"Put out the Light"

"History is what men have tacitly agreed shall be the truth." So commented a recent critic, and doubtless the scribe's Midas-fingers do convert much tinsel into gold. Yet, occasionally, there is no need for alchemy. James Amps, for many years closely associated with Theodore Roosevelt as butler, valet, "head-man," recently in Collier's sketched an intimate portrait of the Colonel's last days. The President had been a jovial man. He would tell a story of how he had loaned $200 to a "Rough Rider" friend to pay a lawyer for his defense after killing someone. Shortly afterwards, back came the $200 with a note: "Dear Teddy: I am returning the money I borrowed to help at my trial. We didn't need to have no trial, as we elected our district attorney." Then Mr. Roosevelt changed. After his defeat at the Chicago convention in 1912, "it was plain to those who knew Mr. Roosevelt and watched him that the part played by Elihu Root hurt him deeply. . . . Late at night, when the last of his advisers had left him, Mr. Roosevelt was in a state of excitement such as I had never seen before. When left alone he continued to pace up and down the room like a caged lion. I knew it would be useless to talk to him. So I just went over to his side and walked up and down with him. Gradually he slackened his pace a little, and then I touched his arm. " 'Don't you think you might rest now, Mr. Roosevelt?' I suggested. "He paused a moment as if in thought. When Mr. Roosevelt was not excited or aroused or happy he was just quiet. He was not a man to look either tired or sad. That was one of the rare occasions when he looked both weary and saddened. And I felt sure then that as his excitement waned the personal injury produced by the desertion of so many men he had counted on weighed heavily on his spirit. He shook his head a little sadly. Then he smiled and sort of tossed the mood off: " 'Oh well, James, I see you're still with me.'" Quentin was also with him then-- poor little "Quinikins," who was later shot down in an aeroplane over the German lines. "The day the news of Quentin's death came, Mr. Roosevelt was at Oyster Bay. . . . after reading the despatch, he carried the sad tidings to his wife. Then he put his arm around her waist and together they walked in silence down the path which led into the woods. Down that path I had seen them go so many times together, just like this, his arm around her waist, as attentive as a young husband. They would, when they were alone at Oyster Bay, fix a little lunch and stroll down that path to have a little picnic together in the woods. Now they took their sorrow there. . . ." But he did not leave them there. "The nearest I saw him come to breaking down was, I think, at Columbus. There he had been talking to a large crowd. As he came out of the hall he passed a group of gold-star mothers. . . . They were weeping and as he went by the sobbing became audible. He clenched his teeth and, turning to them, raised his hand to silence them so he could be heard and said: ' 'We must not weep. Though I too have lost a dear one, I think only of victory. We must carry on, no matter what the cost.'" The Colonel would "carry on," as he had done all his life, yet "on the day when the whole of America was in a frenzy of joy over the ending of the World War--Nov. 11, 1918--Mr. Roosevelt went to the Roosevelt Hospital with an attack of inflammatory rheumatism. He suffered cruelly. But on Christmas Day he was brought to his home at Oyster Bay." There, on the morning of January 4, 1919, Valet Amos was summoned, hurried out to Oyster Bay. "As soon as I entered the room, he smiled and (turning to his wife) said, 'What did I tell you, Edie darling? . . .' His face bore a tired expression. ... He asked me to give him a bath and change his pajamas. This I did. He was in great pain, and I had to be exceedingly careful. When I was through, he said, 'By George, you never hurt me a little bit!' My heart swelled with happiness. . . . I did not enter his room again until eight o'clock Sunday night. ... I could see plainly enough the look of great weariness in his face. He did not talk much and a little later said: 'James, don't you think I might go to bed now?' "That was his way of asking for a thing. So I removed his robe and had almost to lift him into bed. Mrs. Roosevelt was in and out, and about eleven o'clock kissed him good night and retired. The nurse had gone to bed. The children were away--young Ted with his regiment in France; Kermit, I think, with his, and Archie in a hospital in this country. "Just after Mrs. Roosevelt left the room Mr. Roosevelt said, 'James, will you please put out the light?' I put it out. . . . Soon my eyes became accustomed to the dark, and I could see the great man lying there on the bed very still. . . . "About three in the morning I was startled by his irregular breathing. Very quickly it became so uncertain that I got up and went to his side and softly placed my hand on his head. He was sleeping apparently, save for the weakened breathing, as peacefully as when he first dropped off. His breath seemed to stop. Then it resumed again and paused again. "I leaned closer. There was another pause. I waited and waited, but no breath. I ran for the nurse. When she came I asked her to call Mrs. Roosevelt. It was now 4:15. "In a few moments Mrs. Roosevelt came in. She was calm and went to her husband's side. She leaned over him and called, 'Theodore darling!' But there was no answer. I realized then that Mr. Roosevelt had died while I stood alone over his bed. His jaws were closed tight. His eyes too were closed. His face was perfectly at peace. . . . Mrs. Roosevelt, Lee and I knelt beside the bed and recited the Lord's Prayer. And her voice was the steadiest and bravest of the three."