THE VIGOR OF LIFE
Looking back, a man really has a more objective feeling about himself
as a child than he has about his father or mother. He feels as if that
child were not the present he, individually, but an ancestor; just as
much an ancestor as either of his parents. The saying that the child is
the father to the man may be taken in a sense almost the reverse of that
usually given to it. The child is father to the man in the sense that
his individuality is separate from the individuality of the grown-up
into which he turns. This is perhaps one reason why a man can speak of
his childhood and early youth with a sense of detachment.
Having been a sickly boy, with no natural bodily prowess, and having
lived much at home, I was at first quite unable to hold my own when
thrown into contact with other boys of rougher antecedents. I was
nervous and timid. Yet from reading of the people I admired--ranging
from the soldiers of Valley Forge, and Morgan's riflemen, to the heroes
of my favorite stories--and from hearing of the feats performed by my
Southern forefathers and kinsfolk, and from knowing my father, I felt a
great admiration for men who were fearless and who could hold their
own in the world, and I had a great desire to be like them. Until I
was nearly fourteen I let this desire take no more definite shape than
day-dreams. Then an incident happened that did me real good. Having an
attack of asthma, I was sent off by myself to Moosehead Lake. On the
stage-coach ride thither I encountered a couple of other boys who
were about my own age, but very much more competent and also much more
mischievous. I have no doubt they were good-hearted boys, but they were
boys! They found that I was a foreordained and predestined victim, and
industriously proceeded to make life miserable for me. The worst feature
was that when I finally tried to fight them I discovered that either one
singly could not only handle me with easy contempt, but handle me so as
not to hurt me much and yet to prevent my doing any damage whatever in
return.
The experience taught me what probably no amount of good advice could
have taught me. I made up my mind that I must try to learn so that I
would not again be put in such a helpless position; and having become
quickly and bitterly conscious that I did not have the natural prowess
to hold my own, I decided that I would try to supply its place by
training. Accordingly, with my father's hearty approval, I started to
learn to box. I was a painfully slow and awkward pupil, and certainly
worked two or three years before I made any perceptible improvement
whatever. My first boxing-master was John Long, an ex-prize-fighter. I
can see his rooms now, with colored pictures of the fights between Tom
Hyer and Yankee Sullivan, and Heenan and Sayers, and other great events
in the annals of the squared circle. On one occasion, to excite interest
among his patrons, he held a series of "championship" matches for the
different weights, the prizes being, at least in my own class, pewter
mugs of a value, I should suppose, approximating fifty cents. Neither
he nor I had any idea that I could do anything, but I was entered in
the lightweight contest, in which it happened that I was pitted in
succession against a couple of reedy striplings who were even worse than
I was. Equally to their surprise and to my own, and to John Long's, I
won, and the pewter mug became one of my most prized possessions. I
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. Years later I read
an account of a little man who once in a fifth-rate handicap race won
a worthless pewter medal and joyed in it ever after. Well, as soon as I
read that story I felt that that little man and I were brothers.
This was, as far as I remember, the only one of my exceedingly rare
athletic triumphs which would be worth relating. I did a good deal of
boxing and wrestling in Harvard, but never attained to the first rank in
either, even at my own weight. Once, in the big contests in the Gym,
I got either into the finals or semi-finals, I forget which; but aside
from this the chief part I played was to act as trial horse for some
friend or classmate who did have a chance of distinguishing himself in
the championship contests.
I was fond of horseback-riding, but I took to it slowly and with
difficulty, exactly as with boxing. It was a long time before I became
even a respectable rider, and I never got much higher. I mean by this
that I never became a first-flight man in the hunting field, and never
even approached the bronco-busting class in the West. Any man, if
he chooses, can gradually school himself to the requisite nerve, and
gradually learn the requisite seat and hands, that will enable him to do
respectably across country, or to perform the average work on a ranch.
Of my ranch experiences I shall speak later. At intervals after leaving
college I hunted on Long Island with the Meadowbrook hounds. Almost the
only experience I ever had in this connection that was of any interest
was on one occasion when I broke my arm. My purse did not permit me to
own expensive horses. On this occasion I was riding an animal, a buggy
horse originally, which its owner sold because now and then it insisted
on thoughtfully lying down when in harness. It never did this under the
saddle; and when he turned it out to grass it would solemnly hop over
the fence and get somewhere where it did not belong. The last trait
was what converted it into a hunter. It was a natural jumper, although
without any speed. On the hunt in question I got along very well until
the pace winded my ex-buggy horse, and it turned a somersault over a
fence. When I got on it after the fall I found I could not use my left
arm. I supposed it was merely a strain. The buggy horse was a sedate
animal which I rode with a snaffle. So we pounded along at the tail of
the hunt, and I did not appreciate that my arm was broken for three or
four fences. Then we came to a big drop, and the jar made the bones slip
past one another so as to throw the hand out of position. It did not
hurt me at all, and as the horse was as easy to sit as a rocking-chair,
I got in at the death.
I think August Belmont was master of the hunt when the above incident
occurred. I know he was master on another occasion on which I met with
a mild adventure. On one of the hunts when I was out a man was thrown,
dragged by one stirrup, and killed. In consequence I bought a pair of
safety stirrups, which I used the next time I went out. Within five
minutes after the run began I found that the stirrups were so very
"safe" that they would not stay in at all. First one went off at one
jump, and then the other at another jump--with a fall for me on each
occasion. I hated to give up the fun so early, and accordingly finished
the run without any stirrups. My horse never went as fast as on that
run. Doubtless a first-class horseman can ride as well without stirrups
as with them. But I was not a first-class horseman. When anything
unexpected happened, I was apt to clasp the solemn buggy horse firmly
with my spurred heels, and the result was that he laid himself out to do
his best in the way of galloping. He speedily found that, thanks to the
snaffle bit, I could not pull him in, so when we came to a down grade he
would usually put on steam. Then if there was a fence at the bottom and
he checked at all, I was apt to shoot forward, and in such event we went
over the fence in a way that reminded me of Leech's picture, in _Punch_,
of Mr. Tom Noddy and his mare jumping a fence in the following order:
Mr. Tom Noddy, I; his mare, II. However, I got in at the death this time
also.
