ROOSEVELT’S YOUTH

Evening Star, Issue 20089, 1 February 1929, Page 3

ROOSEVELT’S YOUTH

AMUSING BOYHOOD DIARY VISIT TO EUROPE. Amusing observations set down by an American President in his nursery days and early manhood appear in ‘ Theodore Roosevelt's Diaries of Boyhood and Youth ’ (states the London ‘ Daily Chronicle ’). The great, American was a frail youth, but his diaries picture a buy full of enthusiasm, audacious criticism, and a shrewd outlook on life. A. visit to the Princess of Wales is dismissed in eight words, and kissing the Pope’s hand is made a matter of levity; , but losing his watch in .Milan was a deep humiliation. In 1869, when aged ten, a young Roosevelt came to England with his family, and travelled throughout Britain.' At Oxford lie saw “an aicherry and some “ colages ho was able to get “ only a little piece ” of a green marble tabic at Chatsworth which attracted him; the, Thames was “ a vcvry, verry small river or a large creek,” and the Zoo was disappointing. MAGNIFICENT BULL. The boy nevertheless had a great affection for animals, and was impressed by a visit to a Windsor farm. “We then saw a huge, magnificent black Swiss bull, whoso nose I petted, but he was in a stall. Wc saw some smaller ones. Wo then looked into another placo where an even bigger bid! was (loose). Ho was magnificent, and justly named the Glory of England.” Italy was “ cold, dreary, and smelly, and beging (begging).” At Pisa, for example, ho wrote : “ . ... AVo also saw a statue of Mars heathen god of war. The Priests had thought ins statue to handsome to throw away, so they Baptised it and gave it the name of a saint. . . . Behind the .silver alter wo saw in relief (or Basrclief or something like it) or marble Aden and Eve while bound round the tree was a serpent with a woman’s Lead. Tho mail said the English always fume at this, but the Americans do not mind it.”*

Brussels was principally noticeable because there he saw “ (he most beautiful and most, ferocious girl I have ever seen.”