ROOSEVELT’S YOUTH

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 547, 27 December 1928, Page 6

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 toy full of enthusiasm, audacious criticism and a shrewd outlook on life. A visit to the Princess of Wales i» dismissed in eight words, and fcisslK the Pope’s hand is made a matter of levity; but losing his watch in Milw was a deep humiliation. In 1869, when aged 10, a youns Roosevelt came to England with his family and travelled throughout Britain. At Oxford he saw “an arcberry” and “some colages”; he was able to get “only a little piece” of a green marble table at Chatsworth which attraded him; the Thames was "a rerry verry small river or a large creek and the Zoo was disappointing. Magnificent Bull The boy nevertheless had a grec affection for animals, and was impressed by a visit to a Windsor farm“We then saw a huge, magnificent black Swiss bull, whose nose I petteb but he was in a stall. We saw soffit smaller ones. We then looked in f° another place where an even bigf ! bull was (loose). He was magnify cent, and justly named the glory p - Englafld.” Italy was “cold, dreary, smelly* a® beging (begging.)” At Pisa, for **’ ample, he wrote: — • , “ ... We also saw a statue « Mars heathen god of war. The Pries-' had thought his statute to handsome to throw away, so they Baptised it at gave it the name of a saint. . ■ • Behni the silver alter we saw in relief ,c - Basrelief or something like it' c marble Aden and Eve while bous round the tree was a serpent wit woman’s head. The man said English always fume at this. nul ’ : ' Americans do not mind it. . e Brussels was principally n °l' e because there he saw “the most tiful but most ferocious girl • ever seen.”