I was fond of walking and climbing. As a lad I used to go to the north
woods, in Maine, both in fall and winter. There I made life friends
of two men, Will Dow and Bill Sewall: I canoed with them, and tramped
through the woods with them, visiting the winter logging camps on
snow-shoes. Afterward they were with me in the West. Will Dow is dead.
Bill Sewall was collector of customs under me, on the Aroostook border.
Except when hunting I never did any mountaineering save for a couple of
conventional trips up the Matterhorn and the Jungfrau on one occasion
when I was in Switzerland.
I never did much with the shotgun, but I practiced a good deal with the
rifle. I had a rifle-range at Sagamore Hill, where I often took friends
to shoot. Once or twice when I was visited by parties of released Boer
prisoners, after the close of the South African War, they and I held
shooting matches together. The best man with both pistol and rifle who
ever shot there was Stewart Edward White. Among the many other good
men was a stanch friend, Baron Speck von Sternberg, afterwards German
Ambassador at Washington during my Presidency. He was a capital shot,
rider, and walker, a devoted and most efficient servant of Germany, who
had fought with distinction in the Franco-German War when barely more
than a boy; he was the hero of the story of "the pig dog" in Archibald
Forbes's volume of reminiscences. It was he who first talked over with
me the raising of a regiment of horse riflemen from among the ranchmen
and cowboys of the plains. When Ambassador, the poor, gallant,
tender-hearted fellow was dying of a slow and painful disease, so that
he could not play with the rest of us, but the agony of his mortal
illness never in the slightest degree interfered with his work.
Among the other men who shot and rode and walked with me was Cecil
Spring-Rice, who has just been appointed British Ambassador to the
United States. He was my groomsman, my best man, when I was married--at
St. George's, Hanover Square, which made me feel as if I were living in
one of Thackeray's novels.
My own experience as regards marksmanship was much the same as my
experience as regards horsemanship. There are men whose eye and hand are
so quick and so sure that they achieve a perfection of marksmanship to
which no practice will enable ordinary men to attain. There are other
men who cannot learn to shoot with any accuracy at all. In between come
the mass of men of ordinary abilities who, if they choose resolutely to
practice, can by sheer industry and judgment make themselves fair rifle
shots. The men who show this requisite industry and judgment can without
special difficulty raise themselves to the second class of respectable
rifle shots; and it is to this class that I belong. But to have reached
this point of marksmanship with the rifle at a target by no means
implies ability to hit game in the field, especially dangerous game. All
kinds of other qualities, moral and physical, enter into being a good
hunter, and especially a good hunter after dangerous game, just as all
kinds of other qualities in addition to skill with the rifle enter
into being a good soldier. With dangerous game, after a fair degree of
efficiency with the rifle has been attained, the prime requisites are
cool judgment and that kind of nerve which consists in avoiding being
rattled. Any beginner is apt to have "buck fever," and therefore no
beginner should go at dangerous game.
Buck fever means a state of intense nervous excitement which may be
entirely divorced from timidity. It may affect a man the first time he
has to speak to a large audience just as it affects him the first time
he sees a buck or goes into battle. What such a man needs is not courage
but nerve control, cool-headedness. This he can get only by actual
practice. He must, by custom and repeated exercise of self-mastery, get
his nerves thoroughly under control. This is largely a matter of habit,
in the sense of repeated effort and repeated exercise of will power. If
the man has the right stuff in him, his will grows stronger and stronger
with each exercise of it--and if he has not the right stuff in him he
had better keep clear of dangerous game hunting, or indeed of any other
form of sport or work in which there is bodily peril.
After he has achieved the ability to exercise wariness and judgment and
the control over his nerves _which will make him shoot as well at the
game as at a target_, he can begin his essays at dangerous game hunting,
and he will then find that it does not demand such abnormal prowess as
the outsider is apt to imagine. A man who can hit a soda-water bottle at
the distance of a few yards can brain a lion or a bear or an elephant at
that distance, and if he cannot brain it when it charges he can at least
bring it to a standstill. All he has to do is to shoot as accurately as
he would at a soda-water bottle; and to do this requires nerve, at least
as much as it does physical address. Having reached this point, the
hunter must not imagine that he is warranted in taking desperate
chances. There are degrees in proficiency; and what is a warrantable and
legitimate risk for a man to take when he has reached a certain grade of
efficiency may be a foolish risk for him to take before he has reached
that grade. A man who has reached the degree of proficiency indicated
above is quite warranted in walking in at a lion at bay, in an open
plain, to, say, within a hundred yards. If the lion has not charged, the
man ought at that distance to knock him over and prevent his charging;
and if the lion is already charging, the man ought at that distance to
be able to stop him. But the amount of prowess which warrants a man
in relying on his ability to perform this feat does not by any means
justify him in thinking that, for instance, he can crawl after a wounded
lion into thick cover. I have known men of indifferent prowess to
perform this latter feat successfully, but at least as often they have
been unsuccessful, and in these cases the result has been unpleasant.
The man who habitually follows wounded lions into thick cover must be
a hunter of the highest skill, or he can count with certainty on an
ultimate mauling.
The first two or three bucks I ever saw gave me buck fever badly, but
after I had gained experience with ordinary game I never had buck fever
at all with dangerous game. In my case the overcoming of buck fever
was the result of conscious effort and a deliberate determination
to overcome it. More happily constituted men never have to make this
determined effort at all--which may perhaps show that the average
man can profit more from my experiences than he can from those of the
exceptional man.
