Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 95, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 May 1917 — SUPERSTITION OF GEN. GRANT [ARTICLE]

SUPERSTITION OF GEN. GRANT

ilttten Commander Believed It Bad Luck to Turn and Retrace Hie Steps. The country folk in the vicinity of Grant’s boyhood home were as superstitious as was the general run of rural people in that day. One thing grew out of these notions that fixed itself permanently in the mind of the youthful Grant that had, no doubt, marked effect on his later life. He says that he came firmly to believe that it meant bad luck for one to turn round and retrace his steps when on a journey. One might, with impunity return home without reaching his intended destination, but he must do it by another road —not the same one he traveled in going. This feeling may have had something to do with his entrance at West Point. It is commonly known that his appointment was not of his choosing, but that of his father. Grant himself hung back and had to be pressed to go to the academy. Even after he was well on his way—at Philadelphia and New York—he sincerely hoped that some accident might happen that would make his return imperative. But he would not turn round and retrace his steps. The feeling seems to have grown gradually into set rule with him that after having set out to go anywhere, or to do anything, he must go to the end of the thing, and there must be no such thing as turning back. That was characteristic of his course In the Civil war when he rose to positions in which he had supreme decisions to make. The only time in his life when he seemed near to breaking in on this rule was when, after the Mexican war, he decided to resign from the army and change the whole course of his life up to that time. But for the Civil war that called him back, it is likely that he would hardly have been heard from again.