Cadet Days. A Story of West Point

"Did he teach you that salute?"

"No, sir," stammered Geordie.

"Where did you learn it?"

"Among the soldiers, sir, in the garrison."

"Ah, yes, I've heard of your case. That'll do, sir."

Back in his room Pops found his three comrades in excited discussion. Something tremendous had happened. While Geordie, obedient to his orders, had gone to report to the cadet officer, Frazier, exulting in his knowledge of the Point, had persuaded Connell to trust himself to his guidance and go out for a walk. For half an hour after returning from supper the new cadets were allowed release from quarters, and permitted to visit each other and stroll about the grounds as they might see fit, but were cautioned not to venture over towards camp. The Graduating Class had now been gone, with the happy furlough men, an entire week. The rest of the corps, the new First and Third Classes, had marched into their summer quarters over across the cavalry plain, among the beautiful trees south of old Fort Clinton. The new cadets, still in the garb of civil life, were "herded together," as the old cadets expressed it, at the barracks, and thither the older cadets now were forbidden to go. Except in the mess-hall, three times a day, they were seen, therefore, only by their barrack instructors and their squad drill-masters. As a result of this plan the wholesale system of hazing, plaguing, and tormenting that prevailed at the Point some thirty years ago was wellnigh prevented. Not so, however, the impulse. Just so long as human nature remains as it is and has been since creation, "boys will be boys," and rare indeed are the boy-natures which know not the longing to play tricks upon new-comers, especially at school or college. Even among mature men the impulse lingers. Added, therefore, to the line of demarcation mentioned in the interest of discipline between the plebe and the upper-class man there ever exists the temptation to have sport at the expense of the new-comers, and only by most stringent measures has the spirit been controlled to the extent that it is.

So long as Geordie and his comrades kept to the neighborhood of the barracks, however, they were safe. A few of their number had been run up into the rooms of the yearlings the day before camp, where they were instantly surrounded by a frantic mob of young fellows mad with exultation at being at last released from plebehood, and eager to try on the new boys the experiments lavished on them a twelvemonth previous. The officer in charge caught sound of the affair, however, and made instant descent upon the division, only, of course, to find the suspected room deserted, and all the others crowded by old cadets, and the only faces that looked in the faintest degree conscious of guilt or wrong were those of the luckless plebes themselves, who, cautioned against entering the barracks of the elders, were nevertheless caught in the act, and could never explain any more than they could help their presence on dangerous and forbidden ground.

Benny Frazier was loud in his ridicule of Winn, who was one of the party entrapped. No yearling and no squad or party of yearlings could get him where he didn't mean or wish to go, he frequently said; and for no other reason than that he had been officially warned to keep away from camp had Benny become possessed with the longing to cruise thither. Old cadets couldn't cross sentry posts and nab them, he argued. "We'll just aggravate them by coming so near, and yet keeping aloof." Poor, crestfallen, indignant Benny! He and Connell had sallied forth, had gone strolling over the plain and along the south side of camp, between the field battery and the tents, had smilingly declined the eager invitation of the yearlings, who crowded down along the post of the sentry on Number Five, urging them to enter and make themselves at home. In the consciousness of his superior wisdom Benny had even ventured upon an expressive gesture with his thumb at the tip of his nose, his fingers wiggling in air. Poor boy! There were instant and stentorian shouts for the corporal of the guard. Down at a run from the guard-tent came a patrol. Eager hands pointed the way; eager voices clamored for their arrest. Benny and Connell were surrounded in an instant. Glistening bayonets were levelled at their throbbing hearts. "March!" was the order, and amid the jeers and rejoicing of a hundred young scamps in gray and white the two poor plebes were sternly marshalled to the guard-tents, and into the awful presence of the cadet officer of the day, charged with having disobeyed the sentinel's order not to pass between the guns, and, far worse, of having made insulting gestures to a sentry in the solemn discharge of his duty. It was an impressive moment. There stood the stern young cadet captain in his tall plume and crimson sash and gold-laced sleeves, astounded at the effrontery of these young yet hardened reprobates.

