brain, till a late hour of the night. This evident determination to
succeed not only aided his own efforts directly, but impressed his
instructors in his favour. If he could not master the portion of the
text-book assigned for the day, he would not pass it over, but
continued to work at it till he understood it. Thus it often happened
that when he was called out to repeat his task, he had to reply that
he had not yet reached the lesson of the day, but was employed upon
the previous one. There was then no alternative but to mark him as
unprepared, a proceeding which did not in the least affect his
resolution."

Despite all drawbacks, his four years at the Academy were years of
steady progress. "The Immortals" were soon left far behind. At the
end of the first twelve months he stood fifty-first in a class of
seventy-two, but when he entered the first class, and commenced the
study of logic, that bugbear to the majority, he shot from near the
foot of the class to the top. In the final examination he came out
seventeenth, notwithstanding that the less successful years were
taken into account, and it was a frequent remark amongst his brother
cadets that if the course had been a year longer he would have come
out first. His own satisfaction was complete. Not only was his
perseverance rewarded by a place sufficiently high to give him a
commission in the artillery, but his cravings for knowledge had been
fully gratified. West Point was much more than a military school. It
was a university, and a university under the very strictest
discipline, where the science of the soldier formed only a portion of
the course. Subjects which are now considered essential to a military
education were not taught at all. The art of war gave place to ethics
and engineering; and mathematics and chemistry were considered of far
more importance than topography and fortification. Yet with French,