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 describes 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 school house, 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 kindhearted 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.

CHAPTER II.

WEST POINT--GRADUATION.

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 said he thought I would,
AND I THOUGHT SO TOO, IF HE DID. I really had no objection to going to
West Point, except that I had a very exalted idea of the acquirements
necessary to get through. I did not believe I possessed them, and could
not bear the idea of failing. There had been four boys from our
village, or its immediate neighborhood, who had been graduated from West
Point, and never a failure of any one appointed from Georgetown,