He had just passed his examinations for the Senior class in July, 1824, when the first great sorrow came. The wise father whom he had grown to love and reverence died in his sixty-eighth year.
His thoughtful Big Brother came in person to tell him and break the blow with new ambitions and new hopes. He had secured an appointment from President Monroe as a cadet to West Point from the State of Mississippi.
And then began the four years of stern discipline that makes a soldier and fits him to command men.
But once in those busy years did the gay spirit within rise in rebellion, to learn wisdom in the bitterness of experience.
With Emile Laserre, his jolly Creole friend from Louisiana, he slipped down to Bennie Haven's on a frolic—taking French leave, of course. The alarm was given of the approach of an instructor, and the two culprits bolted for the barracks at breakneck speed through pitch darkness. Scrambling madly through the woods, there was a sudden cry, a crash and silence. He had fallen sixty feet over a precipice to the banks of the Hudson. Young Laserre crawled carefully to the edge of the rock, peered over and called through the darkness:
"Are you dead, Jeff?"
He was suffering too much to laugh, though he determined to give an Irishman's reply to that question, if it killed him. He managed to wheeze back the answer:
"Not dead—but spachless!"
Many were the temptations of rebellion from the friends he loved in the years that followed, but never again did he yield. Somehow the thing didn't work in his case.
There was one professor who put his decision of obedience to the supreme test. For some reason this particular instructor took a violent dislike to the tall, dignified young Southerner. Perhaps because he was more anxious to have the love of his cadet friends than the approval of his teachers. Perhaps from some hidden spring of character within the teacher which antagonized the firm will and strong personality of the student who dared to do his own thinking. From whatever cause, it was plain to all that the professor sought opportunities to insult and browbeat the cadet he could not provoke into open rebellion.