26 
BOYHOOD AND EARLY LIFE 
One day he came home from school with muddy clothes and 
scratched and bleeding face and hands. 
“What is the matter, Teddy*?” asked his father. 
“Why, a boy up the street made a face at me and said: 'Your 
father’s a fakir.’ He was a good deal bigger than me, but I couldn’t 
stand that; so I just pitched in. I had a pretty hard time, but I licked 
him.” 
“That’s right, I am glad you licked him,” said the older Theodore, 
who evidently was born with fighting blood, like his combative son. 
We may quote from the younger Theodore a statement which lets 
in a good deal of light upon the character of the father and upon the 
inheritance and training of the son. He tells us this: 
“My father, all my people, held that no one had a right to merely 
cumber the earth; that the most contemptible of created beings is the 
man who does nothing. I imbibed the idea that I must work hard, 
whether at making money or whatever. The whole family training 
taught me that I must be doing, must be working—and at decent work. 
I made my health what it is. I determined to be strong and well, and 
did everything to make myself so. By the time I entered Harvard 
College I was able to take my part in whatever sports I liked. I 
wrestled and sparred and ran a great deal while in college, and though 
I never came in first, I got more good out of the exercise than those 
who did, because I immensely enjoyed it and never injured myself.” 
Such was the training of the boy Roosevelt. We have had abun¬ 
dant examples of its result in the career of the man Roosevelt. 
The daring spirit which he has manifested in later life seems to 
have been born in him. His boyish escapades were many and often 
perilous. A woman who lived next door to the Roosevelt house once 
saw young Theodore hanging from a second-story window and ran 
in alarm to warn his mother. 
“If the Lord,” she said, “had not taken care of Theodore, he 
would have been killed long ago.” 
The boy’s life was an active one throughout, but his time was 
not wasted. He was taking in knowledge as well as winning hardi¬ 
hood. In his tramps through the woods his eyes were kept busy, and 
he grew especially to know the birds, their songs, their nests, their 
