Anecdote of Grant at West Point.

The following incident occurred while young Grant was serving his first year as a cadet of the Military Academy at West Point, and is a very good illustration of the coolness of his disposition.

It is related by his father in his interesting reminiscences of the early life of his distinguished son, published in the New York Ledger.

"As is well known, it is the practice at West Point to get some rig, run, or joke on every new comer. Ulysses took a letter of introduction to a cadet, who told him all this, and put him on his guard. In the course of the first night, one of the cadets, dressed as an officer, entered the room where Ulysses and his chum were sleeping, and told them that one of the rules of the institution required. that a task should be given them, to see how they would get through it, while laboring under the excitement consequent upon their first admission. He then, producing a book, ordered that, before morning, they should each commit to memory a lesson of twenty pages. All right, all right,' responded Ulysses; and as soon as the pretended officer had withdrawn, he went quietly back to bed, while his companion sat up and studied all night. Of course, the recitation has not yet been called for."

Grant's career at West Point was uneventful, his demerits, as his father says, being mostly "of a trivial character, such as not having his coat buttoned, or his shoes tied right, or something of that kind." His progress was of the slow and sure kind; holding firmly on to all he acquired, but having nothing of that dashing brilliancy which is thought so much of by collegiates. He did not, like many, only study to pass the examiner, and then forget what he had learned. Even if his seat was below those of some others in his classes, at the end of each year it would be found

that his education was of a far more solid and substantial nature than that of several of his class-mates who stood higher in grades. Experience, however, has demonstrated that the rank attained at a Military Academy, or at college, affords a very uncertain indication of the future success or usefulness of the man.

What a Fellow Comrade Says of Young Grant at West Point -A Splendid Record.

A gentleman who was a comrade of young Grant for two years at West Point Military Academy, says:

I remember Grant as a plain, common-sense, straightforward youth; quiet, calm, thoughtful, and unaggressive; shunning notoriety; quite contented, while others were grumbling; taking to his military duties in a very businesslike manner; not a prominent man in the corps, but respected by all, and very popular with his friends. His sobriquet of Uncle Sam was given to him there, where every good-fellow has a nickname, from these very quali ties; indeed, he was a very uncle-like sort of a youth.

He was then and always an excellent horseman, and his picture rises before me as I write, in the old torn coat (riding-jackets, if we remember rightly, had not then been issued, and the cadets always wore their seediest rig into the sweat and dust of the riding drill), obsolescent leather gig-top, loose riding pantaloons, with spurs buckled over them, going with his clanking sabre to the drill-hall. He exhibited but little enthusiasm in any thing; his best standing was in the mathematical branches, and their application to tactics and military engineering.

If we again dwell upon the fact that no one, even of his most intimate friends, dreamed of a great future for him, it is to add that, looking back now, we must confess that

the possession of many excellent qualities, and the entire absence of all low and mean ones, establish a logical sequence from first to last, and illustrate, in a novel manner, the poet's fancy about

"The baby figures of the giant mass

Of things to come at large,"

the germs of those qualities which are found in beautiful combination in Wordsworth's "Happy Warrior :"

"The generous spirit who, when brought Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought Upon the plan that pleased his infant thought."

And at this point of view, as we find the Western boy, after the compacting, instructing, developing processes of West Point, coming forth a man, ready for the stern realities of American life, we may pause to point him out to our American youth as an example henceforth to be followed; then, as now, a character which, in the words of a friend, "betrayed no trust, falsified no word, violated not rights, manifested no tyranny, sought no personal aggrandizement, complained of no hardship, displayed no jealousy, oppressed no subordinate; but in whatever sphere, protected every interest, upheld his flag, and was ever known by his humanity, sagacity, courage, and honor." any young man?

What more can be claimed of

General Grant's Class-mates at West Point-Who They Were, and What They Have Done-An Interesting Biographical Series.

General Grant graduated at West Point the twenty-first in his class, June 30, 1843, with thirty-nine class-mates. The grade and brief biography of each is as follows:

The cadet who stood first in the class was William Ben

jamin Franklin, who entered the Topographical Engineer Corps; and having passed through a series of adventures under various commanders was, at the beginning of 1864, the general commanding the Nineteenth Army Corps, in the Department of the Gulf, under General Banks.

The names of the next three graduates do not now appear in the Army List of the United States.

Wm. F. Raynolds ranked fifth in the class, entered the infantry service, and was appointed an aide on the staff of General Fremont, commanding the Mountain Department, with the rank of colonel, from the 31st of March, 1862.

The next graduate was Isaac F. Quinby. He had entered the artillery service, and had been professor at West Point, but had retired to civil life. The rebellion, however, brought him from his retirement, and he went to the field at the head of a regiment of New York volunteers. He afterward became a brigadier-general in the Army of the Potomac.

Roswell S. Ripley, the author of "The War with Mexico," stood seventh; but his name does not now appear in the official Army Register of the United States, as he had attached himself to the rebel cause.

The next graduate was John James Peck, who entered the artillery service, and was, on January 1, 1864, the commander of the district of and army in North Carolina, which then formed a portion of General Butler's Depart

ment.