Yours respectfully,

——­ ——.

New York, January 11, 1913.

My Dear Mrs. ——­: 

Most certainly your letter will not go into the waste-paper basket.  I shall think it over and show it to Mrs. Roosevelt.  Will you let me say, in the first place, that a woman who can write such a letter is certainly not “hopelessly dull and uninteresting”!  If the facts are as you state, then I do not wonder that you feel bitterly and that you feel that the gravest kind of injustice has been done you.  I have always tried to insist to men that they should do their duty to the women even more than the women to them.  Now I hardly like to write specifically about your husband, because you might not like it yourself.  It seems to me almost incredible that any man who is the husband of a woman who has borne him nine children should not feel that they and he are lastingly her debtors.  You say that you have had nine children, that you did all your own work, including washing, ironing, house-cleaning, and the care of the little ones as they came along; that you sewed everything they wore, including trousers for the boys and caps and jackets for the girls while little; that you helped them all in their school work and started them in music; but that as they grew older you got behind the times, that you never belonged to a club or society or lodge, nor went to any one’s house, as you hardly had time to do so; and that in consequence your husband outgrew you, and that your children look up to him and not to you and feel that they have outgrown you.  If these facts are so, you have done a great and wonderful work, and the only explanation I can possibly give of the attitude you describe on the part of your husband and children is that they do not understand what it is that you have done.  I emphatically believe in unselfishness, but I also believe that it is a mistake to let other people grow selfish, even when the other people are husband and children.

Now, I suggest that you take your letter to me, of which I send you back a copy, and this letter, and then select out of your family the one with whom you feel most sympathy, whether it is your husband or one of your children.  Show the two letters to him or her, and then have a frank talk about the matter.  If any man, as you say, becomes ashamed of his wife because she has lost her figure in bearing his children, then that man is a hound and has every cause to be ashamed of himself.  I am sending you a little book called “Mother,” by Kathleen Norris, which will give you my views on the matter.  Of course there are base and selfish men, just as there are, although I believe in smaller number, base and selfish women.  Man and woman alike should profit by the teachings in such a story as this of “Mother.”

Sincerely yours,

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

January 21, 1913.

Colonel Theodore Roosevelt: