nd driving came
to him as naturally as breathing, and the fact that a steed was
mettlesome did not daunt him.

"My father often drove four-in-hand," he has said. "I liked very much to
go with him, and I liked to drive, too."

Theodore Roosevelt's schoolboy days were not far out of the ordinary. He
studied hard, and if he failed in a lesson he did his best to make it up
the next time. It is well said that there is no royal road to learning,
and even a future President must study just as hard as his classmates if
he wants to keep up with them. Sometimes he was absent from school on
account of sickness, and then it was a sharp struggle to keep from
dropping behind.

"In those days nobody expected Teddy Roosevelt to amount to a great
deal," some one has said. "He was thin, pale, and delicate, and suffered
with his eyes. But he pulled through, and when he took to athletics, it
was wonderful how he got stronger."

By his intimate companions, and indeed by nearly everybody who knew him,
he was called Teddy, and this nickname clung to him when he went forth
into the great world to become a governor and a president. How the
nickname came first into use is not known.

Since those schoolboy days Mr. Roosevelt has been asked this
question:--

"What did you expect to be, or dream of being, when you were a boy?"

"I do not recollect that I dreamed at all or planned at all," was the
answer. "I simply obeyed the injunction, 'Whatever thy hand findeth to
do, do that with all thy might,' and so I took up what came along as it
came."

In 1876, while the great Centennial Exhibition was being held at
Philadelphia in commemoration of one hundred years of national liberty,
Theodore Roosevelt took up his residence at Cambridge, Massachusetts,
and became a student at Harvard College. During the previous year his
health had been poor indeed, but now he had taken hold of himself in
earnest.

"I determined to be strong and well, and did everything to make myself
so," he has said. "By the time I entered Harvard I was able to take part
in whatever sports I liked."

As perhaps some of my readers know, Harvard College (now termed a
University) is the oldest and largest institution of learning in the
United States. It was founded in 1636, and among its graduates numbered
John Quincy Adams, sixth President of our country. The college proper is
located in Cambridge, but some of the attached schools are in Boston.

Theodore Roosevelt was ri