History of the Life of William Gilpin; A Character Study (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: and brother, he had no difficulty in having his name placed in advance of the hundreds of other applicants. At West Point William studied very hard. Meade and Montgomery Blair were his tutors. He spent much of his time in the library, and gave special attention to French and mathematics. On completing his course at West Point he went to Philadelphia, He was now eager for action. He had been educated almost to death by the brightest intellects in the world, and now he would try the metal of his own mind. For some time past he had read and thought much regarding the great unoccupied West, never loosing an opportunity to converse with those familiar with the subject. Already military forces were on the frontier, stationed at various forts, at once to restrain and protect the Indians and prevent white men from illegally entering their territory. All this was thrilling romance to the young cadet. Some day he would go there; some day he would mingle with those scenes, and would stir up events which in their turn should yet more stir him up, and help him on to high emprise. As there was no fighting at present to be done at home, it occurred to William to try his fortune abroad, and he accordingly slipped over to London. At that time a legion often thousand was forming in England for service in Spain, to fight against Don Carlos and in favor of Isabella, and it was his idea to join this army, learn something of the Spanish language, and the mode of warfare practised there. His third brother was in London at the time, learning engineering, but was about ready to return home. He made application to Colonel Witherell, the recruiting agent for the army in London, and was told he could not get a commission; that the young nobility were applying for positions constantly, and that a mere y...