Whistler wished to enter West Point, and he persuaded his half-brother to write Daniel Webster, to enlist his sympathy. The letter was dated February 19, 1851. It referred to the father’s career and services and asked that James be appointed to the Academy. He was appointed by President Fillmore, and entered July 1, 1851, registering from Pomfret, Windham County, Connecticut, where his mother was then living. Whistler was so small in stature and physique that it is surprising he was received; the military record of his family was no doubt the controlling consideration. He possessed all the pugnacity and courage required for a soldier, and the military spirit was strong in him, yet such was his bent towards art that his career at the Academy was not one of glory; but he became very popular with his comrades and probably led in all their mischievous pranks. The official records show that at the end of the first year, in 1852, he stood forty-one in a class of fifty-two,--his standing in the different studies being as follows: Mathematics 47, English studies 51, French 9. At the end of his second year he stood number one in drawing, but was not examined in other studies, being absent with leave on account of ill health. In 1854 his standing was as follows: Philosophy 39, Drawing 1, Chemistry deficient. For his deficiency in chemistry he was discharged from the Academy on June 16, 1854. A lady once asked him why he left the Academy, and he replied: “If silicon had been a gas, madame, I should have been a soldier.” On leaving West Point he took it into his head that Fate had intended him for a sailor, and he tried to enter the Naval Academy at Annapolis, but he could not get the appointment. Through an old friend of the family, Captain Benham, of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, he was employed as draughtsman in that department in Washington from November 7, 1854, to February 12, 1855, at one dollar and a half a day. In these days he signed himself James A. Whistler. His lodgings were in an old house still standing on the northeast corner of E and Twelfth Streets. He was always late to breakfast, and scribbled pictures on the unpapered walls. When the landlord objected, he said: “Now, now, never mind; I’ll not charge you anything for the decoration.” Neither time nor the rules of the department had any terrors for him. Even in those early days he was a law unto himself. In one instance the following entry appears against his name: “Two days absent and two days deducted from monthly pay for time lost by coming late to office.”