In the mimic
warfare of the playground at Brienne Napoleon was master of the
revels. His capacity for command had already been detected; but
neither comrade nor teacher saw beneath the unpromising exterior of
the West Point student a trace of aught save what was commonplace.
And yet there is much in the boyhood of Stonewall Jackson that
resembles the boyhood of Napoleon, of all great soldiers the most
original. Both were affectionate. Napoleon lived on bread and water
that he might educate his brothers; Jackson saved his cadet's pay to
give his sister a silk dress. Both were indefatigable students,
impressed with the conviction that the world was to be conquered by
force of intellect. Jackson, burning his lessons into his brain, is
but the counterpart of the young officer who lodged with a professor
of mathematics that he might attend his classes, and who would wait
to explain the lectures to those who had not clearly understood them.
Both were provincial, neither was prepossessing. If the West Point
cadets laughed at Jackson's large hands and feet, was not Napoleon,
with his thin legs thrust into enormous boots, saluted by his
friend's children, on his first appearance in uniform, with the
nickname of Le Chat Botte? It is hard to say which was the more
laughable: the spare and bony figure of the cadet, sitting bolt
upright like a graven image in a tight uniform, with his eyes glued
to the ceiling of his barrack-room, or the young man, with gaunt
features, round shoulders, and uncombed hair, who wandered alone
about the streets of Paris in 1795.
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