FEAR OF CHURCH
In an excellent biography of the young Theodore Roosevelt, I came across the following story about T. R. as a child: [Teedie was the name they called him and Mittie was his mother, Ed.] As a very small child Teedie had also experienced a peculiar and memorable fear of church. It was a small incident that, in later years, made an amusing anecdote of the kind every Roosevelt loved to tell. But for him at the time it was no joke and should not be discounted. Mittie had found he was so afraid of the Madison Square Church that he refused to set foot inside if alone and so she pressed him to tell her why. He was terrified, she discovered, of something called the “zeal.” It was crouched in the dark corners of the church ready to jump at him, he said. When she asked what a zeal might be, he said he was not sure, but thought it was…
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