General Joseph E. Johnson, another Southern leader, was a classmate of his at West Point and gives us this description of him there. "We had the same intimate associates, who thought, as I did, that no other youth or man so united the qualities that win warm friendship and command high respect. For he was full of sympathy and kindness, genial and fond of gay conversation, and even of fun, while his correctness of demeanor and attention to all duties, personal and official, and a dignity as much a part of himself as the elegance of his person, gave him a superiority that every one acknowledged in his heart. He was the only one of all the men I have known that could laugh at the faults and follies of his friends in such a manner as to make them ashamed without touching their affection for him." Lee graduated from West Point with the Class of '29, and the rank of second lieutenant of engineers. His first important move after leaving school was to choose for wife Mary Custis, daughter of George Washington Parke Custis of Arlington, the last branch of the Washington family. Here again the fates linked up the names of Washington and Lee. The two homes at Arlington and Mt. Vernon were only a few miles apart on the Potomac, and as a final link in the chain we find, years after, at the close of his life, Lee giving his last efforts to building up Washington College, which was to be known thereafter as Washington and Lee. When Mary Custis became Mrs. Robert E. Lee there was some disparity in their fortunes. She was the heiress of the Custis estate, while he was drawing only the meager pay of a second lieutenant. But such was her pride and confidence in him, that she turned her back on money and decided to live on her husband's income. It was harsh training for a time, but it fitted her to become a real helpmeet for him; and in the rigorous days of the Civil War she was glad that she had learned early to "do without." One of Lieutenant Lee's first assignments in the engineering corps was the construction of harbor defenses in Hampton Roads. As he labored to make these as strong as possible, he little dreamed that it would be his problem, a quarter of a century later, to study how he might demolish them. From Hampton Roads he was transferred to Washington, and made assistant to the chief engineer--an agreeable change as it brought him close to his wife's home. Mounted on a favorite steed he could easily "commute" back and forth between office and home. On one occasion it is related that he invited a brother officer, Captain Macomb, out home for the night, and as the latter had no mount, Lee took him up behind himself, and down Pennsylvania Avenue they went, saluting other officers whom they encountered, with great glee. That was one time when a commutation ticket was good for two.