I have shot only five kinds of animals which can fairly be called
dangerous game--that is, the lion, elephant, rhinoceros, and buffalo
in Africa, and the big grizzly bear a quarter of a century ago in the
Rockies. Taking into account not only my own personal experience, but
the experiences of many veteran hunters, I regard all the four African
animals, but especially the lion, elephant, and buffalo, as much more
dangerous than the grizzly. As it happened, however, the only narrow
escape I personally ever had was from a grizzly, and in Africa the
animal killed closest to me as it was charging was a rhinoceros--all of
which goes to show that a man must not generalize too broadly from
his own personal experiences. On the whole, I think the lion the most
dangerous of all these five animals; that is, I think that, if fairly
hunted, there is a larger percentage of hunters killed or mauled for a
given number of lions killed than for a given number of any one of the
other animals. Yet I personally had no difficulties with lions. I twice
killed lions which were at bay and just starting to charge, and I killed
a heavy-maned male while it was in full charge. But in each instance I
had plenty of leeway, the animal being so far off that even if my bullet
had not been fatal I should have had time for a couple more shots. The
African buffalo is undoubtedly a dangerous beast, but it happened that
the few that I shot did not charge. A bull elephant, a vicious "rogue,"
which had been killing people in the native villages, did charge before
being shot at. My son Kermit and I stopped it at forty yards. Another
bull elephant, also unwounded, which charged, nearly got me, as I
had just fired both cartridges from my heavy double-barreled rifle in
killing the bull I was after--the first wild elephant I had ever seen.
The second bull came through the thick brush to my left like a steam
plow through a light snowdrift, everything snapping before his rush, and
was so near that he could have hit me with his trunk. I slipped past
him behind a tree. People have asked me how I felt on this occasion.
My answer has always been that I suppose I felt as most men of like
experience feel on such occasions. At such a moment a hunter is so
very busy that he has no time to get frightened. He wants to get in his
cartridges and try another shot.
Rhinoceros are truculent, blustering beasts, much the most stupid of
all the dangerous game I know. Generally their attitude is one of mere
stupidity and bluff. But on occasions they do charge wickedly, both when
wounded and when entirely unprovoked. The first I ever shot I mortally
wounded at a few rods' distance, and it charged with the utmost
determination, whereat I and my companion both fired, and more by good
luck than anything else brought it to the ground just thirteen paces
from where we stood. Another rhinoceros may or may not have been meaning
to charge me; I have never been certain which. It heard us and came at
us through rather thick brush, snorting and tossing its head. I am by
no means sure that it had fixedly hostile intentions, and indeed with
my present experience I think it likely that if I had not fired it would
have flinched at the last moment and either retreated or gone by me.
But I am not a rhinoceros mind reader, and its actions were such as to
warrant my regarding it as a suspicious character. I stopped it with a
couple of bullets, and then followed it up and killed it. The skins
of all these animals which I thus killed are in the National Museum at
Washington.
But, as I said above, the only narrow escape I met with was not from
one of these dangerous African animals, but from a grizzly bear. It was
about twenty-four years ago. I had wounded the bear just at sunset, in a
wood of lodge-pole pines, and, following him, I wounded him again, as he
stood on the other side of a thicket. He then charged through the brush,
coming with such speed and with such an irregular gait that, try as I
would, I was not able to get the sight of my rifle on the brain-pan,
though I hit him very hard with both the remaining barrels of my
magazine Winchester. It was in the days of black powder, and the smoke
hung. After my last shot, the first thing I saw was the bear's left paw
as he struck at me, so close that I made a quick movement to one side.
He was, however, practically already dead, and after another jump, and
while in the very act of trying to turn to come at me, he collapsed like
a shot rabbit.
By the way, I had a most exasperating time trying to bring in his skin.
I was alone, traveling on foot with one very docile little mountain mare
for a pack pony. The little mare cared nothing for bears or anything
else, so there was no difficulty in packing her. But the man without
experience can hardly realize the work it was to get that bearskin off
the carcass and then to pack it, wet, slippery, and heavy, so that it
would ride evenly on the pony. I was at the time fairly well versed in
packing with a "diamond hitch," the standby of Rocky Mountain packers in
my day; but the diamond hitch is a two-man job; and even working with
a "squaw hitch," I got into endless trouble with that wet and slippery
bearskin. With infinite labor I would get the skin on the pony and run
the ropes over it until to all seeming it was fastened properly. Then
off we would start, and after going about a hundred yards I would notice
the hide beginning to bulge through between two ropes. I would shift one
of them, and then the hide would bulge somewhere else. I would shift the
rope again; and still the hide would flow slowly out as if it was lava.
The first thing I knew it would come down on one side, and the little
mare, with her feet planted resolutely, would wait for me to perform my
part by getting that bearskin back in its proper place on the McClellan
saddle which I was using as a makeshift pack saddle. The feat of killing
the bear the previous day sank into nothing compared with the feat of
making the bearskin ride properly as a pack on the following three days.
