teacher made stern inquiry. Jim" somebody, it appeared, who sat beside his sister, had been pinching her all through the hour, and when they came out they had a stand-up fight and he punched him good, bearing away the black eye as his share. The verdict was prompt.

You did perfectly right," said his teacher, and he gave him a dollar. To the class it was ideal justice, but it got out among the officers of the school and scandalized them dreadfully. Roosevelt was not popular with them. Unfamiliar with the forms of the service, he had failed at times to observe them all as they thought he should. They wished to know if he had any objection to any of them. No, none in the world; he was ready to do anything required of him. He himself was Dutch Reformed he got no farther. The idea of a "Dutch Reformed " teaching in their school, superimposed upon the incident of the black eye, was too much. They parted with somewhat formal expressions of mutual regard. Roosevelt betook himself to a Congregational Sunday-school near by and taught there the rest of his four years' course in college. How it fared with Jim's conqueror I do not know.

Before he had finished the course, Roosevelt had started upon his literary career. It came in the day's work, without conscious purpose on his part to write a book. They had at his Club James' history, an English work, and he found that it made detailed misstatements about the war of 1812. Upon looking up American authorities, it turned out that they gave no detailed contradictions of these statements. The reason was not wholly free from meanness: in nearly all the sea-fights of that war the American forces had outnumbered the British, often very materially; but the home historians, wishing not to emphasize this fact, had contented themselves with the mere statement that the "difference was trifling," thus by their foolish vaunts opening the door to exaggeration in the beaten enemy's camp. The facts which Roosevelt brought out from the official files with absolute impartiality grew into his first book, "The Naval War of 1812," which took rank at once as as an authority. The British paid the young author, then barely out of college, the high compliment of asking him to write the chapter on this war for their monumental work on "The

Royal Navy," and there it stands to-day, unchallenged.

He

So with work and with play and with the class politics in which Theodore took a vigorous hand, the four years wore away as one. was, by the way, not a good speaker in those days, I am told; but such speeches as he made --and he never farmed the duty out when it was his to do-were very much to the point. One is remembered yet with amusement by a distinguished lawyer in this city. He had been making an elaborate and as he thought lucid argument in class-meeting, and sat down, properly proud of the impression he must have made; when up rose Theodore Roosevelt.

"I have been listening, Mr. Chairman,” he spoke, “and, so far as I can see, not one word of what Mr. has said has any more to do with this matter than has the man in the moon. It is-" but the class was in a roar, and what

But, as I said, the years passed, and, having graduated, Roosevelt went abroad to spend a year with alternate study in Germany and mountain-climbing in Switzerland by way of

letting off steam. Probably the verdict men might have set down against his whole college career would have been that it was in no way remarkable. Here and there some one had taken notice of the young man, as having quite unusual powers of observation and of concentration, but nothing had happened of any extraordinary nature, though things enough happened where he was around. Later on, when the fact had long compelled public attention, I asked him how it was. His answer I recommend to the close attention and study of young men everywhere who want to get on.

"I put myself in the way of things happening," he said," and they happened."

It may be that the longer they think of it, like myself, the more they will see in it. A plain and homely prescription, but so, when you look at it, has been the man's whole life so far—a plain talk to plain people, on plain issues of right and wrong. The extraordinary thing is that some of us should have got up such a heat about it. Though, come to think of it, that is n't so extraordinary either; the issues are so very plain. "Thou shalt not steal" is

not exactly revolutionary preaching, but it is apt to stir up feelings when it means what it says. No extraordinary ambitions, no other thought than to do his share of what there was to do, and to do it well, stirred in this young student now sailing across the seas to begin life in his native land, to take up a man's work in a man's country. None of his college chums had been found to predict for him a brilliant public career. Even now they own it.

What, then, had he got out of his five years of study? They were having a reunion of his class when he was Police Commissioner, and he was there. One of the professors told of a student coming that day to bid him good-by. He asked him what was to be his work in the world.

"Oh!" said he, with a little yawn. "Really, do you know, professor, it does not seem to me that there is anything that is much worth while."

Theodore Roosevelt, who had been sitting, listening, at the other end of the table, got up suddenly and worked his way round to the professor's seat. He struck the table a blow that was not meant for it alone.