BOYHOOD AND EARLY LIFE 27 



plumage. He thus cultivated the habit of observation and study, 

 while his active outdoor life gave strength to his muscles and tough- 

 ened his frame. 



And in these early days that love of the wild which has become a 

 marked element of his character began to develop. He read stories 

 of the great Western plains and began to long to set foot in the 

 wilderness. Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales fell into his hands and 

 these he devoured with a strong appetite. His friend Jacob Riis 

 asked him once if he liked them. 



"Like them!" he exclaimed, with kindling eyes. "Like them! 

 Why, man, there is nothing like them. I could pass an examination 

 in the whole of them to-day. Deerslayer with his long rifle, Jasper 

 and Hurry Harry, Ishmael Bush with his seven stalwart sons — do I 

 not know them? I have bunked with them and eaten with them, and 

 I know their strength and their weakness. They were narrow and 

 hard, but they did the work of their day and opened the way for ours. 

 Do I like them ? Cooper is unique in American literature, and he will 

 grow upon us as we get farther away from his day, let the critics say 

 w^hat they will." 



Roosevelt as a boy was a busy reader, as he has managed to be a 

 busy reader amid the absorbing labors of his later life. But he was 

 a true boy, one of the type which he has since laid down for the 

 genuine American boy. 



"The chances are strong," he says of young hopeful, "that he 

 won't be much of a man unless he is a good deal of a boy. He must 

 not be a coward or a weakling, a bully, a shirk, or a prig. He must 

 work hard and play hard. He must be clean-minded and clean-lived, 

 and able to hold his own under all circumstances and against all 

 .comers. In life, as in football, the principle to follow is: Hit the line 

 hard; don't foul and don't shirk, but hit the line hard." He seems 

 here speaking of himself. 



The time came when the active, energetic, somewhat strenuous 

 lad with whose life story we are concerned entered Harvard College 

 to complete his education. He was then eighteen years of age. It 

 w^as an education of the type of that of his earlier years, one of much 

 physical exercise and a fair share of mental discipline. He did his 



