General Grant never saw an algebra nor any mathematical work until he went to West Point. He had a great fondness for horses, and was never so happy as when he could be with them. He was an excellent judge of them. When he was but seven he drove his father's horses, hauling all the wood used in the house and shops. When he was fifteen he made a horse trade with a Mr. Payne, at Flat Rock, Kentucky, where he was visiting. The brother of this gentleman was to accompany young Grant back to Georgetown. The boy was told that the horse had never had a collar on (it was a saddle horse), but he hitched it up, and started to drive the seventy miles with a strange animal. The horse ran and kicked, and made the companion horse frightened, and Ulysses stopped them right on the edge of an embankment twenty {309}feet deep. Every time he would start, the new horse would kick and run, until Mr. Payne, who was thoroughly frightened, would not proceed any further in his company, but took passage in a freight wagon. The boy was left alone, but with that faculty for surmounting difficulties which distinguished him in after life, a happy thought struck him--he took out his bandana, a huge handkerchief much used then, and blindfolded the creature, driving him quietly to the house of his uncle in Maysville, where he borrowed another horse. [Illustration: 8318] A laughable incident occurred when he was eight. He saw a colt which he very much coveted, and for which the owner demanded $25. General Grant's father said he would give $20. The boy was so anxious to possess the colt that his father yielded, giving him instructions how to make the bargain. Going to the owner the boy said: “Papa says I may offer you $20 for the colt, but if you won't take that I am to offer $22.50, and if you won't take that, to give you $25.” It is needless to say what he had to pay for the colt. The elder Grant was not poor in the usual sense of the term--on the contrary, he was quite well situated for the time and place. Ulysses was sent to West Point at seventeen; he was quite apt in mathematics, but had no love for military tactics, and resolved {310}not to stay in the army, even if he graduated. He was not brilliant in his class here, either--he says himself that had “the class been turned the other end foremost, I should have been near the head.” He graduated four years after his entrance, No. 21 in a class of thirty-nine. [Illustration: 9319] It was feared at that time that he had the consumption, for he had a bad cough, but his outdoor life entirely removed it. His real name was Hiram Ulysses Grant, but some one made a blunder in making out the document appointing him a cadet, and as U. S. Grant he will be known always.