hardly in accordance with ordinary usage. He never read a letter on that day, nor posted one; he believed that the Government in carrying the mails was violating a divine law, and he considered the suppression of such traffic one of the most important duties of the legislature. Such opinions were uncommon, even among the Presbyterians, and his rigid respect for truth served to strengthen the impression that he was morbidly scrupulous. If he unintentionally made a misstatement—even about some trifling matter—as soon as he discovered his mistake he would lose no time and spare no trouble in hastening to correct it. 'Why, in the name of reason,' he was asked, 'do you walk a mile in the rain for a perfectly unimportant thing?' 'Simply because I have discovered that it was a misstatement, I could not sleep comfortably unless I put it right.'
"He had occasion to censure a cadet who had given, as Jackson believed, the wrong solution of a problem. On thinking the matter over at home, he found that the pupil was right and the teacher wrong. It was late at night and in the depth of winter, but he immediately started off to the Institute, some distance from his quarters, and sent for the cadet. The delinquent, answering with much trepidation the untimely summons, found himself to his astonishment the recipient of a frank apology. Jackson's scruples carried him even further. Persons who interlarded their conversation with the unmeaning phrase 'you know' were often astonished by the blunt interruption that he did not know; and when he was entreated at parties or receptions to break through his dietary rules, and for courtesy's sake to seem to accept some delicacy, he would always refuse with the reply that he had 'no genius for seeming.' But if he carried his conscientiousness to extremes, if he laid
