ROOSEVELT'S BIRTH AND EDUCATION. 55 



balanced by impulsiveness in action or obstinacy in adbering to 

 bis own ideas. He was certainly regarded as a man of unusually 

 good fighting qualities, of determination, pluck and tenacity. 



" If bis classmates bad been asked in tbeir senior year to pick 

 out tbe one member of tbe class wbo would be best adapted for 

 such a service wliicli he rendered with tbe Rough Riders in Cuba 

 I think that, almost with one voice, they would have named 

 Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt is in many respects as broad and 

 typical an American as the country has produced." 



. ORIGINAL AND SELF-RELIANT. 



Both his fellows and his teachers say that he was much above 

 the average as a student. He was just as original, just as reliant 

 on his own judgment as he is now. In a mere matter of opinion 

 or of dogma he had no respect for an instructor's say-so above his 

 own convictions, and some of his coutemporaries in college recall 

 with smiles some very strenuous discussions with teachers in which 

 he was involved by bis habit of defending his own convictions. 



At graduation he was one of the comparatively few who took 

 honors, his subject being natural history. When young Roose- 

 velt entered college he developed the taste for hunting and 

 natural history which has since led him so often and so far through 

 field and forest. His rifle and his hunting kit were the most con- 

 spicuous things in his room. His birds he mounted himself 



Live turtles and insects were always to be found in his study, 

 and one who lived in the house with him at the time recalls well 

 the excitement caused by a particularly large turtle sent by a 

 friend from the southern seas, which got out of its box one night 

 and started for the bathroom in search for water. Although well 

 toward the top as a student he still had his full share of the gay 

 rout that whiles dull care away. In his sophomore year he was 

 one of the forty men in his class who belong to the Institute of 1770. 



In his senior year he was a member of the Porcelain, the 

 Alpha Delta Phi, and the Hasty Pudding Clubs, being secretary 

 of the last named. In the society of Boston he was often seen. 



Roosevelt's membership in clubs other than social shows 