The reason why I was alone in the mountains on this occasion was
because, for the only time in all my experience, I had a difficulty with
my guide. He was a crippled old mountain man, with a profound contempt
for "tenderfeet," a contempt that in my case was accentuated by the
fact that I wore spectacles--which at that day and in that region were
usually held to indicate a defective moral character in the wearer. He
had never previously acted as guide, or, as he expressed it, "trundled
a tenderfoot," and though a good hunter, who showed me much game, our
experience together was not happy. He was very rheumatic and liked to
lie abed late, so that I usually had to get breakfast, and, in fact, do
most of the work around camp. Finally one day he declined to go out with
me, saying that he had a pain. When, that afternoon, I got back to
camp, I speedily found what the "pain" was. We were traveling very light
indeed, I having practically nothing but my buffalo sleeping-bag, my
wash kit, and a pair of socks. I had also taken a flask of whisky for
emergencies--although, as I found that the emergencies never arose
and that tea was better than whisky when a man was cold or done out, I
abandoned the practice of taking whisky on hunting trips twenty years
ago. When I got back to camp the old fellow was sitting on a tree-trunk,
very erect, with his rifle across his knees, and in response to my nod
of greeting he merely leered at me. I leaned my rifle against a tree,
walked over to where my bed was lying, and, happening to rummage in it
for something, I found the whisky flask was empty. I turned on him at
once and accused him of having drunk it, to which he merely responded by
asking what I was going to do about it. There did not seem much to do,
so I said that we would part company--we were only four or five days
from a settlement--and I would go in alone, taking one of the horses. He
responded by cocking his rifle and saying that I could go alone and be
damned to me, but I could not take any horse. I answered "all right,"
that if I could not I could not, and began to move around to get some
flour and salt pork. He was misled by my quietness and by the fact that
I had not in any way resented either his actions or his language during
the days we had been together, and did not watch me as closely as he
ought to have done. He was sitting with the cocked rifle across his
knees, the muzzle to the left. My rifle was leaning against a tree near
the cooking things to his right. Managing to get near it, I whipped it
up and threw the bead on him, calling, "Hands up!" He of course put
up his hands, and then said, "Oh, come, I was only joking"; to which I
answered, "Well, I am not. Now straighten your legs and let your rifle
go to the ground." He remonstrated, saying the rifle would go off, and
I told him to let it go off. However, he straightened his legs in such
fashion that it came to the ground without a jar. I then made him move
back, and picked up the rifle. By this time he was quite sober, and
really did not seem angry, looking at me quizzically. He told me that if
I would give him back his rifle, he would call it quits and we could go
on together. I did not think it best to trust him, so I told him that
our hunt was pretty well through, anyway, and that I would go home.
There was a blasted pine on the trail, in plain view of the camp, about
a mile off, and I told him that I would leave his rifle at that blasted
pine if I could see him in camp, but that he must not come after me,
for if he did I should assume that it was with hostile intent and would
shoot. He said he had no intention of coming after me; and as he was
very much crippled with rheumatism, I did not believe he would do so.
Accordingly I took the little mare, with nothing but some flour, bacon,
and tea, and my bed-roll, and started off. At the blasted pine I looked
round, and as I could see him in camp, I left his rifle there. I then
traveled till dark, and that night, for the only time in my experience,
I used in camping a trick of the old-time trappers in the Indian days. I
did not believe I would be followed, but still it was not possible to be
sure, so, after getting supper, while my pony fed round, I left the fire
burning, repacked the mare and pushed ahead until it literally became so
dark that I could not see. Then I picketed the mare, slept where I was
without a fire until the first streak of dawn, and then pushed on for a
couple of hours before halting to take breakfast and to let the little
mare have a good feed. No plainsman needs to be told that a man should
not lie near a fire if there is danger of an enemy creeping up on him,
and that above all a man should not put himself in a position where he
can be ambushed at dawn. On this second day I lost the trail, and toward
nightfall gave up the effort to find it, camped where I was, and went
out to shoot a grouse for supper. It was while hunting in vain for a
grouse that I came on the bear and killed it as above described.
When I reached the settlement and went into the store, the storekeeper
identified me by remarking: "You're the tenderfoot that old Hank was
trundling, ain't you?" I admitted that I was. A good many years later,
after I had been elected Vice-President, I went on a cougar hunt in
northwestern Colorado with Johnny Goff, a famous hunter and mountain
man. It was midwinter. I was rather proud of my achievements, and
pictured myself as being known to the few settlers in the neighborhood
as a successful mountain-lion hunter. I could not help grinning
when I found out that they did not even allude to me as the
Vice-President-elect, let alone as a hunter, but merely as "Johnny
Goff's tourist."
Of course during the years when I was most busy at serious work I could
do no hunting, and even my riding was of a decorous kind. But a man
whose business is sedentary should get some kind of exercise if he
wishes to keep himself in as good physical trim as his brethren who do
manual labor. When I worked on a ranch, I needed no form of exercise
except my work, but when I worked in an office the case was different.
A couple of summers I played polo with some of my neighbors. I shall
always believe we played polo in just the right way for middle-aged men
with stables of the general utility order. Of course it was polo which
was chiefly of interest to ourselves, the only onlookers being the
members of our faithful families. My two ponies were the only occupants
of my stable except a cart-horse. My wife and I rode and drove them, and
they were used for household errands and for the children, and for two
afternoons a week they served me as polo ponies. Polo is a good game,
infinitely better for vigorous men than tennis or golf or anything of
that kind. There is all the fun of football, with the horse thrown in;
and if only people would be willing to play it in simple fashion it
would be almost as much within their reach as golf. But at Oyster Bay
our great and permanent amusements were rowing and sailing; I do not
care for the latter, and am fond of the former. I suppose it sounds
archaic, but I cannot help thinking that the people with motor boats
miss a great deal. If they would only keep to rowboats or canoes, and
use oar or paddle themselves, they would get infinitely more benefit
than by having their work done for them by gasoline. But I rarely took
exercise merely as exercise. Primarily I took it because I liked it.
Play should never be allowed to interfere with work; and a life devoted
merely to play is, of all forms of existence, the most dismal. But the
joy of life is a very good thing, and while work is the essential in it,
play also has its place.
When obliged to live in cities, I for a long time found that boxing and
wrestling enabled me to get a good deal of exercise in condensed and
attractive form. I was reluctantly obliged to abandon both as I grew
older. I dropped the wrestling earliest. When I became Governor, the
champion middleweight wrestler of America happened to be in Albany, and
I got him to come round three or four afternoons a week. Incidentally
I may mention that his presence caused me a difficulty with the
Comptroller, who refused to audit a bill I put in for a wrestling-mat,
explaining that I could have a billiard-table, billiards being
recognized as a proper Gubernatorial amusement, but that a wrestling-mat
symbolized something unusual and unheard of and could not be permitted.
The middleweight champion was of course so much better than I was that
he could not only take care of himself but of me too and see that I was
not hurt--for wrestling is a much more violent amusement than boxing.
