United States Military Academy West Point - Howitzer Yearbook (West Point, NY)

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complaining of the unwarranted intrusion into the tangled and sacred depths of their pipe-line home. Grim malaria besieged the line of the Hudson, and this being its strongest point, was longest invested, strong men were laid low and forced to spend whole weeks in the Hotel Dieu, and enough quinine was absorbed to make the welkin ring. The camp was like all first-class camps-foggy reveilles, boiling and baking drills Qthe cooking schoolj, concerts, hops, spoons, and astronomy I In all probably more was lost than gained, for sad havoc was played with hearts, Xmas leaves, class rings, and ff previous engagements. ' September Ist was looked for longingly, for we knew it would be the beginning of the end, and finally after long, wasting days, packed full of drills and imprecations Qfor storm clouds never lowered even on the artificial horizonj, the color line drew on apace Qa slow, short pacej, and with it we welcomed back the prodigal sons of '98. Then came H those gray old walls again, the short, but, oh I so pleasant evenings among the oracles of the Dialectic, our chiefipastime foot-ball, and our greatest bug-bear engineering and its drawing. The course from September to january was one awful strain, much stress being brought to bear upon us, especially bythe Ordnance and Engineering departments, but although the usual number of fatalists took Time by the fore-, lock and packed their telescope boxes and shawl straps, their work had to be undone. We are still intact, although the Duke's marital relations are sadly strained. 1 Old '97 was ushered in with fitting ceremonies, and in its first few months we learned to fight great paper battles, successful alike for offense or defense, and every man can now write afive-thousand-word lecture in two hours and a half without suffering from writer's cramp. Unfortunately our Bible presentation came upon 797 days until June, and we were unable to carry out to anywhere near its entirety a programme which in dramatic, operatic, forensic, and terpsichorean effects would have surpassed any- thing yet attempted-by us. As it was, the corps was gorged on peanuts and toothpicks. On April 27th, the birthdayiof our national hero, occurred the great Grant Day parade in New York. The corps was present, and it has never done itself so proud as it did in revering the name of the greatest of its Alumni. I 5.

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'97's last ear. T high noon, june 12th, 1896, we sailed through the golden gate which had been our goal for three long, wearisome years, and found ourselves on the pacitic sea of First-classdoni. How wonderful it seemed! Our -feelings were similar to those of the all-confident Plebe Qbefore he has entered the west sally-port? and we had that large, elevating sensation of conscious greatness and 81 hat which a newly-fledged corporal ex- periences when he sprouts hisuglittering pin feathers. The hampering barracks could not. long contain us, and, after due delibera- tion, it was decided by the authorities to take us into Camp Hooker, where we might have all out doors to move about in. - 1 But how soon do our fondest anticipations come to naught! We all too quickly found that there was more pain than pleasure in the dazzling charm, and, like moths with singed wings, we settled down to the commonplace. Although we rode in the Hrst-class carriage, we found that its wheels turned in the same old rut. Q Of course camp had its diversions, but all through the game, where we pre- ferred hearts, we found our hands full of spades, and enough holes were dug in Fort C1int:on,'fi11ed up, and redug, to make, if continuous,.a short cut to the Antipodes, and always there was the pontoon bridge-of sighs. ' Our morning rides and their attendant elocutionary treats were the inspira- tion which threw us headlong into the capture of Cro' Nest and Long Pond, and far into the night the nioping owl and cooingidove might have been heard T4

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I i I i l P l From our present standpoint we look forward-not over months, but over days, days which seem to drag. But everything has an end. And so fwe judge entirely by the fact that others have graduatedj will this course, a course looked forward to with glorious antici- pations by the embryo cadet, despised and wearisome to the realizer, but always reniernbered with just pride and deep feeling by its graduates for its bitter-sweet and very severity. And what a staff 'twill be on which to leanr in after yearsg the lower quarter emblemizing the miseries of the fourth-class year-crushed into the ground, bearing not only its proportional strain, but also the weight of superincumbent years, the third, second, and most of the first-class years with pressure, slightly lessening on the way up, and finally the whole topped off with the golden head- the climax, capped for us on that day which will be the happiest of our exist- ence-Iune I 1th, 189 7. K j as M lilly X N, I 6