As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
I enjoy reading old books as the contents are real and true. The problem being in old books that the contents are in another language even when in English. When I read, I keep open a Thesarsus by WordWeb, which is free to me, as I do not have the money to travel by jet as that is one of the questions to keep WordWeb.
It is not that I am dense of the English vocabulary or others, but it is that sometimes the words that a Henry Cabot Lodge uses, who was a bright patrician friend of Theodore Roosevelt, honestly to not exist in a dictionary of both English and American version.
I am currently reading the memoirs of General Phil Sheridan, the dashing little Napoleon sized officer of the American Cavalry. Being short always is stigmatized, but I see nothing in it at all, as size has no condition to success, in tall George Washington has had as many short James Madison, Phil Sheridan or whoever that have been as successful.
Mr. Sheridan's schooling involved, "Pike's Arithmetic and Bullions' English Grammar," which is of interest to me, if not more than him, as most boys decided a swim or going fishing was more appropriate use of time, even if West Point was their finishing school.
He uses words like pedagogue for teacher and macadamize for tarmac or asphalt. This was a large undertaking in Ohio in tarring roads and building canals in the 1840's and is what his father was engaged in, in coming over to America from Ireland.
Of course, he was caught in a bust of a railroad that left him only a small farm, but America was rewarded as Phil Sheridan was the little engine who could and would break Virginia in the Shennendoah during the Civil War.
That is all the education Phil Sheridan acquired to the age of 14, and with a bit of primer, he was off to West Point which seems amazing today in how rigged the educational system is. America was founded on people who were self taught in the greater part and finished themselves.
It seems to have developed a rather vigorous mind, as the General points out it was his Mother's, common sense in his upbringing which afforded the best education.
His first salary at age 14, was as a dispenser of sugar and goods at a store for the munificent salary of 24 dollars a year. Learning his dispensing, he moved up to 60 dollars a year in wages from another shop keeper.
It is hillarious really to see this little boy taken advantage of in being paid 2 dollars a month, and then 5 dollars a month in Ohio.
Davey Crockett was doing better than that starting out on the frontier.
Within a year, Phil Sheridan was offered another job of 120 dollars per year, so 10 dollars per month was his advancement beyond minimum wage.
It was the Mexican War which stirred in Phil Sheridan the thought of being a soldier, and his dream was for West Point. That was about as much as a snowball's chance in Death Valley, but he continued to read, became an expert historian, and when a boy failed his exam, he promptly wrote to his Congressman, reminding the Representative that he had often met Phil in the store, where he now was manageing the books, and so he knew his qualifications, and with that a warrant for the class of 1848.
The General crammed with his schoolteachers, but his biggest problem was he had to by regulations a pair of Monroe Shoes, which he nor anyone else in Ohio knew what they were. The mystery was solved enough by his brother who came upon them in Baltimore by another name, and all was saved in the dress shoes.
The class of 1848 would yield generals in Stanley, Slocum and Crook, the Indian fighter, but this idea of words showing up to confound minds appears to be a constant thing from Monroe Shoes to ideas like "getting the bulge on".
Phil Sheridan would get into a fight with an older cadet and be suspended for a year, but he did graduate number 34 in a class of 52, having started from the bottom of the class.
This graduating group would be led by the much loved James B. McPherson, who dipping his hat to Confederates who ordered him to surrender, turned his horse and was fired upon. Others were John Schofield who commanded the Army of the Ohio and the noted Confederate America, General John B. Hood.
"The reality in life is not how you get there, but just getting there."
-Lame Cherry
It seems that one of the secrets in life is to not be stopped by words from those using them that no one else knows the meaning of and to simply forge ahead, for pedagogue or not, the macadamized road is the smoothest to follow.
In Texas.....
"The bands of wild horses I noticed were sometimes led by mules, but generally by stallions with long wavy manes, and flowing tails which almost touched the ground."
Philip Henry Sheridan. Personal Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan, General, United States Army
That is better than any book learning, that a mule would be chosen to lead a band of wild horses.
agtG
