The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-11-23
WAS INTRODUCED
 BY THE PRESIDENT MT. Roosevelt Makes FeIicitous
 Remarks About Friend COMPLIM WAGN E R Says "The Simple Life" Is the Great est Book of Recent Years, Writ
 ten Either Here or Abroad.
COMPLIMENT TSC.W.W IMAGINE R

Washington, November 22.-President Roosevelt introduced the Rev. Charles w Wagner the author, to a large au- dience at the Lafayette Opera house this afternoon, where under the aus pices of the Young Mems Christian as- ociation Dr. Wagner delivered a lec- ture on the simple life," given under the patronage of a number of well-known officials and society people. The au- dience which gathered to hear the au- thor was a thoroughly appreciative one.
 The president, who is a great admlrer of MT. Wagner was given a cordial re- ception. He was introduced by District Attorney Henry B. F. Mcfarland, 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 introduce speaker to an audience; and I am more than glad to do it in this instance, because if there is one book which I should like to have read as tract and also what is not invariably true of tracts, as an interesting tract, by all our peo- pie. 1t is the Simple Life" written by MT. Wagner. There 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 any where, here or abroad, which contains so much that we of America ought to take to our hearts as Is contained in the Simple Life" I like the book because 1t does not merely preach to the rich and does note merely preach to the poor. It is a very easy thing to address a section of the community in reproduction of the forms of vice to which 1t Is not prone. What we must have impressed on us is that 1t Is not unusually the root principle of vice that varies with the va riations in social conditions but 1t Is the manifestation of the vice that varies and MT. Wagner has well brought out the great fundamental truth that the brutal arrogance of a rich man who looks down upon a poor man because he is poor and the brutal envy and hatred held by a poor man towards a rich man merely be- cause he Is rich are at the bottom the manifestation of the same vices. The kind of man who would be arrogant In one case, is precisely the kind of man who would be envious 4 placed in the opposite position.
 Republic Cannot Exist.
 NO republic can permanently exist when it 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 belongs or l fancies that he belongs, as being or 1 prime importance. In antiquity republics 1 failed as they did because they tended to ] become either a republic of the few who i exploited the many, or republic of the many who plundered the few, and in either case the end of the republic was ] inevitable just as much so in one case as in the other We can keep this re-
 public true to the principles of those 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 thought of its founders the theory of treating each man on his worth as a man, neither holding it for or against him that he occupies any par ticular station in life so long as he does his duty fairly and well by his fellows and the nation as whole"
 Continuing President Roosevelt gave in stances of what he stated was the prac- tical working of the principles which are outlined in the Simple Life" He cited the good deeds of Mir Downey whose liv- cry stable in Washington was recently burned, as an example of right effort by the individual. The work of the Civic club of New York furnished him with an Illustration of the value of collective effort to nelp ones fellowman. The Pres dent closed with felicitious introduce ton of the author.