Why the crypt at Annapolis is as it is, I do not know, but in my own purely imaginary picture of what happened, I see the architect's plans for a heroic display of Jones's tomb knocked on the head by some "practical man," some worthy dunce in the Navy Department, whom I can imagine as protesting: "But no! We can't take up space at the center of the chapel for any such purpose. It must be floored over to make room for pews. Otherwise where will the cadets sit?"
So, although the grounds of the academy, with their lawns, and aged trees, and squirrels, and cadets, are charming, and although the solemn and industrious Baedeker assures me that the academy is the "chief lion" of Annapolis, and although I know that it is a great school, and that we need another like it in order properly to officer our navy, I prefer the old town with its old houses, and old streets bearing such reminiscent names as Hanover, Prince George, and Duke of Gloucester.
For certain slang expressions used by cadets I am indebted to a member of the corps. From this admiral-to-be I learn that a "bird" or "wazzo" is a man or boy; that a "pap sheet" is a report covering delinquencies, and that to "hit the pap" is to be reported for delinquency; that "steam" is marine engineering, and to be "bilged for juice" is to fail in examinations in electrical engineering—to get an "unsat," or unsatisfactory mark, or even a "zip" or "swabo," which is a zero. Cadets do not escort girls to dances, but "drag" them; a girl is a "drag," and a "heavy drag" or "brick" is an unattractive girl who must be taken to a dance. A "sleuth" or "jimmylegs" is a night watchman, and to be "ragged" is to be caught. Mess-hall waiters are sometimes called "mokes," while at other times the names of certain exalted dignitaries of the Navy Department, or of the academy, are applied to them.
I shall never cease to regret that dread of the cold kept us from seeing ancient Whitehall, a few miles from Annapolis, which was the residence of Governor Horatio Sharpe, and is one of the finest of historic American homes; nor shall I, on the other hand, ever cease to rejoice that, in spite of cold we did, upon another day, visit Hampton, the rare old mansion of the Ridgelys, of Maryland, which stands amid its own five thousand acres some dozen miles or so to the north of Baltimore. The Ridgelys were, it appears, the great Protestant land barons of this region as the Carrolls were the great Catholics, and, like the Carrolls, they remain to-day the proprietors of a vast estate and an incomparable house.
CHAPTER VIII
WE MEET THE HAMPTON GHOST
There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple;
If the ill spirit have so fair a house,
Good things will strive to dwell with 't.
—The Tempest.
Hampton is probably the largest of Maryland's old mansions, and the beauty of it is more theatrical than the beauty of Doughoregan Manor; for although the latter is the older of the two, the former is not only spectacular by reason of its spaciousness, the delicacy of its architectural details, and the splendor of its dreamlike terraced gardens, but also for a look of beautiful, dignified, yet somehow tragic age—a look which makes one think of a wonderful old lady; a belle of the days of minuets and powdered wigs and patches; a woman no less wonderful in her declining years than in her youth, but wonderful in another way; a proud old aristocrat, erect and spirited to the last; her bedchamber a storehouse of ivory lace and ancient jewelry, her memory a storehouse of recollections, like chapters from romantic novels of the days when all men were gallant, and all women beautiful: recollections of journeys made in the old coach, which is still in the stable, though its outriders have been buried in the slaves' burying ground these many years; recollections of the opening of Hampton, when, as the story goes, gay Captain Charles Ridgely, builder of the house, held a card party in the attic to celebrate the event, while his wife, Rebecca Dorsey Ridgely, a lady of religious turn, marked the occasion simultaneously with a prayer-meeting in the drawing room; of the ball given by the Ridgelys in honor of Charles Carroll's granddaughters, the exquisite Caton sisters; of hunt meets here, long, long ago, and hunt balls which succeeded them; of breakneck rides; of love-making in that garden peopled with the ghosts of more than a century of lovers; of duels fought at dawn. Of such vague, thrilling tales the old house seems to whisper.