28 
BOYHOOD AND EARLY LIFE 
best to “hit the line hard/' We are not told that he shone as a student 
or graduated amid acclamations, but during his years within college 
walls he added much to the strength of his physical and mental fibre. 
The anecdotes extant of his college career are evidence of this. 
He lived the life strong, took active part in all that was going on, and 
became quickly a favorite with his class. They laughed at his odd 
ways and at his enthusiasm, voted him “more or less crazy,” but 
respected him for his scholarship and found themselves falling into 
his ways. 
There was an instance of this when he began the child-like 
exercise of skipping the rope, claiming that it was excellent for 
strengthening the leg muscles. Soon his classmates, convinced by his 
arguments, were following in his track, and rope-skipping became a 
pastime of the class. In the gymnasium they wore red stockings with 
their exercise suits. Roosevelt donned a pair of patriotic red-and- 
white striped ones, and did not know at first at what his fellows were 
laughing. When he was told he laughed, too, but kept them on. 
There were none of the college games in which he did not take 
part. He did not shine in any of them, but they gave him strength 
and vigor, which was what he was after, rather than victory. He 
played polo, he wrestled and ran with his fellows, he drove a two¬ 
wheeled gig—badly enough, but he enjoyed it. His first bout with 
the boxing gloves was with the champion of the class, a man twice 
his size and weight, with whom he instinctively matched himself. The 
pummeling that followed he took with good will, and though his 
glasses fell off, leaving him half blind, he grimly refused to cry quarter, 
and pressed the fight home with all the vim of a berserker. Never since 
has he learned how to cry quarter or to acknowledge in any fight that 
he has been whipped. 
There is one story told of him worth repeating, though it may be 
a college fable. In one of his boxing bouts his antagonist took a mean 
advantage, and struck him, drawing blood, while Roosevelt was still 
adjusting his glove. “Foul!” cried the bystanders, but Roosevelt 
merely smiled grimly. 
“I guess you have made a mistake. That is not our way here,” 
he said, offering his hand to the fellow as a sign to begin hostilities. 
