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 himand 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 successes 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

paramount business of the present to find out just what was implied in that proposition. If it squared with his ideas of right he adopted it; if not, it was rejected until he had been convinced that it contained more of virtue than of evil. His career in those student days differed very little from the swift and fearless march he has since made to the mountain peak of Americanism. He was not so strong of body then as he has since grown to be, but he did not hesitate to join in any reputable sport or serious task attempted by his fellows. In one of his later essays Mr. Roosevelt says: "One plain duty of every man is to face the future as he faces the present, regardless of what it may have in store for him, and turning toward the light as he sees the light, to play his part manfully, as a man among men." A similar spirit seems to have animated him in all his actions, even before he had announced his intention of embarking in a public career. He literally fought his way through college as he has since fought his way through life, accepting nothing from any source that did not seem to him to be fair and founded in truth.

Mr. Roosevelt took with him to Cambridge a habit of hard work and a disdain for idleness.