"Is this possible?" he demanded, slowly, impressively. "Who and what are you who have dared to insult the sacred office of the sentinel, the soldier to whose lightest word even the commander-in-chief must show respect? Who and what are you?"

"We didn't mean any harm," whimpered Benny. "We're only new cadets."

"What!"

And here every one in the surrounding group – officer of the day, officer of the guard, corporals and privates, awed spectators – all fell back into attitudes expressive of horror and dismay.

"What!" exclaimed the cadet captain. "Are you mad? Mad!" he continued. "Is it credible that you, chosen by the deluded Representatives of your States to represent a proud community in an honorable profession – you dared to signalize your admission here by one of the most flagrant offences known to military law? Send at once for the Superintendent, Officer of the Guard. This is beyond my powers. Into the guard-tent with them! Batten down the walls. Station sentries at each side, Mr. Green. Put two of your most reliable men at the door, with orders to shoot them dead if they stir a muscle. Orderly, go at once for the commandant, and warn the officers that mutiny has broken out among the new cadets."

And so in another instant the luckless boys were bundled into the guard-tent, with bristling bayonets at every opening, with sentries on every side discussing in awe-inspiring tones the probable fate of the mutineers. And here might they have been held in limbo for hours had not Cadet Corporal Loring found them absent at inspection, and learned from Mr. Winn, sole representative of the quartet, that Frazier had invited Connell to take a walk, and shrewdly suspecting that they had been trapped over at camp, had reported matters to Mr. Merrick, his immediate superior, and was sent over to the rescue. Of course, on hearing the nature of their crime, he too was properly shocked, and could find no words to express his consternation. All the same, he got them out of the guard-tent and over to barracks before the army officer on duty as commandant of new cadets happened in, and had barely time to get them to their room before that gentleman came to inquire if their charges were all safe for the night. Pops found Connell grievously alarmed, but Frazier was only loudly indignant.

"All I'm afraid of is that now I won't get in the first squad to have muskets," he said. "We were going to have 'em in the morning."

But when morning came it was Geordie, not Frazier, who was put in the first squad, and Benny couldn't understand it. He who had been the best soldier of the high-school cadets was left behind.

CHAPTER IV

Drill, drill, drill! Up with the dawn, rain or shine; hurrying through their soldier toilets; rushing down the iron stairways and springing into rigid attention in the forming ranks; sharply answering to the rapidly called roll; scattering to their rooms to "spruce up" for inspection; sure of reprimand if anything went amiss, sure of silence only if all were well. Sweeping and dusting; folding, arranging, and rearranging each item of their few belongings; stumbling over one another's heels at first, yet with each succeeding day marching to meals with less constraint and greater appetite; spending long hours of toil and brief minutes of respite; twisting, turning, wrenching, extending, developing every muscle, most of them hitherto unsuspected and unknown; bending double, springing erect, roosting on tiptoe, swaying forward, backward, sideways, every ways; aching in every bone and joint, sore in every limb, yet expected to stick to it through thick and thin, until as days wore on and pains wore off, and all that was sore, stiff, and awkward grew little by little to be supple, easy, and alert. Wondrous indeed is the transformation wrought in two weeks of such drill under such drill-masters. The 1st of July arrived; George Graham and his fivescore plebe comrades had now spent a fortnight under surveillance and discipline strict and unrelenting as that of the days of grim old Frederick the Great, except that it tolerated no touch of the corporal's cane, no act of abuse. Sharp, stern, fiercely critical were the young cadet instructors, but after the first few days of soreness the native elasticity returned to both body and soul, the boys began to take heart again, and a spirit of rivalry to develop between the drill squads.

