“You always were, no matter what issue was involved.”
Since we have already learned that all went well with the young man, it is not necessary to repeat the speculation of the couple as they steamed eastward. Jack did enter the Military Academy, and, as I have said, made a creditable record for himself. Warrenia Rowland at the same time became a student in the famous young ladies’ seminary, to which further reference will be made later, and the two were graduated within a few weeks of each other.
It would be supposed that the military career upon which Major Jack Starland entered would have extinguished his love of boating and the water, but it did not. Could he have chosen his profession it would have been that of the navy, and he would have entered the Academy at Annapolis, but that could not be arranged and he threw his whole energies into the military work.
Now it chanced that Jack’s room mate and intimate friend was the son of a prominent ship builder in the East. This youth was as fond of the sea as the young Californian. In one respect he was more fortunate, for his father had presented him with a superb yacht, with which he had cruised up and down the Atlantic coast and made a trip or two to the West Indies. I may as well add that this same yacht was placed at the disposal of our government at the opening of the war with Spain and did good service in scouting in Cuban waters.
The cadets at West Point have only one vacation during their four years’ course; that comes at the end of two years and lasts for a couple of months. Jack Starland made a flying visit home and then accepted the invitation of his room mate to go on a cruise with him in his yacht. It being in the summer time, the craft headed northward and visited Newport, Bar Harbor and several other noted resorts on the Atlantic seaboard.
The excursion was a continual delight to both young men, who, as you are aware, must have been fine specimens of physical vigor, or they would not have been in the Military Academy. Jack wrote such a glowing account of his holiday that his father’s heart was touched. He read the letter to his partner who remarked:
“A good sailor was spoiled when Jack became a soldier.”
“I never knew a lad with a stronger liking for a nautical life. Nothing would have delighted him more than to become a sailor. What makes me respect Jack, is that with all this overwhelming fondness for a sailor’s life, he has had too much good sense to yield to it. He has never asked me to allow him to go to sea, but has always placed my wishes first. Do you know, Teddy, that even when a headlong, impetuous youngster, he must have withstood temptation with Roman firmness. Of course for the last year or two no thought of going contrary to my desires has ever entered his mind.”
(Ah, fond parent, you are but a single example of multitudes of fathers, who have kept their eyes closed to what was going on within touch of their hands.)
“A father is a poorer judge of his children than others. My love for Jack is hardly second to yours, but I am not blind to his faults. I am glad to say that he hasn’t any more of them than he is entitled to have. No father ever had a more obedient son; judging the boy therefore, in cold blood, I must say I agree fully with you. If anybody had suggested to Jack when a boy that he should go contrary to your wishes or run away, he would have made it a casus belli.”