Copy. Oyster Bay, N.Y., July 19, 1905. My [struck: d][inserted: D]ear Mr. Needham: [struck: Indeed it was a pleasure to see you out here, and I only wish I could have talked with you longer. As for what you are kind enough to say, I do not deserve your praise, for I find it pleasant when I have been hard at work on some big state question to entirely change the current of my thoughts, I am fond of tennis, but I am not a good tennis player at all [struck: and would not care to be taken in tennis costume. I simply play with the children, and friends like Garfield and Pinchot, both of whom are far better than I am.] Indeed, as you know, I am not really good at any games. Perhaps in my time I came nearer to being decent as a walker, rider, and rifle shot than in any other way, but I was simply an average good man in these three respects. My success in game hunting has been due as well as I can make it out to three causes; first, common sense and good judgment; second, perseverance, which is the only way of allowing one to make good one's own blunders; third, the fact that I shot as well at game as at a target. This did not make me hit difficult shots, but it prevented my missing easy shots, which a good target shot will often do in a field. Most of my bears, for instance, were killed close up, and the shots were not difficult so long as one did not get rattled. Now of course the possession and practice of these three qualities did not make me by any means as successful a hunter as the men who in addition to possessing them were also better shots than I was, or with greater powers of endurance, or were more skilled in the detection of signs, etc. But they did [2] [struck: enable me to kill a good quantity of game and to do it in ways that have made my observations of real value to the faunal or outdoor naturalist. Besides, I knew what I wanted, and was willing to work hard to get it. In short, I am not an athlete; I am simply a good, ordinary, out-of-doors man. For instance, [struck: day before yesterday I took Mrs. Roosevelt a fifteen miles' row around Lloyd's Neck including a portage. We had our lunch with us - and two or three books. Y][inserted: y]esterday I rowed off with my boys and some cousins and their friends and camped out over night, and rowed back this morning from our camping place some five or six miles down the Sound. I took the two smallest boys in my boat. Each of us had a light blanket to sleep in, and the boys are sufficiently deluded to believe that the chicken or beefstake [sic] I fry in bacon fat on these expeditions has a flavor impossible elsewhere to be obtained. Now these expeditions represent just about the kind of things I do. Instead of rowing it may be riding, or chopping, or walking, or playing tennis, or shooting at a target. But it is always a pastime which any healthy middle aged man fond of outdoors life, but not in the least an athlete, can indulge in if he chooses. I think my last sentence covers the whole case - that is, when I say "if he chooses." It has always seemed to me that in life there are two ways of achieving success, or, for the matter of that, of achieving what is commonly called greatness. One is to do that which can only be done by the man of exceptional and extraordinary abilities. Of course this means that only one man can do it, and it is a very rare kind of success or of greatness. The other is to do that which many men could do, but which as a matter of fact none of them actually does. This is the ordinary kind of success or kind of greatness. Nobody but one of the world's rare geniuses could have written [3] the Gettysburg speech, or the second inaugural, or met as Lincoln met the awful crises of the civil war. But most of us can do the ordinary things, which, however, most of us do not do. It is of course unnecessary to say that I have never won a success of any kind that did not come within this second category. Any one that chose could lead the kind of life I have led, and any one who had led that life could if he chose - and by "choosing," I of course mean choosing to exercise the requisite industry, judgment and foresight, none of a very marked type - have raised my regiment or served in positions analogous to those of Police Commissioner, Civil Service Commissioner, and Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Any fairly hardy and healthy man could do what I did in hunting and ranching if he only really wished to and would take the pains and the trouble and at the same time use[struck: d] common sense. [struck: Now about the photographs. I vaguely recall Jacob Riis having pictures of me in his book both of when I was a boy and in college, but I have not the slightest idea where any such pictures are now. In my book "The Hunting Trips of a Ranchman", you will see pictures taken from photographs of me in hunting and ranching costumes, but here again I can not find the original of these photographs. I send you four photographs which I shall ask you to be sure to send back to me. Two of them are when I was colonel of the Rough Riders. One is when I was Assistant of Secretary of the Navy going on board a battleship to inspect it; and one when I was on my ranch one February or March, twenty years ago.] Sincerely yours, THEODORE ROOSEVELT. Mr. Henry Beach Needham, McClure's Magazine, 44 East 23rd Street, New York, N. Y.