VI
When the Prince made his appearance on Thursday, November 20th, in the uniform of a Welsh Guardsman he came in for a startling ovation. Not only were many people gathered about the Yacht Club landing-stage and along the route of his drive, but at one point a number of ladies pelted him with flowers. Startled though the Prince was, he kept his smile and his sense of humour. He said dryly that he had never known what it was to feel like a bride before, and he returned this volley with his friendly salute.
He was then setting out to the Grand Central Station for his trip up the Hudson to West Point, the Military Academy of the United States.
In the superb white station, under a curved arch of ceiling as blue as the sky, he took the full force of an affection that had been growing steadily through the visit. The immense floor of the building was dense and tight with people, and the Prince, as he came to the balcony that made the stair-head was literally halted by the great gust of cheering that beat up to him, and was forced to stand at the salute for a full minute.
The journey to West Point skirted the Hudson, where lovely view after lovely view of the piled-up and rocky further shore tinted in the russet and gold of the dying foliage came and went. There was a rime of ice already in the lagoons, and the little falls that usually tumbled down the rocks were masses of glittering icicles.
The castellated walls of West Point overhang the river above a sharp cliff; the buildings have a dramatic grouping that adds to the extreme beauty of the surroundings. Toward this castle on the cliff the Prince went by a little steam ferry, was taken in escort by a smart body of American cavalrymen, and in their midst went by automobile up the road to the grey towers of West Point.
Immediately on his arrival at the saluting point on the great campus the horizon-blue cadets, who will one day be the leaders of the American army, began to march.
Paraded by the buildings, they fell into columns of companies with mechanical precision. With precise discipline they moved out on to the field, the companies as solid as rocks but for the metronomic beat of legs and arms.
They were tall, smart youths, archaic and modern in one. With long blue coats, wide trousers, shakos, broad white belts, as neat as painted lines, over breast and back, and, holding back the flaps of capes, they looked figures from the fifties. But the swing of the marching companies, the piston-like certainty of their action, the cold and splendid detachment of their marching gave them all the flare [Transcriber's note: flair?] of a corps d'élite.
Forming companies almost with a click on the wide green, they saluted and stood at attention while the Prince and his party inspected the lines. Then, the Prince at the saluting point again, the three companies in admirable order marched past. There was not a flaw in the rigid ranks as they swept along, their eyes right, the red-sashed "four year men" holding slender swords at the salute.