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letters, and admits that he enjoys dancing) his main interests continued to be study and exercise.61 Not even his triumph in the preliminary Harvard entrance examinations of July 1875 (“Is it not splendid! … I passed in all the eight subjects I tried”) was allowed to affect the inflexible program he had devised for himself. Four times a year he took a recess of a week to ten days, but even these breaks were doggedly purposeful: he would head for the lakes of the Adirondacks, or the woods of Long Island and New Jersey, collecting specimens and data and loping for miles, gun in hand, after wild game.62 He described one such excursion to Edith’s summer place at Sea Bright as being full of “ornithological enjoyment and reptilian rapture.”63

His battle for health would appear to have been mostly won by the end of 1875. A sporting calendar has been preserved which records that from 21 August through 11 December he engaged his brother and several male cousins in a series of fifteen athletic contests—running, jumping, vaulting, wrestling, and boxing—and won fourteen of them, drawing the other one. On 1 November he noted his physical measurements:

Chest 34 in

Waist 26½ ″

Thigh 20 ″

Calf 12½ ″

Neck 14½ ″

Shoulders 41 ″

Arms up 10½ ″

″ straight 9¾ ″

Fore arm 10 ″

Weight 124 lbs

Height 5 ft 8 in64

From this, and from the descriptions of others, we can conjure up the picture of a skinny, sunburned boy, just seventeen years old, with wiry muscles and a clean glow of health about him. Occasional attacks of asthma still came and went, but did not bother him unduly. He affected a pair of side-whiskers, which emphasized the hard thrust of his jaw; his mouth, during moments of thoughtfulness, clamped “like a band of blued steel.”65 At other times, when he allowed his natural humor to bubble over, it seemed to consist of nothing but perfectly white teeth.

Although he was not handsome, he was an attractive youngster, and Fanny Smith, for one, adored him unashamedly. She was convinced that he would become President, and said as much to her sister; but the prophecy seems to have been as skeptically received as Fräulein Anna’s, two years before. In particular Fanny worshiped his courage and “high-mindedness.” Some of her friends found him priggish, but she felt only a sunny charm, which still warmed her when she was an old woman of eighty-nine:

As I look back to those early days perhaps the characteristic that made at the time the strongest appeal was the unquenchable gaiety which seemed to emanate from his whole personality. This quality was a noticeable family trait, but in Theodore it seemed to reach its height and to invigorate the atmosphere about him to an unusual degree. As a young girl I remember dreading to sit next to him at any formal dinner lest I become so convulsed with laughter at his whispered sallies as to disgrace myself and be forced to leave the room.66

That Fanny herself was something of a rival to Edith Carow is implied in another passage from her memoirs. She describes a winter afternoon when Elliott, always more forthcoming than Teedie, paid her and her sisters a courtly visit. While chatting in a window seat she suddenly noticed Teedie, “looking blue with cold,” walking rapidly up and down outside.

“Why, Elliott, do you see Theodore out there? Why doesn’t he come in!” I exclaimed.

Elliott replied—and to this day the incident remains a mystery—that Theodore also had planned a visit but that suddenly he had been overcome by bashfulness and had decided to remain outside. We brought him in, where he became—as always—“the life and soul of the party.” But the incident reminds me of the unexpected strain of self-depreciation which surprised one through the years.67

MUCH LESS IS KNOWN of the relationship between Edith and Teedie, except that it deepened steadily into intimacy during the summer of 1876, his last before entering college. Having completed the equivalent of three years of college preparation in less than two,68 he could finally relax and allow his social personality to develop. He would gallantly