Since certain words of my story were written a few changes have come in. The cadet classes have pledged themselves to abolish hazing; the Hundredth Night (in its old wild glee) has been forbidden; the Cadet Howitzer is spiked. The shady nooks along "Flirtation" have been cleared up; Fort Clinton is a memory, the tents are brown, and Dade's white shaft now stands in the gayest and sunniest of all the thoroughfares. But human nature survives,--and "boodle"--and the girls, so that my book is declared to be still "absolutely true." Sometimes when I watch that grey throng in the Chapel, I have a great wish that I could see the other little army with whom they are to join hands. So much depends on them. For womanhood sets the standard for the world of men. "She's like the keystone to an arch, That consummates all beauty; She's like the music to a march, That sheds a joy on duty." Such she should be. A. B. W. MARTLAER'S ROCK. I THE BOY The lions, if they left not the forest, would capture no prey; and the arrow, if it quitted not the bow, would not strike the mark. --_Arabian Nights._ The precise date of my story does not matter: the world strikes a much more even average than we are apt to think; and still, as of old, "the thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done, is that which shall be done." Once upon a time, then, there was a boy whose name was Charlemagne Kindred. "Magnus" was the home version. I think his two young sisters were perhaps rather proud of the royal-republican title, and would by no means let it come down to "Charley," and so lose itself in the crowd. Once in a while, when a longer lecture than usual was called for, Mrs. Kindred would say Charlemagne: but I doubt if it had much effect, unless to give Magnus some slighting thoughts of the ancestor who had first borne his name. Mrs. Kindred was a widow of ten years' standing; and she and Magnus, and the two young sisters, made up the family. There is nothing on earth sweeter than girls can be; and these two filled out the fair pattern, with few breaks or flaws. But no history or inheritance of even a name had been wasted on them, and they set out in life as plain Rose and Violet, named for their father's favourite flowers. Magnus had not at all, however, the same reverence for his sisters that they felt for him, which was a pity; for really I think they deserved it better. But another drawback to the perfections of my hero,--a common one enough with heroes, and which after all proved him the real thing,--he had not five cents to his name. And failing this, the question came up very naturally, what else he could have "to his name," to make that worth the carrying. "Mamma, he'd make a beautiful minister!" said Rose, who, enshrined in the very rosiest corner of her heart, had a faint, far-away picture of her father in the pulpit.