Owen Wister, Ulysses S. Grant

[18] a comrade, Henry Coppee. “His picture rises before me . . . in the old torn coat, 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 anything.” Here is testimony to that mental indolence, or torpor, which pervaded his nature; and he gives more himself. “I rarely read over a lesson the second time. . . . I read all of Bulwer's, . . . Cooper's, Marryat's, Scott's, Washington Irving's works, Lever's, and many others that I do not now remember.” His letters home show an appreciation of natural scenery, and this he seems always to have had.

During his furlough at home after two years at the Academy it is narrated by Richardson that, “in accordance with an agreement between himself and classmates to abstain from liquor for a year, he steadily refused to drink with his old friends. The object of the cadets was to ”