To Geordie the hours of soreness of spirit had been few as those of physical suffering. His years of life among the soldiers had prepared him for much that he had to encounter, and pride and pluck sustained him when wearied by the drills or annoyed by the sharp language of his instructors. But with poor Benny Frazier all was different. A pet at home, and the brightest scholar of the high-school of his native city; moreover, the boy officer of the high-school battalion, of whom it was confidently predicted that "He would need no drilling at all at West Point"; "He'd show those cadet fellows a thing or two they never dreamed of" – it was gall and wormwood to his soul to find himself the object of no more consideration at the Point than the greenest "country jake" from Indiana or Dakota; and to Benny's metropolitan mind anything from either Western commonwealth could be nothing but green. What made matters worse for Frazier was the fact that his father and mother had accompanied him to the Point on his arrival, and with pardonable pride, but mistaken zeal, had sought to impress upon the minds of such officers, cadets, and relatives of other plebes as they chanced to meet the story of Benny's manifold excellences as soldier and scholar – oft-told tales of how General This or Professor That had declared him the most accomplished young captain they had ever seen. Then poor Mrs. Frazier, who had pictured for her beloved boy a reception at the hands of the authorities in which gratification, cordiality, and respect should be intermingled, was simply aghast to find that he must take his stand with his fellows at the bottom of the ladder. Luckily for Benny, his parents' stay was limited to three days. Unluckily for Benny, they remained long enough to see him at his first squad drill, side by side with two unmistakably awkward boys, and faring but little better. Such was her grief and indignation that the good lady declared to acquaintances at the hotel that her boy should be drilling that horrid little martinet instead of being drilled by him – and such speeches are sure of repetition. Before Benny was a week older he was known throughout the battalion as "the plebe who had come to drill the corps of cadets," and nothing could have started him worse. One can only conjecture what the fond but unwise mother would have said could she have seen, a fortnight later, that boys who had never drilled at all – had never handled a musket – were grouped in the first squad, and making rapid and soldierly progress, while Benny was still fretting and fuming in the lower one. Yet what was so inexplicable and inexcusable in her eyes was perfectly plain and simple to those acquainted with the facts.

All over the Union now are military schools and National Guard organizations in which the drill regulations of the regular army are well taught and understood; but, on the other hand, there are many schools and communities in which the strictly business system of instruction insisted upon among all progressive soldiers has been neglected in favor of something showy, catchy, pretty to look at, and utterly useless and unserviceable except for spectacular purposes; and as ill-luck would have it, Benny had been taught all manner of "fancy drill" movements utterly at variance with those he was now to learn; and so, poor boy, the nerves and muscles long schooled in one way of doing things were perpetually tripping him in his efforts to master another – he had to unlearn so much before he could learn even a little. The green boys, on whom he looked with such pity at the start, knowing no wrong methods, were speedily far ahead of him in acquiring the right.

And so the boy who had entered with the highest hopes and expectations was now low on the soldier list and lowest in his mind. But for his father's hard common-sense, Benny Frazier would have been only too glad to resign and get out of it all and go home, as other disappointed boys have done, and declare West Point a hotbed of narrow prejudice, of outrageous partiality, and unbridled injustice; and Benny's mother would have honestly believed every word of it. Connell, too, was ready to sympathize with Frazier, and confidentially to agree with him that Pops, the youngest of the four room-mates, owed his rise to the first squad entirely to the fact that his father was an officer; but when four more boys were added to the first squad, and Connell was one of them, he changed his views, and decided that only merit governed those matters, after all. He began to pluck up heart, too, for he and Graham were among the first to be marched over to the commissary's to try on the new gray fatigue uniforms, and Mr. Loring's squad all appeared in shell jackets and trousers before Winn and Frazier had cast off their civilian garb.

