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What to take along to read on Safari, was as much a math problem for Roosevelt as a literary one. He would be gone a year; he read at the rate of a book a day; a porter could carry no more than sixty pounds. He could only take, then, as he states here, a “limited number of books” - one of which would be Reverend Crothers’ The Gentle Reader.
Indefatigable as ever, Roosevelt solved his quandary by taking the Bible, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Euripides, some English poets – Shelley, Keats, Browning, Tennyson – and a couple medieval classics; adding a sampling of Bret Harte, Sir Walter Scott, Cooper, Twain, Thackeray, and Dickens – and having them all unbound. Then he had them trimmed at the margins, bound anew in pigskin (which he thought could best take the beating of a year on safari), placed in an aluminum bookcase with oilcloth slipcase and – viola! The Pigskin Library, weighing a neat fifty-eight pounds.
The Gentle Reader contained essays on the enjoyment of poetry, the evolution of gentlemen, cases of conscience concerning witchcraft, and quixotism.
Indefatigable as ever, Roosevelt solved his quandary by taking the Bible, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Euripides, some English poets – Shelley, Keats, Browning, Tennyson – and a couple medieval classics; adding a sampling of Bret Harte, Sir Walter Scott, Cooper, Twain, Thackeray, and Dickens – and having them all unbound. Then he had them trimmed at the margins, bound anew in pigskin (which he thought could best take the beating of a year on safari), placed in an aluminum bookcase with oilcloth slipcase and – viola! The Pigskin Library, weighing a neat fifty-eight pounds.
The Gentle Reader contained essays on the enjoyment of poetry, the evolution of gentlemen, cases of conscience concerning witchcraft, and quixotism.
Typed Letter Signed, 1 page, quarto, The Outlook, 287 Fourth Avenue, New York [New York]. With one autograph emendation. To Samuel L. Crothers
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Page 1/1
The Outlook
287 Fourth Avenue
New York
Office of
Theodore Roosevelt
March 11th 1909.
My dear Mr Crothers:
Your letter really touched me. I thank you for it. You may be amused to know that "The Gentle Reader" is one of the limited number of books I am taking to Africa!
Sincerely yours,
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Mr Samuel M. Crothers,
Cambridge, Mass.
287 Fourth Avenue
New York
Office of
Theodore Roosevelt
March 11th 1909.
My dear Mr Crothers:
Your letter really touched me. I thank you for it. You may be amused to know that "The Gentle Reader" is one of the limited number of books I am taking to Africa!
Sincerely yours,
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Mr Samuel M. Crothers,
Cambridge, Mass.
