“One minute, Mr. Coleman; I’ll give you a chance to say all that before the commandant.”
“What are you going to do?” cried Coleman in alarm.
“I’m going to have you say that to the commandant, and I’m going to see him this minute.”
“I order you not to; that’s personal. I direct you to do nothing of the kind and I advise you to remember that I’m a third classman and you’re a plebe.”
“Give me any orders as a third classman, you whippersnapper, and I’ll report you for hazing. Now, get out of my room, you ugly-faced coward, or I may forget myself.” Coleman, intimidated, withdrew. A few moments later he was called to the commandant’s office and received a severe reprimand, and next day was given twenty-five demerits, a punishment that entailed loss of many esteemed privileges, for “using provoking language to another midshipman.”
At this time, everybody at the Naval Academy, officers and their families included, were tremendously interested in football. Some of Ralph’s classmates, Himski and Streeter and Creelton, were playing with the second team occasionally, and went out for practice every day. Ralph had a feeling that he would like to try football, but he was doing so poorly in his studies that he felt he could not afford to. Football practice not only took up much time but also it was exhausting, and after strenuous work at football a midshipman was not apt to be in good shape for intense mental application. It was a disastrous football season for Annapolis, and finally the Naval Academy team went down to overwhelming defeat by West Point in Philadelphia on December first.
In December the midshipmen of Ralph’s class in mathematics had algebra and geometry. Ralph felt he was barely holding his own, yet he studied conscientiously. He was improving in French, thanks to Creelton’s constant help, though he stood very low in it. He did but indifferently in rhetoric. In mathematics he felt he should be doing much better than he was; as Ralph later discovered he put too much time on studying the rules and the formulas and the way they were derived, instead of working out problems. When one works out problems he naturally uses the rules and these become impressed upon him. But in learning formulas and rules one should also apply them in working out problems. Ralph trusted to his knowledge of rules and principles and formulas to help him with the problems he had to do in recitation and on examination, and in doing this he was too slow to accomplish much.
On his December examination in geometry was a problem to prove that the square of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle was equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. In preparing for this examination Ralph had felt so confident of this particular problem that he had not reviewed it; but when he came to solve it he utterly failed. He was amazed and disgusted, and made desperate efforts to do it, using up far more time than he should have afforded for one question. He finally gave it up and did the best he could in the remaining time. But when he saw his month’s standing in mathematics he was alarmed. He had made only 1.1 on the examination, and was unsatisfactory, having but 2.38 for the month.
“I’ll bilge sure,” said Ralph to Creelton, “unless I take a brace.” And he did study hard.
The month of January was spent in reviewing the work already gone over, and here Ralph’s good work in previous studying rules and formulas helped him considerably and he did fairly well in his recitations. At odd times he endeavored to prove in his own way the problem in geometry at which he had so signally failed in the December examination, and by the end of January, when the much dreaded semi-annual examinations were to begin, Ralph felt he was well prepared. After this examination the midshipmen who fail to make 2.50 for the term’s average are required to resign, and between twenty and thirty fourth classmen are generally found to be unsatisfactory each year.