By July 1st, however, all were in fatigue dress, and consolidated in half a dozen squads for drill purposes. By this time, too, they could march to and from the mess-hall in stiff but soldierly fashion; and still, hour after hour, the relentless drills went on. Only on Saturday afternoons and on the long, beautiful, peaceful Sundays was there really time and opportunity for rest; and still the new cadets were kept carefully secluded from the old, seeing little or nothing of the battalion, except as, with its quick elastic step and its glistening white uniform, with the brave young faces looking browner every day under their snowy helmets, with drums and fifes playing their lively quicksteps, the little column came marching down the shaded road, and the plebes were drawn up in solid ranks until their future comrades should pass by, and, springing up the mess-hall steps, give room for them to follow.

Pops wrote his first long letter home the second Sunday after passing the entrance examination, and this is something of what he said:

"We have lived together now just fourteen days, Frazier and Connell, Winn and I, and are getting along pretty well. Of course we may be scattered as soon as we get in camp, for Winn is tall, and will be put in A or D company. Connell wants to live with his statesman, Mr. Foster, in B. If Frazier and I get into the same company we will tent together, most likely. He asked me to, and said he could fix it. We got our fatigue uniforms Thursday, Connell and I, and were almost the first, too, because of being in Mr. Loring's squad for drill. He is very sharp and severe, and some of our class don't like him a bit; but thus far we get along all right. I'm so pleased to be in the first squad to get rifles I don't mind his manner. Of course it helped a good deal knowing the manual of arms, but they're a heap stricter here. [Pops would drop into frontierisms at times.] If a thumb or finger is a bit out of place, the corporal makes more row about it than Sergeant Feeny would over a recruit's coming out for guard with a dirty kit.

"I guess Frazier wishes he hadn't been so fresh [more slang, Pops] at first. He was captain in the high-school cadets and head of his class, and rather held over our boys about the drill at first; said he knew it all, and showed his school medals for best-drilled soldier, etc.; but Mr. Loring gave him fits, and put him under Mr. Flint, who drilled me the first few days, and is as ugly and stern as he can be. Frazier tried to make us believe the cadets were drilling him wrong; but when he showed us how they did it where he came from I knew it was he who was wrong; and he's had a lot of trouble, and wanted to resign and quit, but his father wouldn't let him. He's getting on a little better now, and says he'll be all right as soon as we are at our studies in the fall. I guess he will, for he's been clear through algebra and geometry and trigonometry, has been in France two years, and speaks French perfectly, and we all think he's sure to be head of the class, if he doesn't get disgusted; but he does that pretty easy. Connell is slower, but has been well taught in the public schools. Winn is a big, tall fellow from 'Kentuck,' as he calls it – good-natured and jolly. He's been to college, and is nearly twenty; so is Connell; and Frazier is eighteen, but a regular boy. He was awfully disgusted at a trick the old cadets played on him last week; and they got hold of some story about his thinking he ought to be drilling them instead of their drilling him, and I expect he'll have a tough lesson when we go into camp, where they can get at us and have fun. Don't expect any long letters like this, mother dear, when once we are there, for there won't be any undisturbed hours, as there are here in barracks this lovely Sunday afternoon. I've been thinking of all you said to-day, and tried to fix my thoughts on the service and the sermon in church; but they would go with my eyes along the row of cadet officers, who always sit in the centre aisle and at the end of the pews, and I found myself wondering what each one was like, and whether the time would really ever come when I, too, would wear the handsome chevrons and sash. I could see just where Mr. McCrea must have sat when he was cadet captain of Company C. It must have seemed such a 'come down' to go out into the world and be nothing but a Second Lieutenant, whom anybody could rank out of quarters and everybody order around. And yet that's what I hope to do after four years – four long, long years of hard work; and there isn't a happier, hopefuler boy in creation than this particular plebe. But you just ought to see how blue most of them are!

