The extreme youth of the cadets, in the early Academy days, is the key to the many ludicrous laws and anecdotes which have come down. For many years the average age of the cadets was between twelve and fourteen years, and old heads cannot be expected on young shoulders. As a matter of fact, old heads were not to be found; and the history of the Academy, over a hundred years ago, is one of the most comic narratives which can be perused. The incessant war going on between the Gulliver of authority and the Lilliputians of defiance, who so frequently got poor Gulliver on his back,—the laughable use of unaccustomed power by cadet corporals, bewildered by their position,—and the grandiloquent appeals of Governor after Governor to the feelings of rebellious youth, all combine to make up a rare picture. We meet threats against cadets who shall pass an officer without pulling off their hats, or who shall stay away from church, or shall play during the hours of study. So fond were the boys of bathing, more especially after it had been forbidden, that no punishment could deter them, until ingenious authority decided that any cadet found swimming in the Thames should be taken out and carried naked to the guard-room. Special punishments were devised for those who should wear officers' uniforms for the purpose of getting past the guard at the Warren gate, and for those who should break out over the wall after tattoo, or spoil the furniture, or write upon the walls. Nor is it merely the extreme youth of the cadets which is revealed by these orders; it is their incessant repetition, month after month, day after day, that makes the student detect the utter want of discipline that existed. A record remains of a cadet who was expelled for striking and maltreating another on parade, in presence of an officer, and "refusing to make any concession, although urged to do so by the Lieutenant- Governor." Two others are described in an official report as "scabby sheep, whom neither lenity will improve, nor confinement to a dark room and being fed on bread and water." These two, having openly displayed contempt of orders and defiance of authority, were dismissed ultimately from the Academy. Another, on whom the same penalty of expulsion fell, rather checkmated the authorities by taking with him his cadet's uniform and warrant, which enabled him to create such disturbances in the town of Woolwich, that he had to be threatened with the civil power if he did not give up the one and discontinue wearing the other. But in the orders which it was found necessary to issue can be read most succinctly the account of life among the earlier cadets.