I wonder if the place has changed much since that sixteenth birthday of my Mercedes? Of course it's only a _very_ few years ago! Not being Aunt Mary, I won't make any remark about the number. But if you haven't quite forgotten that first love, doesn't it make your heart beat to think of those great terraced, castellated buildings of gray stone massed against the cliffsides above the sparkling river, almost Walhalla-like in grandeur, of the gracious elms and the prim soldierly barracks draped with ivy, of the vast parade ground and the wonderful grouping of mountains whose shapes lie reflected far down under the crystal water, Cro' Nest, haunted by the "Culprit Fay," and Storm King; and little Constitution Island which tried its best to stop the British ships. I wish a cadet had fallen in love with me! I wish one would do it now! I adored them all as I sat in the motor watching the ranks of white-clad figures moving to music and looking, in the late sunshine against their green background, like hundreds of marble statues come alive. When they stood to "attention" they were like snow men. Oh, and what music it was, to which they moved! Jack said there couldn't be a scene of its kind half so fine and picturesque anywhere else in the world. I felt quite proud to have been born an American as I looked at it, and so, judging from their expressions, did crowds of pretty girls who gazed adoringly at all those soldiers in the making. It worried me a little, just when the music was at its noblest, that a man in a motor _char-a-bancs_ or something huge and touristy should be telling his victims how West Point had been "the key to the Hudson," and what a fatal blow would have been dealt to hopes of independence if Benedict Arnold could have handed it over to the British. I thought he glared at Jack as he delivered this lecture, guessing perhaps by the shape of his particularly nice nose that he's a Britisher. But just then the sunset gun was fired, echoing again and again among the mountains. All the female victims squeaked and stopped their ears, and the man jumped, so that Jack was saved. You, who have happy memories of Flirtation Walk, will pity Pat when I tell you that her sensitive conscience made her consent to walk there with Ed Caspian after dinner, Jack and Peter Storm and I following at a respectful distance. Peter could hardly bear it. I suppose the moonlight on the water glinting far under the high cliff walk and the bitter-sweet scent of the ferns went to his head. He forgot that we'd all planned together this way of disgusting Pat with what she thought her duty--throwing her so constantly with Caspian that she'd find out all his faults. But when Peter was leading up to some excuse for joining the pair in front, Jack reminded him that if ever the medicine could be beneficial to the poor little patient it would be in such a scene, and on such a night made for love and happiness.