Besides the service at the Chapel there is another service held on Sundays. It is the Y. M. C. A., a purely religious body among the cadets and not as in the cities a sort of club house where a swimming pool, assembly rooms, and gymnasium are the main attractions. These advantages are already a part of West Point’s equipment. The Y. M. C. A. at the Academy meets every Sunday evening after supper in a hall over one of the sally-ports, and here after a few prayers, a speaker makes a short address. On week days the hall is frequented by cadets only to read the papers or to play the victrola, and in Lent the Chaplain holds afternoon services. Formerly the Chaplain held these prayers immediately after breakfast, but once a cadet captain, wishing to remind the cadets that the services would take place immediately after the dismissal of the Battalion, mixed up his verbs and announced very emphatically “cadets are _cautioned_ about the ten-minute service in the Y. M. C. A.”! The Sunday service, however, is the reason for the existence of the organization. The prayers are not long and the addresses sometimes most interesting, especially when they relate to the work that the cadet will have to do as an officer. The meetings are usually terminated when the bugler blows the evening call to quarters in the sally-port under the hall. Of all the sounds at West Point, Sunday evening “call to quarters” is the most doleful and depressing. It means that after the break of Saturday and Sunday, the cadet must once more turn to his books and dig out the problems for Monday. When he hears its melancholy, long-drawn-out notes, he has the Sunday evening feeling, which is only a degree more cheerful than the blue Monday feeling, and he reluctantly goes back to his room to begin anew the weekly cycle. The cadet is really never quite free from the spiritual influences of the Academy. Nature, his Chapel, traditions, precept, and example so arouse and sharpen his insight into things and into himself that his day gradually assumes a new background. These are the influences that, when he is an officer, draw him back to his Alma Mater and make him speak of it always with undisguised affection. CHAPTER XIII THE SPIRIT OF WEST POINT