The hotel, just in the rear of the Washington Monument, was built in 1829, and with the exception of a wing that was added in 1850, it has remained practically unchanged. It is not difficult to imagine, therefore, that its appointments fail to satisfy the luxurious tastes of present-day Americans, so that many complaints are heard, and not a few jokes passed at its expense. One humorist remarked that Washington was raising his hand not in benediction of the Academy, but in a warning to the guests to keep away from the hotel. From the hotel, a steep little graveled path entices the visitor into a most enchanting walk that skirts the steep precipice along the river. For three-quarters of a mile, Flirtation Walk pursues its way with its windings and abrupt turnings, its ascents and descents, past the site of the old chain Battery, and farther on past old Lantern Battery on Gee’s Point, past the Bachelor Officers’ quarters, until at the base of Cullum Hall it ends in Kosciusko’s Garden. The latter is a cool little sheltered plateau, said to have been a favorite of the Pole. When the trees are in bloom, to stroll along the Walk is to feel the delicacy of nature, to behold the quintessence of her refinement. The foliage seems like maiden-hair fern through which charming little vistas of the river and the opposite bank are framed. On summer days it is a favorite for the cadets and their girls, who wander along its graveled path whiling away the time, or who seek out the choice nooks and screen themselves from profane eyes with a gaily colored parasol. Near the end of Flirtation Walk alongside of old Battery Knox, a Revolutionary relic, stands the Bachelor Officers’ quarters. This building of brick and limestone, serves to tie the new buildings with the classic Cullum Memorial Hall and the Officers’ Mess. Its color is darker than the pink granite of Cullum Hall, to approach more closely the dark brown of the Library and the gray of the Academic, while its flat buttresses harmonize with the straight lines of Memorial Hall. [Illustration: _Photo White Studio_ “Spooning” on Flirtation Walk] In this building there are forty suites of three rooms and a bath each, besides rooms in the basement for the janitor and for officers’ servants. Adjoining the Bachelor Officers’ quarters is the beautiful Cullum Memorial Hall, built of Milford pink marble and resembling somewhat in style, the Erechtheum, on the Acropolis at Athens. Just under the cornice and above the four Ionic columns is carved: “To the Officers and Graduates of the Military Academy.” To the left of the main hall is a small assembly room, whose walls contain bronze tablets to graduates who have been killed in action. The flags are guidons, carried by our Cavalry, both regular and volunteer, during our wars, chiefly during the Spanish War.