But after a couple of months he had to go away, and he left as a
substitute a good-humored, stalwart professional oarsman. The oarsman
turned out to know very little about wrestling. He could not even take
care of himself, not to speak of me. By the end of our second afternoon
one of his long ribs had been caved in and two of my short ribs badly
damaged, and my left shoulder-blade so nearly shoved out of place that
it creaked. He was nearly as pleased as I was when I told him I thought
we would "vote the war a failure" and abandon wrestling. After that I
took up boxing again. While President I used to box with some of the
aides, as well as play single-stick with General Wood. After a few years
I had to abandon boxing as well as wrestling, for in one bout a young
captain of artillery cross-countered me on the eye, and the blow smashed
the little blood-vessels. Fortunately it was my left eye, but the sight
has been dim ever since, and if it had been the right eye I should
have been entirely unable to shoot. Accordingly I thought it better
to acknowledge that I had become an elderly man and would have to stop
boxing. I then took up jiu-jitsu for a year or two.
When I was in the Legislature and was working very hard, with little
chance of getting out of doors, all the exercise I got was boxing and
wrestling. A young fellow turned up who was a second-rate prize-fighter,
the son of one of my old boxing teachers. For several weeks I had him
come round to my rooms in the morning to put on the gloves with me for
half an hour. Then he suddenly stopped, and some days later I received a
letter of woe from him from the jail. I found that he was by profession
a burglar, and merely followed boxing as the amusement of his lighter
moments, or when business was slack.
Naturally, being fond of boxing, I grew to know a good many
prize-fighters, and to most of those I knew I grew genuinely attached.
I have never been able to sympathize with the outcry against
prize-fighters. The only objection I have to the prize ring is the
crookedness that has attended its commercial development. Outside of
this I regard boxing, whether professional or amateur, as a first-class
sport, and I do not regard it as brutalizing. Of course matches can be
conducted under conditions that make them brutalizing. But this is true
of football games and of most other rough and vigorous sports. Most
certainly prize-fighting is not half as brutalizing or demoralizing
as many forms of big business and of the legal work carried on in
connection with big business. Powerful, vigorous men of strong animal
development must have some way in which their animal spirits can find
vent. When I was Police Commissioner I found (and Jacob Riis will
back me up in this) that the establishment of a boxing club in a tough
neighborhood always tended to do away with knifing and gun-fighting
among the young fellows who would otherwise have been in murderous
gangs. Many of these young fellows were not naturally criminals at all,
but they had to have some outlet for their activities. In the same way
I have always regarded boxing as a first-class sport to encourage in the
Young Men's Christian Association. I do not like to see young Christians
with shoulders that slope like a champagne bottle. Of course boxing
should be encouraged in the army and navy. I was first drawn to two
naval chaplains, Fathers Chidwick and Rainey, by finding that each of
them had bought half a dozen sets of boxing-gloves and encouraged their
crews in boxing.
When I was Police Commissioner, I heartily approved the effort to
get boxing clubs started in New York on a clean basis. Later I was
reluctantly obliged to come to the conclusion that the prize ring had
become hopelessly debased and demoralized, and as Governor I aided in
the passage of and signed the bill putting a stop to professional boxing
for money. This was because some of the prize-fighters themselves were
crooked, while the crowd of hangers-on who attended and made up and
profited by the matches had placed the whole business on a basis
of commercialism and brutality that was intolerable. I shall always
maintain that boxing contests themselves make good, healthy sport. It
is idle to compare them with bull-fighting; the torture and death of the
wretched horses in bull-fighting is enough of itself to blast the sport,
no matter how great the skill and prowess shown by the bull-fighters.
Any sport in which the death and torture of animals is made to furnish
pleasure to the spectators is debasing. There should always be the
opportunity provided in a glove fight or bare-fist fight to stop it when
one competitor is hopelessly outclassed or too badly hammered. But the
men who take part in these fights are hard as nails, and it is not worth
while to feel sentimental about their receiving punishment which as a
matter of fact they do not mind. Of course the men who look on ought to
be able to stand up with the gloves, or without them, themselves; I have
scant use for the type of sportsmanship which consists merely in looking
on at the feats of some one else.
Some as good citizens as I know are or were prize-fighters. Take Mike
Donovan, of New York. He and his family represent a type of American
citizenship of which we have a right to be proud. Mike is a devoted
temperance man, and can be relied upon for every movement in the
interest of good citizenship. I was first intimately thrown with him
when I was Police Commissioner. One evening he and I--both in dress
suits--attended a temperance meeting of Catholic societies. It
culminated in a lively set-to between myself and a Tammany Senator who
was a very good fellow, but whose ideas of temperance differed radically
from mine, and, as the event proved, from those of the majority of the
meeting. Mike evidently regarded himself as my backer--he was sitting on
the platform beside me--and I think felt as pleased and interested as if
the set-to had been physical instead of merely verbal. Afterward I grew
to know him well both while I was Governor and while I was President,
and many a time he came on and boxed with me.
Battling Nelson was another stanch friend, and he and I think alike
on most questions of political and industrial life; although he once
expressed to me some commiseration because, as President, I did not get
anything like the money return for my services that he aggregated during
the same term of years in the ring. Bob Fitzsimmons was another good
friend of mine. He has never forgotten his early skill as a blacksmith,
and among the things that I value and always keep in use is a penholder
made by Bob out of a horseshoe, with an inscription saying that it is
"Made for and presented to President Theodore Roosevelt by his friend
and admirer, Robert Fitzsimmons." I have for a long time had the
friendship of John L. Sullivan, than whom in his prime no better man
ever stepped into the ring. He is now a Massachusetts farmer. John used
occasionally to visit me at the White House, his advent always causing a
distinct flutter among the waiting Senators and Congressmen. When I went
to Africa he presented me with a gold-mounted rabbit's foot for luck. I
carried it through my African trip; and I certainly had good luck.
