st combative enter it unless they are
consciously strong, is well illustrated by Dr. Johnson's remark to some
friends, when sickness had relaxed the tough fibre of his brain,--"If
that fellow Burke were here now, he would kill me."

A peculiar kind of grit, not falling under any of the special
expressions I have noted, yet partaking in some degree of all, is
illustrated in the character of Lieutenant-General Grant. Without an
atom of pretension or rhetoric, with none of the external signs of
energy and intrepidity, making no parade of the immovable purpose, iron
nerve, and silent, penetrating intelligence God has put into him, his
tranquil greatness is hidden from superficial scrutiny behind a cigar,
as President Lincoln's is behind a joke. When anybody tries to coax,
cajole, overawe, browbeat, or deceive Lincoln, the President nurses his
leg, and is reminded of a story; when anybody tries the same game with
Grant, the General listens and--smokes. If you try to wheedle out of him
his plans for a campaign, he stolidly smokes; if you call him an
imbecile and a blunderer, he blandly lights another cigar; if you praise
him as the greatest general living, he placidly returns the puff from
his regalia; and if you tell him he should run for the Presidency, it
does not disturb the equanimity with which he inhales and exhales the
unsubstantial vapor which typifies the politician's promises. While you
are wondering what kind of man this creature without a tongue is, you
are suddenly electrified with the news of some splendid victory, proving
that behind the cigar, and behind the face discharged of all tell-tale
expression, is the best brain to plan and the strongest heart to dare
among the generals of the Republic.

It is curious to mark a variation of this intellectual hardihood and
personal force when the premises are not in the solidities, but in the
oddities of thought and character, and whim stands stiffly up to the
remotest inferences which may be deduced from its insanest freaks of
individual opinion. Thus it is said that in one of our country towns
there is an old gentleman who is an eccentric hater of women; and this
crotchet of his character he carries to its extreme logical
consequences. Not content with general declamation against the sex, he
turns eagerly, the moment he receives the daily newspaper, to the list
of deaths; and if he sees the death of a woman recorded, he gleefully
exclaims,--"Good! good! there's anot