Eleanor and Franklin Read Online Free Page A

at school as at home for Thee is way behind or rather before me & perhaps although I don’t now I may in future years see it was best for me.
    I feel rich too in the prospect of my allowance, next first of January, it seemes a long way off.
    Are we going to Oyster bay next summer dont you think Thee & I could spunge on all of our uncles & you & have a sail boat. I know we could manage her & would not I think be likly to drown. My darling Father you have made me a companion & a very happy one I don’t believe there is any boy that has had as happy & free of care life as I have had.
    Oh. Father will you ever think me a “noble boy”, you are right about Tede he is one & no mistake a boy I would give a good deal to be like in many respects. If you ever see me not stand by Thee you may know I am entirely changed, no Father I am not likly to desert a fellow I love as I do my Brother even you dont know what a good noble boy he is & what a splendid man he is going to be as I do No, I love him. love him very very dearly & will never desert him & if I know him he will never desert me.
    Father my own dear Father God bless you & help me to be a good boy & worthy of you, good by.
    Your Son.
    [P.S.] This sounds foolish on looking over it but you touched me when you said always to stand by Thee in your letter.
    E.R.
    When Theodore Sr. finally gave in to Elliott’s pleadings and allowed him to enter St. Paul’s in September, 1875, the boy’s happiness was brief. “I am studying as hard as I can,” he wrote his father on October 1, “and I think all my teachers are satisfied with me.” But after a letter full of casual gossip, he added an ominous postscript:
    Private
    Yesterday during my Latin lesson without the slightest warning I had a bad rush of blood to my head, it hurt me so that I can’t remember what happened. I believe I screamed out, anyway the Doctor brought me over to his house and I lay down for a couple of hours; it had by that time recovered and after laying down all the afternoon I was able to go on with my afternoon studies. I lost nothing but one Greek lesson by it. It had left me rather nervous and therefore homesick and unhappy. But I am well now so don’t worry about me. I took some of my anti-nervous medicine, and I would like the receipt of more. You told me to write you everything or I would not bother you with this, but you want to know all about me don’t you?
    P.S. II Don’t forget me please and write often .
    Love from Ellie
    â€œPoor Ellie Roosevelt,” Archibald Gracie wrote his mother, “has had to leave on account of his health. He has ‘ever been subject to rush of blood to his head’ and while up here he exerted himself too much both physically and mentally. He studied hard and late. One day he fainted just after leaving the table and fell down. . . . His brother came up to take him home. . . . ”
    The various doctors who were consulted did not agree on the nature of his malady. According to some reports he had a form of epilepsy, but there is no other record of epilepsy in the family and the seizures of which we have accounts were too infrequent to fit such a diagnosis. Some doctors who have read this account have noted thatElliott’s seizures occurred when he was confronted with demands that evidently were too much for him and have suggested that they may have been, without Elliott’s realizing it, a form of escape.
    It was the elder Roosevelt’s view that bodily infirmities were to be conquered by a strenuous outdoor life and Spartan discipline. He had told the frail and asthmatic Theodore in 1870: “You have the mind but not the body. . . . You must make your body.” And that was exactly what Theodore proceeded to do. Outdoor life was now to cure Elliott; he was sent to Fort McKavett, a frontier post in the hill country of Texas, where the Roosevelts knew many of the officers, including the commander,