Theodore Roosevelt | Page 7

live lobsters, to the consternation of the other people in
the horse-car. He held a high office in the Natural History Society, and
took honors, when he graduated, in the subject. His father had
encouraged his desire to be a professor of natural history, reminding
him, however, that he must have no hopes of being a rich man. In the
end he gave up this plan, not because it did not lead to money, for
never in his life did he work to become wealthy, but because he
disliked science as it was then taught. One of the bad things the
German universities had done to the American colleges was to make
them worship fussy detail, and so science had become a matter of
microscopes and laboratories. The field-work of the naturalist was
unknown or despised.
He took part in four or five kinds of athletics. He seems never to have
played baseball, perhaps because of poor eyesight which made him
wear glasses. But he practiced with a rifle, rowed and boxed, ran and
wrestled. In his vacations he went hunting in Maine. Boxing was one of
his favorite forms of sport,--for two reasons. He thought a boy or a man

ought to be able to defend himself and others, and he enjoyed hard
exercise.
It is important to know what he thought and did about self-defense and
fighting. Many people dodge this, and other difficult subjects, when
they are talking to boys. It was not Roosevelt's way to hide his thoughts
in silence because of timidity, and then call his lack of action by some
such fine name as "tact" or "discretion." When there was good reason
for speaking out he always did so. Since a boy who is forever fighting
is not only a nuisance, but usually a bully, some older folk go to the
extreme and tell boys that all fighting is wrong.
Theodore Roosevelt did not believe it. When he was about fourteen,
and riding in a stage-coach on the way to Moosehead Lake, two other
boys in the coach began tormenting him. When he tried to fight them
off, he found himself helpless. Either of them could handle him, could
hit him and prevent him from hitting back. He decided that it was a
matter of self-respect for a boy to know how to protect himself and he
learned to box.
Speaking to boys he said later:
"One prime reason for abhorring cowards is because every good boy
should have it in him to thrash the objectionable boy as the need
arises."
And again:
"The very fact that the boy should be manly and able to hold his own,
that he should be ashamed to submit to bullying, without instant
retaliation, should in return, make him abhor any form of bullying,
cruelty, or brutality."
[Footnote: These two quotations from essay called "The American
Boy" in "The Strenuous Life," pp. 162, 164]
When he was teaching a Sunday School class in Cambridge, during his
time at college, one of his pupils came in with a black eye. It turned out

that another boy had teased and pinched the first boy's sister during
church. Afterwards there had been a fight, and the one who tormented
the little girl had been beaten, but he had given the brother a black eye.
"You did quite right," said Roosevelt to the brother and gave him a
dollar.
But the deacons of the church did not approve, and Roosevelt soon
went to another church.
Meanwhile he was learning to box. In his own story of his life he
makes fun of himself as a boxer, and says that in a boxing match he
once won "a pewter mug" worth about fifty cents. He is honest enough
to say that he was proud of it at the time, "kept it, and alluded to it, and
I fear bragged about it, for a number of years, and I only wish I knew
where it was now."
His college friends tell a different story of him. He was never one of the
best boxers, they say, and he was at a disadvantage because of his
eyesight. But he was plucky enough for two, and he fought fair. He
entered in the lightweight class in the Harvard Gymnasium, March 22,
1879. He won the first match. When time was called he dropped his
hands, and his opponent gave him a hard blow on the face. The fellows
around the ring all shouted "Foul! Foul!" and hissed. But Roosevelt
turned toward them, calling "Hush! He didn't hear!"
In the second match he met a man named Charlie Hanks, who was a
little taller, and had a longer reach, and so for all Roosevelt's pluck and
willingness to take punishment, Hanks won the match.
He was a member of