Great Heart The Life Story of Theodore Roosevelt 8

Great Heart The Life Story of Theodore Roosevelt 8

To the women, with their starved existence--so far as education was

concerned--Roosevelt proved a benefactor indeed; but no less did he

administer to the mental craving of his men comrades.

 

Monotonous and threadbare grew the conversation at a cow-camp. Seldom

did the talk vary from such topics as these, described by him:

 

“A bunch of steers had been seen traveling over the buttes to the head

of Elk Creek. A stray horse, with a blurred brand on the left hip,

had just joined the saddle ponies. The red F. V. cow had been bitten

by a wolf. The old mule, Sawback, was getting over the effects of the

rattlesnake bite. The river was going down, but the fords were still

bad, and the quicksand at the Caster Trail crossing had worked along

so that wagons had to be taken over opposite the blasted cottonwood.

Bronco Jim had tried to ride the big, bald-faced sorrel belonging to

the Oregon horse outfit and had been bucked off and his face smashed

in. It was agreed that Jim ‘wasn’t the sure-enough bronco-buster he

thought himself,’ and he was compared very unfavorably to various

heroes of the quirt and spurs who lived in Texas and Colorado.”

 

These topics having been exhausted, the rumor was discussed that the

vigilantes had given notice to quit to two men who had just built a

shack at the head of the Little Dry River, and whose horses included a

suspiciously large number of different brands, most of them blurred.

Then the talk became more personal. Roosevelt would be asked to write

or post letters for the cow-punchers. Then his companions, growing

friendly, would make him the confident of their love affairs, and make

him listen for an hour to the charms of their sweethearts.

 

Here Roosevelt’s books stood both him and his companions in good stead.

No matter what adverse conditions surrounded the young ranch-owner,

favorite volumes were at hand, and out they came at the first

opportunity.

 

On one occasion, while hunting on Beaver Creek for a lost horse, he

met a cowboy and made friends with him. Caught in a heavy snowstorm,

they lost themselves, and after eight or nine horns of drifting,

finally came across an empty hut near Sentinel Butte. Making their

horses comfortable in a sheltered nook with hay found in an old

stack, the two cold and tired men sat down to spend the long winter

evening together. Out of Roosevelt’s pocket came a small edition of

Hamlet. His cowboy companion was greatly interested in the reading,

and Roosevelt tells us that he commented very shrewdly on the parts he

liked, especially Polonius’s advice to Laertes. His final comment was

extremely gratifying to the man who had introduced to him the treasures

of the world’s greatest dramatist, and would doubtless have given great

pleasure to the immortal bard himself:

 

“Old Shakespeare saveyed human natur’ some!”

 

On another evening the men at the Roosevelt ranch began to discuss

the English soldiers. Thereupon Roosevelt got down “Napier” and read

them extracts from his descriptions of the fighting in the Spanish

peninsula. He also told them about the fine appearance and splendid

horses of the cavalry and hussars he had seen.

 

Thus when the East called Roosevelt home there was left behind in

the minds of the sons and daughters of the great West not only the

recollection of a tried and true comrade, but also the seeds of a

culture whose fruitage is still springing forth from the lives he

touched.

 

From a business standpoint Roosevelt’s ranching venture was a failure.

The country was poorly adapted to cattle-raising. His reviving interest

in politics and his engagement to Edith Carow came to draw him back to

the fields where happiness and success waited. Sewall and Dow returned

East with him.

 

The duty of a biographer is to record and not to speculate, yet as we

look at Roosevelt’s later life in his unpretentious home at Sagamore

Hill; when we think of the democratic sewing circle at Oyster Bay

to which Mrs. Roosevelt goes regularly to sew garments for crippled

children, and when we see the democratic simplicity with which

Roosevelt mingled with his neighbors and shared their experiences and

confidences; when we read of him or Captain Archie playing Santa Claus

to the village children, we are led to pronounce this judgment, which

we feel Roosevelt, if he were living, would heartily second--that while

he gave to the men and women of the West the best that was in him,

he also received from their kind hearts and frank and open natures a

deepening and ripening of his sense of brotherhood that was equivalent

in value to the finest gifts he gave these frontier folks.

 

 

 

 

V

 

Keeping Fit

 

 

It is a matter of conjecture how far the attitude of the doughboy

is due to the training he got in the army, but the fact remains

that boxing and wrestling have been recognized and practised by

our army officers as valuable adjuncts to military training. Uncle

Sam encouraged the science of fisticuffs on shipboard and in the

training camps, under a committee headed by no other than the famous

ex-champion, James J. Corbett, because the positions and motions used

in boxing are almost the same as those used in bayonet practice. The

development of gameness in the recruit is another important benefit

derived from the sport.

 

One of the anecdotes that came out of the trenches has for its hero

a short but stocky Yank who, in an encounter with a huge Prussian,

dropped his rifle and went for his foe with his fists. He knocked the

fight out of the surprised German and brought him in a prisoner. An

officer who had watched his exploit thought it proper to caution him as

to the danger that lay in this departure from the rules of attack.

