s Confederate
generals,* (* A.P. Hill, G.E. Pickett, and D.H. Maury.) were standing
together when he first entered the gates of the Academy. "There was
about him," says one of them, "so sturdy an expression of purpose
that I remarked, "That fellow looks as if he had come to stay.""

Jackson's educational deficiencies were more difficult of conquest
than the goodwill of his comrades. His want of previous training
placed him at a great disadvantage. He commenced his career amongst
"the Immortals" (the last section of the class), and it was only by
the most strenuous efforts that he maintained his place. His
struggles at the blackboard were often painful to witness. In the
struggle to solve a problem he invariably covered both his face and
uniform with chalk, and he perspired so freely, even in the coldest
weather, that the cadets, with boyish exaggeration, declared that
whenever "the General," as he had at once been dubbed in honour of
his namesake, the victor of New Orleans, got a difficult proposition
he was certain to flood the classroom. It was all he could do to pass
his first examination.* (* Communicated by General John Gibbon,
U.S.A.)

"We were studying," writes a classmate, "algebra and analytical
geometry that winter, and Jackson was very low in his class. Just
before the signal lights out he would pile up his grate with
anthracite coal, and lying prone before it on the floor, would work
away at his lessons by the glare of the fire, which scorched his very
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 cla