he was governor he would start on a walk with Mrs. Roosevelt and the children, and they would understand that ultimately some physical test would be met. The walk would call for sustained effort in the face of fatigue; to cross a difficult field or to ford a brook at a treacherous spot, or to go through a deep ravine with tangled underbrush. Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt were teaching the children that life presents similar obstacles and that "It is the part of good manhood and good womanhood to meet squarely and surmount them, going through or over, but never around." Thus early they began to learn lessons in "resourcefulness, perseverance, courage, stoicism, and disregard for danger." The latter was often met. They once came to an almost perpendicular clay bank, very difficult to ascend. All succeeded except Alice, then a girl of sixteen, who had reached the top but could not get down. Elon Hooker, a family friend, had accompanied them. He climbed a tree and grasping a piece of slate on the bank he made a bridge with his arm. When Alice stepped on the arm the piece of slate gave way and fell to the bottom of the precipice but she caught a limb and held on until Mr. Hooker rescued her and brought her safely down. They then discovered that the mass of slate had struck Mr. Roosevelt on the head and made a cut from forehead to rear which caused the surgeon to take a dozen stitches; but there was no complaint.

One of the "cousins" recounted her memories of these tramps to Dean Lewis. He had few rules and was always just and fair, she said, but expected them

to use their reason. "If there was a slip in climbing a tree because both hands were not used, home we went." It was the same if they fell into a brook. "We never regarded this kind of punishment as unfair because it taught us to take care of ourselves."

He was a great favorite as Santa Claus at the village school where his children attended. He always demanded his "treat" with the children. Frequently he used the occasion to enforce Christian virtues. Once he said to them:

I want you all as you grow up to have a good time. I do not think enough of a sour-faced child to spank him. And while you are having a good time, work, for you will have a good time while you work, if you work the right way. If the time ever comes for you to fight, fight, as you have worked, for it will be your duty. A coward, you know, is several degrees meaner than a liar. Be manly and gentle to those weaker than yourselves. Hold your own and at the same time do your duty to the weak, and you will come pretty near being noble men and women.1

His boys went to the public school at Oyster Bay through the grammar grades and in Washington and did not know any discrimination of class or condition but accepted all as members of the great brotherhood. One of them when asked how he got along with the "common" boys in school replied, "My father says there are only tall boys and short boys and bad boys and good boys, and that's all the kinds of boys there are." That teaching will insure democracy.

Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company, from Theodore Roose velt: The Boy and the Man, by James Morgan, p. 284. Copyright, 1907, by The Macmillan Company.

In a commencement address at the "Hill School," in which many notable men have been prepared for college, he enforced the need of earnest righteous

ness:

One of the hardest things to do is to make men understand that "efficiency in politics does not atone for public immorality."

I believe in happiness, I believe in pleasure-but I do not believe you will have any good time at all in life unless the good time comes as an incident of the doing of duty-doing some work worth doing.

Continuing he said:

...

In short, to-day, under the auspices of the Civic Club, I preach to you the doctrine that you will amount to nothing unless you have ideals, and you will amount to nothing unless in good faith you strive to realize them (The Outlook, June 9, 1913).

In an article on "Character and Success" in The Outlook, March 31, 1900, in discussing a HarvardYale football game, he repeated with satisfaction. what a Yale professor had said to him about character in a football player:

I told them not to take him, for he was slack in his studies, and my experience is that, as a rule, the man who is slack in his studies will be slack in his football work; it is character that counts in both.

He added:

Between any two contestants, even in college sport or in college work, the difference in character on the right side

is as great as the difference of intellect or strength the other way; it is the character side that will win.

Dr. Lambert said to the writer:

When

The President visited Ted at the Groton School. he left the lad kissed his father good-by. He then told his father that the last time he did that he had several fights on his hands because the boys teased him about it and he had waded into them. Then the President said: "You can be just as good and as affectionate in life as you are willing to fight for." And he himself taught and illustrated that truth all his life.

The writer said to Kermit: "If someone should say to you, 'How can you prove that your father had faith in God?' how would you answer?” In a voice a little stiff with indignation he replied: "I wouldn't answer it." In further conversation he showed that he considered the question an absurd one, for to him his father's faith in God seemed very evident.

Harriet Beecher Stowe once said of her father, Lyman Beecher, "My father was for so many years for me so true an image of the heavenly Father." Few can fairly receive that tribute, but every man can in his own way strive to be a clean, companionable, inspiring, and high-purposed father striving to put the ideals of Jesus into deeds. Theodore Roosevelt was preeminently that kind of a father, and without the teachings of Jesus and the indwelling spirit of God he could not have so nearly approached the ideal.

CHAPTER IV

PROVIDENTIALLY PREPARED FOR HIS

CAREER

"God is with the patient if they know how to wait.”— Theodore Roosevelt.

Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier.2 Tim. 2. 3.

M

R. ROOSEVELT once said: "Fit yourselves for the work God has for you to do in this world and lose no time about it." He had a fearless confidence that his life was immortal until his work was done. He accepted every experience as a part of the schooling he needed for his tasks. His mother once told Mr. Cheney, the editor of the local paper, after Theodore had narrowly escaped serious injury by being thrown from a colt, "If the Lord had not taken care of Theodore as a boy, he would have been killed long ago."

Mrs. Robinson said to the writer, after stressing the deep religious nature of her father, "My father had a confident prevision of Theodore's future, believing deeply in his notable usefulness."

Riches are a hindrance to the spur that helps success. Carnegie pitied the sons of the wealthy. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., envied his father his early poverty. But Theodore's wealth was turned to his advantage, since it gave him a certain independence