West Point Colors

by Anna Bartlett Warner

With all this, songs—often very good; or a charming bit of "silent manual"; and scenes and situations sometimes true, always possible, and very droll. Then some mock machinery that one wondered how they ever found time to make; unheard-of problems and discoveries worked out in most ingenious ways, with just enough flavour of this or that instructor's style to "adorn the tale"—whether any moral came in or not.

Enter a donkey, carefully compounded of four plebs within—and I cannot guess what without. Ears and tail of the proper length, hide of the proper colour. He is slightly jerky and uncertain about his first coming in; but that is all in keeping for a descendant of the donkey "what wouldn't go"; and there is no hitch whatever in the performance. I believe one of the legs fainted as time went on; but the little beast (I mean the donkey), being skilfully pulled by the tail, beat a masterly retreat upon the other three.

A showman comes in with an armful of pictures, clever crayon sketches of nooks on Flirtation; of unhorsed cadets; of cadet dreams, and first-post realities. The showman pulls them away, one after the other, with brief words of comment, prefacing the last with a bit of glowing praise and liking—and lo! there stands before you the life-size "counterfeit" of the well-beloved Superintendent; cleverly enlarged by the cadet artist from a picture in some magazine. How the men cheer! They'll have a slap at him, like enough, among the jokes, but they love him none the less.

Then stalks out to view a stately papa, and a whole bevy of blooming daughters flutter in after him. They are dressed to kill, and come flirting and fanning, bridling and prinking, in a way to instruct some bona fide girls. The butterfly poise of these airy damsels is quite admirable, and could only have been won by long and careful study of the originals.

A dance of cuirassiers follows: but thereby hangs a tail—longer than the donkey's.

There had been for some time a highly unpopular dog at the Post; whether bearing his own demerits, or those of his master, history saith not. But some months before this winter night, and with his owner away, the dog had been mysteriously and marvellously painted by hands unknown.

Condign punishment was ready for the offenders. But the prefix to the old receipt for cooking a hare ("First catch it") is eminently in place at West Point,—and no one was caught. It was told, sub rosa, and with great delight, how word flashed over the wires: "The dog has been painted"; and how, when the owner came back, he met the chief culprit first of all, and said he was glad to see him. But all this had passed, and the dog was himself again.

Now, to-night, the four cuirassiers, booted and spurred and helmeted, went on with their dance, singing their song the while, when suddenly from behind the scenes slid in the dog—the paint stripes in order as they had been before, and the medallion on its side with the number of its master's regiment all complete. The carefully moulded little body gave hardly a hint of its pillow-case skin.

Midway across the stage the dog stood still. And instantly the cuirassiers paused in their dance, drew up around the dog and solemnly saluted, with sword points to the earth, as if the whole tactical department had been there in person. A wild dance followed, and the dog was then solemnly borne off on the points of the cuirassiers' weapons. But words cannot give the utter drollery of the thing, nor tell the perfect way in which it was carried out.

Then came more music, and the reading of the Howitzer.