I well remember being at a New Year’s ball given by the cadets. This also took place in the large upper room of the mess hall. The decorations (which were the best the place and the season could furnish) were planned and executed entirely by those young gentlemen. For several previous days they had devoted their leisure-time to cutting and bringing in an immense quantity of evergreens, with which they festooned the walls, and converted every one of the numerous windows into a sort of bower, by arching it from the top to the floor with an impervious mass of thickly-woven foliage. The pillars that supported the ceiling were each encircled by muskets with very bright bayonets. The orchestra for the music was constructed of the national flag that belonged to the post. This flag, which, when flying out from the top of its lofty staff, looks at that height scarcely more than a yard or two in length, is, in reality, so large, that when taken down two men are required to carry it away in its voluminous folds. On this occasion the drapery of the stars and stripes was ingeniously disposed, so as to form something like a stage-box with a canopy over it. The two elegant standards that had been presented to the corps of cadets by the hands of ladies, were fancifully and gracefully suspended between the central pillars, and waved over the heads of the dancers. Affixed to the walls were numerous lights in sconces, decorated with wreaths of the mountain-laurel whose leaves are green all winter. These sconces were merely of tin, made very bright for the occasion; but they were the same that had been used at the ball given, while our army lay at West Point, by the American to the French officers, in honor of the birth of the dauphin. For this camp-like entertainment, the soldiers erected on the plain, a sort of pavilion or arbor of immense length covered in with laurel branches, and illuminated by these simple lamps, which afterwards became valuable as revolutionary relics. They have ever since been taken care of, in the military store-house belonging to West Point. At this memorable ball whose courtesies were emblematic of the national feeling, and which was intended to assist in strengthening the bonds of alliance between the regal government of France and the first congress of America, the ladies of many of our continental officers were present: having travelled to West Point for the purpose—and in the dance that commenced the festivities of the evening, the lady of General Knox led off as the partner of Washington. In all probability the commander-in-chief, with his fine figure and always graceful deportment, was in early life an excellent dancer, according to the fashion of those times.