Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
thrown into contact with other boys of rougher antecedents. I was
nervous and timid. Yet from reading of the people I admired--ranging
from the soldiers of Valley Forge, and Morgan's riflemen, to the heroes
of my favorite stories--and from hearing of the feats performed by my
Southern forefathers and kinsfolk, and from knowing my father, I felt a
great admiration for men who were fearless and who could hold their
own in the world, and I had a great desire to be like them. Until I
was nearly fourteen I let this desire take no more definite shape than
day-dreams. Then an incident happened that did me real good. Having an
attack of asthma, I was sent off by myself to Moosehead Lake. On the
stage-coach ride thither I encountered a couple of other boys who
were about my own age, but very much more competent and also much more
mischievous. I have no doubt they were good-hearted boys, but they were
boys! They found that I was a foreordained and predestined victim, and
industriously proceeded to make life miserable for me. The worst feature
was that when I finally tried to fight them I discovered that either one
singly could not only handle me with easy contempt, but handle me so as
not to hurt me much and yet to prevent my doing any damage whatever in
return.
The experience taught me what probably no amount of good advice could
have taught me. I made up my mind that I must try to learn so that I
would not again be put in such a helpless position; and having become
quickly and bitterly conscious that I did not have the natural prowess
to hold my own, I decided that I would try to supply its place by
training. Accordingly, with my father's hearty approval, I started to
learn to box. I was a painfully slow and awkward pupil, and certainly
worked two or three years before I made any perceptible improvement
whatever. My first boxing-master was John Long, an ex-prize-fighter. I
can see his rooms now, with colored pictures of the fights between Tom
Hyer and Yankee Sullivan, and Heenan and Sayers, and other great events
in the annals of the squared circle. On one occasion, to excite interest
among his patrons, he held a series of "championship" matches for the
different weights, the prizes being, at least in my own class, pewter
mugs of a value, I should suppose, approximating fifty cents. Neither
he nor I had any idea that I could do anything, but I was entered in
the lightweight contest, in which it happened that I was pitted in
succession against a couple of reedy striplings who were even worse than
I was. Equally to their surprise and to my own, and to John Long's, I
won, and the pewter mug became one of my most prized possessions. I
kept it, and alluded to it, and I fear bragged about it, for a number
of years, and I only wish I knew where it was now. Years later I read
an account of a little man who once in a fifth-rate handicap race won
a worthless pewter medal and joyed in it ever after. Well, as soon as I
read that story I felt that that little man and I were brothers.
This was, as far as I remember, the only one of my exceedingly rare
athletic triumphs which would be worth relating. I did a good deal of
boxing and wrestling in Harvard, but never attained to the first rank in
either, even at my own weight. Once, in the big contests in the Gym,
I got either into the finals or semi-finals, I forget which; but aside
from this the chief part I played was to act as trial horse for some
friend or classmate who did have a chance of distinguishing himself in
the championship contests.
I was fond of horseback-riding, but I took to it slowly and with
difficulty, exactly as with boxing. It was a long time before I became
even a respectable rider, and I never got much higher. I mean by this
that I never became a first-flight man in the hunting field, and never
even approached the bronco-busting class in the West. Any man, if
he chooses, can gradually school himself to the requisite nerve, and
gradually learn the requisite seat and hands, that will enable him to do
respectably across country, or to perform the average work on a ranch.
Of my ranch experiences I shall speak later. At intervals after leaving
college I hunted on Long Island with the Meadowbrook hounds. Almost the
only experience I ever had in this connection that was of any interest
was on one occasion when I broke my arm. My purse did not permit me to
own expensive horses. On this occasion I was riding an animal, a buggy
horse originally, which its owner sold because now and then it insisted
on thoughtfully lying down when in harness. It never did this under the
saddle; and when he turned it out to grass it would solemnly hop over
the fence and get somewhere where it did not belong. The last trait
was what converted it into a hunter. It was a natural jumper, although
without any speed. On the hunt in question I got along very well until
the pace winded my ex-buggy horse, and it turned a somersault over a
fence. When I got on it after the fall I found I could not use my left
arm. I supposed it was merely a strain. The buggy horse was a sedate
animal which I rode with a snaffle. So we pounded along at the tail of
the hunt, and I did not appreciate that my arm was broken for three or
four fences. Then we came to a big drop, and the jar made the bones slip
past one another so as to throw the hand out of position. It did not
hurt me at all, and as the horse was as easy to sit as a rocking-chair,
I got in at the death.
