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The Paper Trust

Bernard A. Weisberger
April 1971

To begin with, the Presidential libraries do not look like what they are. Each one is, in fact, a miniature Office of Public Records. And scholars who frequent such offices know that they are found in capital cities, in buildings that are heavy, ornamented, slowly discoloring monuments to bureaucrats dead and gone. The National Archives of the United States—America’s public records—are, to give one example, housed in an oversized Greek temple near the intersection of Constitution and Pennsylvania avenues in Washington, D.C. Read more »

The Real Little Lord Fauntleroy

The lady author modelled her famous fictional creation after her own wonder boy —and condemned a generation of “manly little chaps” to velvet pants and curls

Tom Mccarthy
February 1970

In the November, 1885, issue of St. Nicholas magazine there appeared the first installment of a romantic novel about a little American boy who inherits a British title and goes to England to live with his rich, grumpy grandfather in a suitably elegant castle.Read more »

From One Humble Servant To Another

December 1970

For all its wars and difficulties the eighteenth century was a delightful time, as this charming exchange of letters attests. The English gentleman who wrote the first one was Jacob Bouvene, 2nd Earl of Radnor, seen next to his massive country house, Longford Castle, in Salisbury, Wiltshire. He had been a pro-American Whig member of the Commons until he inherited his title and moved to the Lords in 1776.Read more »

A Winter’s Tale Or, The Legal Mind In Formation

Charles Evans Hughes
February 1959
 

As Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Charles Evans Hughes was the living embodiment of law and rectitude. But even he had at least one skeleton in his moral closet. It is revealed in two letters written to his parents during his junior year at Brown University, and reprinted from Merlo J. Pusey’s definitive biography.

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T. R. Writes His Son

No matter how busy he was, Theodore Roosevelt always found time for his children. The charming “picture” letters below, addressed to his thirteen-year-old son Archie from a Louisiana hunting camp, recall a man who for millions of Americans will always live on, forever vigorous, forever young.

Theodore Roosevelt
December 1958

Tenesas Bayou, Oct. 10, 1907.

Blessed Archie:

I just loved your letter. I was so glad to hear from you. I was afraid you would have trouble with your Latin. What a funny little fellow Opdyke must be; I am glad you like him. How do you get on at football?

We have found no bear. I shot a deer; I sent a picture of it to Kermit.

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