Declarations

Indirect mail

“It looked like it got stuck in a machine.”

Cullen Fletcher, who manages the Maine office building where a New York Life letter postmarked Sept. 1, 1943, and bearing 3-cent postage was recently returned.

Teddy R.

“I have always been fond of the West African proverb: ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.’ If I had not carried the big stick … I would not have had 10 votes. But I was entirely good natured, kept perfectly cool and steadfastly refused to listen to anything save that Payn had to go, and that I would take none but a thoroughly upright and capable man in his place.”

From the original letter in which former President Theodore Roosevelt first used the phrase “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” In the letter to a Republican ally, dated Jan. 26, 1900, Roosevelt, then governor of New York, expresses his pleasure in convincing the state’s Republican leaders to reject the reappointment of Louis F. Payn as insurance commissioner.

Beltway

“We don’t need a paternalistic Legislature coming in and telling adults what they can and cannot do.”

Windham, N.H., Republican Jason Bedrick as the “Live Free or Die” state debated giving up its status as the only state without a mandatory seat belt law for adults. The House voted 153-140 to send the bill to require seat belts to the Senate.