NICKNAMED TEDDY--GOES TO HARVARD COLLEGE--MEMBER OF MANY CLUBS--DEATH OF
MR. ROOSEVELT--ANECDOTES OF COLLEGE LIFE
The instincts of the hunter must have been born in Theodore Roosevelt.
His first gun was given to him when he was ten years of age, and for the
time being his books and his studies were forgotten, and he devoted his
whole time and attention to shooting at a target set up in the garden of
the country home and in going out with the older folks after such small
game as were to be found in that vicinity.
The horses on the place were his pets, and he knew the peculiarities of
each as well as did the man who cared for them. Riding and driving came
to him as naturally as breathing, and the fact that a steed was
mettlesome did not daunt him.
"My father often drove four-in-hand," he has said. "I liked very much to
go with him, and I liked to drive, too."
Theodore Roosevelt's schoolboy days were not far out of the ordinary. He
studied hard, and if he failed in a lesson he did his best to make it up
the next time. It is well said that there is no royal road to learning,
and even a future President must study just as hard as his classmates if
he wants to keep up with them. Sometimes he was absent from school on
account of sickness, and then it was a sharp struggle to keep from
dropping behind.
"In those days nobody expected Teddy Roosevelt to amount to a great
deal," some one has said. "He was thin, pale, and delicate, and suffered
with his eyes. But he pulled through, and when he took to athletics, it
was wonderful how he got stronger."
By his intimate companions, and indeed by nearly everybody who knew him,
he was called Teddy, and this nickname clung to him when he went forth
into the great world to become a governor and a president. How the
nickname came first into use is not known.
Since those schoolboy days Mr. Roosevelt has been asked this
question:--
"What did you expect to be, or dream of being, when you were a boy?"
"I do not recollect that I dreamed at all or planned at all," was the
answer. "I simply obeyed the injunction, 'Whatever thy hand findeth to
do, do that with all thy might,' and so I took up what came along as it
came."
In 1876, while the great Centennial Exhibition was being held at
Philadelphia in commemoration of one hundred years of national liberty,
Theodore Roosevelt took up his residence at Cambridge, Massachusetts,
and became a student at Harvard College. During the previous year his
health had been poor indeed, but now he had taken hold of himself in
earnest.
"I determined to be strong and well, and did everything to make myself
so," he has said. "By the time I entered Harvard I was able to take part
in whatever sports I liked."
As perhaps some of my readers know, Harvard College (now termed a
University) is the oldest and largest institution of learning in the
United States. It was founded in 1636, and among its graduates numbered
John Quincy Adams, sixth President of our country. The college proper is
located in Cambridge, but some of the attached schools are in Boston.
Theodore Roosevelt was rich enough to have lived in elegant style while
at Harvard, but he preferred unostentatious quarters, and took two rooms
in the home of Benj. H. Richardson, at what was then No. 16 and is now
No. 88 Winthrop Street. The residence is a neat and comfortable one,
standing on the southwest corner of Winthrop and Holyoke streets.
The young student had two rooms on the second floor,--one of good size,
used for a study, and a small bedroom. In the whole four years he was at
the college he occupied these rooms, and he spent a great deal of time
in fixing them up to suit his own peculiar taste. On the walls were all
sorts of pictures and photographs, along with foils and boxing-gloves,
and the horns of wild animals. On a shelf rested some birds which he had
himself stuffed, and books were everywhere.
[Illustration: HOUSE IN WHICH THEODORE ROOSEVELT ROOMED WHILE AT
HARVARD.]
"It was a regular den, and typical of Roosevelt to the last degree," a
student of those times has said. "He had his gun there and his
fishing rod, and often spoke of using them. He was noted for trying to
get at the bottom of things, and I remember him well on one occasion
when I found him with a stuffed bird in one hand and a natural history
in the other, trying to decide if the description in the volume covered
the specimen before him." When Roosevelt graduated from college, he was
one of a very few that took honors, and the subject of his essay was
natural history. How his love of natural history continued will be shown
later when we see him as a ranchman and hunter of the West.