"You asked me not to use tobacco, and I won't. It is forbidden in the corps, but lots of them do it. Frazier has a hard time. He has been smoking cigarettes two years, he says, though his mother doesn't know it, and he had a lot in his trunk when he came, but had to turn them all over to the old cadets. Winn chews. He says they all did at his home. But Mr. Merrick made him surrender his tobacco – all he had; but it's easy enough to get more at the Falls. Frazier says all you've got to do is to pay some servant or drummer-boy. He has money in plenty, for his mother supplied him. They are rich, I believe, and Frazier says his father deposited two hundred dollars with the treasurer to start with, instead of the one hundred required. Some boys haven't that, and couldn't get it. Connell said he worked after hours for six months to raise enough to bring him here, and had fifty dollars to hand the treasurer. It hurts me to think how you and father must have pinched and denied yourselves to raise the money to send me all the way, and to pay all these expenses and the one hundred dollars deposit. I know now why father couldn't afford the new uniform he so much needed this year, and I don't know what you must have given up; but I love you, and don't mean to let myself think how I envy Buddie this minute, that he is there where he can hear your voice and see your face and touch and kiss you."

But here Pops's eyes began to fill, and the letter had to be put aside. He was glad of the loud, ringing summons on the ground-floor, "New cadets, turn out promptly!" and just dashing his hand across his eyes, went bounding down the stairs to take his station in the ranks.

And then came the momentous day of their move into camp. All were now in complete fatigue uniform, many thoroughly drilled, all passably so, and all eager to get into the battalion, and figure, in their own eyes at least, as old cadets. Right after reveille roll-call on the morning of the 2d of July they were bidden to stow the last of their civilian clothing in their trunks, carry the trunks to the store-rooms, roll their bedding into convenient bundles, and be ready to move the moment breakfast was over. By half-past six the cavalry plain, as the turfless eastern half of the broad open plateau is termed, was covered with a long straggling procession of plebes, bearing their burdens over to the lively and excited camp. They had been sized the night before, the taller half of the class being assigned, as was then the custom, to the flank companies of the battalion, while Pops and Connell were told off into Company B, the right centre or color company. Frazier, always luckless, as he said, was one of the plebes assigned to C Company, and for a time it looked as though Pops were to lose his prospective tent-mate. But Mr. Merrick, in brief official tones, announced that exchanges would be permitted except from flank to centre companies, and Frazier presently found a meek little fellow named Willis who said it made no difference to him which company he went to, so he crossed over and took Frazier's place in the C squad, and thus it happened that when they trudged across the sentry post at Number Six, and were directed to deposit their bundles in Company B's bustling street, Pops and Frazier were once more together. Already Geordie was beginning to doubt the wisdom of the arrangement, but he had given his promise to tent with Benny, and would keep it. All along among the tents the yearlings could be seen indulging in pantomime, expressive of the liveliest delight at these accessions to the ranks. Pops could see them pointing out Frazier, and hear exclamations: "There's the plebe that ought to be drilling the corps," "Major-General Frazier," etc., and low laughter and chuckles. But all this was done covertly; for Lieutenant Allen, the army officer commanding the company, was standing close at hand with Cadet Captain Leonard, supervising the assignment of tents. Mr. Merrick had handed the cadet captain a list of names of those assigned to his company, twenty-eight in all, and that young soldier was now keenly looking over his new men. Pops, saying nothing to anybody, was standing quietly by his bundle of bedding waiting for orders; but Frazier, who had more "cheek," as Connell expressed it, and less discretion, did not hesitate to step up to Lieutenant Allen, and say, "Mr. Graham and I would like to tent together, sir."

The officer turned. "Which is Mr. Graham?" he asked. "Call him here."

And so in another moment Pops found himself standing attention to his company commander and instructor.

"I am told you wish to tent with Mr. Frazier. Is that the case?"

Geordie colored. The question was so pat and what soldiers call point-blank. He could not truthfully say that he really wished to share Frazier's fortunes as a tent-mate. In the pursuance of the policy he had mapped out for himself he would rather have lived with some one less likely to be the recipient of much attention from the old cadets – some one less apt to be perpetually saying or doing something to invite their especial efforts. Mr. Allen saw his hesitancy, and spoke kindly.

"If you think of any one else you would rather tent with, I presume that it can be arranged."

