From all I saw and all I heard I tried to learn and to keep on learning. And so I prepared for the time of my own initial bow before the public. As I gradually studied and developed, I began to feel more and more sure that I was destined to be a singer. I felt that it was my life and my heritage; that I was made for it, and that nothing else could ever satisfy me. And Muzio told me that I was right. In another six months I would be ready to make my _début_. It was a serious time, when I faced the future as a public singer, but I was very happy in the contemplation of it. That summer I took a rest, preparatory to my first season,--how thrillingly professional that sounded, to be sure!--and it was during that summer that I had one of the most pleasant experiences of my girlhood,--one really delightful and _young_ experience, such as other girls have,--a wonderful change from the hard-working, serious months of study. I went to West Point for a visit. In spite of my sober bringing-up, I was full of the joy of life, and loved the days spent in a place filled with the military glamour that every girl adores. West Point was more primitive then than it is now. But it was just as much fun. I danced, and watched the drill, and walked about, and made friends with the cadets,--to whom the fact that they were entertaining a budding _prima donna_ was both exciting and interesting--and had about the best time I ever had in my life. Looking back now, however, I can feel a shadow of sadness lying over the memory of all that happy visit. We were just on the eve of war, little as we young people thought of it, and many of the merry, good-looking boys I danced with that summer fell at the front within the year. Some of them entered the Union Army the following spring when war was declared, and some went South to serve under the Stars and Bars. Among the former was Alec McCook--"Fighting McCook," as he was called. Lieutenant McCreary was Southern, and was killed early in the war. So, also, was the son of General Huger--the General Huger who was then Postmaster General and later became a member of the Cabinet of the Confederacy. It is interesting to consider that West Point, at the time of which I write, was a veritable hotbed of conspiracy. The Southerners were preparing hard and fast for action; the atmosphere teemed with plotting, so that even I was vaguely conscious that something exceedingly serious was going on. The Commandant of the Post, General Delafield, was an officer of strong Southern sympathies and later went to fight in Dixie land. When the war did finally break out, nearly all the ammunition was down South; and this had been managed from West Point.