But you never saw them walk arm in arm, like other students,--this would strike any stranger. Close together, but both hands free. Perhaps the regulation salute, with its frequent, instant, and exact demands, may be partly the cause of this. A fellow once hastening over to the hop with a girl on one arm, and her shoes and fan laying claim to the other, passed a certain dignitary with only a bow of the head, and was of course reported. Going next day to explain and get the report off, he was told: "Drop the girl! Drop the shoes! Salute, salute!" Another feature of West Point life which I think would strike unwonted eyes, is the universal opening of front doors at four o'clock. Up to that time, after the midday refection of whatever name, West Point on the plain might be a city asleep, with slow pacing sentries guarding its slumbers. But when the sweet four o'clock bugle sounds out, waking the echoes and the antagonistic dogs, the houses wake up too. Bonnets go on, gloves slide into place, and the fair wearers come forth with a delightful sense of expecting or being expected (for both things are in place), and the thinnest veil of unconcern to hide it all. It is a very pretty scene. Officers and professors come hastening back from the section room, gay turnouts wheel hither and thither, and the cadets are presently out in force. For drill, for parade, for walks, according to the time of year and the state of the weather. Football was not yet the rage, in Magnus Kindred's time, nor bicycles; and so every man you met was practising the noble art of walking, or showing how splendidly West Point can ride. As November speeded away, Christmas leave began to rise up in the distance, and to claim many thoughts. Men who had lost it were down on their "luck" (the cadet spelling for carelessness), men who had won it debated in what way the few dear hours of freedom should be spent; and many a fellow from some far-down or far-off corner of the land stood pledged to go with his happier friend whose home was nearer by. In all these joys, as usual, the poor fourth classmen had no share. They walked, indeed, like the rest; one must do something; but they talked gloomy things. No Christmas leave for them--and not much of anything else but hard work. They were not supposed to need anything else. No damsels on the sidewalk proffered them sugar plums, very few people even knew them by sight. I will do Magnus Kindred the justice to say that the keen memory of some of his own early days at the Post made him a little bit thoughtful of these forlorn young strangers. It was no great credit to him, perhaps, if he now and then passed on to fourth class hands a box of Miss Flirt's best candy, but he did better than that. He gave words of encouragement and counsel, cheered up the faint hearts, and would smile and speak to a pleb on the sidewalk, just as if he himself had not been first sergeant, and a prime favourite with the ladies.