The years at West Point did not go by quickly; only the ten weeks of vacation which seemed shorter than one week in school. Sometimes at the academy a great general, like Winfield Scott, came to review the cadets. "With his commanding figure," says young Grant, "his quite colossal size, and showy uniform, I thought him the finest specimen of manhood my eyes had ever beheld, and the most to be envied. I could never resemble him in appearance, but I believe I did have a presentiment, for a moment, that some day I should occupy his place on review--although I had no intention then of remaining in the army. My experience in a horse trade ten years before, and the ridicule it caused me, were too fresh in my mind for me to communicate this presentiment to even my most intimate chum." How often into lives there comes a feeling that there is a specified work to be done by us that no other person can or will ever do! When the years were over at West Point, each "four times as long as Ohio years," young Grant was anxious to enter the cavalry, especially as he had suffered from a cough for six months, and his family feared consumption. Having gone home, he waited anxiously for his new uniform. "I was impatient," he says, "to get on my uniform and see how it looked, and probably wanted my old school-mates, particularly the girls, to see me in it. The conceit was knocked out of me by two little circumstances that happened soon after the arrival of the clothes, which gave me a distaste for military uniform that I never recovered from. Soon after the arrival of the suit I donned it, and put off for Cincinnati on horseback. While I was riding along a street of that city, imagining that every one was looking at me with a feeling akin to mine when I first saw General Scott, a little urchin, bareheaded, barefooted, with dirty and ragged pants held up by a single gallows--that's what suspenders were called then--and a shirt that had not seen a washtub for weeks, turned to me and cried: 'Soldier, will you work? No sir-ee; I'll sell my shirt first!' The horse trade and its dire consequences were recalled to mind. "The other circumstance occurred at home. Opposite our house in Bethel stood the old stage tavern where 'man and beast' found accommodation. The stable-man was rather dissipated, but possessed of some humor. On my return, I found him parading the streets, and attending in the stable, barefooted, but in a pair of sky-blue nankeen pantaloons--just the color of my uniform trousers--with a strip of white cotton sheeting sewed down the outside seams in imitation of mine. The joke was a huge one in the minds of many of the people, and was much enjoyed by them; but I did not appreciate it so highly."