At Fifteen He Is
Not To Be A Boy, At Twenty He Is Not To Be A Young Man.
He is to
be a gentleman, a soldier, and an officer.
I believe that those
who leave the college for the army are gentlemen, soldiers, and
officers, and, therefore, the result is good. But they are also
young men; and it seems that they have become so, not in accordance
with their training, but in spite of it.
But I have another complaint to make against the authorities of
West Point, which they will not be able to answer so easily as that
already preferred. What right can they have to take the very
prettiest spot on the Hudson - the prettiest spot on the continent -
one of the prettiest spots which Nature, with all her vagaries,
ever formed - and shut it up from all the world for purposes of war?
Would not any plain, however ugly, do for military exercises?
Cannot broadsword, goose-step, and double-quick time be instilled
into young hands and legs in any field of thirty, forty, or fifty
acres? I wonder whether these lads appreciate the fact that they
are studying fourteen hours a day amid the sweetest river, rock,
and mountain scenery that the imagination can conceive. Of course
it will be said, that the world at large is not excluded from West
Point, that the ferry to the place is open, and that there is even
a hotel there, closed against no man or woman who will consent to
become a teetotaller for the period of his visit.
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