Theodore Roosevelt had decided to make the most of himself, and while at
Harvard scarcely a moment was wasted. If he was not studying, he was in
the gymnasium or on the field, doing what he could to make himself
strong. He was a firm believer in the saying that a sound body makes a
sound mind, and he speedily became a good boxer, wrestler, jumper, and
runner. He wrestled a great deal, and of this sport says:--
"I enjoyed it immensely and never injured myself. I think I was a good
deal of a wrestler, and though I never won a championship, yet more
than once I won my trial heats and got into the final rounds."
At running he was equally good. "I remember once we had a stiff run out
into the country," said a fellow-student. "Roosevelt was behind at the
start, but when all of the others got played out he forged ahead, and in
the end he beat us by several minutes. But he never bragged about it.
You see, it wasn't his style."
With all his other sports, and his studying, the young collegian did not
give up his love for driving. He had a good horse and a fancy cart,--one
of the elevated sort with large wheels,--and in this turnout he was seen
many a day, driving wherever it pleased him to go. Sometimes he would
get on the road with other students, and then there was bound to be more
or less racing.
With a strong love for natural history it was not surprising that he
joined the Natural History Club of the college, and of this he was one
of the most active members. He also joined the Athletic Association, of
which he was a steward, and the Art Club, the Rifle Corps, the O.K.
Society, and the Finance Club. In his senior year he became a member of
the Porcellian Club, the Hasty Pudding, and the Alpha Delta Phi Club,
and also one of the editors of a college paper called the _Advocate_. On
Sundays he taught a class of boys, first in a mission school, and then
in a Congregational Sunday school. It was a life full of planning, full
of study, and full of work, and it suited Theodore Roosevelt to the last
degree.
As he grew older his love of natural history was supplemented by a love
for the history of nations, and particularly by a love of the history of
his own country. The war of 1812 interested him intensely, and before he
graduated he laid plans for writing a history of this war, which should
go into all the details of the memorable naval conflicts.
It was while in his third year at Harvard that Theodore Roosevelt
suffered the first heavy affliction of his life. On February 9, 1878,
his father died. It was a cruel blow to the family, and one from which
the faithful wife scarcely recovered. The son at Harvard felt his loss
greatly, and it was some time before he felt able to resume his studies.
The elder Roosevelt's work as a philanthropist was well known, and many
gathered at his bier to do him honor, while the public journals were
filled with eulogies of the man. The poor mourned bitterly that he was
gone, and even the newsboys were filled with regret over his taking
away. In speaking of his parent, President Roosevelt once said: "I can
remember seeing him going down Broadway, staid and respectable business
man that he was, with a poor sick kitten in his coat pocket, which he
had picked up in the street." Such a man could not but have a heart
overflowing with goodness.
While at college Theodore Roosevelt often showed that self-reliance for
which he has since become famous. To every study that he took up he
applied himself closely, and if he was not at the head of the class, he
was by no means near the foot. When he was sure of a thing, no amount of
argument could convince him that he was wrong, and he did not hesitate
at times to enter into a discussion even with some of the professors
over him.
Although a close student, and also a good all-round athlete, Theodore
Roosevelt did not forget his social opportunities. Boston was but a
short distance from his rooms in Cambridge, and thither he often went to
visit the people he had met or to whom he had letters of introduction.
He was always welcome, for his manner was a winning one, and he usually
had something to tell that was of interest--something of what he had
seen or done, of the next foot-ball or base-ball game, of the coming
boat races, of his driving or exploring, or of how he had added a new
stuffed bird to his collection, or a new lizard, and of how a far-away
friend had sent him a big turtle as a souvenir of an ocean trip in the
South Seas. There is a story that this big turtle got loose one night
and alarmed the entire household by crawling through the hallway,
looking for a pond or mud-hole in which to wallow. At first the turtle
was mistaken for a burglar, but he soon revealed himself by his angry
snapping, and it was hard work making him a prisoner once more.