Exceptional souvenir typescript titled “Excerpts from Memorial Address on Theodore Roosevelt, Delivered by Honorable Warren G. Harding, January 29, 1919,” signed in fountain pen (almost certainly as president) “Warren G. Harding,” one page on an 8 x 10.5 sheet of White House letterhead, no date [circa 1921–1923]. In part: “Perhaps his greatest work apart from his appealing Americanism, and yet a vital part of it, was his crusade for a new order of things, a new conscience in the Republic.... He did four years of arousing and uprooting. His far-seeing vision detected a dangerous drift.... In his zest he was the radical, as all creators are, but when he saw the business conscience of America awakened, he gladly welcomed constructive supersedure.... The greatest blunder of his career was made in this very chamber when he addressed the Constitutional Convention of 1912. He came against his own judgment and in yielding to insistent advice declared for the recall of judicial decisions.... It was a mark of his greatness that he instantly recovered, and lost little of his hold and none of the respect of the American people.... In his virile American manhood he was the surpassing and inspiring example. In the fulness of mental and physical vigor, he was the great patriotic sentinel, pacing the parapet of the republic, alert to danger and every menace and in love with duty and service and always unafraid. It is little to say that the republic is bigger and better and mightily advance by his part in its glorious history, more American for his call to patriotism and more secure for his warning of perils. It is more to say he inspired those who follow to nobler manhood and higher ideals....” Very faint intersecting folds (vertical fold touching one letter of last name) and narrow mounting remnant to reverse of left margin, otherwise fine condition. A most remarkable document from a scandal-ridden president whose autograph material rarely rises above the level of mundane! Auction LOA John Reznikoff/PSA/DNA and R&R COA.
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