Attics

Postcard showing the attic in The House of the Seven Gables in Salem, Massachusetts. Several pieces of furniture are placed around the room, including trunks, chairs, and a spinning wheel. Charles C. Myers comments on the hardness of the old wood beams in the attic.

Comments and Context

In Charles C. Myers’s own words, “The attic is a very interesting place to visit. These large wood beams are still as they were when the building was first erected and they are as hard as iron and can hardly be scratched with an ordinary knife.”

Collection

Charles C. Myers Collection

President Roosevelt sits in the White House attic with a variety of items: ears of corn with the label of “presidential tips to farmers,” a picture of Edward Henry Harriman with “my dear Harriman” crossed out and replaced with “undesirable citizen,” “the big stick,” several books, including “How to choose a successor,” a crib “for larger families,” and a coffin of a “nature faker.” Roosevelt holds a book entitled, “Science of Pseudology.” Caption: Mr. Roosevelt–“I wonder how much of this stuff Bill wants me to leave behind.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

The brilliant but largely forgotten body of cartoons that W. A. Carson drew for the front pages of the Utica Saturday Globe — centered, below the masthead and dateline, always in bright colors — often were accompanied by perfectly superfluous printed explanations. Carson’s work was so direct and documentary that written guides were useless; and the work of the anonymous editor was invariably vapid and redundant.

President Wilson sits in a cobwebbed White House attic, rummaging through a trunk full of memorabilia belonging to former President Roosevelt. He pulls out Roosevelt’s famous “Big Stick” from the trunk exclaiming, “Just the thing for my new Knock-Him-Down policy!” Other memorabilia includes a framed portrait of the former president, a copy of Roosevelt’s book of essays and addresses entitled, “The Strenuous Life” (1900), a tennis racket, a sword, spurs, a sign marked “Delighted,” and other paraphernalia.

comments and context

Comments and Context

With Justice Charles Evans Hughes the prospective Republican nominee to challenge President Wilson in 1916, it was not Hughes’ trademark reserve and reticence that President Wilson needed to resist in the 1916 campaign. Roosevelt — a possible nominee of the Republicans and the Progressives, and making frequent attacks on the Administration — prompted Wilson, in this cartoon, to use Roosevelt’s iconic cudgel itself.