Our hero entered the institution September 23, 1854. It did not take him
long to discover that the institution, like that at West Point, is
controlled by the most rigid discipline possible. No stricter rules can
be devised than those that prevail at the two institutions. I have heard
it said by a West Point graduate that a cadet cannot sit down and
breathe for twenty-four hours without violating some rule. The fact that
a few men do escape being "skinned"--that is, punished for derelictions
of duty--does not prove that they have not committed any indiscretions,
but that they have escaped detection.

Hard, however, as was the road for Dewey to travel, he never shrank or
turned aside, for he knew the same path had been traveled by all who had
gone before him, and he reasoned that what man had done man could do,
and he did it.

It will be noted that the future Admiral entered the Naval Academy at a
stirring period in the history of our country, over which the coming
Civil War already cast its awful shadow, and, as the months and years
passed, the shadow darkened and grew more portentous until the red
lightning rent the clouds apart and they rained blood and fire and woe
and death.

At the Annapolis Academy the lines between the cadets from the North and
the South were sharply drawn. They reflected the passions of their
sections, and, being young and impulsive, there were hot words and
fierce blows. As might be supposed, George Dewey was prominent in these
affrays, for it has been said of him that there was never a fight in his
neighborhood without his getting into the thickest of it.