1846.

Jackson was already a man in years when he passed his final
examination, and here the record of his boyhood may fitly close. He
had made no particular mark at the Academy. His memory, in the minds
of his comrades, was associated with his gravity, his silence, his
kind heart, and his awkward movements. No one suspected him of nobler
qualities than dogged perseverance and a strict regard for truth. The
officers and sergeants of the cadet battalion were supplied by the
cadets themselves; but Jackson was never promoted. In the mimic
warfare of the playground at Brienne Napoleon was master of the
revels. His capacity for command had already been detected; but
neither comrade nor teacher saw beneath the unpromising exterior of
the West Point student a trace of aught save what was commonplace.

And yet there is much in the boyhood of Stonewall Jackson that
resembles the boyhood of Napoleon, of all great soldiers the most
original. Both were affectionate. Napoleon lived on bread and water
that he might educate his brothers; Jackson saved his cadet's pay to
give his sister a silk dress. Both were indefatigable students,
impressed with the conviction that the world was to be conquered by
force of intellect. Jackson, burning his lessons into his brain, is
but the counterpart of the young officer who lodged with a professor
of mathematics that he might attend his classes, and who would wait
to explain the lectures to those who had not clearly understood them.
Both were provincial, neither was prepossessing. If the West Point
cadets laughed at Jackson's large hands and feet, was not Napoleon,
with his thin legs thrust into enormous boots, saluted by his
friend's children, on his first appearance in uniform, with the
nickname of Le Chat Botte? It is hard to say which was the more