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

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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

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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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JOHN H. GIBBONS CAPTAIN U. S. NAVY, SUPERINTENDENT