ed study or disliked
it. Probably he took it as a part of life, something that had to be
done, and did it. He was most apt in mathematics. When he arrived at
West Point he was able to pass the not very severe entrance examination
without trouble. He seems to have had good native powers of perception,
reasoning, and memory. What he learned he kept, but he was never an
ardent scholar. He had no enthusiasm for knowledge, nor, indeed, so far
as appears, for anything else except horses. He used to fish
occasionally, but never hunted. The sportsman's tastes were not his, nor
were his social tastes demonstrative. Possibly they may have been
restrained in some measure by his mother's strictness of religious
principles. He was neither morose nor brooding,--not a dreamer of
destiny. He yearned for no star. No instinct of his future achievements
made him peculiar among his companions or caused him to hold himself
aloof. He exhibited nothing of the young Napoleon's distemper of gnawing
pride. He was just an ordinary American boy, with rather less boyishness
and rather more sobriety than most, disposed to listen to the talk of
his elders instead of that of persons of his own age, and fond of
visiting strange places and riding and driving about the country. His
work had made him acquainted with the subjects in which grown men were
interested. The family life was serious but not severe. Obedience and
other domestic virtues were inculcated with fidelity; but he said that
he was never scolded or punished at home.

CHAPTER IV

HIS LIFEWORK APPOINTED

When the boy was about seventeen years old he had made up his mind upon
one matter,--he would not be a tanner for life. He told his father,
possibly in response to some suggestion that it was time for him to quit
his aimless occupations and begin his lifework, that he would work in
the shop, if he must, until he was twenty-one, but not a day longer. His
desire then was to be a farmer, or a trader, or to get an education; but
he seems to have had no definite inclination except to escape from the
disagreeable tannery. His father treated the matter judiciously, not
being disposed to force the boy to learn a business that he would not
follow. He was unable to set him up in farming. He had not much respect
for the river traders, and may have had little confidence in the boy's
ability to thrive in competitions of enterprise and greed.

Without consulting his son, he wrote to one of the