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

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. THE Naval Academy of today has grown from an humble beginning under George Bancroft, founder of the institution. The hall wherein the Regiment eats, sleeps, and studies bears his name. One ' s first impression is a sense of the size of this structure and, as a lowly plebe, one ' s first act is to get hopelessly lost in the maze of corridors and rooms. Then the plebe grasps the system- atic scheme of arrangement and in due time his own little apart- ment with bare buff walls, white iron bed, hard bot- tomed chair, and green topped study table becomes endowed with a person- ality which distinguish- es it from a thousand similar rooms. On the terraces of the hall with feet blistering on the hot concrete and sweat streaming from every pore, he stands at attention in the blazing July sun, and learns the meaning of military dis- cipline. Amid the clatter of dishes and the hurrying of mess boys, he assumes a brace and dines among the upper classes in the long mess hall. A year later will find him smiling quietly as he watches new plebes marching in file beneath the endless lines of corridor lights. And four years hence he will hurry along the same corridors littered with trunks and cruise boxes to fall in with the other members of the graduating class. Memory will of- ten turn back to the moments of leisure spent in Bancroft. Spring evenings and the smokers on the seaward terrace, with the jazz band in action, listening in on the radio after taps, trying out the latest on the vie, and divers sessions of the radiator club. Little things are these, but vital bits of Bancroft life. %. 17

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