sity of opinion. Roosevelt was so impressed with the importance of continuing the exploration that on his return he personally contributed two thousand dollars from his literary earnings to send his companion naturalists back to the field. 66 An American statesman, who should have known better, once characterized Roosevelt as one who knew a little about more things than any one else in this country." This gives an entirely false impression of Roosevelt's mind, which was of quite the contrary order. What Roosevelt did know in history and in natural history he knew thoroughly; he went to the very bottom of things, if possible, and no one was more conscientious than he where his knowledge was limited or merely that of the intelligent layman. His thorough research in preparing for the African and South American expeditions was not that of the amateur or of the sportsman but of the trained naturalist who desires to learn as much as possible from previous students and explorers. The State of New York will erect a splendid memorial to Theodore Roosevelt the Naturalist and Explorer which will perpetuate the idealistic and courageous aspects of his character and life as a naturalist. It will adjoin the American Museum of Natural History, which he loved and which inspired him to the activities of his youth and his mature years, where he sought the companionship of men of kindred ambitions and to which he repaired, in the intervals of politics and of pressing duties of every kind, for keen and concentrated discussions on animal coloration, the geographic distribution of mammals and birds, the history of human races, evolution of special groups of animals, and the furtherance of his expeditions. The memorial will remind boys and girls of all generations of Americans of Theodore Roosevelt's spirit of self-effacement, of love, of zeal, of fearlessness, of energy, of intelligence with which they should approach nature in all of its wonderful aspects. THE TWO JOHNS JOHN BURROUGHS JOHN MUIR "The two Johns," as they were affectionately known by their comrades on the Harriman Expedition to Alaska, were alike in their Christian names, in their love of nature, and, to a certain extent, in their powers of expression, but they were profoundly different in every other respect. I had the privilege of knowing John Muir much more intimately than I knew John Burroughs. I learned through correspondence and through long and intimate conversations thoroughly to understand his Scotch soul, which had a strong Norse element in it and a moral fervor drawn from the Bible of the Covenanters. It is interesting to contrast this Scotch type of soul with the English type of soul seen in John Burroughs. I had in mind for some time this idea of the racial soul as something more profound in its influence than either the racial temperament or the racial mind. If the body had a long history in the past, so has the soul of man. In reading Wordsworth's noble "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood," it flashed across my mind that along an entirely different path I had reached the same conclusion as Wordsworth: namely, that the human soul is full of reminiscences and that it responds to conditions and experiences long bygone. |