The fairies bestowed upon him treasures of mind and heart, of form, mien, and face, of speech and manners. He was not of the very first rank, as Webster, Toombs, and Lee, who suggest comparison with the Pheidian Zeus, nor was he in the next with Poseidon and Ares. When President Pierce and the members of his cabinet were passing by Princeton, a throng of citizens and students called them out during the stop of the train at the Basin. As we went away it seemed to me that no speech but that of Davis was remembered. Compliments were rained upon him. At last a student from New York State cried, "He's an Apollo!" and all the hearers assented with enthusiasm. This placed him right,--at the head of the Olympians in the third circle. Though he became a very prominent political leader, the choice of a profession made by him was that of a soldier. And that profession was always his first love. His early education, though very deficient and limited, was far superior to that with which Calhoun had to be content until he was eighteen. But Davis had when a boy something which supplies educational defects--a taste for study and a fondness of and access to books. When at the age of thirty-five he made his début in politics he had become really a well-schooled and highly cultured man. He completed his West Point course, graduating in July, 1828. His wife says: "He did not pass very high in his class; but he attached no significance to class standing, and considered the favorable verdict of his classmates of much more importance."[122] He served in the army until June 30, 1835, when he resigned. I will cull from the entertaining narrative of Mrs. Davis certain occurrences of his army life which are characteristic. Reaching a ferry on Rock river in Illinois, in 1831, with his scouts, he found the boat stopped by ice, and the mail coach with certain wagons going to the lead mines waiting on the bank. All the crowd put themselves at his direction. He had the men to cut blocks from the ice for a bridge. Water was poured upon each block as soon as it was laid, and this freezing, the block was kept firmly in its place. Whenever a cutter would fall overboard, he was sent to turn himself round and round before the fire until he was dry and ready to resume work. The bridge was soon finished, and the entire party crossed the river. This incident shows that there was something in Davis's appearance that invited full trust, and that he was unwontedly quick and ingenious in expedient. How he disabled a disobedient soldier of ferocious temper and great size by an unexpected blow, and then beat him into complete submission; and how he captivated the other soldiers by announcing that he would not notice the affair officially, illustrates his talent for command.