New Iberia enterprise. (New Iberia, La.) 1885-1902, 1900-06-30
A WOMAN'S PEN PICTURE OF
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

Philadelphia, June 21.-I wonder
if Roosevelt is an example Of ava
tism. He belongs to an old and
established family, and if there is
anything in breeding he should
have clean, well-cut face, with a
high brow and refinement of
nostril and chin. Instead, his face
is almost primal, as the faces of re-
mote and nameless Roosevelts must
have been before civilization began
it's work.
There is no modelling in the
physiognomy and head of the tran
sient "Teddy." His forehead is
low, his nose like that of man
born in illiteracy, his mouth so
rudimentary as to be almost animal,
and his head is small and fiat.
The cartoons of him are far better
looking than himself. Is it this
reversion to primal type in ap-
pearance that has persuaded Roose-
welt that he, and he alone. is the
incarnation of the primal virtues7
Or is there war within him between
the rugged qualities of the savage
and the superimpositions of civili-
zation.
He has the brute or physical
courage to surprising degree,
and a gift for leadership which,
were he uneducated, might make
a really great man in savage
country. Bat into the instincts
which alone have made him famous
civilization has planted the Ameri-
can vices of sensationalism, Of
playing to the gallery, of spread
eagleism, political chicanery and
the itch for notoriety.
The bluff manner and the slouch
hat are not so much expressions of
the basic characteristics as the clever
use of them by the sharpened mind.
His attitude of "strenuousness"
and "rugged honesty" is the loud
clamor of his inherited primeval
instincts to drown the impatient
protests of his latter days con-
science.
The master buffer in the United
States, there is no one so clamor-
ously bluffed by Roosevelt as Roose-
velt himself. It is almost unfair
to call him fraud and a fakir; he
is merely the most signal instance
in the world to-day Of the ill-knit
faces of elemental and super-civi-
lized man.
His brain lacks the chemical
quality of assimilating these forces,
the crude tendency to ex-
tremes and pressing the strong and
finest qualities into an harmonious
whole. Roosevelt escapes being a
great character because civilization
finds the material crude and out of
date, and has revenged herself by
his moral courage while
at his physical; but he
will escape degenerating into
political mountebank because he
believes in himself and feels every
inch a man.
He is a poor speaker, suggestive
Of the first reader, but this should
not be laid up against him in a con-
vention of criminally bad speakers.
Senator Foraker is usually strong
and magnetic, but when a man gets
up and, in set phrases and a delivery
forced to the point of violence,
hurls ont sentiments in favor of a
man he despises, nothing is to be
of him
Congressman Knight and Senator
Depew were bright green spots in
IN arid desert Of words, and got
little spontaneous enthusiasm. But
he rest of the demonstration was
-made--might, indeed, have
oeen made in Germany and leaked
IN the way over.
People opened their mouths and
uttered a prolonged "Ah-h- h, as
when a physician is investigating a
sore throat. When the "Ah-h-h-h"
showed signs of exhaustion impress
'ario Hanna tripped to the front of
he stage and imperiously waved a
in one hand and a
piece of pampas grass in the other
1T was the last touch to the great
'arce of the convention of 1900.
l am a devout Republican and
would like to see the party triumph
mt in the Fall, with a strong man
ike Hale or Reed at its head, but
he fiatness and inertia, the mech
lnical expression of Republicanlsm
md the anxious stagecraft makes
,ne apprehensive that the party is
! mere skeleton and cuticle, with