fortifications anywhere. How could people live in such a careless,
unnatural fashion? He blushed with shame as he thought to himself that
a foreigner might apparently journey through the country from one end
to the other without knowing that there was such a thing as a soldier
in the land. What a travesty this was on civilization! How baseless the
proud boasts of national greatness when only an insignificant and
almost invisible few paid any attention to the claims of military
glory! The outlook was indeed dismal, but Sam was no pessimist.
Obstacles were in his dictionary "things to be removed." "I shall have
a hand in changing all this," he muttered aloud. "When I come home a
conquering general with the grateful country at my feet, these wretched
toilers in the field and at the desk will have learned that there is a
nobler activity, and uniforms will spring up like flowers before the
sun." Where Sam acquired his command of the English language and his
poetic sensibility it would be difficult to say. It is enough to know
that these faculties endeavored, not without success, to keep pace with
his growing ambition for glory.

Sam's first weeks at East Point were among the happiest in his life.
Here, at any rate, military affairs were in the ascendant. His ideal of
a country was simply an East Point infinitely enlarged. His neat gray
uniform seemed already to transform him into a hero. When he thought
of the great soldiers who had been educated at this very place, he felt
a proud spirit swelling in his bosom. One night in a lonely part of the
parade-ground he solemnly knelt down and kissed the sod. The military
cemetery aroused his enthusiasm, and the captured cannon, the names of
battles inscribed here and there on the rocks, and the portraits of
generals in the mess-hall, all in turn fascinated him. As a new arrival
he was treated with scant courtesy and drilled very hard, but he did
not care. Tho his squad-fellows were almost overcome with fatigue, he
was always sorry when the drill came to an end. He never had enough of
marching and counter-marching, of shouldering and ordering arms. Even
the "setting-up" exercises filled him with joy. When cavalry drills
began he was still more in his element. His old teamster days now stood
him in good stead. In a week he could do anything with a horse,--he
understood the horse, and the horse trusted him. When he first emerged
from the riding-schoo