l on one side! Of course, they fought in the
old Mexican War as well, for West Point has been a training school
ever since 1794. That seems a long time in America!

[Illustration: THE HUDSON RIVER "When we came into sudden sight of the
river there was a magical effect: a veil of silver mist, with boats big
and little moving behind it, like white swans"]

We had a gorgeous run to Tuxedo--a road that might make Europe
jealous--among mountains of the Catskill family, too important and
beautiful, I thought, to dismiss as foothills. What a pity Rip Van
Winkle spent all his twenty years asleep in one place! _I_ should have
walked in my sleep, and changed my bed from mountain to mountain every
night or so. Oh, I forgot to tell you, at West Point I heard a new
legend of the Catskills. At least, it's so old that it's as good as new.
Once when the Indians were just comfortably beginning to feel at home
after one of those interrupting Ice Ages, there lived a fearful giant
with a wife and children as terrible as himself. The only things they
cared to eat were Indian babies; and after this horrid family had been
vainly admonished for their ways by the Great Spirit they were suddenly,
in the midst of a meal, turned into stone. Being so big, they became
mountains, and as some tried to run away and escape the others' fate,
they grouped themselves in a chain along the riverside. I don't quite
believe this story, though! I'd rather think that a _good_ family of
giants asked the Great Spirit to let them become beautiful mountains
when they died, and so be remembered lovingly forever, while the world
lasts.

The Ramapo Valley is a dream of loveliness all the way, with its lakes
like wide-open blue eyes of dryads, and its laced silver ribbon of
river. Larry has a friend at court--I mean Tuxedo Park; so he was again
useful as well as ornamental--a rare thing for him! We sailed in at the
queer gates as confidently as if we owned a hundred acres of land and a
lake inside the magic circle. Only the Hippopotamus balked. He had tire
trouble just inside the entrance to Paradise; but I think he could have
crawled in if Tom, Dick, and Harry had urged him a little. They, poor
boys, are under a cloud since Pat's engagement was announced, and are
only going on as a sort of mute protest against its irrevocability. If
it were any one else except Caspian--Peter Storm, for instance--they
would bravely retire from the field with congratulations for the vi