The next ten or twelve waking hours are little but hurry and rush. The big hop on hand for society men: with farewell visits, last ends of packing, and countless bits of red tape to be tied in regulation knots. Then last looks at the river, and hands laid lovingly and for the last time upon some of the old grey rocks. In front of the library a platform is raised, and draped with the star-spangled banner, and a canvas canopy stretches across from tree to tree. Strong ropes wall in the space below, where stand the chairs, rank after rank, and as the morning hours run on, sentinels guard the ropes against all intruders. The seats, of course, are, first of all, for cadets and people of the Post, but just there does the dear general public wish to sit, and for whom the chairs are placed affects them not at all. So, for an hour or more, there is a sort of running fight--a skirmish line--all round the lines of rope, and the sentries well nigh meet their match. Demands, complaints, exclamations, are loud-voiced and many, and neither orders nor fixed bayonets win much respect. "Those are the orders, ma'am." "I'm not responsible, ma'am." "No, ma'am, no one allowed inside the ropes." "Sit there? Those seats are reserved for the mothers, ma'am." "But _we_ are the mothers," cried one good dame to the stony official. And as the guard turned to ward off some new intruder, one could but laugh at the adroitness with which she slipped in behind his back, to be again ordered out. At last come dignitaries in such very full feather that the crowd stands back and becomes a trifle more modest. The hands on the clock move on, cadets who were wandering about with mothers and friends leave them and go off to barracks. Men for the platform come leisurely along, sure of a good place; the upper ten for the seats below make more speed, seeking the best. Then the superintendent, the adjutant, and all the glittering people in train of the Board of Visitors, mount the platform, and make it a study of sheen and colour. Drums sound in the distance, then nearer, and the whole battalion comes marching down. They halt at the back of the crowd, stack arms, and the graduating class file in and take their seats.