the intimate group whom he had always known. Years later she
became his wife.

The Roosevelt family returned to New York in May, 1870, and
resumed its ordinary life. Theodore, whom one of his fellow
travelers on the steamer remembers as "a tall thin lad with
bright eyes and legs like pipestems," developed rapidly in mind,
but the asthma still tormented him and threatened to make a
permanent invalid of him. His father fitted up in the house in
Twentieth Street a small gymnasium and said to the boy in
substance, "You have brains, but you have a sickly body. In order
to make your brains bring you what they ought, you must build up
your body; it depends upon you." The boy felt both the obligation
and the desire; he willed to be strong, and he went through his
gymnastic exercises with religious precision. What he read in his
books about knights and paladins and heroes had always greatly
moved his imagination. He wanted to be like them. He understood
that the one indispensable attribute common to all of them was
bodily strength. Therefore he would be strong. Through all his
suffering he was patient and determined. But I recall no other
boy, enfeebled by a chronic and often distressing disease, who
resolved as he did to conquer his enemy by a wisely planned and
unceasing course of exercises.

Improvement came slowly. Many were the nights in which he spent
hours gasping for breath. Sometimes on summer nights his father
would wrap him up and take him on a long drive through the
darkness in search of fresh air. But no matter how hard the
pinch, the boy never complained, and when ever there was a
respite his vivacity burst forth as fresh as ever. He could not