Ulysses S. Grant

On his way to a reception held in his honor, Ulysses S. Grant got caught in a shower and offered to share his umbrella with a stranger walking in the same direction. The man said he was going to Grant’s reception out of curiosity; he had never seen the general. “I have always thought that Grant was a much overrated man,” he said.

“That’s my view also,” Grant replied.

Quoted in The Little Brown Book of Anecdotes, Reader’s Digest, October, 1994, p. 142