sake of your own country and of seeing that this nation does well for the sake of mankind."

At 5 o'clock on the morning of Jan 6, 1919, T.R. died in bed of an embolism in the coronary artery. His last words, spoken to his valet, were, "Please put out the light." But the light of the life of Theodore Roosevelt no American could put out. Even as he was dying, his country was throbbing with new vitality and new hope. Even as he was dying, his last words to the American people were read to a rip-roaring ail-American benefit at the Hippodrome in New York. Said Theodore Roosevelt: "I cannot be with you. and so all I can do is wish you Godspeed."