'All officers to retain their side arms'; and the problem was solved
and Lee kept his sword, and Grant went down to posterity, not perhaps a
fine gentleman, but a great one."

Napoleon, who of all men of mighty deeds after Julius Caesar had the
greatest intellect, was a tireless reader, and since he needed only
four or five hours' sleep in twenty-four he found time to read in the
midst of his prodigious activities. Nowadays those of us who are
preparing to conquer the world are taught to strengthen ourselves for
the task by getting plenty of sleep. Napoleon's devouring eyes read far
into the night; when he was in the field his secretaries forwarded a
stream of books to his headquarters; and if he was left without a new
volume to begin, some underling had to bear his imperial displeasure.
No wonder that his brain contained so many ideas that, as the sharp-
tongued poet, Heine, said, one of his lesser thoughts would keep all
the scholars and professors in Germany busy all their lives making
commentaries on it.

In Franklin's "Autobiography" we have an unusually clear statement of
the debt of a man of affairs to literature: "From a child I was fond of
reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid
out in books. Pleased with the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' my first
collection was of John Bunyan's works in separate little volumes.... My
father's little library consisted chiefly of books on polemic divinity,
most of which I read, and have since often regretted that, at a time
when I had such a thirst for knowledge, more proper books had not
fallen in my way, since it was now resolved that I should not be a
clergyman. 'Plutarch's Lives' there was in which I read abundantly, and
I still think that time spent to great advantage. There was also a book
of De Foe's, called an 'Essay on Projects,' and another of Dr.