Assistant professors at West Point are all officers of the army, supposed to be selected for their special fitness for the particular branch of study they are assigned to teach.

The answer from Professor Church was entirely satisfactory, and no doubt I should have been detailed a year or two later but for the Mexican War coming on.
Accordingly I laid out for myself a course of studies to be pursued in garrison, with regularity, if not persistency.

I reviewed my West Point course of mathematics during the seven months at Jefferson Barracks, and read many valuable historical works, besides an occasional novel.

To help my memory I kept a book in which I would write up, from time to time, my recollections of all I had read since last posting it.

When the regiment was ordered away, I being absent at the time, my effects were packed up by Lieutenant Haslett, of the 4th infantry, and taken along.