the cadets were required to write a report telling of the suppression
of the insurrection on the Isthmus of Panama. McGiffin won great
praise for the military arrangements and disposition of his men,
but, in the same report, he went on to describe how he armed them
with a new gun known as Baines's Rhetoric and told of the havoc
he wrought in the enemy's ranks when he fired these guns loaded
with similes and metaphors and hyperboles.

Of course, after each exhibition of this sort he was sent to the
_Santee_ and given an opportunity to meditate.

On another occasion, when one of the instructors lectured to the
cadets, he required them to submit a written statement embodying
all that they could recall of what had been said at the lecture. One
of the rules concerning this report provided that there should be no
erasures or interlineations, but that when mistakes were made the
objectionable or incorrect expressions should be included within
parentheses; and that the matter so enclosed within parentheses
would not be considered a part of the report. McGiffin wrote an
excellent _resume_ of the lecture, but he interspersed through it in
parentheses such words as "applause," "cheers," "cat-calls," and
"groans," and as these words were enclosed within parentheses he
insisted that they did not count, and made a very fair plea that he
ought not to be punished for words which slipped in by mistake,
and which he had officially obliterated by what he called oblivion
marks.

He was not always on mischief bent. On one occasion, when the
house of a professor caught fire, McGiffin ran into the flames and
carried out two children, for which act he was commended by the