While Fort Putnam was being built Washington was advised that Dubois's regiment was unfit to be ordered on duty, there being "not one blanket in the regiment. Very few have either a shoe or a shirt, and most of them have neither stockings, breeches, or overalls. Several companies of inlisted artificers are in the same situation, and unable to work in the field." What privations were here endured to establish our priceless liberty! It makes better Americans of us all to turn and re-turn the pages of the real Hudson, the most picturesque volume of the world's history. West Point during the Revolution was the Gibraltar of the Hudson and her forts were regarded almost impregnable. Fort Putnam will be rebuilt as an enduring monument to the bravery of American soldiers. The best way to study West Point, however, is not in voluminous histories or in the condensed pages of a guide book, but to visit it and see its real life, to wander amid its old associations, and ask, when necessary, intelligent questions, which are everywhere courteously answered. The view north seen in a summer evening, is one long to be remembered. In such an hour the writer's idea of the Hudson as an open book with granite pages and crystal book-mark is most completely realized as indicated in the Highland section of his poem, "The Hudson": On either side these mountain glens Lie open like a massive book, Whose words were graved with iron pens, And lead into the eternal rock: Which evermore shall here retain The annals time cannot erase, And while these granite leaves remain This crystal ribbon marks the place. * * * Under Spring's delicate marshalling every hill of the Highlands took its own place, and the soft swells of ground stood back the one from the other in more and more tender coloring. _Susan Warner._ * * * [Illustration: LOOKING NORTH FROM WEST POINT BATTERY] =West Point to Newburgh.=