Of course we could not study all of the time set apart for study, so we
often devised ways and means to lighten our burdens.
All of our coats buttoned up to the chin and the white collars of my
day were made so that we had to fold them lengthwise and pin them on
the coat. As white shirts were not used to fasten the collar to we quit
wearing them, and pinned our cuffs to the inside of the coat sleeves. We
got the knack of dressing down to a fine point, no cadet wore suspenders
then, so all we had to do for reveille or tattoo, was to jump into our
pants, stick our feet into our oldest shoes, from which the strings had
been removed, and called “reveilles,” put on the coat and cap to be worn
and hustle, buttoning up just before going out of the hall-door. Two
minutes gave us ample time to get from our rooms to the line in the area.
Now the cadets are required to wear white shirts and the style of the
white collar[32] having been changed it requires a white shirt to fasten
it to.
A cadet generally carries his lead pencil stuck into his coat near the
throat, but I made a little pocket on the underside of the tail of my
dress-coat, just big enough for a little pen knife and a pencil an inch
and a half long, and I never got “skinned” for it either. In my day, the
last section was called “the Immortals” but I am told that the “Goats”
have captured the name I once knew so well.
For many years, “Old Bentz” blew the bugle calls for recitations and
mid rain or snow, he never missed a call, he blew it first on the north
side of the Barracks, near the “Sally Port,” and then in the area. Many
a cadet has stood at the blackboard, not ready to recite, praying for
old Bentz to blow; once in a while he would succeed in “bugling it,”
that is, avoid a recitation, but as the instructors have all been cadets
themselves, the poor fellow was generally called upon to recite and got
1.5 or less for his pains.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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