 

“Danger!” spoke up the Yank, “there isn’t a Fritz alive that I can’t

lick with just my fists!”

 

Theodore Roosevelt, had he realized his desire to serve with the colors

during the world conflict, would undoubtedly have been an enthusiastic

spectator at such of the army’s ring battles as were within reach of

him. Indeed, had he been still occupant of the White House it would

not have been surprising to have heard of his inviting champions from

the various cantonments to test their skill under the White House

roof. Mr. Roosevelt was first drawn to two naval chaplains, Fathers

Chidwick and Rainey, through his discovery that each of them had

bought sets of boxing gloves and encouraged their crews in boxing.

While he was President fencing or boxing were Mr. Roosevelt’s favorite

indoor exercises. He was also intensely interested in jiu-jitsu, the

“muscleless art.” To perfect himself in this exercise he employed one

of the best of the Japanese instructors, and took a course of twenty

lessons.

 

After learning the various grips, the President would practise them

upon his teacher. He soon mastered the science, and his enthusiasm over

it led him to introduce jiu-jitsu instruction at Annapolis and West

Point.

 

When Mr. Roosevelt entered upon his public career heavy burdens were

laid upon him, and to keep in condition to meet the hard physical and

mental strain he again turned to boxing and wrestling for exercise.

When Governor of New York the champion middleweight wrestler of

America came several evenings a week to wrestle with him. The news of

the purchase of a wrestling mat for the Governor’s mansion at Albany

created consternation on the part of the Controller, but was greeted

with great enthusiasm by the red-blooded men to whom the Governor had

become an idol. Many of these would have paid a great price to have

been able to stand at the edge of the mat and cheer their champion

in his strenuous amusement. To the middleweight champion the job was

a hard one. Not because he experienced any difficulty in downing the

Governor, but because he was so awed by the Governor’s position and

responsibilities that he was always in dire anxiety lest the Governor

should break an arm or crack a rib. This gingerly attitude of his

opponent exasperated Roosevelt. He didn’t feel that it was fair for him

to be straining like a tiger to get a half-Nelson hold on the champion

while the latter seemed to feel that he must play the nurse to him.

After repeated urgings he managed to get the champion to throw him

about in real earnest--then he was satisfied.

 

Colonel Roosevelt relates in his reminiscences that, while he was

in the Legislature, he had as a sparring partner a second-rate

prizefighter who used to come to his rooms every morning and put on the

gloves for a half hour. One morning he failed to arrive, but a few days

later there came a letter from him. It developed that he was then in

jail; that boxing had been simply an avocation with him, and that his

principal business was that of a burglar.

 

Roosevelt was fond of boxing with “Mike” Donovan, trainer at the New

York Athletic Club, as well as with William Muldoon, the wrestler and

trainer. His opponents testify that the Colonel was handicapped by

his poor sight. He wanted to see his adversary’s eyes--to catch the

gleam that comes before a blow. Roosevelt always maneuvered to see his

opponent’s face, and he liked to “mix in” when boxing.

 

Hard and heavy was the Colonel’s method, and his opponents forced the

colonel to adapt his plan of fighting to theirs. It did not matter to

Roosevelt. It was the striving, not the result, that interested him.

 

An illustration of Roosevelt’s fondness for the Japanese art of

wrestling is found in this extract from the diary of John Hay,

Secretary of State:

 

“April 26--At the Cabinet meeting this morning the President talked of

his Japanese wrestler, who is giving him lessons in jiu-jitsu. He says

the muscles of his throat are so powerfully developed by training that

it is impossible for any ordinary man to strangle him. If the President

succeeds once in a while in getting the better of him he says, ‘Good!

Lovely!’”

 

Lieutenant Fortescue, a distant relative of the Roosevelt family,

sometimes put on the gloves with the Colonel. One day, feeling in

fighting trim, Fortescue asked the Colonel to box with him. Finally the

Colonel agreed to go four rounds. According to Joseph Grant, detective

sergeant of the Washington Police Department, detailed to the White

House to “guard” the President, it was the fastest bout he ever saw.

 

“The Colonel began to knock Lieutenant Fortescue right and left in

the second round,” said the detective. “His right and left got to the

army officer’s jaw time after time, and the bout was stopped in the

third round to prevent the army man from getting knocked out. Then the

Colonel turned to me and said: ‘I think I can do the same to you. Put

on the gloves!’

 

“I drew them on reluctantly, and I put up the fight of my life. The

best I could do was to prevent a decision and get a draw.”

 

It was a sporting rule of the Colonel’s not only to give as good a blow

as he could, but also to take without squirming the hardest blow his

opponent could deliver. The wrestler who hesitated to stand him on his

head because he was Governor of New York exasperated him; nor would he

have permitted a man to spar with him who held back his blows.