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 on the face.  The fellows around the ring all shouted “Foul!  Foul!” and hissed.  But Roosevelt turned toward them, calling “Hush!  He didn’t hear!”

In the second match he met a man named Charlie Hanks, who was a little taller, and had a longer reach, and so for all Roosevelt’s pluck and willingness to take punishment, Hanks won the match.

He was a member of three or four clubs,—­the Institute, the Hasty Pudding and the Porcellian.  He was one of the editors of the Harvard Advocate, took part in three or four college activities, and was fond of target shooting and dancing.  It is told that he never spoke in public, until about his third year in college, that he was shy and had great difficulty in speaking.  It was by effort that he became one of the best orators of his day.

Roosevelt did not like the way college debates were conducted.  He said that to make one side defend or attack a certain subject, without regard to whether they thought it right or wrong, had a bad effect.

“What we need,” he wrote, “is to turn out of colleges young men with ardent convictions on the side of right; not young men who can make a good argument for either right or wrong, as their interest bids them.”

He did one thing in college which is not a matter of course with students under twenty-two years old.  He began to write a history, named “The Naval War of 1812.”  It was finished and published two years after he graduated, and in it he showed that his idea of patriotism included telling the truth.  Most American boys used to be brought up on the story of the American frigate Constitution whipping all the British ships she met, and with the notion that the War of 1812 was nothing but a series of brilliant victories for us.