Cadet rebukes rarely miss the mark through being wrapped in too much cotton. But if a few cuts and scratches follow they are not deep, and the surrounding fun half heals them. I defy anybody to look grave, when that grey house "comes down" in a roar of merriment.
Of course, many of the jokes are so local and technical that a stranger would be puzzled. West Point affairs, personal hits at cadets, or memories of the section room, figure largely. But whether you understand or not, you have to laugh, just for the rollicking joy that goes on behind you. The jolly storm of applause sweeps you helplessly along.
There are years when you go to the Hundredth Night between snowbanks as high as yourself, and along slippery white paths; there are others when the hills are clouded, and the mist hangs low, and the gas lights twinkle and peer through a grey veil. There are still others when air and hills and sky are at the brightest and bonniest, with a clear, hard, brown earth; and you cross the plain amid a glory of contesting lights:—gas round the quarters; a young moon dipping her lovely crescent behind the hill; Newburgh's electric lights winking and blinking like live things, from ten miles away; and close before you, the whole front of barracks in a blaze of lit-up rooms. It is so fair, so weird, that you can only look and look, back and forth, from side to side.
As you gaze and loiter, small parties pass you on the way: people intent upon other effects than those of light and shadow. Generally a cadet with a girl—or two girls; with sometimes a chaperon, and sometimes not. But remember that every West Point cadet is held to be a knight par excellence; a gentleman all through; and so, by long usage and experience, judged to be a fit and sufficient escort on every such occasion. It is the regular thing.
And then when the figures flit by you side by side or arm in arm; pink and grey, or grey and yellow, or, as now, furs and cadet cloth, all your comment is for the pretty combination. And when some solitary greatcoat goes speeding along to meet an appointment at the Hotel or the houses, you instantly hope that the girl will not keep him waiting.
For the minutes are running on; and whoever wants a good seat—or a seat at all—had better not delay.
There is a grey throng about the steps of the old Mess Hall, and girls in quantity.
They press up the stone steps, and pour into the hall, pretty and flushed, proud and sufficient. Officers with their families join in, and now and then a distinguished stranger; and these fill up the front seats. Then come civilians, visitors, and their escorts. Behind the curtain mysterious sounds of tools at work tell of preparations not quite complete. There is music, a pause, and more music; and then from behind the curtain a tall, grey figure steps gravely forth, bows low to the audience, and begins the regulation Hundredth Night address. It is the president of the first class.
Whoever makes the speech, and whatever else he puts in it, the refrain is always:
"One hundred days to June!"