would thrash him until he could not stand or see. Of course he sent me
his second, and one of my classmates acted for me. We went out that
same evening after supper behind Fort Clinton, and I thrashed him so
badly that he was laid up in the hospital for several days. After that
I took a much more cheerful view of life, and as it seemed hardly fair
to make one cadet bear the whole brunt of my displeasure toward the
entire battalion, I began picking quarrels with anyone who made
pretensions of being a fighter, and who chanced to be bigger than
myself.

Sometimes I got badly beaten, and sometimes I thrashed the other man,
but whichever way it went, those battles in the soft twilight evenings
behind the grass-grown ramparts of the old fort, in the shadow of the
Kosciusko Monument, will always be the brightest and pleasantest
memories of my life at this place.

My grandfather had one other daughter besides my mother, my Aunt Mary,
who had married a Harvard professor, Dr. Endicott, and who had lived
in Cambridge ever since they married.

In my second year here, Dr. Endicott died and my grandfather at once
went to Cambridge to bring Aunt Mary and her daughter Beatrice back
with him, installing them in our little home, which thereafter was to
be theirs as well. He wrote me saying he knew I would not disapprove
of this invasion of my place by my young cousin and assured me that no
one, girl or boy, could ever take the place in his heart that I had
held. As a matter of fact I was secretly pleased to hear of this
addition to our little household. I knew that as soon as I was
graduated I would be sent to some army post in the West, and that the
occasional visit I was now able to pay to Dobbs Ferry would be