Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps by H. Irving (Harrie Irving) Hancock
page 30 of 231 (12%)
page 30 of 231 (12%)
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of reporting his fellow classmen for what they may consider
insufficient breaches of discipline. The "cut" or "Coventry" is reserved for the cadet whom it is intended to drive from the Army altogether. If a man at West Point is "sent to Coventry" by the whole corps, or as a result of class action, he will never be able to form friendships in the Army again, no matter how long he remains in the Army, or how hard he tries to fight the sentence down. Cadet Jordan, as will have been noted, professed to be satisfied if the class voted a week's "silence" to Dick Prescott, for Jordan believed that by this time the tantalized young cadet captain could be provoked into actions that would bring the imposition of the "long silence" of permanent Coventry. At the end of the busy cadet day, when the two cadet battalions stood in formal array at dress parade, Cadet Adjutant Filson published the day's orders. One of these orders mentioned Jordan's confinement to the company street, and added the further infliction of "punishment tours" to be walked every Wednesday and Saturday afternoons. "Oh, well," thought the culprit, savagely, "as I walk I can plan newer and newer things. I'll go into the Army, and you, Prescott, may become a freight clerk on a jerk-water railroad." Unknown to either Jordan or Prescott at that moment, other storm-clouds were gathering swiftly over the head of the popular |
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