Theodore Roosevelt: An Intimate BiographyThayer, William Roscoe
History
Theodore Roosevelt: An Intimate Biography
Thayer, William Roscoe
Presidents -- United States -- Biography; Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919
Roosevelt took rooms at No. 16 Winthrop Street, a quiet little
lane midway between the College Yard and Charles River, where he
could pursue his hobbies without incessant interruption from
casual droppers-in. Here he kept the specimens which he went on
collecting, some live--a large turtle and two or three harmless
snakes, for instance--and some dead and stuffed. He was no
"grind"; the gods take care not to mix even a drop of pedantry in
the make-up of the rare men whom they destine for great deeds or
fine works. Theodore was already so much stronger in his health
that he went on to get still more strength. He had regular
lessons in boxing. He took long walks and studied the flora and
fauna of the country round Cambridge in his amateurish but
intense way. During his first Christmas vacation, he went down to
the Maine Woods and camped out, and there he met Bill Sewall, a
famous guide, who remained Theodore's friend through life, and
Wilmot Dow, Sewall's nephew, another woodsman; and this trip,
subsequently followed by others, did much good to his physique.
He still had occasional attacks of asthma--he "guffled" as Bill
Sewall called it--and they were sometimes acute, but his tendency
to them slowly wore away.
All his days Roosevelt was proud of being a Harvard man. Even in
the period when academic Harvard was most critical of his public
acts, he never wavered in his devotion to Alma Mater herself,
that dear and lovely Being, who, like the ideal of our country,
lives on to inspire us in spite of unsympathetic administrations
and unloved leaders.
"The One remains, the many change and pass."
Nevertheless, in his "Autobiography," Theodore makes very scant
record of his college life. "I thoroughly enjoyed Harvard," he
says, "and I am sure it did me good, but only in the general
effect, for there was very little in my actual studies which
helped me in after life." * Like nine out of ten men who look
back on college he could make no definite estimate of the actual
gains from those four years; but it is precisely the
indefiniteness, the elusiveness of the college experience which
marks its worth. This is not to be reckoned financially by an
increase in dollars and cents, or intellectually, by so many
added foot-pounds of knowledge. Harvard College was of
inestimable benefit to Roosevelt, because it enabled him to find
himself--to be a man with his fellow men.
*Autobiography, 27.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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