Captain Macklin | Page 5

for even at that late day he wore a blue
coat with brass buttons and a buff waistcoat and high black stock. He
had a strong, fine profile and was smooth shaven. I remember I found
him exactly my ideal of the Duke of Wellington; for though I was only
then ten or twelve years of age, I had my own ideas about every soldier
from Alexander and Von Moltke to our own Captain Custer.

It was in the garden behind the Patterson house that we met the General,
and he alarmed me very much by pulling my shoulders back and asking
me my age, and whether or not I expected to be as brave a soldier as
my grandfather, to which latter question I said, "Yes, General," and
then could have cried with mortification, for all of the great soldiers
laughed at me. One of them turned, and said to the only one who was
seated, "That is Hamilton's grandson." The man who was seated did not
impress me very much. He was younger than the others. He wore a
black suit and a black tie, and the three upper buttons of his waistcoat
were unfastened. His beard was close-cropped, like a blacking-brush,
and he was chewing on a cigar that had burned so far down that I
remember wondering why it did not scorch his mustache. And then, as
I stood staring up at him and he down at me, it came over me who he
was, and I can recall even now how my heart seemed to jump, and I felt
terribly frightened and as though I were going to cry. My grandfather
bowed to the younger man in the courteous, old-fashioned manner he
always observed, and said: "General, this is my grandchild, Captain
Macklin's boy. When he grows up I want him to be able to say he has
met you. I am going to send him to West Point."
The man in the chair nodded his head at my grandfather, and took his
cigar from his mouth and said, "When he's ready to enter, remind me,
let me know," and closed his lips again on his cigar, as though he had
missed it even during that short space if time. But had he made a long
oration neither my grandfather nor I could have been more deeply
moved. My grandfather said: "Thank you, General. It is very kind of
you," and led me away smiling so proudly that it was beautiful to see
him. When he had entered the house he stopped, and bending over me,
asked. "Do you know who that was, Roy?" But with the awe of the
moment still heavy upon me I could only nod and gasp at him.
"That was General Grant," my grandfather said.
"Yes, I know," I whispered.
I am not particularly proud of the years that preceded my entrance to
West Point, and of the years I have spent here I have still less reason to
be content. I was an active boy, and behaved as other young cubs of
that age, no better and no worse. Dobbs Ferry was not a place where
temptations beset one, and, though we were near New York, we were
not of it, and we seldom visited it. When we did, it was to go to a

matinee at some theatre, returning the same afternoon in time for
supper. My grandfather was very fond of the drama, and had been
acquainted since he was a young man with some of the most
distinguished actors. With him I saw Edwin Booth in "Macbeth," and
Lester Wallack in "Rosedale," and John McCullough in "Virginius," a
tragedy which was to me so real and moving that I wept all the way
home in the train. Sometimes I was allowed to visit the theatre alone,
and on these afternoons I selected performances of a lighter variety,
such as that given by Harrigan & Hart in their theatre on Broadway.
Every Thanksgiving Day I was allowed, after witnessing the annual
football match between the students from Princeton and Yale
universities, to remain in town all that night. On these great occasions I
used to visit Koster & Bial's on Twenty-third Street, a long, low
building, very dark and very smoky, and which on those nights was
blocked with excited mobs of students, wearing different colored
ribbons and shouting the cries of their different colleges. I envied and
admired these young gentlemen, and thought them very fine fellows
indeed. They wore in those days long green coats, which made them
look like coachmen, and high, bell-shaped hats, both of which, as I now
can see, were a queer survival of the fashions of 1830, and which now
for the second time have disappeared.
To me, with my country clothes