midshipman. I knew McGiffin only as a boy with whom in
vacation time I went coon hunting in the woods outside of
Washington. For his age he was a very tall boy, and in his
midshipman undress uniform, to my youthful eyes, appeared a
most bold and adventurous spirit.

At Annapolis his record seems to show he was pretty much like
other boys. According to his classmates, with all of whom I find he
was very popular, he stood high in the practical studies, such as
seamanship, gunnery, navigation, and steam engineering, but in all
else he was near the foot of the class, and in whatever escapade
was risky and reckless he was always one of the leaders. To him
discipline was extremely irksome. He could maintain it among
others, but when it applied to himself it bored him. On the floor of
the Academy building on which was his room there was a pyramid
of cannon balls--relics of the War of 1812. They stood at the head
of the stairs, and one warm night, when he could not sleep, he
decided that no one else should do so, and, one by one, rolled the
cannon balls down the stairs. They tore away the banisters and
bumped through the wooden steps and leaped off into the lower
halls. For any one who might think of ascending to discover the
motive power back of the bombardment they were extremely
dangerous. But an officer approached McGiffin in the rear, and,
having been caught in the act, he was sent to the prison ship. There
he made good friends with his jailer, an old man-of-warsman
named "Mike." He will be remembered by many naval officers
who as midshipmen served on the _Santee_. McGiffin so won over
Mike that when he left the ship he carried with him six charges of
gunpowder. These he loaded into the six big guns captured in the
Mexican War, which lay on the grass in the centre of the Academy