"He was very attentive and kind; full of fun in those days. The master of the school--Rev. Dr. Roswell Park--was one of the stiffest and most precise of clergymen, and dressed the part. One day Whistler came to school with a high, stiff collar and a tie precisely copied from Dr. Park's. Of course, the schoolroom was full of suppressed laughter. The reverend gentleman was very angry, but he could hardly take open notice of an offence of that sort. So he bottled up his wrath, but when Jimmy--as we used to call him in those schooldays--gave him some trifling cause of offence, the Rev. Dr. went for him with a ferrule. The school was in two divisions--the girls sitting on one side of the large hall, and the boys on the other. Jimmy, pursued by the Dr. and the ferrule, went round back of the girls' row, and threw himself down on the floor, and the Dr. followed him and whacked him, more, I think, to Jimmy's amusement than to his discomfort." Mrs. Moulton had further recollections of the maps he drew, which "were at once the pride and the envy of all the rest of us--they were so perfect, so delicate, so exquisitely dainty in workmanship." The work done at Pomfret by Whistler which we have seen does not strike us as remarkable. It has its historic importance, but shows no greater evidence of genius than the early work of any great artist. CHAPTER IV: WEST POINT. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN FIFTY-ONE TO EIGHTEEN FIFTY-FOUR. Though Whistler's mother was proud of his drawing, she did not see in art a career for him. She thought he had inherited a profession more distinguished. Many Whistlers and McNeills had been soldiers. West Point had made of them men--Americans. West Point must do the same for him. Through the influence of George Whistler with Daniel Webster, he was appointed cadet At Large by President Fillmore, and on July 1, 1851, after two years at Pomfret school, within ten days of his seventeenth birthday, he entered the United States Military Academy, West Point, where Colonel Robert E. Lee was Commandant. Whistler was not made for the army any more than Giotto for Tuscan pastures, or Corot for a Paris bonnet shop. It was inevitable that he should fail. Yet his three years at West Point were an experience he would not have missed. [Illustration: BIBI LALOUETTE ETCHING. G. 51 (_See page 38_)] [Illustration: STREET AT SAVERNE ETCHING. G. 19 (_See page 43_)] The record sent to us from West Point by Colonel C. W. Larned is: "He entered July 1, 1851, under the name of James A. Whistler; aged sixteen years and eleven months. He was appointed At Large.... At the end of his second year, in 1853, he was absent with leave on account of ill-health. On June 16, 1854, he was discharged from the Academy for deficiency in chemistry. At that time he stood at the head of his class in drawing and No. 39 in philosophy, the total number in the class being 43."