Topic 5
HOW I LOST MY EYE

I DID not realize it was news until I saw the papers yesterday.  I rather supposed most people knew I had lost the sight of one eye."

Colonel Roosevelt was a bit amazed and somewhat puzzled by the prominence given this fact one Monday morning after he had talked with a group of reporters at Jack Cooper's health farm, near Stamford, Connecticut, where he had gone to take off some surplus weight.  The reporters he had bidden there more, I am sure, to do something for his friend Cooper by securing him a lot of publicity than anything else, though he had, as a matter of fact, half promised that he would have something to say before leaving the place when he went there.

"You knew it, did you not?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," I answered; "you told me about it one night on a train going West.  Yoder (of the U.  P.) and Reggie Post were in the party."

"I thought so," said he.

My notebook tells me that his story as to how he lost the use of the left eye was led up to by a question of the Colonel's as to a rumor about his being in poor health then going the rounds.
"What do they say I have?" he inquired.

'' Arterio sclerosis.''

"Just what is that?"

"A hardening of the walls of the arteries — a loss of elasticity in the blood vessels."

"Well, on that definition they are right.  I have had arterio sclerosis for a long time.  Ever since I was about forty, I have had to cut out violent exercises one after the other until now there is nothing left except what a grandfather might expect.

"When I was Governor it was delightful to note the refusal of the Comptroller to audit a bill for a wrestling mat for the Executive Mansion.  He could understand perfectly why a gentleman should wish a billiard table, but a wrestling mat for a Governor! It was inconceivable.

"I did not wrestle so much after that.  My first man, a middle weight champion, knew enough to take care of himself and me, too.  I forget his name.  He had to quit and his successor was an oarsman who could neither look out for himself nor for me.  The result was that one bout ended with the smashing of one of his knees and I had a loose rib or two.

"I used to like to box, but I had to stop when I hurt my left eye in the White House.  You know it is blind; a loss, but not nearly as bad as if it were the right one.  It happened this way: I was boxing with a naval officer, a husky chap and a cousin of Mrs.  Roosevelt.  He countered a hot one on the side of the head — right over the eye.  One of the hardening arteries ruptured.  Then the eye gradually began to film over.  Soon all the sight was gone.  That's how I lost it.

"So far as I know the officer never learned the result of his blow.  To have told him would have only caused him to feel badly."

After the publicity following his statement at Jack Cooper's, Colonel Roosevelt again referred to the fact that he had kept the extent of his injury secret from his boxing partner.

"The only man I ever tried to keep that story away from was the young officer.  It would have worried him to death.

"By the way," he added, with a laugh, "did you notice how quickly it is announced that Mr.  Wilson, too, has but one eye.  Of course, he did not lose it in any such vulgar way as boxing; that would never do.  He had to lose his in the more ladylike and refined bookworm way — too much reading."