ppointments been made on merit alone
and that "from $250 to $500 was the amount frequently paid to obtain
them." The examination was to be conducted at Trenton, Mo., and was open
to all who were eligible.

Pershing decided to try. In making this decision his sister strongly
encouraged him, and was the only one of his family who was aware of his
plan. His room-mate writes that Pershing urged him also to try. "No," I
told him, "I didn't know that I could pass." "Well," he said, "you'd
better come and we'll take a chance. One or the other of us ought to
win." I told him he had been in school three months while I had been
selling goods, and that if he thought he would like it, to go, that I
didn't care for it. But I should like to have the education, though I
should probably stay in the army if I happened to pass. "No," he said,
"I wouldn't stay in the army. There won't be a gun fired in the world
for a hundred years. If there isn't, I'll study law, I guess, but I want
an education and now I see how I can get it."

Eighteen took the examination and Pershing won, though by only a single
point, and that was given only after he and his competitor,
Higginbottom, had broken the tie by each diagramming the following
sentence--"_I love to run!_"

Higginbottom's solution--

"I"--subject.
"love"--predicate.
"to run"--infinitive phrase qualifying the meaning
of the verb.

Pershing's solution was as follows:

"I"--subject.
"love"--predicate,
"to run"--is the object.

The commission preferred Pershing's diagram, and thus by a single point
he won the competitive examination and received the appointment.

When, however, Pershing and his sister informed their mother that he had
passed the best examination and was to receive the appointment to West
Point, she expressed her strong disapproval of the plan to make a
soldier of John. Her objections were finally overcome, and she
consented, partly because she believed her boy when he said "there would
not be a gun fired for a hundred years" and partly because she was even
more eager than he for him to obtain a good education.

[Illustration: The Highland Military Academy.]

[Illustration: United States Military Academy, West Point, N. Y.]

Thirty years afterward General Pershing himself wrote: "The proudest
days of my life, with one exception, have come to me in connection with
West Point days that stand out