I think August Belmont was master of the hunt when the above incident
occurred. I know he was master on another occasion on which I met with
a mild adventure. On one of the hunts when I was out a man was thrown,
dragged by one stirrup, and killed. In consequence I bought a pair of
safety stirrups, which I used the next time I went out. Within five
minutes after the run began I found that the stirrups were so very
"safe" that they would not stay in at all. First one went off at one
jump, and then the other at another jump--with a fall for me on each
occasion. I hated to give up the fun so early, and accordingly finished
the run without any stirrups. My horse never went as fast as on that
run. Doubtless a first-class horseman can ride as well without stirrups
as with them. But I was not a first-class horseman. When anything
unexpected happened, I was apt to clasp the solemn buggy horse firmly
with my spurred heels, and the result was that he laid himself out to do
his best in the way of galloping. He speedily found that, thanks to the
snaffle bit, I could not pull him in, so when we came to a down grade he
would usually put on steam. Then if there was a fence at the bottom and
he checked at all, I was apt to shoot forward, and in such event we went
over the fence in a way that reminded me of Leech's picture, in _Punch_,
of Mr. Tom Noddy and his mare jumping a fence in the following order:
Mr. Tom Noddy, I; his mare, II. However, I got in at the death this time
also.
I was fond of walking and climbing. As a lad I used to go to the north
woods, in Maine, both in fall and winter. There I made life friends
of two men, Will Dow and Bill Sewall: I canoed with them, and tramped
through the woods with them, visiting the winter logging camps on
snow-shoes. Afterward they were with me in the West. Will Dow is dead.
Bill Sewall was collector of customs under me, on the Aroostook border.
Except when hunting I never did any mountaineering save for a couple of
conventional trips up the Matterhorn and the Jungfrau on one occasion
when I was in Switzerland.
I never did much with the shotgun, but I practiced a good deal with the
rifle. I had a rifle-range at Sagamore Hill, where I often took friends
to shoot. Once or twice when I was visited by parties of released Boer
prisoners, after the close of the South African War, they and I held
shooting matches together. The best man with both pistol and rifle who
ever shot there was Stewart Edward White. Among the many other good
men was a stanch friend, Baron Speck von Sternberg, afterwards German
Ambassador at Washington during my Presidency. He was a capital shot,
rider, and walker, a devoted and most efficient servant of Germany, who
had fought with distinction in the Franco-German War when barely more
than a boy; he was the hero of the story of "the pig dog" in Archibald
Forbes's volume of reminiscences. It was he who first talked over with
me the raising of a regiment of horse riflemen from among the ranchmen
and cowboys of the plains. When Ambassador, the poor, gallant,
tender-hearted fellow was dying of a slow and painful disease, so that
he could not play with the rest of us, but the agony of his mortal
illness never in the slightest degree interfered with his work.
Among the other men who shot and rode and walked with me was Cecil
Spring-Rice, who has just been appointed British Ambassador to the
United States. He was my groomsman, my best man, when I was married--at
St. George's, Hanover Square, which made me feel as if I were living in
one of Thackeray's novels.
My own experience as regards marksmanship was much the same as my
experience as regards horsemanship. There are men whose eye and hand are
so quick and so sure that they achieve a perfection of marksmanship to
which no practice will enable ordinary men to attain. There are other
men who cannot learn to shoot with any accuracy at all. In between come
the mass of men of ordinary abilities who, if they choose resolutely to
practice, can by sheer industry and judgment make themselves fair rifle
shots. The men who show this requisite industry and judgment can without
special difficulty raise themselves to the second class of respectable
rifle shots; and it is to this class that I belong. But to have reached
this point of marksmanship with the rifle at a target by no means
implies ability to hit game in the field, especially dangerous game. All
kinds of other qualities, moral and physical, enter into being a good
hunter, and especially a good hunter after dangerous game, just as all
kinds of other qualities in addition to skill with the rifle enter
into being a good soldier. With dangerous game, after a fair degree of
efficiency with the rifle has been attained, the prime requisites are
cool judgment and that kind of nerve which consists in avoiding being
rattled. Any beginner is apt to have "buck fever," and therefore no
beginner should go at dangerous game.
Buck fever means a state of intense nervous excitement which may be
entirely divorced from timidity. It may affect a man the first time he
has to speak to a large audience just as it affects him the first time
he sees a buck or goes into battle. What such a man needs is not courage
but nerve control, cool-headedness. This he can get only by actual
practice. He must, by custom and repeated exercise of self-mastery, get
his nerves thoroughly under control. This is largely a matter of habit,
in the sense of repeated effort and repeated exercise of will power. If
the man has the right stuff in him, his will grows stronger and stronger
with each exercise of it--and if he has not the right stuff in him he
had better keep clear of dangerous game hunting, or indeed of any other
form of sport or work in which there is bodily peril.
After he has achieved the ability to exercise wariness and judgment and
the control over his nerves _which will make him shoot as well at the
game as at a target_, he can begin his essays at dangerous game hunting,
and he will then find that it does not demand such abnormal prowess as
the outsider is apt to imagine. A man who can hit a soda-water bottle at
the distance of a few yards can brain a lion or a bear or an elephant at
that distance, and if he cannot brain it when it charges he can at least