Chapter 1 THE SEAL ON BROADWAY Along the cobblestone streets of New York City, a small and somewhat pink-faced boy wandered down Broadway, dwarfed by the towering wall of storefronts at his side. Still sporting a full head of baby curls, the child seemed barely old enough to be out in the city alone, and he looked frail, as if he might have been sick. Horse-drawn carriages rattled by, dropping off elegant women in hoop-skirted dresses and big hats. Gathering their billowing raiments up with their fingers, they floated in and out of stores showcasing velvet gloves, mink stoles, and fancy sweets. This was "Ladies'' Mile"--that stretch of Broadway between Union and Madison Squares where New York''s fancy boutiques competed for space and well-heeled customers. Jostled by the swarms of fashionable shoppers, the boy continued along Broadway, glancing through the storefront windows, until he passed a familiar grocery, where something caught his eye. Amid the usual cartons of fruits and vegetables was an object strangely out of place, splayed out on a slab of wood. It was the dull mass of a seal, dead less than a day.

Placed on display to attract paying customers, its corpulent body drew the child''s attention. Sliding his hand along the seal''s glossy-smooth pelt and peering deeply into its clouding eyes, he was overwhelmed with interest. Its eyes were so big, and they were fringed with delicate eyelashes like his own. Curious onlookers stood back, only a brave few leaning in for a closer look, but the little boy remained transfixed. It was probably a harbor seal, still fairly common in New York Harbor. So transfixed was the boy by this exotic creature that he raced home for a notebook and ruler, returning moments later to measure the carcass and jot down a few notes on its color and appearance. The eight-year-old boy then wrote a detailed natural history of seals based entirely on that one dead animal. Theodore Roosevelt''s life changed forever in that encounter, for it marked, as he later noted, "the first day" of his career as a naturalist.

Recalling the event in his autobiography decades later, Roosevelt wrote that the seal filled him with "every possible feeling of romance and adventure." It was so unlike anything he had ever seen before. Touching that seal, he would have felt the stiffness of its long, graceful whiskers, and, gently lifting up its lips, he would have seen the gleaming white teeth. The ears were just tiny holes, barely noticeable in its dense fur. Squeezing the front flippers, he would have felt that they were just like greatly enlarged hands, the individual finger bones completely encased in the flesh of the flipper with tiny claws extending from the tip. Feeling the seal''s body with his own hands, he could appreciate all the similarities to his own basic anatomy, but he wanted to get closer--to take the animal home, perhaps to dissect or stuff it. He had read about how naturalists kept animal specimens to study them, and now he had a chance to practice naturalism himself. Born on October 27, 1858, to Theodore Roosevelt Sr.

and Martha Bulloch Roosevelt (known as "Mittie"), Theodore was one in a long line of Roosevelts to have lived in Manhattan, the descendant of some of New York''s early Dutch settlers. The family had always been well-off, but Theodore''s paternal grandfather, Cornelius Roosevelt, amassed an incredible fortune through real estate speculation. From his redbrick mansion on the southwest corner of Broadway at 14th Street, Cornelius settled each of his five sons in nearby homes. Theodore Sr. was given a four-story brownstone just a short walk uptown, on East 20th Street. It was here that Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was born and raised with his older sister, Anna (nicknamed "Bamie"), younger brother, Elliott ("Ellie"), and their baby sister, Corinne ("Conie"). Tall, bearded, and with fierce blue eyes beneath heavy brows, Theodore Roosevelt Sr.

looked grim, but to those who knew him well, Mr. Roosevelt was benevolence personified. Although he was a partner in the Wall Street investment banking firm Roosevelt & Son, he preferred to think of himself as a philanthropist, and he took great pleasure in championing charitable causes. He especially adored children, even spending Sunday evenings serving meals to destitute newsboys and street urchins. To his own family Roosevelt Sr. represented strength and courage, tenderness and great unselfishness. He was so admired by his children that they went to great lengths to compete for his attention. Theodore Jr.

later recalled that his father was "the best man I ever knew" but added that he was also "the only man of whom I was ever really afraid." What Theodore feared most was his father''s stern disapproval--for Theodore, nothing was more important than earning the respect of his father. Perhaps more than anything, Mr. Roosevelt was shaped by his views as a "muscular Christian." A popular movement with British and American Protestants of the Victorian era, muscular Christianity taught that Jesus was not only morally strong but also physically sturdy. Masculinity--as shown in the will to fight for a cause--was seen as integral to Christian morality. Muscular Christianity was the answer to a growing concern among men that the world was becoming overly feminized, a reaction to the increasing number of sedentary occupations in the industrializing world and women''s growing role in the church. The movement stressed physical activity and spending time outdoors, urging cold-water swims and vigorous mountain climbs.

