Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. IV.djvu/122

90 His boyhood was passed chiefly in the city of his birth, and it was here that he received his early schooling. In that day the health of his body seems to have been fragile; the ordinary games of boys were beyond his strength. But it is evident there could have been no weakness in the health of his mind. Perceiving the necessity for a vigorous constitution, he set himself to the getting of one. From this purpose he seems never to have swerved, and by the time he was ready to enter Harvard College he had begun to be robust.

His four years of college life show his character and tendencies as completely as does any period which has followed them. His energies were directed to bodily exercise, to study, and to all the social advantages that Boston afforded him. Although conspicuous in no single athletic sport, he was energetic in a variety, sparring and horsemanship being among them. His knowledge of sparring, besides the general benefit that it was to him, proved at least upon one later occasion in the West of particular service, and enabled him most successfully to surprise a typical saloon bully who had attempted to take liberties with him. As a student, he was as attentive and energetic as in muscular exercise; and here also, though not conspicuous in any one branch, he devoted himself with industry to several, political history being perhaps the chief of these. He read “The Federalist” with especial