Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: bodily vigor, out of his own victories he was able to formulate his famous rule for the genuine American boy: " The chances are strong that he won't be much of a man unless he is a good deal of a boy. He must not be a coward or a weakling, a bully, a shirk or a prig. He must work hard and play hard. He must be clean-minded and clean-lived, and able to hold his own under all circumstances and against all comers. In life, as in football, the principle to follow is: Hit the line hard; don't foul and don't shirk, but hit the line hard." " Go on and increase in valor, O boy 1 This is the path to immortality." Virgil — Eneid. CHAPTER II COLLEGE AND GROWTH The slim youth with narrow shoulders and flat chest and rather delicate in health who entered Harvard in 1876 gave little hint that he would become the most rugged and impressive figure of his time. Of all the men in the class of '80, so his classmates have testified, Theodore Roosevelt was the last one they would have picked out as destined for greatness. He studied hard and never loafed, but found little in his actual studies which interested him deeply or helped him in his later life. This is his own testimony. Yet he thoroughly enjoyed his four years at Harvard and believed they did him good intheir general effect. He had no idea, at that time, of entering public life, and did not study elocution nor practice debating. He regretted, later on, that he had not equipped himself with some knowledge of elocution, but he never ceased to be glad that he did not take part in the conventional debates. The reason he gives in his autobiography is worthy of serious consideration by young men of to-day: " Personally I have not the slightest sympathy with debating contests in which each side is arbitrarily assigned a given pro...