Wednesday’s column, promised last week in my Reading Log post, is about General Grant’s autobiography. It’s also kind of about procrastination, obligation and guilt, as the book was assigned for a college class in 1986 but never read until now. And maybe it’s a little bit about favorite teachers.

By the way, for space reasons, I cut a couple of stories despite loving them both. This picks up after the paragraph about some of his asides involving his early schooling and his proposal of marriage:

He tells a funny story on himself at age 8. Following his father’s strict instructions, the future president offers a price for a neighbor’s horse: “Papa says I may offer you $20 for the colt, but if you won’t take that, I am to offer $22.50, and if you won’t take that, to offer $25.”

Politically, Grant asserts that changing circumstances a century after the U.S. Constitution mean that one shouldn’t rely too much on the framers’ intent.

“The instantaneous transmission of messages around the world by means of electricity,” Grant writes concerning the telegraph, “would probably at that day have been attributed to witchcraft or a league with the Devil.”