The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-11-23
FORSAKES STRENUOSITY
ROOSEVELT INTRODUCES AUTHOR
 OF 1.-THE SIMPLE LIFE.v
High in Ills Praise of the Work of pr. Wagner, Which He Reecna- . naends t0. Be Read by
 All Citizens.

Washington, Nov. 22.--4Presldent Roosevelt introduced the Rev. Charles Wagner, the author. to large audi enee at the Lafayette Opera House this afternoon where. under the, auspices of the Young Mems Christian Association, pr. Wagner delivered lecture ons 'prhe Simple Life" given under the patron age of a well known osticial and soci- ety people
 The audience which gathered to hear the author was a thoroughly represent ative one of the national capital. The President, who Is a great admirer of Mir Wagner, was given a cordial re- ception. He was introduced by District Attorney Henry B. F. MacFariand, and in turn presented Mir. Wagner to the audience in the following words:
 MT. Mcfarland. MT. Wagner, men and women of Washington---This is the first and will be the only time during my Presidency that I shall ever intro duce a speaker to an audience; and am more than glad to dc it in this in- stance. because if there Is one book which should like to have read as a tract, and also what Is not invariably true of tracts as an interesting tract, by all our people. 1t is The Simple Life written by Mir. Wagner. aTa.
 There's are other books which he has written from which we can gain great good. but I know of no other book written of recent years, anywhere, here or abroad. which contains so much that we of America ought to take to our hearts as is contained in Thes Simple Life.'
 T like the book because 1t does not merely preach to the rich and does not merely preach to the poor. It is avery easy thing to address section of the community In reproduction of the forms of vice to which it is prone. What we must have impressed on us is that 1t is not usually the root principle of vice that varies with variation in social conditions but that 1t is the manifesto ton of the vice that varies; and Mr. Wagner has well brought out the great fundamental truth that the brutal ar rogance of a rich man who looks down upon a poor man because he Is poor, and the brutal envy and hatred felt by a poor man towards a rich man merely because he is rich. are at the bottom twin manifestations of the same vice.
 They are simply different sides of the same shield. The kind of man who would be arrogant in one case Is pre- cisely the kind of man who would be envious and filled with hatred in the other. An ideal shield Is the just, the generous, the broad minded man who Is incapable of arrogance If rich as he is of malignant envy if poor.
 ''No republic can permanently exist when 1t becomes a republic of classes where the man feels not the interest Of the whole people but the interest of the particular class to which he be- longs or fancies that he belongs, as be- awar zF Tg4 kar republics failed as they did because they tended to become either a republic of the few who exploited the man, or 0 republic of the many who plundered the few, and in either case the end pf the republic was inevitable; just as much so In one case as in the other. and no more so in one case than in the other.
 we can keep this republic true to the principles oFthose who founded 1t and of those who afterwards preserved it. we can keep 1t a republic at all only by remembering that we must live up to the theory of It's founders, to the theory of. treating each man on his worth as "a man; neither holding 1t for or against him that he occuHied any particular station in life so long as he does his duty fairly and we'll by his fellows and by the nation as a whole. |" Continuing, President Roosevelt gave instances of what he stated was the practical working of the principles which are outlined in the simple life. He cited the good deeds of Mir. Dow l ney, whose livery stable in Washing ton was recently burned. as an exam pie of right effort by the individual. The work of the civic club of New York furnished him with an ilIustra- tion of the value of collective effort to help ones fellow man.
 The President closed with a felici- tious introduction of the author.