Mornings on Horseback

by David McCullough

But the chief lesson is that life is quite literally a battle. And the test is how he responds, in essence whether he sees himself as a helpless victim or decides to fight back, whether he becomes, as Teedie was to say of a particular variety of desert bird, “extremely tenacious of life.”

“Theodore, you have the mind, but you have not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should.” He must build himself up by his own effort. “You must make your body.” It was a summons and the offer of a counterpoise, a way, the one way, to right his own balance. “It is hard drudgery to make one’s body,” the father said, “but I know you will do it.”