Almost from infancy Theodore suffered from asthma, which made him
physically puny, and often prevented him from lying down when he
went to bed. But his spirit did not droop. His mental activity
never wearied and he poured out endless stories to the delight of
his brother and sisters. "My earliest impressions of my brother
Theodore," writes his sister, Mrs. Robinson, "are of a rather
small, patient, suffering little child, who, in spite of his
suffering, was the acknowledged head of the nursery .... These
stories," she adds, "almost always related to strange and
marvelous animal adventures, in which the animals were
personalities quite as vivid as Kipling gave to the world a
generation later in his 'Jungle Books.'"
Owing to his delicate health Theodore did not attend school,
except for a little while, when he went to Professor MacMullen's
Academy on Twentieth Street. He was taught at home and he
probably got more from his reading than from his teachers. By the
time he was ten, the passion for omnivorous reading which
frequently distinguishes boys who are physically handicapped,
began in him.
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