This paragraph is about President Theodore Roosevelt and dates from the era of Woodrow Wilson:
When he was President of the United States a cowboy came up to him and said, “Mr. President, I have been in jail a year for killing a gentleman.” “How did you do it?” asked the President, meaning to inquire as to the circumstances. “Thirty-eight on a forty-five frame,” replied the man, thinking that the only interest the President had was that of a comrade who wanted to know with what kind of tool the trick was done. No other President, it is said, from Washington to Wilson would have drawn that answer.
It’s from Virginia Woolf’s essay “Body and Brain” and it shows what a good paragraph can do. That short anecdote gets to why I admire Roosevelt, despite so many flaws. It gets to a particular quality in his personality.
Some lengthy biographies provide so much detail of a life that the personality behind that life is lost, or at least hard to find. And then you run across a writer who can get to the man in one paragraph, 93 words. It’s why I admire Woolf.
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