St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1901-09-21
GEN. GRANTS OLD DESK.
An Ante-Wartime Relic Packed
Away i'm the Attic of a Cleve-
lxnd ONCE Building.

Packed away in the attic of big
office building here is heavy Old cher
ry wood desk at which Capt. Ulysses
5. Grant, afterward commander of TIE
union armies and president of the
United States, once sat and made not
very fat living in the real estate bust
ness in St. Louis, says the New York
Sun.
The desk is big and old-fashioned
now for modern Office use, and it is
covered with dust and almostforgot-
ten. 1t belongs to A. T. Brewer,
Cleveland lawyer, who got it in part
payment for rent, and he told a re-
porter few days ago how it Travelled
from Grants office to this Cleveland
attic.
Gin 1870" he said, II was young
lawyer just starting, and I rented
part of my Office to life insurance
man named Avery, who came from st.
Louis. He brought with him this old
desk, and when he left my Office he
owed me some rent and he left the desk
in payment, with the understanding
that he was to have the right to redeem
it at any time. That was 80 years ago,
and 1 guess he's dead now.
"He told me all about the desk. Capt.
Grant, when he dabbled in real estate
in St. Louis before the war, had desk
room in Avery's office, and this was his
desk. Avery got it when Grant went to
the war in part payment for rent, as
did later from Avery. He told me
great deal that was interesting about
Grant.
'When he was in the real estate bust
ness the Crimean war was on and
Grant was much more interested in
that than he was in real estate. He
made large maps of the battlefields in
the Crimea, with the positions of the
fighting armies marked on them, and
he used to spend hours over these
maps which he spread out on the top
of this desk. The plumbers in the
allies campaign annoyed him greatly
and he used to tell his friends what
the commanders should have done.
"'Here is the English position he
would say, according to Avery, plant
ing his finger on his map, and here
the French. The Turks are here. Over
here are the Russians. The allies
should not have attacked here; that
was mistake. It was just what the
Russians wanted them to do, for, it
gave them an opening. What the allies
should have done was to feint here to
distract the attention of the Russians
to their flank, and then concentrate
their forces and attack here. In that
way they would have been able to
break through the Russian lines and
crimple them back
'The groups of Grants fellow citi.
zens who listened to these criticisms,
Avery said, used to laugh at the cap
tain's criticisms of the European gen
erals. Probably they remembered
that later. The more in earnest Grant
grew the more amused they were.
Then Grant would see that they
weren't following him and he would
stop.
"He was neither silent nor taciturn
in those days, though. and he paid a
lot more attention to his war maps
than he did to the real estate business.
He seemed wholly absorbed in the
problems in generalship the Crimean
war offered
For many years, Mr.. Brewer says, he
used the old desk himself and he still
keeps it for the sake Df its associa-
lions, but he has no room for it in the
office he now occupies and that's why
it is relegated to the attic among the
discarded and useless furniture piled
under the roof.