Speaking to boys he said later:
“One prime reason for abhorring cowards is because every good boy should have it in him to thrash the objectionable boy as the need arises.”
And again:
“The very fact that the boy should be manly and able to hold his own, that he should be ashamed to submit to bullying, without instant retaliation, should in return, make him abhor any form of bullying, cruelty, or brutality.”[2]
[2] These two quotations from essay called “The American Boy” in “The Strenuous Life,” pp. 162, 164
When he was teaching a Sunday School class in Cambridge, during his time at college, one of his pupils came in with a black eye. It turned out that another boy had teased and pinched the first boy’s sister during church. Afterwards there had been a fight, and the one who tormented the little girl had been beaten, but he had given the brother a black eye.
“You did quite right,” said Roosevelt to the brother and gave him a dollar.
But the deacons of the church did not approve, and Roosevelt soon went to another church.
Meanwhile he was learning to box. In his own story of his life he makes fun of himself as a boxer, and says that in a boxing match he once won “a pewter mug” worth about fifty cents. He is honest enough to say that he was proud of it at the time, “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.”