NOTE: If the video didn't load video for about 30 seconds. Please try to refresh the page and try again for several times.
If it's still not working, please contact us/comment on the page so we can fix it ASAP.
Ted promptly seized this and began waving it, shouting, “I’m a Rough Rider. I choose Father with me. The rest of you can be Spaniards.”
Theodore recovered the menacing weapon firmly and stood it in a far corner. “No Rough Rider fought with a pitchfork. I’ll be the Spaniards. The rest of you can attack from those stacks over there. Remember we beat the Spaniards!”
There was a great deal of yelling “Bang! Bang!” and 32when the hay was pretty well flattened and the children swarming over him Roosevelt obligingly lay flat pretending to gasp and moan from a lethal wound. His acting was so realistic that Ethel began to cry.
“I don’t like being Spaniards,” she wailed. “I don’t want to hurt Father.”
He sat up, reaching for her. “I’m not hurt,” he comforted, “just slightly out of breath. That hay is dusty. Now everybody help. We’ll pile it up again.” He retrieved the pitchfork and set to work, flinging forkfuls of hay in the air while the children gathered up as much as they could hold.
They achieved a beautifully rounded stack that almost reached the rafters and instantly Kermit and Ethel flung themselves at it, squealing happily.
“Stop! You’ll tear it down,” yelled Ted, blinking as the last ray of sun through the shingles glinted off his spectacles. “I want it all round and pretty.”
“We’ll play Indians and this is the Bad Lands of Dakota,” said his father. “Ted and Kermit will be Indians and the girls and Archie and I will be the settlers hiding from them.”
“I want to be an Indian,” Archie protested. “I can yell loud.” He emitted a piercing whoop to prove it.
“Indians don’t yell,” said Ted, scornfully. “They creep out of ambush very stealthily.” He quoted triumphantly from the stories their father had read to them. “They like to surprise their victims.”
“When they’re on horseback they yell,” Roosevelt said. “But you’ll be prowling Indians. They know how to be still as mice. And twice as deadly.” He twined a spray of hay through Archie’s hair for a feather. Instantly Ted and 33Kermit had to have feathers too and tying knots in their short hair to hold a dry wisp of hay erect was a slow business.
“I wish we had some war paint,” said Ted, studying his brothers with grudging approval. “I could have used some of my water colors if I’d known we were going to play Indians.”
“You’d get it on your shirt and Mame would scold,” Kermit reminded him.
“She scolds anyway,” remarked Ted. “Mame is a very scoldy person.”
“Your faces are dirty enough to pass for Indians,” stated their father. “And remember that Mame is good and faithful and devoted to you children. You must always be kind to Mame and respectful and never talk back to her.”
“Ethel kicked her once,” Ted tattled.
“She swept up my paper doll hats. Anyway, I didn’t kick her hard and I got punished for it.”
Theodore Roosevelt knew that his children, indulged as they were in many ways, were sure that retribution for any misbehavior was certain and swift, relentlessly applied after any wrongdoing. His was always the correcting hand when he was at home, Edith always resigning that job to her husband, and he comforted himself with the idea that when they were bad they were still pretty good children. At least they were truthful, only Kermit now and then letting his facile imagination run ahead of him too fast but he was always sternly corrected for it, and as a rule his brothers and sisters dealt scornfully with his fancies.