On one occasion one of my prize-fighting friends called on me at the
White House on business. He explained that he wished to see me alone,
sat down opposite me, and put a very expensive cigar on the desk,
saying, "Have a cigar." I thanked him and said I did not smoke, to which
he responded, "Put it in your pocket." He then added, "Take another; put
both in your pocket." This I accordingly did. Having thus shown at the
outset the necessary formal courtesy, my visitor, an old and valued
friend, proceeded to explain that a nephew of his had enlisted in the
Marine Corps, but had been absent without leave, and was threatened with
dishonorable discharge on the ground of desertion. My visitor, a good
citizen and a patriotic American, was stung to the quick at the thought
of such an incident occurring in his family, and he explained to me that
it must not occur, that there must not be the disgrace to the family,
although he would be delighted to have the offender "handled rough" to
teach him a needed lesson; he added that he wished I would take him and
handle him myself, for he knew that I would see that he "got all that
was coming to him." Then a look of pathos came into his eyes, and
he explained: "That boy I just cannot understand. He was my sister's
favorite son, and I always took a special interest in him myself. I
did my best to bring him up the way he ought to go. But there was just
nothing to be done with him. His tastes were naturally low. He took
to music!" What form this debasing taste for music assumed I did not
inquire; and I was able to grant my friend's wish.
While in the White House I always tried to get a couple of hours'
exercise in the afternoons--sometimes tennis, more often riding, or else
a rough cross-country walk, perhaps down Rock Creek, which was then as
wild as a stream in the White Mountains, or on the Virginia side along
the Potomac. My companions at tennis or on these rides and walks we
gradually grew to style the Tennis Cabinet; and then we extended the
term to take in many of my old-time Western friends such as Ben Daniels,
Seth Bullock, Luther Kelly, and others who had taken part with me in
more serious outdoor adventures than walking and riding for pleasure.
Most of the men who were oftenest with me on these trips--men like
Major-General Leonard Wood; or Major-General Thomas Henry Barry; or
Presley Marion Rixey, Surgeon-General of the Navy; or Robert Bacon, who
was afterwards Secretary of State; or James Garfield, who was Secretary
of the Interior; or Gifford Pinchot, who was chief of the Forest
Service--were better men physically than I was; but I could ride and
walk well enough for us all thoroughly to enjoy it. Often, especially
in the winters and early springs, we would arrange for a point to point
walk, not turning aside for anything--for instance, swimming Rock
Creek or even the Potomac if it came in our way. Of course under such
circumstances we had to arrange that our return to Washington should
be when it was dark, so that our appearance might scandalize no one. On
several occasions we thus swam Rock Creek in the early spring when the
ice was floating thick upon it. If we swam the Potomac, we usually
took off our clothes. I remember one such occasion when the French
Ambassador, Jusserand, who was a member of the Tennis Cabinet, was
along, and, just as we were about to get in to swim, somebody said, "Mr.
Ambassador, Mr. Ambassador, you haven't taken off your gloves," to which
he promptly responded, "I think I will leave them on; we might meet
ladies!"
We liked Rock Creek for these walks because we could do so much
scrambling and climbing along the cliffs; there was almost as much
climbing when we walked down the Potomac to Washington from the Virginia
end of the Chain Bridge. I would occasionally take some big-game friend
from abroad, Selous or St. George Littledale or Captain Radclyffe
or Paul Niedicke, on these walks. Once I invited an entire class of
officers who were attending lectures at the War College to come on one
of these walks; I chose a route which gave us the hardest climbing along
the rocks and the deepest crossings of the creek; and my army friends
enjoyed it hugely--being the right sort, to a man.
On March 1, 1909, three days before leaving the Presidency, various
members of the Tennis Cabinet lunched with me at the White House.
"Tennis Cabinet" was an elastic term, and of course many who ought
to have been at the lunch were, for one reason or another, away from
Washington; but, to make up for this, a goodly number of out-of-town
honorary members, so to speak, were present--for instance, Seth Bullock;
Luther Kelly, better known as Yellowstone Kelly in the days when he was
an army scout against the Sioux; and Abernathy, the wolf-hunter. At the
end of the lunch Seth Bullock suddenly reached forward, swept aside a
mass of flowers which made a centerpiece on the table, and revealed
a bronze cougar by Proctor, which was a parting gift to me. The lunch
party and the cougar were then photographed on the lawn.
Some of the younger officers who were my constant companions on these
walks and rides pointed out to me the condition of utter physical
worthlessness into which certain of the elder ones had permitted
themselves to lapse, and the very bad effect this would certainly have
if ever the army were called into service. I then looked into the matter
for myself, and was really shocked at what I found. Many of the older
officers were so unfit physically that their condition would have
excited laughter, had it not been so serious, to think that they
belonged to the military arm of the Government. A cavalry colonel proved
unable to keep his horse at a smart trot for even half a mile, when I
visited his post; a Major-General proved afraid even to let his horse
canter, when he went on a ride with us; and certain otherwise good
men proved as unable to walk as if they had been sedentary brokers.
I consulted with men like Major-Generals Wood and Bell, who were
themselves of fine physique, with bodies fit to meet any demand. It
was late in my administration; and we deemed it best only to make a
beginning--experience teaches the most inveterate reformer how hard it
is to get a totally non-military nation to accept seriously any military
improvement. Accordingly, I merely issued directions that each officer
should prove his ability to walk fifty miles, or ride one hundred, in
three days.
This is, of course, a test which many a healthy middle-aged woman would
be able to meet. But a large portion of the press adopted the view that
it was a bit of capricious tyranny on my part; and a considerable number
of elderly officers, with desk rather than field experience, intrigued
with their friends in Congress to have the order annulled. So one day I
took a ride of a little over one hundred miles myself, in company with
Surgeon-General Rixey and two other officers. The Virginia roads were
frozen and in ruts, and in the afternoon and evening there was a storm
of snow and sleet; and when it had been thus experimentally shown, under
unfavorable conditions, how easy it was to do in one day the task for
which the army officers were allowed three days, all open objection
ceased. But some bureau chiefs still did as much underhanded work
against the order as they dared, and it was often difficult to reach
them. In the Marine Corps Captain Leonard, who had lost an arm at
Tientsin, with two of his lieutenants did the fifty miles in one day;
for they were vigorous young men, who laughed at the idea of treating a
fifty-mile walk as over-fatiguing. Well, the Navy Department officials
rebuked them, and made them take the walk over again in three days,
on the ground that taking it in one day did not comply with the
regulations! This seems unbelievable; but Leonard assures me it is true.
