that he didn't have time. The
other fellow came back with a taunt--and then Joseph "waded in."

He did not have any chums for the same reason, lack of time, and
doubtless he missed a great deal out of boyhood from this fact. It is
said that in the study hall he would erect a great pile of books between
himself and the next boy, so as not to be disturbed. Yet he didn't shine
particularly as a student. He was simply busy--thinking.

It was not until he was sent to college at Perpignan, that he really
began to take an interest in books, and his favorites were the more solid
studies--algebra, descriptive geometry, surveying, and draftsmanship.
His bent even at this early day seemed to be civil engineering.

The ambition of every middle-class French home, in those days, was to
send a son to the army--have him study to become an officer. Mamma
Joffre had not forgotten the Caesar in her oldest son's name; and in a
family conclave it was decided that he should be sent to Paris, to try
for the entrance examinations in the Ecole Polytechnique.

Gilles Joffre accompanied his son to the capital, and left him in a
private school. Like his son, the cooper was a man of few words; but
what he must have done at parting was to clap the boy on the shoulder,
and say: "Now, go to it!"

Joseph Joffre did. When he returned to his boyhood's home, only four
years later, he was wearing the shoulder straps of a lieutenant, and had
seen active service. But this is getting ahead of our story.

There was really nothing else for him to do but to "go to it" here in
Paris. He was a big, hulking lad of fifteen, with a bullet head set upon
a thick neck and broad shoulders--an awkward figure dressed in
ill-fitting clothes. All his life Joffre paid little attention to dress.
Here at the awkward age he looked out of place with the well-dressed city
boys. They tried to have fun at his expense, but he withdrew into his
shell more than ever, and they soon learned to let him alone.

It must have been a lonely life that young Joffre led--but we have no
direct evidence that he ever felt lonely. His books and his day dreams
seem always to have made up for a lack of human companionship. The other
fellows contented themselves with saying of him: "He is too slow, and
methodical to amount to much."

He did not, indeed, make a specially brilliant record in his entrance
examinations to the Polytechnique; but his stumbling block was not
mathematics o