Theodore Roosevelt had the good fortune to be born of a well-known, long-established family, with every facility for education and with an atmosphere of patriotism and disinterested service both to country and humanity all about him. In his father he had before him an example of lofty public spirit, from which it would have been difficult to depart.

But if the work of his ancestors relieved him from the hard struggle which meets an unaided man at the outset, he also lacked the spur of necessi...