SOURCE: "TR and Mark Twain," in Theodore Roosevelt: Among the Humorists, W. D. Howells, Mark Twain, and Mr. Dooley, University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, 1980, pp. 24-42.

In the following essay, Gibson outlines the affinities and conflicts between Roosevelt and Mark Twain.

Although in 1906 Mark Twain remarked that he had known Theodore Roosevelt "for certainly twenty years," dining in his company on occasion and enjoying Roosevelt's heartiness and gusto, it was not until his return from several years of round-the-world lecturing, in the fall of 1900, that Clemens began to take a strong, lasting interest in the Vice President soon to become President. That the foremost humorist of the country should begin to follow closely the career of the President of the country is not surprising. Both men over the years had formed intense moral commitments, Clemens' often unconventional, Roosevelt's largely traditional. Thus Mark Twain, fresh from Europe in October...