He got the letter
during a business conference and he read it aloud to the group of
business men. Some there were in that group who keenly differed with
the President on national issues, but they were all fathers, and two of
the sturdiest turned and walked to the window as they said:
"Yes, that is fine!"
Then came the boy's pleasure when he was handed the letter; the next
few days were spent inditing an answer to "my friend, the President."
At last the momentous epistle seemed satisfactory, and off to the busy
presidential desk went the boyish note, full of thanks and assurances
that he would come just as soon as he could, and that Mr. Roosevelt
must not get impatient!
The "soon as he could" time, however, did not come as quickly as all
had hoped!--a little heart pumped for days full of oxygen and
accelerated by hypodermic injections is slow to mend. But the
President's framed letter, hanging on the spot on the wall first seen
in the morning, was a daily consolation.
Then, in March, although four months after the promise--and it would
not have been strange, in his busy life, for the President to have
forgotten or at least overlooked it--on the very day that the book was
published came a special "large-paper" copy of _The Outdoor Pastimes of
an American Hunter_, and on the fly-leaf there greeted the boy, in the
President's own hand:
To MASTER CURTIS BOK,
With the best wishes of his friend,
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
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