Forty-Six Years in the Army | Page 5

too strong for him, and he gave it up, to the great
indignation of the officer of the day, who had ordered him to charge,
and who threatened to report me, but did not. That night I slept on the
ground outside the guard tents, and caught cold, from which my eyes
became badly inflamed, and I was laid up in the hospital during the
remainder of my encampment. On that account I had a hard struggle
with my studies the next year. While sitting on the east porch of the
hospital in the afternoon, I attracted the kind attention of General
Winfield Scott, who became from that time a real friend, and did me a
great service some years later.
CHARACTER OF THE WEST POINT TRAINING
In our third-class encampment, when corporal of the guard, I had a
little misunderstanding one night with the sentinel on post along Fort
Clinton ditch, which was then nearly filled by a growth of bushes. The
sentinel tore the breast of my shell-jacket with the point of his bayonet,
and I tumbled him over backward into the ditch and ruined his musket.
But I quickly helped him out, and gave him my musket in place of his,
with ample apologies for my thoughtless act. We parted, as I thought,
in the best of feeling; but many years later, a colonel in the army told
me that story, as an illustration of the erroneous treatment sometimes
accorded to sentinels in his time, and I was thus compelled to tell him I
was that same corporal, to convince him that he had been mistaken as
to the real character of the treatment he had received.

That third-class year I lived in the old North barracks, four of us in one
room. There, under the malign influence of two men who were
afterward found deficient, I contracted the bad habit of fastening a
blanket against the window after "taps," so that no one could see us
"burning the midnight oil" over pipes and cards. The corps of cadets
was not as much disciplined in our day as it is now. If it had been, I
doubt if I should have graduated. As it was, I got 196 demerits out of a
possible 200 one year. One more "smoking in quarters" would have
been too much for me. I protest now, after this long experience, that
nothing else at West Point was either so enjoyable or so beneficial to
me as smoking. I knew little and cared less about the different corps of
the army, or about the value of class standing. I became quite indignant
when a distinguished friend rather reproved me for not trying to
graduate higher--perhaps in part from a guilty conscience, for it
occurred just after we had graduated. I devoted only a fraction of the
study hours to the academic course--generally an hour, or one and a
half, to each lesson. But I never intentionally neglected any of my
studies. It simply seemed to me that a great part of my time could be
better employed in getting the education I desired by the study of law,
history, rhetoric, and general literature. Even now I think these latter
studies have proved about as useful to me as what I learned of the art
and science of war; and they are essential to a good general education,
no less in the army than in civil life. I have long thought it would be a
great improvement in the Military Academy if a much broader course
could be given to those young men who come there with the necessary
preparation, while not excluding those comparatively young boys who
have only elementary education. There is too much of the "cast-iron" in
this government of law under which we live, but "mild steel" will take
its place in time, no doubt. The conditions and interests of so vast a
country and people are too varied to be wisely subjected to rigid rules.
But I must not be misunderstood as disparaging the West Point
education. As it was, and is now, there is, I believe, nothing equal to it
anywhere in this country. Its methods of developing the reasoning
faculties and habits of independent thought are the best ever devised.
West Point training of the mind is practically perfect. Its general
discipline is excellent and indispensable in the military service. Even in

civil life something like it would be highly beneficial. In my case that
discipline was even more needed than anything else. The hardest lesson
I had to learn was to submit my will and opinions to those of an
accidental superior in rank, who, I imagined, was my inferior in other
things, and it took me many years to learn it. Nothing is more
absolutely indispensable to