Doubtless Grant would have made a capital circus-rider, for he appears to have had a taste for daring feats with horses. At five years of age he began to stand up on the bare backs of the horses as he rode them to water to the White Oak River. When he was nine, he would stand on one foot, with the horse at the top of his speed, only holding on by the rein. A neighbor's boy was unfortunately killed in his attempts to keep up with him, though he did not seek to imitate him in his circus proclivities by standing on the back of the animal. Grant was a perfect breaker of horses, for the independent, self-willed creature soon learned that he had a master in the youth; but he would do this kind of business only for his own amusement. He appears to have had an instinctive nobility of character, which would not assimilate with anything like the horse-jockey or the horse-trainer. Though he had a remarkable tact, in his boyhood, for teaching a horse to pace, he regarded it as degrading to follow the art as a calling. While he was always willing to work, and had a just regard for the dignity of labor, he was sensitive about engaging in anything of doubtful utility or questionable respectability. A trick was resorted to by his father to induce him to teach a neighbor's horse to pace: though, in a ride of thirteen miles and back, he accomplished the feat, and returned the animal to the owner a perfect pacer, he discovered the subterfuge of which he had been made the victim, and he would never again train another. At the age of twelve the embryo hero was very small in stature, but he seems to have indulged in big ideas even then. Mr. Grant had a contract to build the Brown County jail, and the little fellow promised to haul all the logs of which the structure was to be composed, if his father would buy a certain large-sized horse, to which the youth had taken a fancy. His father assented, but did not suppose the boy would be able to endure the fatigue for more than a week, and hired a man to take his place when he was worn out. But he did not wear out; he had a habit of never wearing out, for he imparted the firmness and solidity of his will to his slight frame. The hired man followed the team for a few days, and then declared that the boy was more competent than himself to handle the big horse. That hired man reminds me of a certain general who followed Grant around for a time, ready to take his place, or give it to another, thinking the "big horse" was too much for his subordinate to manage, and who finally took the field in person; but he was obliged to acknowledge in the end, as the other hired man had, that Grant could handle the "big horse" better than he could.