rable combination on the North American continent. One-half
Irish, one-fourth English, and a good deal more than "a trace" of
French, would appear to be the showing of a quantitative analysis.
Yet, as far as I understand my personality, I think to see in the
result the predominance which the English strain has usually asserted
for itself over others. I have none of the gregariousness of either
the French or Irish; and while I have no difficulty in entering into
civil conversation with a stranger who addresses me, I rarely begin,
having, upon the whole, a preference for an introduction. This is not
perverseness, but lack of facility; and I believe Froissart noted
something of the same in the Englishmen of five hundred years ago. I
have, too, an abhorrence of public speaking, and a desire to slip
unobserved into a back seat wherever I am, which amount to a mania;
but I am bound to admit I get both these dispositions from my father,
whose Irishry was undiluted by foreign admixture.

In my boyhood, till I was nearly ten, West Point was a very
sequestered place. It was accessible only by steam-boats; and during
great part of the winter months not by them, the Hudson being frozen
over most of the season as far as ten to twenty miles lower down. The
railroad was not running before 1848, and then it followed the east
bank of the river. One of my early recollections is of begging off
from school one day, long enough to go to a part of the post distant
from our house, whence I caught my first sight of a train of cars on
the opposite shore. Another recollection is of the return of a company
of engineer soldiers from the War with Mexico. The detachment was
drawn up for inspection where we boys could see it. One of the men had
grown a full beard, a sight to me then as novel as the railroad, and I
announced it at home as a most interesting fact. I had as yet seen
only clean-shaven faces. Among my other recollections of childhood
are, as superintendent of the Academy, Colonel Robert E. Lee,
afterwards the great Confederate leader; and McClellan, then a junior
engineer officer.

As my boyhood advanced the abolition movement was gaining strength, to
the great disapprobation and dismay of my father, with his strong
Southern and Union sympathies. I remember that when _Uncle Tom's
Cabin_ came out, in my twelfth year, the master of the school I
attended gave me a copy; being himself, I presume, one of the rising
party adverse to slavery.