He did not inform me at the time, being afraid to "get in wrong" with
his permanent superiors. If I had known of the order, short work would
have been made of the bureaucrat who issued it.[*]
[*] One of our best naval officers sent me the following
letter, after the above had appeared:--
"I note in your Autobiography now being published in the
Outlook that you refer to the reasons which led you to
establish a physical test for the Army, and to the action
you took (your 100-mile ride) to prevent the test being
abolished. Doubtless you did not know the following facts:
"1. The first annual navy test of 50 miles in three days was
subsequently reduced to 25 miles in two days in each
quarter.
"2. This was further reduced to 10 miles each month, which
is the present 'test,' and there is danger lest even this
utterly insufficient test be abolished.
"I enclose a copy of a recent letter to the Surgeon General
which will show our present deplorable condition and the
worse condition into which we are slipping back.
"The original test of 50 miles in three days did a very
great deal of good. It decreased by thousands of dollars the
money expended on street car fare, and by a much greater sum
the amount expended over the bar. It eliminated a number of
the wholly unfit; it taught officers to walk; it forced them
to learn the care of their feet and that of their men; and
it improved their general health and was rapidly forming a
taste for physical exercise."
The enclosed letter ran in part as follows:--
"I am returning under separate cover 'The Soldiers' Foot and
the Military Shoe.'
"The book contains knowledge of a practical character that
is valuable for the men who HAVE TO MARCH, WHO HAVE SUFFERED
FROM FOOT TROUBLES, AND WHO MUST AVOID THEM IN ORDER TO
ATTAIN EFFICIENCY.
"The words in capitals express, according to my idea, the
gist of the whole matter as regards military men.
"The army officer whose men break down on test gets a black
eye. The one whose men show efficiency in this respect gets
a bouquet.
"To such men the book is invaluable. There is no danger that
they will neglect it. They will actually learn it, for
exactly the same reasons that our fellows learn the gunnery
instructions--or did learn them before they were withdrawn
and burned.
"B U T, I have not been able to interest a single naval
officer in this fine book. They will look at the pictures
and say it is a good book, but they won't read it. The
marine officers, on the contrary, are very much interested,
because they have to teach their men to care for their feet
and they must know how to care for their own. But the naval
officers feel no such necessity, simply because their men do
not have to demonstrate their efficiency by practice
marches, and they themselves do not have to do a stunt that
will show up their own ignorance and inefficiency in the
matter.
"For example, some time ago I was talking with some chaps
about shoes--the necessity of having them long enough and
wide enough, etc., and one of them said: 'I have no use for
such shoes, as I never walk except when I have to, and any
old shoes do for the 10-mile-a-month stunt,' so there you
are!
"When the first test was ordered, Edmonston (Washington shoe
man) told me that he sold more real walking shoes to naval
officers in three months than he had in the three preceding
years. I know three officers who lost both big-toe nails
after the first test, and another who walked nine miles in
practice with a pair of heavy walking shoes that were too
small and was laid up for three days--could not come to the
office. I know plenty of men who after the first test had to
borrow shoes from larger men until their feet 'went down' to
their normal size.
"This test may have been a bit too strenuous for old hearts
(of men who had never taken any exercise), but it was
excellent as a matter of instruction and training of
handling feet--and in an emergency (such as we soon may have
in Mexico) sound hearts are not much good if the feet won't
stand.
"However, the 25-mile test in two days each quarter answered
the same purpose, for the reason that 12.5 miles will
produce sore feet with bad shoes, and sore feet and lame
muscles even with good shoes, if there has been no practice
marching.
"It was the necessity of doing 12.5 MORE MILES ON THE SECOND
DAY WITH SORE FEET AND LAME MUSCLES that made 'em sit up and
take notice--made 'em practice walking, made 'em avoid
street cars, buy proper shoes, show some curiosity about sox
and the care of the feet in general.
"All this passed out with the introduction of the last test
of 10 miles a month. As one fellow said: 'I can do that in
sneakers'--but he couldn't if the second day involved a
tramp on the sore feet.
"The point is that whereas formerly officers had to practice
walking a bit and give some attention to proper footgear,
now they don't have to, and the natural consequence is that
they don't do it.
"There are plenty of officers who do not walk any more than
is necessary to reach a street car that will carry them from
their residences to their offices. Some who have motors do
not do so much. They take no exercise. They take cocktails
instead and are getting beefy and 'ponchy,' and something
should be done to remedy this state of affairs.
"It would not be necessary if service opinion required
officers so to order their lives that it would be common
knowledge that they were 'hard,' in order to avoid the
danger of being selected out.
"We have no such service opinion, and it is not in process
of formation. On the contrary, it is known that the
'Principal Dignitaries' unanimously advised the Secretary to
abandon all physical tests. He, a civilian, was wise enough
not to take the advice.
"I would like to see a test established that would oblige
officers to take sufficient exercise to pass it without
inconvenience. For the reasons given above, 20 miles in two
days every other month would do the business, while 10 miles
each month does not touch it, simply because nobody has to
walk on 'next day' feet. As for the proposed test of so many
hours 'exercise' a week, the flat foots of the pendulous
belly muscles are delighted. They are looking into the
question of pedometers, and will hang one of these on their
wheezy chests and let it count every shuffling step they
take out of doors.
"If we had an adequate test throughout 20 years, there would
at the end of that time be few if any sacks of blubber at
the upper end of the list; and service opinion against that
sort of thing would be established."
