"Not I. My school-days were very few when I was a boy. My father regularly sent me, and paid my tuition bills, but I as regularly played truant. I ran wild in the woods of my native Indiana as free and happy as the squirrels and rabbits, which scarcely took the trouble to keep out of my pathway, so accustomed to my presence did they become. I hunted, fished, staid in the woods, and slept with my dog, and came out as strong and healthy as an oak sapling, without the least idea that I was laying the foundation for the constitution which could in later years withstand the hardships and exposures of camp and field. Health was so absolute it was not thought of." "You must, however, have been fond of books." "Passionately so. I read every moment that I was still. In my runaway journeys through the woods I always carried a book in my pocket. I both read and remembered. My education, such as it is, is due to my father's excellent library, and the freedom with which I browsed at will upon the wholesome pastures of good old English literature." "Doubtless you had certain favorite volumes." "Yes. _Plutarch's Lives_ was and is the work which had most influence upon me. Even yet, at the age of sixty-seven, when I grow drowsy and my ambition seems to fail, I pick up my old companion, and an hour with him restores me to myself." "How did you first come to think of writing?" Another smile of amusement over the recollections of those crude boyish days, and the General replied: "My first literary effort was made in a society of lads near my own age, of which I was a member when about sixteen. Berry Sulgrove, once editor of the Indianapolis _Journal_, was president, and assigned each one his part in our weekly meetings--a speech, essay, story, or poem. I was ordered to write a story. I undertook a love-tale of the crusades of the tenth century, in weekly instalments, with the title of 'The Man-at-Arms.'" "Can you recall the plot of the tale?"