One day, after the Civil War, the two victorious Northern Generals, Ulysses S Grant and William T Sherman were riding along Pennsylvania Avenue when Grant asked his fellow general a question. Sherman relayed, “Grant inquired of me in a humorous way, ‘Sherman, what special hobby do you intend to adopt?’ I inquired what he meant, and he explained that all men had their special weakness or vanity and that it was wiser to choose one’s own than to leave the newspapers to affix one less acceptable, and that for his part he had chosen the ‘horse’, so that when anyone tried to pump him he would turn the conversation to his ‘horse’.”