of comparatively little use without the body; you have got to
make your body, and it lies with you to make it. It's dull, hard
work, but you can do it." The boy knew that his father was right;
and he set those white, powerful teeth of his and took up the
drudgery of daily, monotonous exercise with bars and rings and
weights. "I can see him now," says his sister, "faithfully going
through various exercises, at different times of the day, to
broaden the chest narrowed by this terrible shortness of breath,
to make the limbs and back strong, and able to bear the weight of
what was coming to him later in life."

All through his boyhood the young Theodore Roosevelt kept up his
fight for strength. He was too delicate to attend school, and was
taught by private tutors. He spent many of his summers, and
sometimes some of the winter months, in the woods of Maine. These
outings he thoroughly enjoyed, but it is certain that the main
motive which sent him into the rough life of the woods to hunt
and tramp, to paddle and row and swing an axe, was the obstinate
determination to make himself physically fit.

His fight for bodily power went on through his college course at
Harvard and during the years that he spent in ranch life in the
West. He was always intensely interested in boxing, although he
was never of anything like championship caliber in the ring. His
first impulse to learn to defend himself with his hands had a
characteristic birth.

During one of his periodical attacks of asthma he was sent alone
to Moosehead Lake in Maine. On the stagecoach that took him the
last stage of the journey he met two boys of about his own age.