"So mother says; but I speak of what I know. When you first get to the Academy, you are so homesick that you'd like to pray and read the Bible all the time; it seems more like home than anything else. Then you are plagued, and get provoked. Then upper classmen drive you to prayer-meeting, and of course you don't want to go. Then you get so tangled up in the work and the hazing that you'd give your own dog two cents to tell you who you are. You can't keep Sunday,—at least, you think you can't,—with guard-mounting in the morning and dress parade at night, and in barracks a lesson a mile long for eight o'clock Monday morning."
"But Magnus, you do not study on Sunday?" Cherry said anxiously.
"I did once—and maxed it straight through, had a splendid week, and saw visions of Willet's Point. So I thought I'd try it again. And that week I just went down; got the worst marks I ever had, and, instead of the doughty Engineer Corps, had the Immortals in full view. So I concluded to get back into the good old ways and stay there."
Cherry laughed, but her eyes glistened. "That was one of the Lord's gentle rebukes," she said.
"Well, it lasted," said Magnus. "I haven't done that thing again."
"And they make no allowance for the day before's being Sunday?"
"Not a bit. Why, one of the instructors advised us to have our prayer-meeting early Sunday night, that there might be more hours for study."
"But if you told them, Magnus?"
"They would just think I was shirking. You see we could not ask in numbers enough to be a power, for many of the men do not care. That's another thing in one's way; see a first classman as meek as Moses at prayer-meeting, and then in camp have him just as hateful as Pharaoh and all the Egyptians."
"To you yourself, Magnus?"