One day, at Prairie Mound, at
the noon hour a big farmer with red sideburns rode up to the
schoolhouse with a revolver in his hand. Pershing had whipped one of
the farmer's children, and the enraged parent intended to give the
young schoolmaster a flogging.
"I remember how he rode up cursing before all the children in the
schoolyard, and how another boy and I ran down a gully because we were
afraid. We peeked over the edge, though, and heard Pershing tell the
farmer to put up his gun, get down off his horse, and fight like a man.
"The farmer got down and John stripped off his coat. He was only a boy
of seventeen or eighteen and slender, but he thrashed the old farmer
soundly. And I have hated red sideburns ever since."
After several terms of country school teaching, young Pershing saved up
enough money to enter the State Normal School, at Kirksville, Mo. One
of his sisters went with him. He remained there for two terms, doing
his usual good steady work, but was still dissatisfied. He wanted to
get a better education.
About this time he happened to notice an announcement of a competitive
examination in his district for an entrance to West Point. The
soldiering side did not appeal to him, but the school side did.
"I wouldn't stay in the army," he remarked to a friend.
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