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 