"No, sir," answered Geordie, finding voice at last. "I had thought of no one else. I promised Mr. Frazier."

"Very well, sir. Mr. Leonard, put this young gentleman and Mr. Frazier in the same tent – two more with them. Have you any choice, Mr. Graham?"

"No, sir."

And then again appeared Frazier, eager to speak. "Connell and Foster, sir, would like to tent with us."

The cadet officer looked interrogatively at his superior. Mr. Allen briefly nodded.

"Take that one, then," said Mr. Leonard, shortly, indicating a vacant tent on the south side of the company street, at about the middle of the row.

"Come on, boys," said Frazier, eagerly, assuming the leadership of his squad as though by vested right, and then was brought up standing by the voice of his young captain.

"Mr. Frazier," said he, "the first lesson you have to learn is that very new cadets should only be seen, not heard; and when you are heard, sir, don't again allude to members of the corps of cadets of the United States Army as boys. You are here to be men, if it's in you. If it isn't, you're apt to get out of it, sir."

And with this withering welcome to his company, poor Frazier was permitted to go.

"That's another young snob, that fellow Leonard!" he confided to his comrades, in low tone, as they were depositing their few goods and chattels in their eight-by-ten domain. "I'll pay him off for that yet, see if I don't." Whereat Pops and Connell exchanged glances and grins.

It took little time to arrange their canvas home in the prescribed military order. Pops was a veteran campaigner, and had slept in many a tent or bivouac in the Far West, so the quarters that struck his comrades as crowded were almost palatial to him. When they placed their loads in front of it at six forty-five, all they saw was a trimly-pitched wall-tent, the walls themselves neatly looped up so as to allow the air to circulate freely, the tent and its "overcoat," or fly, both stretched taut and smooth, without crease or wrinkle, a square, smooth, six-inch-high platform or floor covering the ground from front tent pole almost to the one in rear. An elongated wooden box painted dark green, divided into four compartments, with lids opening at the top, extended almost from front to rear of the platform on the west side of the tent. This was to be their chest of drawers. A wooden rod hung about eighteen inches under the ridge-pole; this was to be their wardrobe, and of other furniture there was none. Under the brief instruction of a cadet corporal they began with the rudiments of their military house-keeping. First, their four big double blankets were folded in a square very nearly four feet across, and with the folded edges to the front and inside, accurately piled one upon the other. Then the four pillows in their white cases were evenly laid upon the blankets. Then the four comforters or quilts, folded like the blankets, were evenly laid on top, edges vertical, and that was the way in which the beds were made up every morning after reveille. The pile thus formed occupied the corner of the floor opposite the locker or chest of drawers at the back of the tent. The locker was the name given the dark green chest, and the "locker" had neither lock nor key. Under the supervision of the cadet corporal the plebe quartet contributed the items necessary to their summer house-keeping. A looking-glass, sixteen by twelve, in a plain wooden frame, was hung on the front tent pole, tilted a trifle forward at the top. A water-bucket was deposited at the front edge of the platform close to the locker. A washbowl, bottom outward, was leaned against the front edge of the platform close to the bucket. A soap-dish was on the platform behind the basin. Candlestick, candles, cleaning materials, etc., were deposited in a cylindrical tin box that stood at the foot of the rear tent pole behind the base of the arm-rack.

The four rifles, barrels to the front, were stood erect, the butt of each in its wooden socket at the back of the floor, the muzzle poked through a hole in the wooden shelf fastened about four feet from the ground on the rear tent pole. The white webbing belts, supporting the cartridge-box and bayonet-scabbard, were hung on pegs projecting from the wooden shelf. Shoes, "neatly blacked and dusted at all times," were aligned at the back of the floor, toes to the front. Such books as were allowed were piled on the floor at the back end of the locker. All woollen uniforms, overcoats, rubber coats, etc., were to be hung on the hanging-pole. All white trousers, sheets, underclothing, collars, cuffs, gloves, etc., to be stored, each man's in his own locker. Brushes, combs, shaving utensils were stuck in loops tacked on the inside of each lid. The black full-dress shakos were, when procured, to be neatly placed on the shelf of the rear pole, ornaments to the front, and forage-caps hung on the owners' pegs. There was a place, howsoever small, for everything, and everything was to be kept in its place.

