CHAPTER IV. 
STORIES AND ANECDOTES ABOUT ROOSEVELT. 
How He Looked when a Boy—Was a Born Leader—The Old Dutch Reformed ,Church—How 
He Strengthened His Delicate Frame—First Love. 
T HEODORE ROOSEVELT was born in that old, aristocratic por¬ 
tion of New York known as Gramercy Park. The family resi¬ 
dence was in East Twentieth Street, just beyond Fifth Avenne, 
the number being 28. Many of the people in that neighborhood remember 
most vividly the childhood days of 4 ‘ Little Teddy/’ One of the neigh¬ 
bors, in speaking of his infancy and boyhood days, has said: 
“ As a young boy he was thin-shanked, pale and delicate, giving little 
promise of the amazing vigor of his late life. To avoid the rough 
treatment of the public school, he was tutored at home, also attended 
a private school for a time—Cutler’s, one'of the most famous of its day. 
Most of his summers, and in fact two-thirds of the year, he spent at the 
Roosevelt farm near Oyster Bay, then almost as distant in time from 
New York as the Adirondacks now are. 
“For many years he was slow to learn and not strong enough to 
join in the play of other boys; but as he grew older he saw that if he 
ever amounted to anything he must acquire vigor of body. With char¬ 
acteristic energy he set about developing himself. 
“He swam, he rowed, he ran, he tramped the hills back of the Bay, 
for pastimes, studying and cataloguing the birds native to his neighbor¬ 
hood, and thus he laid the foundation of that incomparable physical 
vigor from which rose his future prowess as a ranchman and hunter.” 
President Roosevelt’s father was wise enough to patronize the pub¬ 
lic schools by sending his children through them. Here they learned 
the American lesson of mixing with their neighbors’ children and of 
taking the place their abilities entitled them to in the classes. 
The children were given the best educational advantages to be ob- 
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