Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/494

 “No, you shan't have it. I will give it to Mrs. Pennypacker.”

Then she was called to the stage.

It has been my fortune to be brought into relations with the President in various ways and to have had at different times personal intercourse with him. A contemporaneous estimate of one who has filled so conspicuous a rôle, by any observer, may possess some value. My youngest brother, James L. Pennypacker, went to Harvard University. Roosevelt was in the same class and in some of the same societies and when my brother became an editor of the Harvard Advocate, Albert Bushnell Hart and he urged Roosevelt for the staff and succeeded in having him elected. They had their photographs taken together. Consequently, I began to hear of Roosevelt in his days at college. He has frequently spoken to me of my brother as “my Pennypacker.” What I heard of him was that he was not regarded among his associates as in any way remarkable save for earnestness of purpose and promptness of movement, though the fact that my brother, through most of the bizarre fortunes of the President, has been steadfast in his loyalty, speaks well for the impression he made. In the Hayes campaign the students marched in a parade through Boston. They were never on very good terms with the townspeople, and from the roof of a tall building potatoes and refuse, it may be some stones, were thrown at them. Roosevelt, excited and angry, suggested at once that they burn down the building.

A few years later, after Mr. Roosevelt began to appear in New York politics, occurred the contest between Mr. Blaine and Mr. Cleveland for the presidency. At that time I was secretary of the Philadelphia Civil Service Reform Association. The Independents in Pennsylvania favored Mr. Blaine, and when George William Curtis attempted to 474