was not a shirk and always told the truth, his father was in the
habit of saying, after the farm chores were done: "Now, Ulysses, you can
take the horse and carriage and go where you like. I know I can trust
you."

When he was only twelve, his father began sending him seventy or eighty
miles away from home, on business errands. These trips would take him
two days. Sometimes he went alone, and sometimes he took one of his
chums with him. Talking so much with grown men gave him an old manner,
and as his judgment was pretty good he was called by merchants a "sharp
one." He would have been contented to jaunt about the country, trading
and colt-breaking, all his life, but his father decided he ought to have
military training and obtained for him an appointment at West Point (the
United States' school for training soldiers that was started by George
Washington) without Ulysses knowing a thing about it. Now Ulysses did
not have the least desire to be a soldier and did not want to go to this
school one bit, but he had always obeyed his father, and started on a
fifteen days' journey from Ohio without any more talk than the simple
statement: "I don't want to go, but if you say so, I suppose I must."

He found, when he reached the school, that his name had been changed. Up
to this time his initials had spelled HUG, but the senator who sent
young Grant's appointment papers to Washington had forgotten Ulysses'
middle name. He wrote his full name as Ulysses Simpson Grant, and as it
would make much trouble to have it changed at Congress, Ulysses let it
stand that way. So instead of being called H-U-G Grant (as he had been
by his mates at home) the West Point boys, to tease him, caught up the
new initials and shouted "Uncle Sam" Grant, or "United States"
Grant--and sometimes "Useless" Grant.

But the Ohio boy was good-natured and only laughed at them. He was a
cool, slow-moving chap, well-behaved, and was never known to say a
profane word in his life. At this school there was plenty of chance to
prove his skill with horses. Ulysses was never happier than when he
started off for the riding-hall with his spurs clanking on the ground
and his great cavalry sword dangling by his side. Once, mounted on a big
sorrel horse, and before a visiting "Board of Directors," he made the
highest jump that had ever been known at West Point. He was as modest
as could be about this jump, but the other cadets (as the pupils were
called) bragged about it