In sharp contrast to the muscular Christians and her robust, rugged husband, Martha Roosevelt was meek and genteel, a southerner who had grown up in a Georgia plantation house. While Mr. Roosevelt worked tirelessly, Mrs. Roosevelt was physically frail and often complained of fatigue. She was obsessively hygienic and had a penchant for immaculate white dresses, which she wore year-round. One acquaintance described her as "the purest woman he ever saw. No matter how dirty, hot, and ruffled everyone else looked, Mrs. Roosevelt seemed so cool and clean.

No dirt ever stopped near her." To her children, she was distant, like a delicate china doll--beautiful to look at but fragile and cold. Young Theodore Jr. inherited his mother''s frailty. No amount of money could spare him the almost constant stomachaches, headaches, coughs, fevers, and nausea he suffered. But Theodore''s most chronic and persistent struggle was with asthma. He was plagued by the horror of battling for a shallow gasp of air, only to have anxiety trigger still more severe struggles for breath. Theodore''s asthma attacks lasted from a few hours to several days of nonstop wheezing, and it was never entirely certain that he would survive to adulthood.

At the time, asthma was a poorly understood condition, which doctors mistakenly attributed to a narrow chest. There were no effective treatments, so the sufferers and their families were often left to devise their own desperate cures. Roosevelt Sr.--so distraught by his son''s ill-health--once summoned a horse and rig from a neighboring stable so that he could take young Theodore on a vigorous nighttime ride, attempting to force air into the small boy''s lungs. Fearful of letting the sickly boy out of their sight, his family rarely allowed him far from their watchful eyes, and (except for a very brief period) he never attended school. Although trapped inside all day, fearing his next asthma attack, Theodore sought solace in his father''s library--a dark, windowless room on the first floor of their town house. Lined with bookcases of "gloomy respectability" and cluttered with coarse horsehair chairs that scratched his bare legs, the library was, nonetheless, a sanctuary for the young boy. Sitting on his favorite velvet stool or standing with one leg propped against a wall and his neck bent sharply downward, he lost himself in books.

In these tomes, Theodore found adventure. One of his favorites was Scots medical missionary David Livingstone''s Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa. Although it was too large and heavy for a small boy such as Teddy to carry properly, he dragged the book around the house, begging people to read it to him. Livingstone had left his native Scotland to devote his life to evangelism in South Africa, but he was much better known for his explorations of the African continent than for his religious work. Missionary Travels documented those exploits and was illustrated with detailed engravings. Roosevelt may have been too young to understand the words, but the pictures in Livingstone''s book spoke clearly: a desperate man pinned to the earth by a snarling lion; men with spears and shields driving whole herds of zebras, elands, and antelope into giant pitfall traps dug into the earth; a dugout canoe being violently tipped by an enraged hippopotamus, the passengers flailing their arms and leaping to escape. The man squirming under the lion''s paw was David Livingstone himself. He had been trying to help some villagers by shooting one of the lions raiding their cattle corrals.

Firing both barrels of his muzzle-loading rifle, he only wounded the lion, which charged him as he hastily reloaded. The animal sprang onto Livingstone, bit into his shoulder, and pulled him down to the ground. "Growling horribly, he shook me as a terrier dog does a rat," Livingstone explained. "It caused a sort of dreaminess, in which there was no sense of pain nor feeling of terror, though I was quite conscious of all that was happening." Even more influential to young Teddy than Livingstone''s writings were the books of novelist and adventurer Captain Thomas Mayne Reid, whose yarns of hunting, animal.