"Ninety-six days to June!"—or forty-six, as the case may be. I had a note once from a cadet, dated:
"Barracks. Sixty-four days to June!"
But then he forgot to sign his name. That did not matter.
It is a strong pull, each man for himself, for the next three months; a sort of individual "tug of war." I think Magnus had never worked so hard in all the time he had been at West Point. Perhaps chemistry and wave motion had something to do with this, for our hero was no genius. Nothing but honest work carried him on. Higher thoughts than of rank lit up the musty pages, and made music for the dull company drills. Truly he was not unmindful of the charms of an engineer post for Cherry; but several born mathematicians stood between him and any hope of that. Yet all he could do, he would. The honour of the Christian name, no less than Cherry's sweet life, was in his trust, to dim or to brighten; and no man should ever adorn the tale with the name of Charlemagne Kindred, when saying that religion spoiled men, and should be left to women and children.
So Magnus had his own secret joy over every high mark. Never had he enjoyed "maxing it," as he did that winter, and never had he done it so often.
Some years ago, when the graduating class received their Bibles, and Dr. Wm. M. Taylor made the presentation address, he bade every man cull from his morning reading—no matter how brief it was—a sort of rose-in-the-buttonhole word for the day. Something like that our young cadet had learned to do. Nothing had hindered his daily reading since furlough, hard as it seemed to spare the minutes, some days, when work was unusually pressing. But perhaps that very pressure taught him to dive right into the meaning of what he read; catch up a message, and bear it away. Now a promise, now a precept, now a prayer; a breath of joyous hope, a gleam of unearthly glory. That real rose-in-the-buttonhole which dress coats and blouses may never wear, would have drooped in the drill, fainted in the section room, and been lost in the tan bark. But it seemed to Magnus as if his invisible blooms grew only fairer as the day went on. The fragrance was royal, as it came and went in such variety.
"Hopeth all things, endureth all things."—
"Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord."—
"Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as unto the Lord, and not unto men."—
"Nevertheless, the Lord stood by me."—