BOYHOOD AND EARLY LIFE 29 



Instantly his right hand shot out, taking the man on the point of the 

 jaw. The left followed. Down went the culprit with a crash. The 

 unfair blow had stirred up all the Roosevelt fighting blood, and it is a 

 hot grade of blood when it is up. 



Other things than games and exercise attracted the college boy s 

 attention. His father had been active in the work of public aid. He 

 died while the boy was at college, and young Theodore sought to walk 

 in his footsteps. He became Secretary of the Prison Reform Associa- 

 tion and acted on several committees. In addition he became a teacher 

 in a Sunday-school. His family faith was the Dutch Reformed, but 

 he found no church of that denomination at Cambridge, and drifted 

 into a mission school of the high church Episcopalian faith. 



He did not stay there long. One day a boy came to his class with 

 a black eye. When questioned, he acknowledged that he got it in a 

 fight, and that, too, on Sunday. The class was scandalized and the 

 teacher questioned him sternly. The fact came out that "Jim," the 

 other boy, had sat beside the lad's sister and had pinched her all 

 through the school hour. A fight followed, in which Jim got soundly 

 punched, the avenger of his sister coming out with a black eye. 



"You did just right," was Roosevelt's verdict, and he gave the 

 young champion a dollar. 



This pleased the class highly. It appealed to them as justice. 

 But when it got out among the school officers they were scandalized. 

 And Roosevelt was a black sheep among them in other ways. He did 

 not observe the formalities of the high church service as they thought 

 he should. They asked if he had any objection to them. None in the 

 world, but — he was Dutch Reformed. This was too much. Some 

 words followed and Roosevelt got out and entered a Congregational 

 Sunday-school near by, where he taught during the remainder of his 

 college term. Just what he taught we are not aware, but it seems 

 rather amusing to think of Theodore Roosevelt as a Sunday-school 

 teacher. 



What now about the real work for which one goes to college, the 

 studies, the diligent pursuit of knowledge? That he was an earnest 

 student of those subjects which especially interested him we may be 

 sure from what we know of the man. His tastes turned toward the 



