On getting home, Theodore, who was fifteen years old, set to work seriously to fit himself to enter Harvard College. Up to this time his education had been unmethodical, leaving him behind his fellows in some subjects and far ahead of them in others. He had the good fortune now to secure as a tutor Mr. Arthur H. Cutler, for many years head of the Cutler Preparatory School in New York City, thanks to whose excellent training he was able to enter college in 1876. During these years of preparation Theodore's health steadily improved. He had a gun and was an ardent sportsman, the incentive of adding specimens to his collection of birds and animals outweighing the mere sport of slaughter. At Oyster Bay, where his father first leased a house in 1874, he spent much of his time on the water, but he deemed sailing rather lazy and unexciting, compared with rowing. He enjoyed taking his row-boat out into the Sound, and, if a high headwind was blowing, or the sea ran in whitecaps, so much the better. He was now able to share in all of the athletic pastimes of his companions, although, so far as I know, he never indulged in baseball, the commonest game of all. When he entered Harvard as a Freshman in 1876, that institution was passing through its transition from college to university, which had begun when Charles W. Eliot became its President seven years before. In spite of vehement assaults, the Great Educator pushed on his reform slowly but resistlessly. He needed to train not only the public but many members, perhaps a majority, of his faculty. Young Roosevelt found a body of eight hundred undergraduates, the largest number up to that time. While the Elective System had been introduced in the upper classes, Freshmen and Sophomores were still required to take the courses prescribed for them.