The Young Wild-Fowlers

by Harry Castlemon

“No, but it makes me tired. I am heartily sick of this eternal study and drill, and I should like to go somewhere and do something. I was in hopes that your friend Lester Brigham would be up and doing before this time; but he seems to have gone to sleep like the rest of the discontented ones, and I don’t believe we shall have a single thing to break the monotony of the school routine during the year.”

“There will be your class dinner on the 31st of the month,” suggested Don.

“But what does the class dinner amount to?” exclaimed Mack. “A lot of students, following the example set them by their fathers, who, perhaps, had no better way of passing the time, hire a hall, or get together in the dining-room of a hotel at Hamilton, stuff themselves with things that they might better let alone, make a few speeches in which they pledge undying friendship to one another, and when the term is ended they separate and go their several ways, plunge into some business or profession and perhaps never think of the matter again. And that reminds me that our committee ought to report at the meeting to-night. Let’s go down and see if they have come back yet.”

The committee to which Mack referred was composed of three boys belonging to the first class, who had been sent up to Hamilton with full power to make all arrangements for the coming dinner, which was intended to be a grand affair. More than that, they took with them a large package of notes from the committee on invitation, addressed to prominent citizens of Hamilton, including the commanding officer of the 61st and his staff. The members of this committee had just come from the depot, and the young officers found them gathered about the big stove in the hall, making an informal report of their day’s work to a few boys in their own class, regardless of the fact that several students who were members of other classes were loitering about within earshot. But what did they care for that? The graduating class had always made a great stir about their dinners, and no doubt this committee took unbounded delight in tantalizing their auditors by telling, in glowing language, of the good things they were going to serve up to their Hamilton guests. It appeared that the class had a goodly sum of money in the hands of Colonel Mack, the treasurer, and that this committee had provided for the spending of every cent of it.

“You can see for yourself that this dinner of ours will exhaust all the resources of the cuisine,” said one of the committee, in a grandiloquent tone, after the chairman had told Mack just what he and his companions had done in the city during the day; “and the decorations of the banqueting hall will be correspondingly rich and elaborate.”

“In other words it will be bang-up,” observed the chairman. “All those nobby officers of the Sixty-first, to whom we presented the invitations in person, promised to be on hand, and the colonel said he would give them permission to appear in uniform. The boys said they wanted us to make this dinner go ahead of anything that was ever heard of in this academy, and when it comes off they will find that we have obeyed instructions. It will be something to talk about, and there won’t be a hitch anywhere. We told Mr. Taylor to do his level best, and send all his bills to you as treasurer of the class, and he said it was all right.”

The members of the committee talked in this way until the mouths of the boys who were standing around, and who had no part nor lot in the matter, began to water; then, having thoroughly warmed their fingers, they went up to their dormitories, and in a few minutes the lower hall was deserted by all save a single student, who paced back and forth with his hands in his pockets, and his eyes fastened thoughtfully on the floor. It was Wallace Ross, Lester Brigham’s room-mate, who, as we said, had been “gated” for thirty days for some violation of the rules.

Ross, who was now spending his second year at the academy, was much such a fellow as Enoch said Lester Brigham was—he was all talk and no do. Unfortunately the world is full of such boys. They make great calculations concerning the future, tell big stories of the things they intend to do at no distant day, and there they stop. They set their mark high, but make no honest, persevering effort to attain to the object of their desires, it being so much easier to think and plan than it is to act.

Ross had entered the academy with the laudable determination of beating every student there. He had assured his friends before he left home that when they saw him again, they would see him wearing an officer’s uniform. Not even a first sergeant’s warrant would satisfy him, for his ambition was to carry a sword instead of a musket. He wanted to jump from the ranks, over the heads of all the fellows above him, and land in a captain’s place the first time trying. Don Gordon had proved that such a thing could be done, for at the close of the last term he had exchanged his musket and knapsack for the major’s shoulder-straps; but then Don had worked for his promotion, and that was something Ross was not willing to do. In less than a week after he signed the muster-roll, he found that he had been wofully mistaken in the opinions he had formed of the academy, and of the boys who belonged to it. The majority of them were quite as smart as he was; and after he had been “hazed” a few times at “setting up” by a corporal who thought he needed a little wholesome discipline, and the fencing-master had railed at him in his broken English because he did not pay more attention to business during the hours that were devoted to the broadsword exercise, and some of the other teachers had reported him for his failures in the recitation room—after all these disagreeable things had happened to him, the boy’s eyes were opened to the fact that the Bridgeport Military Academy was not at all the school he had been looking for; but he could not get out of it with his father’s consent, so he set himself to work to get through the course with as little trouble as he could. Other boys openly declared that that was what they intended to do, and they seemed to get on quite as well as he did.

The lieutenant-colonel’s uniform was a very handsome one, and Wallace Ross was not the only student who longed to wear it. When that official appeared in full dress all eyes were fastened upon him—that is, all except those belonging to a few disappointed aspirants. These generally turned their backs and made disparaging remarks about the uniform and the boy who wore it. Ross, who had given up all hope of wearing that uniform, felt very bitter toward Colonel Mack.