By the time the first drum was beating for troop parade everything was in spick-span order. The officers had gone about their duties, and a group of yearlings, looking as though each and every one had just stepped from a bandbox, so far as his dress and equipments were concerned, quickly formed in the company ground in front of the newly occupied "plebe hotels," the very imp of mischief grinning in the sun-tanned faces of the younger and more boyish members, but one and all full of the liveliest interest in the appearance of the new-comers and their household affairs. Comment and criticism, advice and suggestions, more or less valuable, were showered on every plebe; but even while silently and good-humoredly submitting to his fire of remarks, Pops could plainly see that no tent was so surrounded as their own. It really seemed as though every Third Class man and many a senior in Company B, reinforced by strong detachments from other companies, had come to claim the acquaintance of Major-General Frazier, and furthermore that the luckless Benny, instead of maintaining good-humored reticence, and speaking only when he had to, was rapidly adding to the array of charges laid at his door by trying to be smart in reply. The sudden batter of the second drum transferred the laughing, chaffing crowd into two silent, statuesque ranks, and for the rest of that momentous hour, while doing his best to give his whole thought to drill and duty, Geordie Graham found himself thinking, "Just won't we catch it to-night!"

CHAPTER V

The dusk of evening had fallen on the Point when the battalion broke ranks, returning from supper. A few minutes later, a hundred strong, came the column of plebes, marching by fours, looking even more than usually sombre now in their suits of gray, contrasting with the white trousers and natty bell-buttoned coatees of the corps, and feeling, doubtless, more than usually solemn in anticipation of the possible experiences ahead of them. First night of plebe camp is a thing not soon to be forgotten, even in these days when pitchy darkness no longer shrouds the pranks of the yearlings, and official vigilance and protection have replaced what really seemed tacit encouragement and consent of over thirty years ago. Then it was no uncommon thing for the new cadet to be dragged out ("yanked," was the expression in vogue) and slid around camp on his dust-covered blanket twenty times a night, dumped into Fort Clinton ditch, tossed in a tent-fly, half smothered in the folds of his canvas home, tumbled by his tormentors about his ears, ridden on a tent pole or in a rickety wheelbarrow, smoked out by some vile, slow-burning pyrotechnic compound, robbed of rest and sleep, at the very least, after he had been alternately drilled and worked all the livelong day. Verily, the hardening process of the early sixties was a thing that might well be frowned down upon and stamped out, but it took stringent measures to effect it. In great measure the deviling system was, so far as its most harmful features were concerned, but the ghost of its old self when Ralph McCrea entered the Academy just after the Centennial year. Then little by little means were taken to make the process still more difficult to the perpetrators, until twenty years after the War of the Rebellion hazing became indeed hazardous. Officers were kept on duty and on the alert in camp at all hours. Gas-lamps were placed along the sentry post. In every way the authorities could foresee the plebe was protected from the more active torment of the old days. But so long as boys will be boys some modification must exist; and as for the year of probation which the new-comer must pass – the year in which he is taught in every conceivable way that he is a creature far apart from the rest of the corps, a being to be drilled, trained, disciplined, badgered, even at times bullied – it is really a year of most valuable experiences, perhaps the most valuable of the four. It is this that teaches him that no matter what may be the wealth or social standing of his relatives, he is no better than the humblest clodhopper of his class. It is this year that teaches him to look to his own class-mates and no others for comrades and chums. It is this that teaches him silence, patience, and fortitude. Nine out of ten of the plebes and their relatives pronounce it inhuman and barbarous so long as it applies to them or theirs. Ninety-nine out of a hundred, however, uphold it so soon as their plebehood is done.