The Silent Readers: Sixth Reader. Albert Lindsay Rowland
ROOSEVELT'S FAVORITE STUDY
You should all begin to read this story at the same moment.
At the end of five minutes you will be asked to close your books and follow your teacher's directions.
Very often the things that a boy or girl likes to do as a child are signs of what he or she will like to do as a man or woman. This is true in the case of Theodore Roosevelt. One of the subjects in which he was all his life most interested was his favorite study as a boy. It seems that he was not an unusually clever student in his early years. In Latin and Greek and mathematics he was poor; in science and history and geography he made better progress; but best of all he loved natural history—the study of animals.
His first experience in this study befell him when he was nine years old. He was walking past one of the city markets one day, when he saw a dead seal lying on a slab of wood. He had just been reading about seals, and it seemed a wonderful thing to see a real one. He became possessed with a longing to own the seal. Being unable to form any plan for satisfying that longing, he contented himself with visiting the market day by day to gaze upon the object which proved so interesting to him. He took the seal's measurements carefully with a folding pocket rule and had considerable difficulty when he came to measuring its girth. Somehow or other he got the animal's skull, and with it he and two of his cousins immediately founded what they called the "Roosevelt Museum of Natural History". At the same time his observations of the seal and the measurements which he had made of it were carefully set down in a blank book.
In another blank book were recorded further observations in natural history. This work was entitled, "Natural History on Insects, by Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.," and began in this fashion: "All these insects are native of North America. Most of the insects are not in other books. I will write about ants first."
The beginning of the treatise on ants is entertaining, if not deeply scientific. "Ants," he writes, "are difided into three sorts for every species. These kinds are officer, soilder [soldier?] and worker. There are about one officer to ten soilders and one soilder to two workers." The book then went on to describe other insects which he had observed, all of which he assured the reader "inhabit North America". At the end of the volume on insects were a few notes on fishes. Among these was a description of the crayfish. "I need not describe the form of the crayfish to you," wrote the young author; "look at the lobster and you have its form." These observations, recorded at the age of nine years, are worth mentioning because they show a real interest in the creatures of which he was writing.
When Theodore was thirteen, his father sent him to a little shop to take lessons in taxidermy, the stuffing and mounting of animals. Then the boy wanted to secure his own specimens; so his father gave him a gun for that purpose. When he first tried to use this gun, he was puzzled to find that he could not see the objects at which his companions were shooting. One day some boys with him read aloud an advertisement written in huge letters on a billboard some distance away, and Theodore then realized, for the first time, that there must be something the matter with his eyes because he could not see the letters. His father soon got him a pair of spectacles, which, he says, opened up a new world to him.
When he was fourteen the family went to Europe, and, among other expeditions, took a trip up the Nile. Before they started on this trip. Theodore picked up in Cairo a book which contained some account of the birds of that region. Armed with this book and with the gun which his father had given him, he secured a number of specimens of birds in Egypt.
Unfortunately for the rest of the family, Theodore insisted on carrying his natural history specimens about with him from place to place. One day when the family was in Vienna, his brother Elliot inquired plaintively of their father whether it would be possible that he should now and then have a room to himself in the hotels, instead of being obliged always to share one with Theodore. Mr. Roosevelt was perfectly willing to comply, but inquired the reason for Elliot's request. Elliot said, "Come and see our room, and you will understand." When they reached the boys' room, they found bottles of taxidermist's supplies everywhere, and in the basin the remains of specimens which Theodore had lately captured. Theodore himself records the fact that he was "grubby". "I suppose," he says, "that all growing boys tend to be grubby; but the small boy with the taste for natural history is generally the very grubbiest of all."
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