Abstract
took a greater interest in the canon than Theodore Roosevelt. Though the Harvard-educated Rough Rider strove to project a cowboy image to the public, he was at heart a literary feller, as he confided to his friend Brander Matthews.' In Roosevelt's mind, the and the political were inextricably linked, as is vividly revealed in a letter he wrote to Matthews in June, 1894. The letter is worth a close reading. Roosevelt, then Civil Service Commissioner, begins by expressing support for a check on immigration because we are getting some very undesirable elements now. He then states that he is looking forward to visiting his Dakota ranch in September. That comment leads to a paragraph on Hamlin Garland's Crumbling Idols (1894), which Matthews had sent him. Roosevelt admired Garland's depictions of the strenuous life out West, but was displeased by Garland's insistence in Crumbling Idols that the classics have little to say to the present; in a bit of rough writing, Roosevelt complains that Garland's ignorance, crudity,
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