Theodore Roosevelt | Page 7

house lugging a thick, heavy volume of Livingstone's
"Travels" and asking some one to tell him about the "foraging ants"
described by the explorer. At last his older sister found the passage in
which the little boy had mistaken "foregoing" for "foraging." No
wonder that in his mature years he became an advocate of reformed
spelling. His sense of humor, which flashed like a mountain brook
through all his later intercourse and made it delightful, seems to have
begun with his infancy. He used to say his prayers at his mother's knee,
and one evening when he was out of sorts with her, he prayed the Lord
to bless the Union Cause; knowing her Southern preferences he took
this humorous sort of vengeance on her. She, too, had humor and was

much amused, but she warned him that if he repeated such impropriety
at that solemn moment, she should tell his father.
Theodore and the other children had a great fondness for pets, and their
aunt, Mrs. Robert, possessed several of unusual kinds--pheasants and
peacocks which strutted about the back yard and a monkey which lived
on the back piazza. They were afraid of him, although they doubtless
watched his antics with a fearful joy. From the accounts which survive,
life in the nursery of the young Roosevelts must have been a perpetual
play-time, but through it all ran the invisible formative influence of
their parents, who had the art of shaping the minds and characters of
the little people without seeming to teach.
Almost from infancy Theodore suffered from asthma, which made him
physically puny, and often prevented him from lying down when he
went to bed. But his spirit did not droop. His mental activity never
wearied and he poured out endless stories to the delight of his brother
and sisters. "My earliest impressions of my brother Theodore," writes
his sister, Mrs. Robinson, "are of a rather small, patient, suffering little
child, who, in spite of his suffering, was the acknowledged head of the
nursery .... These stories," she adds, "almost always related to strange
and marvelous animal adventures, in which the animals were
personalities quite as vivid as Kipling gave to the world a generation
later in his 'Jungle Books.'"
Owing to his delicate health Theodore did not attend school, except for
a little while, when he went to Professor MacMullen's Academy on
Twentieth Street. He was taught at home and he probably got more
from his reading than from his teachers. By the time he was ten, the
passion for omnivorous reading which frequently distinguishes boys
who are physically handicapped, began in him. He devoured Our
Young Folks, that excellent periodical on which many of the boys and
girls who were his contemporaries fed. He loved tales of travel and
adventure; he loved Cooper's stories, and especially books on natural
history.
In summer the children spent the long days out of doors at some
country place, and there, in addition to the pleasure of being

continuously with nature, they had the sports and games adapted to
their age. Theodore was already making collections of stones and other
specimens after the haphazard fashion of boys. The young naturalist
sometimes met with unexpected difficulties. Once, for instance, he
found a litter of young white mice, which he put in the ice-chest for
safety. His mother came upon them, and, in the interest Of good
housekeeping, she threw them away. When Theodore discovered it he
flew into a tantrum and protested that what hurt him most was "the loss
to Science! the loss to Science!" On another occasion Science suffered
a loss of unknown extent owing to his obligation to manners. He and
his cousin had filled their pockets and whatever bags they had with
specimens. Then they came upon two toads, of a strange and new
variety. Having no more room left, each boy put one of them on top of
his head and clapped down his hat. All went well till they met Mrs.
Hamilton Fish, a great lady to whom they had to take off their hats.
Down jumped the toads and hopped away, and Science was never able
to add the Bufo Rooseveltianus to its list of Hudson Valley reptiles.
In 1869 Mr. Roosevelt took his family to Europe for a year. The
children did not care to go, and from the start Theodore was homesick
and little interested. Of course, picture galleries meant nothing to a boy
of ten, with a naturalist's appetite, and he could not know enough about
history to be impressed by historic places and monuments. He kept a
diary from which Mr. Hagedorn* prints many amusing entries, some of
which I quote:
* H. Hagedorn: The Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt. Harper & Bros.
1918.
Munich, October. "In the night I had