on TR's Life in the West
When he went West as a cowboy, he went all stops out. He, had his spurs and his belt buckles and his pearl-handled revolvers all done for him by Tiffany. He had a woman make him a cowboy shirt with fringe and all, a kind of buckskin, Wild West outfit that costs $100. Well, that would be a $1000 or $1500 today. Imagine getting yourself up in a thousand-dollar cowboy shirt. It would be as if he went West all done up by Ralph Lauren.
And he arrived with his, regalia and his very thick eyeglasses and his very thick Harvard accent, and the cowboys just thought that was something they had never seen before, something quite new under the sun. And they would go charging off by horseback on their work, the round-up, or whatever, and he would shout over to them, "Hasten forward quickly there." Well, they'd just about fall out of the saddle, it was so hilarious.
But once again he didn't try to ape their mannerisms. He didn't try to imitate them in order to win them over. He won them over by being himself and by doing what they did, by being just as tough and durable as the situation called for. And gradually this comic character, who they had made such sport of and so ridiculed, became Good Old Four Eyes, lovable, an admired figure, because he could take it.
He's approached in a bar one night by a tough bully and Roosevelt, this rather small man -- you must remember he was only about five-foot-eight-and-half -- stood up and knocked this fellow cold. And they didn't forget that. His endurance on long rides in all seasons of the year was as much as any of them could have hoped for.