13 lines, on 1st page of 4-page letterhead of U.S. Navy Department. 17x13.5 cm. (6¾x5¼").

Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States, writes as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, to Mrs. Bayard T. Putnam, whose husband, the fourth of the G.P. Putnam's Sons, had passed away (by suicide some say) 11 years earlier, after having patented an ingenious chart-holder: "It will be a great pleasure to see your boy, and still a greater pleasure to see yourself, while at Newport. I fear I must ask you to come to the War College. I shall be up to my ears in work, with almost every minute engaged, while in Newport, but I will gladly see you there and I will have that chart-holder matter carefully gone over..." Roosevelt makes one holograph amendment to the letter, a characteristic contrivance to add a personal touch to the impersonal nature of a typed letter. Putnam's son would be about 16 or 17 at this time, and perhaps she was hoping for an appointment for him to Annapolis, and also perhaps there was a dispute over Bayard Putnam's patent for the chart-holder.