Читать книгу "Great-Heart" - Daniel Henderson - Страница 8

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“I did watch him carefully,” said “Bill” Sewall. “He took a lot of watching,” he added. “Yes, a lot of watching. He’d never quit. I remember the time we set out from my place up at Island Falls to climb Mount Katahdin. That’s the tallest mountain we have in Maine. We were crossing Wissacataquoik Creek. The current is very swift there. Somehow Theodore lost one of his shoes. Away it went downstream. All he had with him to take the place of shoes was a pair of thin-skinned moccasins. The stones and crags on the way up cut his feet into tatters. But he kept on, with never a murmur of complaint. That’s a little thing, perhaps; but he was that way in all things—always.”

Later, when Roosevelt had lost his first wife and also his mother, it was to Sewall, the backwoodsman who, in long walks in the Maine forests, had given him his first lessons in the value of unvarnished democracy, that he turned for solace, and it was this Maine guide who went West with him and helped to lead him out of the daze that followed these bereavements.

Roosevelt’s interest in boxing developed when he was fourteen, and rose out of the primitive need of being able to protect himself against boys who sought to impose on him. At that time he ventured forth by himself on a trip to Moosehead Lake and on the stage-coach that bore him there he met two mischievous boys of his own age who proceeded to make life miserable for him. Made desperate by their persecutions, he decided to lick them, but found that either one singly was more than a match for him.

Bitterly determined that he should not be again humiliated in this way, he resolved to learn how to defend himself, and, with his father’s approval, started to learn boxing.

Mr. Roosevelt himself relates how, under the training of John Long, an ex-prize-fighter, whose rooms were ornamented with vivid pictures of ring champions and battles, he first put on the gloves. For a long period he was knocked around the ring with no other fighting quality in evidence but the ability to take punishment. But then, when his boxing master arranged a series of matches, he was entered in a lightweight contest and entrusted to the care of his guardian angel.

Luckily his opponents chanced to be two youths whose ambitions greatly exceeded their science and muscular development, and, to the surprise of all concerned, he emerged the possessor of the prize cup for his class—a pewter mug that, though it would have been dear at fifty cents, was nevertheless a rich compensation for the knockdowns and bruises he had endured during his training.