United States Naval Academy - Lucky Bag Yearbook (Annapolis, MD)

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down his face in great drops. He thought of those stifling Sunday afternoons, when he poured out his troubles to one who understood, smiled cheerily, and urged him on — his Mother. Then the upper classes came back. Life was mean. There were things that he did, and had done to him, that rankled ; but these were hard to remember, for memory of such is short. He remembered pledging himself never to act that way when he was a youngster; and here he smiled a little. He was a youngster once more, a careless happy-go-lucky youngster with never a thought of the morrow. Those glorious rough-houses that began with a wild whoop on the corridor at evening gun-fire, and ended with an involuntary shower bath at taps — the delight of swaggering through the corridors in a bathrobe — those times when the fellows talked shop, sometimes gaily, and other times in a moody spirit — it was good to be one of them — and best of all, the growing ties of friendship that were binding him to his classmates — all came flooding back in memory. He thought of his cruises, and he did not remember the long stretches at sea, the niggardly liberty of one cruise, or its rotten food. No, he recalled the wonderful trip to London, and those never to be forgotten din- ners the ' old crowd had within a stone ' s throw of Trafalgar Square, when laughter and 10

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3 etro£pect NE Spring evening he was sitting at an open window in the smoking room. The day had been hot with the enervating heat of the first warm days. The moist, heavy air ; the droning murmur of music floating across the terrace ; the gaily lighted armory windows ; the big smoky moon mounting slowly above the opposite bank of the Severn ; and the curling smoke from his worn and darkened pipe— all conspired to conjure dreams before his eyes. It was May of his first class year. The work was nearly over. He was taking advantage of the all too short lull before the tear and rush of June Week with its distracting worries of outfitters ' bills and the excitement of Her coming. It was too hot to dance, so he had wandered there to be alone. His thoughts went back to his plebe days, and strangely enough, he thought first of no less a prosaic thing than blistered feet, raw, blistered feet at every step of which a sharp twinge of pain shot upward. Then he pictured the .drills on the terrace. Would he ever forget the burning pavement, and the stench of oozy, melting tar that was every- where! Once more he pulled a cutter in from the lighthouse, and even now he felt the bulky feel of the oar in his hand, while the pitiless sun drove out the sweat that rolled

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joy waited on all. It was not the inconveniences of the sea ; but it was the picture of Gibraltar in the early morning mist ; that glorious sunset off Palos ; the harbor entrance to Marseilles, with its vivid, stabbing coloring; Ireland in its bursting greenery; Berlin, Finse, and the Septembers at home — that were stamped on his memory. Now he was leaving it all. There was regret. Had you told him second class year that he would be sorry to leave, he would have laughed you to scorn. He thought of graduation, and the new life to come. He dreaded those first few weeks. It would be all so strange, but he knew that the Service was beckoning, and if he proved worthy, would welcome him. The Service — that was the word! He was part of a great brotherhood: little Jarvis, Richard Somers, Wadsworth, Craven, Cushing, Hugh Aiken — they were all his brothers. They had all been where he had been. He had not served in a student corps. The Service had accepted him on faith, and had conferred on him, a raw plebe, the rank that had been consecrated by the lives of devoted men, that of midshipman, not of a brigade, nor of an Academy, but of the United States Navy. This was the reason for the trials of four years, that he might be tested, that he might be proved worthy to accept the call of the Service. 11