ch enough to have lived in elegant style while
at Harvard, but he preferred unostentatious quarters, and took two rooms
in the home of Benj. H. Richardson, at what was then No. 16 and is now
No. 88 Winthrop Street. The residence is a neat and comfortable one,
standing on the southwest corner of Winthrop and Holyoke streets.

The young student had two rooms on the second floor,--one of good size,
used for a study, and a small bedroom. In the whole four years he was at
the college he occupied these rooms, and he spent a great deal of time
in fixing them up to suit his own peculiar taste. On the walls were all
sorts of pictures and photographs, along with foils and boxing-gloves,
and the horns of wild animals. On a shelf rested some birds which he had
himself stuffed, and books were everywhere.

[Illustration: HOUSE IN WHICH THEODORE ROOSEVELT ROOMED WHILE AT
HARVARD.]

"It was a regular den, and typical of Roosevelt to the last degree," a
student of those times has said. "He had his gun there and his
fishing rod, and often spoke of using them. He was noted for trying to
get at the bottom of things, and I remember him well on one occasion
when I found him with a stuffed bird in one hand and a natural history
in the other, trying to decide if the description in the volume covered
the specimen before him." When Roosevelt graduated from college, he was
one of a very few that took honors, and the subject of his essay was
natural history. How his love of natural history continued will be shown
later when we see him as a ranchman and hunter of the West.

Theodore Roosevelt had decided to make the most of himself, and while at
Harvard scarcely a moment was wasted. If he was not studying, he was in
the gymnasium or on the field, doing what he could to make himself
strong. He was a firm believer in the saying that a sound body makes a
sound mind, and he speedily became a good boxer, wrestler, jumper, and
runner. He wrestled a great deal, and of this sport says:--

"I enjoyed it immensely and never injured myself. I think I was a good
deal of a wrestler, and though I never won a championship, yet more
than once I won my trial heats and got into the final rounds."

At running he was equally good. "I remember once we had a stiff run out
into the country," said a fellow-student. "Roosevelt was behind at the
start, but when all of the others got played out he forged ahead, and in
the end he beat us by several minutes. But he never