CHRISTMAS LEAVE, 332 XLIII. THE HUNDREDTH NIGHT, 343 XLIV. PRESSING ON, 355 XLV. NOTHING SERIOUS, 360 XLVI. TRYING LETTERS, 364 XLVII. MRS. CONGRESSMAN, 369 XLVIII. THE GUARD-HOUSE IN JUNE, 376 XLIX. FLIRTATION AND OTHER PLACES, 388 L. FAIRYLAND, 398 LI. THE HOME STRETCH, 404 LII. THE BIG RECEPTION, 414 LIII. THE FIRST POST, 420 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, FACING PAGE THE FLAG, _Title_ THE BARRACKS IN WINTER, 97 THE COLOR GUARD, 109 MOUNTING HEAVY GUNS IN FORT CLINTON, 170 CADET ROOM IN BARRACKS, 300 PARADE REST IN CAMP, 377 FLIRTATION, 392 CADET BOAT AND CREW, 401 INTRODUCTION TO THIS TALE OF A POSSIBLE CADET Some of my friends in a certain cadet class beset me to write a West Point story; promising me incidents at will, a plot, a name, and a tactical officer for "the villain." Perhaps it was because I declined this last sensational detail that they backed out of all the rest, and having given my boat a shove into deep water, left me to row and pilot as best I might. However, help came from other men, in other classes. I was cheered on in my work, and given story after story, with full leave to use them as I chose; and so it falls out that my book is quite true. Not that all the happenings ever came to any one cadet, or within the bounds of any four years' course. But they have almost all, at some time, been part of somebody's cadet life at West Point. With what men, or in what years, it does not matter: the last decade of the nineteenth century nearly enough covers the whole. I have tried hard to have the small technicalities quite correct. Yet as rules do vary now and then, even at West Point, everything may not always _seem_ right, to this or that graduate. And, of course, I may have blundered here and there. Certain points in cadet life I was especially asked to handle; and if once or twice I have told only what _might_ have been, even there I had the warrant of cadet opinion. As for the fancy names, it was so hard to find plain ones that were not down in some Army List or Visitors' Book, that I made up a few, choosing rather to give caps which nobody would put on than others quite sure to be appropriated. Truly, I did not name Miss Dangleum: a young officer did that, and Cadet Devlin was also dubbed by one who knew.