One day he came home from school with muddy clothes and scratched and bleeding face and hands. "What is the matter, Teddy?" asked his father. "Why, a boy up the street made a face at me and said: 'Your father's a fakir.' He was a good deal bigger than me, but I couldn't stand that; so I just pitched in. I had a pretty hard time, but I licked him." "That's right, I am glad you licked him," said the older Theodore, who evidently was born with fighting blood, like his combative son. We may quote from the younger Theodore a statement which lets in a good deal of light upon the character of the father and upon the inheritance and training of the son. He tells us this: "My father, all my people, held that no one had a right to merely cumber the earth; that the most contemptible of created beings is the man who does nothing. I imbibed the idea that I must work hard, whether at making money or whatever. The whole family training taught me that I must be doing, must be working-and at decent work. I made my health what it is. I determined to be strong and well, and did everything to make myself so. By the time I entered Harvard College I was able to take my part in whatever sports I liked. I wrestled and sparred and ran a great deal while in college, and though I never came in first, I got more good out of the exercise than those who did, because I immensely enjoyed it and never injured myself." Such was the training of the boy Roosevelt. We have had abundant examples of its result in the career of the man Roosevelt. The daring spirit which he has manifested in later life seems to have been born in him. His boyish escapades were many and often perilous. A woman who lived next door to the Roosevelt house once saw young Theodore hanging from a second-story window and ran in alarm to warn his mother. "If the Lord," she said, "had not taken care of Theodore, he would have been killed long ago." The boy's life was an active one throughout, but his time was not wasted. He was taking in knowledge as well as winning hardihood. In his tramps through the woods his eyes were kept busy, and he grew especially to know the birds, their songs, their nests, their plumage. He thus cultivated the habit of observation and study, while his active outdoor life gave strength to his muscles and toughened his frame. And in these early days that love of the wild which has become a marked element of his character began to develop. He read stories of the great Western plains and began to long to set foot in the wilderness. Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales fell into his hands and these he devoured with a strong appetite. His friend Jacob Riis asked him once if he liked them. "Like them!" he exclaimed, with kindling eyes. "Like them! Why, man, there is nothing like them. I could pass an examination in the whole of them to-day. Deerslayer with his long rifle, Jasper and Hurry Harry, Ishmael Bush with his seven stalwart sons-do I not know them? I have bunked with them and eaten with them, and I know their strength and their weakness. They were narrow and hard, but they did the work of their day and opened the way for ours. Do I like them? Cooper is unique in American literature, and he will grow upon us as we get farther away from his day, let the critics say what they will.” Roosevelt as a boy was a busy reader, as he has managed to be a busy reader amid the absorbing labors of his later life. But he was a true boy, one of the type which he has since laid down for the genuine American boy. He must "The chances are strong," he says of young hopeful, "that he won't be much of a man unless he is a good deal of a boy. not be a coward or a weakling, a bully, a shirk, or a prig. He must work hard and play hard. He must be clean-minded and clean-lived, and able to hold his own under all circumstances and against all comers. In life, as in football, the principle to follow is: Hit the line hard; don't foul and don't shirk, but hit the line hard." He seems here speaking of himself. The time came when the active, energetic, somewhat strenuous lad with whose life story we are concerned entered Harvard College to complete his education. He was then eighteen years of age. It was an education of the type of that of his earlier years, one of much physical exercise and a fair share of mental discipline. He did his best to "hit the line hard." We are not told that he shone as a student or graduated amid acclamations, but during his years within college walls he added much to the strength of his physical and mental fibre. The anecdotes extant of his college career are evidence of this. He lived the life strong, took active part in all that was going on, and became quickly a favorite with his class. They laughed at his odd ways and at his enthusiasm, voted him "more or less crazy," but respected him for his scholarship and found themselves falling into his ways. There was an instance of this when he began the child-like exercise of skipping the rope, claiming that it was excellent for strengthening the leg muscles. Soon his classmates, convinced by his arguments, were following in his track, and rope-skipping became a pastime of the class. In the gymnasium they wore red stockings with their exercise suits. Roosevelt donned a pair of patriotic red-andwhite striped ones, and did not know at first at what his fellows were laughing. When he was told he laughed, too, but kept them on. There were none of the college games in which he did not take part. He did not shine in any of them, but they gave him strength and vigor, which was what he was after, rather than victory. He played polo, he wrestled and ran with his fellows, he drove a twowheeled gig-badly enough, but he enjoyed it. His first bout with the boxing gloves was with the champion of the class, a man twice his size and weight, with whom he instinctively matched himself. The pummeling that followed he took with good will, and though his glasses fell off, leaving him half blind, he grimly refused to cry quarter, and pressed the fight home with all the vim of a berserker. Never since has he learned how to cry quarter or to acknowledge in any fight that he has been whipped. There is one story told of him worth repeating, though it may be a college fable. In one of his boxing bouts his antagonist took a mean advantage, and struck him, drawing blood, while Roosevelt was still adjusting his glove. "Foul!" cried the bystanders, but Roosevelt merely smiled grimly. "I guess you have made a mistake. That is not our way here," he said, offering his hand to the fellow as a sign to begin hostilities. Copyright by Clinedinst PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT AND HIS FAMOUS TENNIS CABINET |