"Clean-minded and clean-lived, and able to hold his own..."

Anthony Esolen at Mere Comments:

From a children's encyclopedia (first printing, 1914), on a man whom the writer justly calls our most popular President, Teddy Roosevelt:

"While at college he taught a Sunday School class. One day one of his students came to class with a black eye. He owned up that he had got it in a fight and on a Sunday at that. He confessed to his teacher that during the morning service a boy, sitting next to his sister, had pricked her all through the hour, so after church he waited outside and they had a good 'stand-up fight,' and he 'punched him good,' although he got a black eye in exchange. 'You did exactly right,' said his teacher and gave the lad a dollar. To the class it was ideal justice, but when the church authorities heard of it they were scandalized. Young Roosevelt was dismissed and took himself and his ideals to another Sunday School.

"Many years later he gave this bit of advice to his Boy Scout friends: 'What we have a right to expect of the American boy is that he shall turn out to be a good American man. Now, the chances are strong that he won't turn out to be much of a man unless he is a good deal of a boy. He must not be a coward or a weakling, a bully, a shirk, or a prig. He must work hard and play hard. He must be clean-minded and clean-lived, and able to hold his own under all circumstances and against all comers. It is only on these conditions that he will grow into the kind of a man of whom America can be really proud. In life, as in a football game, the principle is: Hit the line hard; don't foul and don't shirk, but hit the line hard.'"

.... None of the priggishness of political correctness here; no weakling celebration of having been a victim or a chump, or perhaps of claiming to have been a victim or a chump; no cowardly running away from the hard facts of life; no excuses to allow the shirker to slide through his youth devoting his mind and heart to nothing. Yes, we now do discourage bullying, certainly - but now too a black eye is far away from the worst that can happen to your child in school. Not coincidental, that. And we still have the bullies anyway.

Source: Touchstone Magazine - Mere Comments: Not Coming to a School Near You