ckless
he was always one of the leaders. To him discipline was extremely
irksome. He could maintain it among others, but when it applied to
himself it bored him. On the floor of the Academy building on which was
his room there was a pyramid of cannon balls--relics of the War of 1812.
They stood at the head of the stairs, and one warm night, when he could
not sleep, he decided that no one else should do so, and, one by one,
rolled the cannon balls down the stairs. They tore away the banisters
and bumped through the wooden steps and leaped off into the lower halls.
For any one who might think of ascending to discover the motive power
back of the bombardment they were extremely dangerous. But an officer
approached McGiffin in the rear, and, having been caught in the act, he
was sent to the prison ship. There he made good friends with his jailer,
an old man-of-warsman named "Mike." He will be remembered by many naval
officers who as midshipmen served on the _Santee_. McGiffin so won
over Mike that when he left the ship he carried with him six charges of
gunpowder. These he loaded into the six big guns captured in the Mexican
War, which lay on the grass in the centre of the Academy grounds, and at
midnight on the eve of July 1st he fired a salute. It aroused the entire
garrison, and for a week the empty window frames kept the glaziers busy.

About 1878 or 1879 there was a famine in Ireland. The people of New York
City contributed provisions for the sufferers, and to carry the supplies
to Ireland the Government authorized the use of the old _Constellation_.
At the time the voyage was to begin each cadet was instructed to
consider himself as having been placed in command of the _Constellation_
and to write a report on the preparations made for the voyage, on the
loading of the vessel, and on the distribution of the stores. This
exercise was intended for the instruction of the cadets; first in the
matter of seamanship and navigation, and second in making official
reports. At that time it was a very difficult operation to get a gun out
of the port of a vessel where the gun was on a covered deck. To do this
the necessary tackles had to be rigged from the yard-arm and the yard
and mast properly braced and stayed, and then the lower block of the
tackle carried in through the gun port, which, of course, gave the fall
a very bad reeve. The first part of McGiffin's report dealt with a new
method of dismounting the guns and carrying the