He was a leader in athletic sports.

He was a great horseman, and often rode as a jockey for his uncle in the horse races which the open-air Virginians loved so well, and in which they indulged so much.

He could cut down a tree or run a saw-mill, or drive four horses to a wagon, or seek deer through the mountains with the sturdiest hunter of them all.

And upon top of this vigorous boyhood had come the long and severe training at West Point, the most thorough and effective military school the world has ever known.
Harry did not wonder, as he looked at his general, that he could dare and do so much.

He might be awkward in appearance, he might wear his clothes badly, but the boy at ten years had been a man, doing a man's work and with a man's soul.