he
sense of duty, the delight in studying literature and science, the pride
in the new Germany, the more than kind and friendly interest in three
strange children--all these manifestations of the German character and
of German family life made a subconscious impression upon me which I did
not in the least define at the time, but which is very vivid still forty
years later.

When I got back to America, at the age of fifteen, I began serious study
to enter Harvard under Mr. Arthur Cutler, who later founded the Cutler
School in New York. I could not go to school because I knew so much less
than most boys of my age in some subjects and so much more in others. In
science and history and geography and in unexpected parts of German
and French I was strong, but lamentably weak in Latin and Greek and
mathematics. My grandfather had made his summer home in Oyster Bay a
number of years before, and my father now made Oyster Bay the summer
home of his family also. Along with my college preparatory studies I
carried on the work of a practical student of natural history. I worked
with greater industry than either intelligence or success, and made very
few additions to the sum of human knowledge; but to this day certain
obscure ornithological publications may be found in which are recorded
such items as, for instance, that on one occasion a fish-crow, and on
another an Ipswich sparrow, were obtained by one Theodore Roosevelt,
Jr., at Oyster Bay, on the shore of Long Island Sound.

In the fall of 1876 I entered Harvard, graduating in 1880. I thoroughly
enjoyed Harvard, and I am sure it did me good, but only in the general
effect, for there was very little in my actual studies which helped me
in after life. More than one of my own sons have already profited by
their friendship with certain of their masters in school or college. I
certainly profited by my friendship with one of my tutors, Mr. Cutler;
and in Harvard I owed much to the professor of English, Mr. A. S. Hill.
Doubtless through my own fault, I saw almost nothing of President Eliot
and very little of the professors. I ought to have gained much more than
I did gain from writing the themes and forensics. My failure to do
so may have been partly due to my taking no interest in the subjects.
Before I left Harvard I was already writing one or two chapters of a
book I afterwards published on the Naval War of 1812. Those chapters
were so dry that they would have made a dictionary seem