children until he left his New York home to enter upon life at Harvard College. They had been together while at school; and in those days which seem so far away now they had taken their games to the greensward of Union Park, and had played there day after day together. Her home, indeed, was in Fourteenth street, and but a step from the square. That was a part of the fashionable quarter at the time, and the myriad business houses had not begun their intrusion.

There was plenty of reason for the intimacy. They met at the same children's parties, and studied in the same schools-until little Miss Edith was packed off to a fashionable boarding school presided over by a Miss Comstock, who will be remembered by many of the older New Yorkers to-day. Edith's father was a merchant, as his father had been before him; and her mother was by birth Miss Gertrude Tyler, daughter of General Tyler, of Connecticut. Her family in all its connections had been rich and prominent through many generations. The same was true of Theodore, whose father was a lawyer and a judge, and had been successively an alderman, a member of the assembly at

Albany and a congressman at Washington. Edith Kermit Carow has said, in the happy, established days since her marriage, that she had "liked" Teddy Roosevelt in those distant times because he could do so much more than she could. And yet he was a child of puny strength, while she reveled in all the vigor of a healthy girlhood. It is probable the strong-willed lad impressed her with more power than he possessed. He certainly suffered in comparison with many other lads of her acquaintance, of his age. But it is his brother's testimony that he never permitted himself to be thrust out of the way, nor his little friend to be imposed upon. And his ready championing of her at all times may have won him a place in her eyes for which he was indebted rather to the promise of his spirit than the fulfilment of the flesh.

Later in life Mr. Roosevelt found more than a childhood friend in the girl companion of his leisure hours. He found one who understood him, who had faith in him and encouraged him— and who came in maturer years, after sorrow had visited him, to share his home, to increase his fortune, and to make sacred his success.

When young Theodore Roosevelt had ad

vanced to the age of college study, and had gone up to Harvard for the final four years of student life, he was singularly well-equipped for the labors that awaited him. So far as natural preference was concerned, he had taken the greatest delight in history, and in civil government. But so thoroughly had he made himself master of his tendencies and desires that he passed exceedingly well in mathematics-that bane of the imaginative scholar. That must have meant adherence to a course of self-discipline; for arithmetic was naturally distasteful to him. He loved to revel in books of adventure, and knew the story of his own land and those of modern western Europe, from repeated reading. But he had resolutely devoted himself to the less attractive studies-being aided, no doubt, by the rigid methods of his teachers. And the mental training so secured must be in large part chargeable with the close-knit intellectual fiber which his manhood has revealed. It was the substantial structure upon which his later fancy could build, just as his acquired physical strength formed a magazine from which his tireless energy might draw without fear of exhausting it.

In the campaign of 1900 it was sometimes

said that "Theodore Roosevelt was born with a gold spoon in his mouth." But the imputation is hardly fair. He was an average boy as to mental attainments, and considerably under the average in bodily strength. Whatever suc

cesses he has achieved seem to have come more from an inherent will that would not brook defeat in any line rather than from peculiar advantages gratuitously bestowed upon him. He was rich, it is true, and possessed of many social advantages. But these could not have won him a place in the fields of physical, mental and political activity which he has chosen. A careful estimate of his life must lodge much of the credit for his equipping in those years of later boyhood when his own motive was the impelling force; when he would not permit other boys to excel him in studies, and when he went systematically at such training as would render it impossible for them long to excel him in sports. And on the basis of these two elements in his boyhood has probably been builded the traits and the powers which have made him a type of very creditable American manhood. Out of these may grow, if one have the purpose to achieve it, an equal success in any line of endeavor.

CHAPTER III.

COLLEGE LIFE.

ENTERS COLLEGE AT THE AGE OF EIGHTEEN-DEVELOPS A TASTE FOR HUNTING AND NATURAL HISTORY-IS ACTIVE IN ALL COLLEGE SPORTS, ESPECIALLY WRESTLING AND BOXING-GRADUATES IN 1880 WITH HIGH HONORS-MEMBERSHIP IN CLUBS, ETC.

Slender of figure and pale of face, Theodore Roosevelt entered Harvard in the fall of the Centennial year, a youth of eighteen. He had been reared in a home of refinement and comfortable wealth in the city of New York. He was well aware of his position in society and of what would be expected of him at home when his graduation day had arrived. He had been drilled by his parents in the knowledge of selfdependence and already had a mind leaning to investigation and discovery.

At the university, Mr. Roosevelt was a unique figure. Sterling, rugged, old-fashioned honesty and a keen sense of duty brought him up sharply before every proposition, and he made it the