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!"