At one of these fancy-balls the squeak of a bad fife (or perhaps of a good fife badly played on) and the tuck of an ill-braced drum, was heard ascending the stair-case followed by an irregular tramp of feet and the chatter of many voices. The door (which had been recently closed) was now thrown open with a bang, and a militia company, personated by a number of the choicest cadets, came marching in, with a step that set all time and tune at defiance; some trudging, some ambling, and some striding. They were headed by a captain who, compared to Uncle Sam’s officers, certainly wore his regimentals “with a difference.” Having “marshalled his clan,” whom he arranged with a picturesque intermixture of tall and short, and in a line partaking of the serpentine, he put them through their exercise in a manner so laughably bad as could only have been enacted by persons who knew perfectly well what it ought to be. Their firelocks were rough sticks, cornstalks, and shut umbrellas—and when the captain was calling the muster-roll, the names to which his men answered were ludicrous in the extreme. I have before alluded to the West Point Band, which must always be classed among the most agreeable recollections connected with that place; particularly by those who were familiar with its excellence when Willis was the instructor in military music. He was an Irishman, and had belonged to the lord lieutenant’s band at Dublin Castle. His own exquisite performance on the Kent bugle can never be forgotten by any one who has been so fortunate as to hear it; and he taught all the members of the West Point Band to play on their respective instruments in the most admirable manner. One of them, named Ford, excelled on the octave flute. Sometimes when, on a moonlight summer evening, they were playing under the beautiful elms that are clustered in front of the mess house, and delighting us with a charming composition called the Nightingale, Ford would ascend one of the trees, and seated amidst its branches, perform solo on his flute those passages that imitated the warbling of the bird. Occasionally a distinguished vocalist came to West Point for the purpose of having a concert; and these concerts were always well attended. On one of the concert nights, Willis accompanied Keene (a celebrated singer of that time) in the fine martial air of the Last Bugle—a beautiful song beginning, “When the muffled drum sounds the last march of the brave.”