Funny incidents of these early combats stick in my mind. One day one of my brothers came home from school very proud. He said he had had a fight with a boy. When asked how the fight resulted he said he had won by kicking the boy in the windpipe. Further investigation developed the fact that the windpipe was the pit of the stomach. My brother felt that it must be the windpipe, because when you kicked someone there he lost his breath. I can remember father to this day explaining that no matter how effective this method of attack was it was not considered sportsmanlike to kick. Father and mother believed in robust righteousness. In the stories and poems that they read us they always bore this in mind. _Pilgrim's Progress_ and _The Battle Hymn of the Republic_ we knew when we were very young. When father was dressing for dinner he used to teach us poetry. I can remember memorizing all the most stirring parts of Longfellow's _Saga of King Olaf_, _Sheridan's Ride_, and the _Sinking of the Cumberland_. The gallant incidents in history were told us in such a way that we never forgot them. In Washington, when father was civil service commissioner, I often walked to the office with him. On the way down he would talk history to me--not the dry history of dates and charters, but the history where you yourself in your imagination could assume the rôle of the principal actors, as every well-constructed boy wishes to do when interested. During every battle we would stop and father would draw out the full plan in the dust in the gutter with the tip of his umbrella. When very little we saw a great many men serving in both the army and navy. My father did not wish us to enter either of these services, because he felt that there was so much to be done from a civilian standpoint in this country. However, we were taught to regard the services, as the quaint phraseology of the Court Martial Manual puts it, as the "honorable profession of arms." We were constantly listening to discussions on military matters, and there was always at least one service rifle in the house. We spent our summers at Oyster Bay. There, in addition to our family, were three other families of little Roosevelts. We were all taught out-of-door life. We spent our days riding and shooting, wandering through the woods, and playing out-of-door games. Underlying all this was father's desire to have all of us children grow up manly and clean-minded, with not only the desire but the ability to play our part at the country's need.