These tests were kept during my administration. They were afterwards
abandoned; not through perversity or viciousness; but through weakness,
and inability to understand the need of preparedness in advance, if the
emergencies of war are to be properly met, when, or if, they arrive.
In no country with an army worth calling such is there a chance for
a man physically unfit to stay in the service. Our countrymen should
understand that every army officer--and every marine officer--ought to
be summarily removed from the service unless he is able to undergo far
severer tests than those which, as a beginning, I imposed. To follow any
other course is to put a premium on slothful incapacity, and to do the
gravest wrong to the Nation.
I have mentioned all these experiences, and I could mention scores of
others, because out of them grew my philosophy--perhaps they were in
part caused by my philosophy--of bodily vigor as a method of getting
that vigor of soul without which vigor of the body counts for nothing.
The dweller in cities has less chance than the dweller in the country to
keep his body sound and vigorous. But he can do so, if only he will take
the trouble. Any young lawyer, shopkeeper, or clerk, or shop-assistant
can keep himself in good condition if he tries. Some of the best men who
have ever served under me in the National Guard and in my regiment were
former clerks or floor-walkers. Why, Johnny Hayes, the Marathon victor,
and at one time world champion, one of my valued friends and supporters,
was a floor-walker in Bloomingdale's big department store. Surely with
Johnny Hayes as an example, any young man in a city can hope to make his
body all that a vigorous man's body should be.
I once made a speech to which I gave the title "The Strenuous Life."
Afterwards I published a volume of essays with this for a title. There
were two translations of it which always especially pleased me. One was
by a Japanese officer who knew English well, and who had carried the
essay all through the Manchurian campaign, and later translated it for
the benefit of his countrymen. The other was by an Italian lady, whose
brother, an officer in the Italian army who had died on duty in a
foreign land, had also greatly liked the article and carried it round
with him. In translating the title the lady rendered it in Italian as
_Vigor di Vita_. I thought this translation a great improvement on the
original, and have always wished that I had myself used "The Vigor of
Life" as a heading to indicate what I was trying to preach, instead of
the heading I actually did use.
There are two kinds of success, or rather two kinds of ability displayed
in the achievement of success. There is, first, the success either in
big things or small things which comes to the man who has in him the
natural power to do what no one else can do, and what no amount of
training, no perseverance or will power, will enable any ordinary man to
do. This success, of course, like every other kind of success, may be
on a very big scale or on a small scale. The quality which the man
possesses may be that which enables him to run a hundred yards in nine
and three-fifths seconds, or to play ten separate games of chess at the
same time blindfolded, or to add five columns of figures at once without
effort, or to write the "Ode to a Grecian Urn," or to deliver the
Gettysburg speech, or to show the ability of Frederick at Leuthen or
Nelson at Trafalgar. No amount of training of body or mind would enable
any good ordinary man to perform any one of these feats. Of course the
proper performance of each implies much previous study or training,
but in no one of them is success to be attained save by the altogether
exceptional man who has in him the something additional which the
ordinary man does not have.
This is the most striking kind of success, and it can be attained only
by the man who has in him the quality which separates him in kind no
less than in degree from his fellows. But much the commoner type of
success in every walk of life and in every species of effort is that
which comes to the man who differs from his fellows not by the kind of
quality which he possesses but by the degree of development which he has
given that quality. This kind of success is open to a large number of
persons, if only they seriously determine to achieve it. It is the kind
of success which is open to the average man of sound body and fair mind,
who has no remarkable mental or physical attributes, but who gets just
as much as possible in the way of work out of the aptitudes that he does
possess. It is the only kind of success that is open to most of us. Yet
some of the greatest successes in history have been those of this second
class--when I call it second class I am not running it down in the
least, I am merely pointing out that it differs in kind from the first
class. To the average man it is probably more useful to study this
second type of success than to study the first. From the study of the
first he can learn inspiration, he can get uplift and lofty enthusiasm.
From the study of the second he can, if he chooses, find out how to win
a similar success himself.
I need hardly say that all the successes I have ever won have been
of the second type. I never won anything without hard labor and the
exercise of my best judgment and careful planning and working long in
advance. Having been a rather sickly and awkward boy, I was as a young
man at first both nervous and distrustful of my own prowess. I had to
train myself painfully and laboriously not merely as regards my body but
as regards my soul and spirit.
When a boy I read a passage in one of Marryat's books which always
impressed me. In this passage the captain of some small British
man-of-war is explaining to the hero how to acquire the quality of
fearlessness. He says that at the outset almost every man is frightened
when he goes into action, but that the course to follow is for the man
to keep such a grip on himself that he can act just as if he was not
frightened. After this is kept up long enough it changes from pretense
to reality, and the man does in very fact become fearless by sheer dint
of practicing fearlessness when he does not feel it. (I am using my own
language, not Marryat's.) This was the theory upon which I went. There
were all kinds of things of which I was afraid at first, ranging from
grizzly bears to "mean" horses and gun-fighters; but by acting as if I
was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid. Most men can have the
same experience if they choose. They will first learn to bear themselves
well in trials which they anticipate and which they school themselves
in advance to meet. After a while the habit will grow on them, and they
will behave well in sudden and unexpected emergencies which come upon
them unawares.
It is of course much pleasanter if one is naturally fearless, and I envy
and respect the men who are naturally fearless. But it is a good
thing to remember that the man who does not enjoy this advantage can
nevertheless stand beside the man who does, and can do his duty with the
like efficiency, if he chooses to. Of course he must not let his
desire take the form merely of a day-dream. Let him dream about being
a fearless man, and the more he dreams the better he will be, always
provided he does his best to realize the dream in practice. He can do
his part honorably and well provided only he sets fearlessness before
himself as an ideal, schools himself to think of danger merely as
something to be faced and overcome, and regards life itself as he should
regard it, not as something to be thrown away, but as a pawn to be
promptly hazarded whenever the hazard is warranted by the larger
interests of the great game in which we are all engaged.