Theodore Roosevelt and His Times | Page 4

weights. "I can see him now," says his
sister, "faithfully going through various exercises, at different times of
the day, to broaden the chest narrowed by this terrible shortness of
breath, to make the limbs and back strong, and able to bear the weight
of what was coming to him later in life."
All through his boyhood the young Theodore Roosevelt kept up his
fight for strength. He was too delicate to attend school, and was taught
by private tutors. He spent many of his summers, and sometimes some
of the winter months, in the woods of Maine. These outings he
thoroughly enjoyed, but it is certain that the main motive which sent
him into the rough life of the woods to hunt and tramp, to paddle and
row and swing an axe, was the obstinate determination to make himself
physically fit.

His fight for bodily power went on through his college course at
Harvard and during the years that he spent in ranch life in the West. He
was always intensely interested in boxing, although he was never of
anything like championship caliber in the ring. His first impulse to
learn to defend himself with his hands had a characteristic birth.
During one of his periodical attacks of asthma he was sent alone to
Moosehead Lake in Maine. On the stagecoach that took him the last
stage of the journey he met two boys of about his own age. They
quickly found, he says, in his "Autobiography", that he was "a
foreordained and predestined victim" for their rough teasing, and they
"industriously proceeded to make life miserable" for their fellow
traveler. At last young Roosevelt could endure their persecutions no
loner, and tried to fight. Great was his discomfiture when he discovered
that either of them alone could handle him "with easy contempt." They
hurt him little, but, what was doubtless far more humiliating, they
prevented him from doing any damage whatever in return.
The experience taught the boy, better than any good advice could have
done, that he must learn to defend himself. Since he had little natural
prowess, he realized that he must supply its place by training. He
secured his father's approval for a course of boxing lessons, upon which
he entered at once. He has described himself as a "painfully slow and
awkward pupil," who worked for two or three years before he made
any perceptible progress.
In college Roosevelt kept at boxing practice. Even in those days no
antagonist, no matter how much his superior, ever made him "quit." In
his ranching days, that training with his fists stood him in good stead.
Those were still primitive days out in the Dakotas, though now, as
Roosevelt has said, that land of the West has "'gone, gone with the lost
Atlantis,' gone to the isle of ghosts and of strange dead memories." A
man needed to be able to take care of himself in that Wild West then.
Roosevelt had many stirring experiences but only one that he called
"serious trouble."
He was out after lost horses and came to a primitive little hotel,
consisting of a bar-room, a dining-room, a lean-to kitchen, and above a
loft with fifteen or twenty beds in it. When he entered the bar-room late
in the evening--it was a cold night and there was nowhere else to go--a
would-be "bad man," with a cocked revolver in each hand, was striding

up and down the floor, talking with crude profanity. There were several
bullet holes in the clock face, at which he had evidently been shooting.
This bully greeted the newcomer as "Four Eyes," in reference to his
spectacles, and announced, "Four Eyes is going to treat." Roosevelt
joined in the laugh that followed and sat down behind the stove,
thinking to escape notice. But the "bad man" followed him, and in spite
of Roosevelt's attempt to pass the matter over as a joke, stood over him,
with a gun in each hand and using the foulest language. "He was
foolish," said Roosevelt, in describing the incident, "to stand so near,
and moreover, his heels were closer together, so that his position was
unstable." When he repeated his demand that Four Eyes should treat,
Roosevelt rose as if to comply. As he rose he struck quick and hard
with his right fist just to the left side of the point of the jaw, and, as he
straightened up hit with his left, and again with his right. The bully's
guns went off, whether intentionally or involuntarily no one ever knew.
His head struck the corner of the bar as he fell, and he lay senseless.
"When my assailant came to," said Roosevelt, "he went down to the
station and left on a freight." It was eminently characteristic of
Roosevelt that he tried