as doubtless far more humiliating, they prevented him from doing
any damage whatever in return.

The experience taught the boy, better than any good advice could have
done, that he must learn to defend himself. Since he had little natural
prowess, he realized that he must supply its place by training. He
secured his father's approval for a course of boxing lessons, upon which
he entered at once. He has described himself as a "painfully slow and
awkward pupil," who worked for two or three years before he made any
perceptible progress.

In college Roosevelt kept at boxing practice. Even in those days no
antagonist, no matter how much his superior, ever made him "quit." In
his ranching days, that training with his fists stood him in good stead.
Those were still primitive days out in the Dakotas, though now, as
Roosevelt has said, that land of the West has "'gone, gone with the lost
Atlantis,' gone to the isle of ghosts and of strange dead memories." A
man needed to be able to take care of himself in that Wild West then.
Roosevelt had many stirring experiences but only one that he called
"serious trouble."

He was out after lost horses and came to a primitive little hotel,
consisting of a bar-room, a dining-room, a lean-to kitchen, and above
a loft with fifteen or twenty beds in it. When he entered the bar-room
late in the evening--it was a cold night and there was nowhere else
to go--a would-be "bad man," with a cocked revolver in each hand, was
striding up and down the floor, talking with crude profanity. There were
several bullet holes in the clock face, at which he had evidently been
shooting. This bully greeted the newcomer as "Four Eyes," in reference
to his spectacles, and announced, "Four Eyes is going to treat."
Roosevelt joined in the laugh that followed and sat down behind the
stove, thinking to escape notice. But the "bad man" followed him, and
in spite of Roosevelt's attempt to pass the matter over as a joke, stood
over him, with a gun in each hand and using the foulest language. "He
was foolish," said Roosevelt, in describing the incident, "to stand so
near, and moreover, his heels were closer together, so that his position
was unstable." When he repeated his demand that Four Eyes should treat,
Roosevelt rose as if to comply. As he rose he struck quick and hard with
his right fist just to the left side of the point of the jaw, and, as he
straightened up hit with his left, and again with his right. The bully'