![[Original]](#531997727884268533_9318.jpg.id-3147437389101307112.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}
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 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.
![[Original]](#531997727884268533_9319.jpg.id-4464832812605718368.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}
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.