The great General Grant, when a cadet, went through his course at West
Point with one foot out of the Academy and the other in. So curiously
deficient was he in all the arts and sciences which theory insists must
go to make the perfect soldier that he was always in the “Immortals.”
“Immortals” is the name of the section at the foot of the class, admission
to whose profane cult means small marks and the possible privilege of
resigning at the end of the half-year. Immortals is a neat contraction of
“Les Immortals,”--that is, lazy mortals. Immortal Grant became, but not
in the way the academic reports of the time would have indicated.
This has proved true again and again among the graduates of the Naval
Academy, as well as those of West Point. Though the “child is father to
the man” in general tendencies and character, it does not follow that
mere mental attainments are an indication of great genius in the practical
operation of the great military professions. Works of the brain and works
of the body and spirit are two things; and though the finely-ordered mind
controls to a degree both body and spirit, no such mechanism can ever
accomplish great deeds in which heart and spirit are needed, though it
may plan the details with a nicety to challenge criticism. A combination
of all these qualities is rare, for the bookworm is seldom an enthusiast
on any subject which gets very far away from his theories.