No Butter for Breakfast.

Otago Witness, Issue 2815, 26 February 1908, Page 91

No Butter for Breakfast.

"When I was a boi," eaid General Grant. "m\ mother one morning found herself without butter for breakfast, and sent mo to borrow some from a neighbour. Going- jnto the house without knocking, I o\ei heard a letter read from the son of a neighbour who was then at West Point, stating that he had failed in examination and was coming- home. I got the butter, took it home, and without waiting for breakfast ran to the office of the Congressman for our district. " ' Mr Hammer,' I said, ' will you appoint me to West Point?' " ' No ; Davis is there, and has three yeare to serve.' But suppose he should fail — will you send me?' "Mr Hammer laughed. If he does not go through it is no use for you to try, Uly.' " 'Promise me you will give me the enhance, Mr Hammer, anyhow.' "Mr Hammer promised. The next day the defeated lad came home, and the Congressman, laughing at my sharpness, gave me the appointment. " 'Now,' said Grant, 'it was my mother's being without butter that made me general and president.' " But he was mistaken. It was his own shrewdness to see the chanco and the promptness to seize it that urged him upward. He was resolute and unafraid always; a boy to be trusted and counted upon — sturdy and capable of hard knocks. If he said, "I can do that," he not merely meant that "he would try to do it. but that he had thought his way to the successful ■end of the undertaking. He was an unusually determined boy. and as a man he did not begin on anything until he understood it, and when he began he stuck to it till it was accomplished. — Marden.