t would not
require a Connecticut man to guess the price finally agreed upon. This
story is nearly true. I certainly showed very plainly that I had come
for the colt and meant to have him. I could not have been over eight
years old at the time. This transaction caused me great heart-burning.
The story got out among the boys of the village, and it was a long time
before I heard the last of it. Boys enjoy the misery of their
companions,--at least village boys in that day did, and in later life I
have found that all adults are not free from the peculiarity. I kept the
horse until he was four years old, when he went blind, and I sold him
for twenty dollars. When I went to Maysville to school, in 1836, at the
age of fourteen, I recognized my colt as one of the blind horses working
on the tread-wheel of the ferry-boat.

I have described enough of my early life to give an impression of the
whole. I did not like to work; but I did as much of it, while young, as
grown men can be hired to do in these days, and attended school at the
same time. I had as many privileges as any boy in the village, and
probably more than most of them. I have no recollection of ever having
been punished at home, either by scolding or by the rod. But at school
the case was different. The rod was freely used there, and I was not
exempt from its influence. I can see John D. White, the school-teacher,
now, with his long beech switch always in his hand. It was not always
the same one, either. Switches were brought in bundles from a beech wood
near the schoolhouse, by the boys for whose benefit they were intended.
Often a whole bundle would be used up in a single day. I never had any
hard feelings against my teacher, either while attending the school or
in later years when reflecting upon my experience. Mr. White was a
kind-hearted man, and was much respected by the community in which he
lived. He only followed the universal custom of the period, and that
under which he had received his own education....

In the winter of 1838-9 I was attending school at Ripley, only ten miles
distant from Georgetown, but spent the Christmas holidays at home.
During this vacation my father received a letter from the Honorable
Thomas Morris, then United States Senator from Ohio. When he read it he
said to me, "Ulysses, I believe you are going to receive the
appointment." "What appointment?" I inquired.--"To West Point; I have
applied for it." "But I won't go," I said. He sa