Marcus Antonius. CÆsar dear, is there no way this troubling my dear little plebeian sentinels can be stopped?
CÆsar. There probably is, but we have not found it yet.

Nor yet. And so, year by year, for a time, the new fourth classmen worked out pretty fairly Lowell's lines:

Magnus Kindred was speeding along through camp one morning, thinking of home, when he was hailed by an upper classman.

"See here, beast, what's your name?"

Magnus made answer, with what composure of face and voice he could call up at such short notice.

"Where did you come from?" And again the reply came with fair coolness.

"Got so few men out there, they give 'em long names to stretch out and cover the country. Who was your pred.?"

"Mr. Dunn, sir. He resigned, sir."

"Good example for you to follow in November," said Mr. Seaton, "but you've got to be taken care of in the mean time. Wipe that smile off, sir! What's your technical name?"

"Haven't got any, sir."

"Well, if anyone asks you that again, tell 'em it's Lorenzo Monkey," said Seaton, and walked away.

Magnus shook his fist at him (mentally), but what can a pleb do? And so to the next inquirer he answered (pretty ungraciously, it must be owned):

"Somebody said it was Lorenzo Monkey, sir."

"Can't have a monkey without a tail," said Mr. Danby. "Now remember, beast, you are technically called: 'Lorenzo Monkey; and the name is not fame.' Take your eyes off me, sir!"

Well, the tail grew—naturally; and every time the name was called for, to amuse one man or a dozen, somebody would add on a word, and then Magnus was bid to rattle the whole thing off, amid shouts of laughter. He was required also to write out his technical name in full, and hand the paper in under the guise of an official document: a half sheet of paper duly folded, and inscribed as follows:

Camp Hard,
West Point, N. Y.,
July —, 18—.

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Kindred, C,
Cadet Private. Co. "A." 4th Class.

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Subscribed Copy of
"Technical Name."

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Within, it ran thus:

Camp Hard,
West Point, N. Y.,
July —, 18—.

To Cadet Lieut. Crabapple. (Through the proper channels.)

Sir: I have the honour to submit the following,—my technical name for the summer encampment, U. S. M. A. To wit:

I am Lorenzo Monkey; and the name is not fame. It is tame: it is lame: it is shame: it is blame: it is game. Yet I claim, a Colonial dame was my flame, when I came. Same at same.

Very respectfully,

Your obedient servant,
Charlemagne Kindred,
Cadet Private, Co. "A." Fourth Class.

To Cadet Lieut. Crabapple,
Commanding Battalion of Crabs. Magnus chafed at all this stuff; growled over it, almost resisted; and yet it was wise to pass things by as quietly as he could. All the same, his feeling towards some of the upper classmen was getting to be a very fixed fact, indeed.

Mr. Prank, for instance, was much given to hops,—also to prinking for the same: and it was in his heart to combine all the good things he could, and "crawling" plebs came in among the rest. So on hop nights, after supper, when Mr. Prank was shaving, dressing, and vainly endeavouring to curl his short hair, Magnus Kindred was frequently detailed as valet. The work being to follow Mr. Prank about the tent and fan him during these fatigues, and also to soothe and attune his feelings by singing "Annie Laurie" or some other lovelorn ditty. How Magnus did hate it!—and how he did secretly vow vengeance, if ever he himself should have half a chance with Mr. Prank's best girl! But then! Mr. Prank had a relay of "best girls," and could spare one or two just as well as not.

On the other hand, the two men who "tented" with Magnus thought he had an easy time.

"If you had to black Mr. Mean's shoes!" said Randolph.

"Or clear up after old Seaton," said Rig.

Rig's technical name taxed all his powers of memory and patience. It began:

"I am the distilled quintessence of stuff, the double-dyed result of being dipped in the Styx,"—and so on, ad infinitum, and to Rig, certainly, ad nauseam.

Homesickness had broken loose in the fourth class, of late, and become epidemic. These boys were but boys, and the manliest of them all would—many a day—have given up his hopes of being a brigadier just to lay his head down on his mother's apron, and have her pet him and comfort him, and make him feel that he was not a "beast."

"But she'd not find any hair to stroke, now," said Magnus Kindred, in one of these spasms. And then he caught hold of himself again, set his teeth in his favourite fashion, and announced to himself that he meant to be adjutant.

"And I'll not look like you, either," he went on, apostrophising Mr. Larkin, who just then came strolling by between two admiring girls, turning from one to the other with much the air of the exquisite who said:

"Really, now, you know—won't somebody come and share me?"

The young adjutant's buttons were very bright, and his waist was very small; and the red and white (brown) of his complexion left nothing to be desired. If he had been a girl, you might have called his walk "willowy," but I know not the masculine of that. And the barber had plainly been open to persuasion in his case, and had left almost a lovelock or two on the tall head.

Magnus Kindred watched the party go by, but they did not see him. In one of the rocky, shady nooks on Flirtation, where the green leaves rustle and the river whispers softly to the shore, there he had hidden himself away with his sweet and bitter fancies. Hard, literal facts they were just then, for Magnus.

The footsteps died away, and more came, quicker and brisker than the first; and two cadets went by his hiding place. Then another with his best girl (for the time being); and Magnus watched them all. As the silence fell again a wood thrush in the shadows behind him rang its liquid chime.

Then a tall cadet with chevrons, and the dainty air and manner which had earned him the soubriquet of "Gentleman Joe," passed slowly by with his mother on his arm; he bending down to her, and she looking up to him, while a little white fidget of ten years old flitted about the two.

But when these were out of sight, then Magnus Kindred threw himself face down among the moss and ferns, and gave no further heed to outside things. "Oh, mother!—and Cherry, and Violet, and Rose—and home!" It was very bitter for a while. And when at last, in answer to a distant drum-call, Magnus roused himself, and got on his feet, he knew that he hated that drum, and all it betokened, just as hard as he could.

Gentler thoughts came, as he mounted the hill. The clear notes of the thrushes were all around him, but in their grave sweetness there were no faltering tones; and while it pierced the boy's heart it strengthened it, too. Yes, one day he would be the tall man with chevrons, leading his mother along Flirtation; and she should be as proud of him as Mrs. Gresham was of her son. And, instead of that child in white, there would be—but here the drum became imperative, and Magnus stowed away all the rest of his thoughts, and double-timed every remaining step up to Camp Hard.