The boy had his father’s love of the woods and the fields. He studied and classified the birds of the neighbourhood, until he knew their songs and plumage and nests. He and his young friends could be relied on to find the spot where the violets bloomed the earliest, and the trees on which the walnuts were most plentiful, as well as the pools where the minnows swarmed, and the favourite refuge of the coon.
He was taken to Europe, in the hope that it would benefit his health, “a tall thin lad with bright eyes and legs like pipestems.”
When at last, he was ready to go to college, he had vanquished his enemy, ill-health, and was ready to play a man’s part in life.
“I made my health what it is,” he said later, “I determined to be strong and well, and did everything to make myself so. By the time I entered Harvard, I was able to take part in whatever sports I liked. I wrestled and sparred, and I ran a great deal, and, although I never came in first, I got more out of the exercise than those who did, because I immensely enjoyed it and never injured myself.
Busting Broncos
After leaving college, young Roosevelt entered politics. Finally, between legislative sessions, he surrendered to his impulses and started for the Wild West.
He left the train in North Dakota at the little town of Medora. The young visitor from the East, sought out two hunters and told them that he wished to go buffalo hunting with them. And he did so, though hunting the buffalo then was no fancy pastime.
It was, in truth, a rare chance to see the Wild West in the last glow of its golden age. Soon it was all to vanish and pass into the most romantic chapter of American history.
Before his first visit was at an end, he had become a ranchman.
The young master of Elkhorn Ranch, brave, outspoken, and always ready to bear his full share of toil, and hardship, was not long in winning the respect and hearty good-will of the bluff, honest men of the Bad Lands.