[Footnote: 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."

His college friends tell a different story of him. He was never
one of the best boxers, they say, and he was at a disadvantage
because of his eyesight. But he was plucky enough for two, and he
fought fair. He entered in the lightweight class in the Harvard
Gymnasium, March 22, 1879. He won the first match. When time was
called he dropped his hands, and his opponent gave him a hard blow