News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1883-09-13
DANCING AT WEST POINT.
The Very Lively Balls which the Cadets En-
10y Three Times Week.

The cadet balls which occur here three
times week during the summer en-
campment, letter from West POin says,
have a delicious flavor of Old-fashiOned
children's parties about them. They
begin at eight and end at ten sharp.
Uncle Sam provides a good ball room
and ten musicians, and the cadets pro-
vide the guests. The officers magnani-
mously stay away except the superin-
tendent and his wife. who punctiliOusly
accept the Invitations rendered them.
The only preparation the cadets can
make is to put on their freshest laun-
dried white duck trousers and scrub
their already shining faces. Their trou-
sers are objects of much solicitude with
them. They rigidly avoid sitting down
at the balls, for fear that their kne
should acquire baggy and civilian look,
and it may be said that the military
tailor who makes their trousers is a per-
| feet master of the mystery of fitting.
About eight o'clock in the evening in
Vulnerable white-legged and bobtail-
| coated young men assemble in front of
| the academic building containing the
| ball room, where the Omnibuses deposit
the blooming young ladies, who make the
cadets hearts beat beneath their nicely
padded jackets. Having only two
hours of revelling to count on, they have
| got the question of time down fine.
| Every dance is engaged for, and the in
| tervals between the dances are infnitesi-
NAL These boys show in their fresh
faces and 1.-THE forms the benefit of the
REGULAR hours, wholesome fare andhealthy
discipline. The continual attention OF
| the riding master, the fencing master,
and the dancing master is shown in their
| department. The bad manners of many
! society men would need no better foil
! than the polite attention to their guests
! of these cadets.
Principally at eight the band strikes
up, and the whirling begins. Every
tuIug dances; the DObtaiIed coats SCIn-
tillate, the white trousered legs twinkle,
and the ecstatic young ladies are in the
Elysian Fields. ChaperOnes at these
white balls are of small account. There
is no danger of couples straying off; the
cadet is engaged for every dance, and
there is very little time for sentiment.
The band plays a kind of hoppity-skip-
pity-jump music that is highly apprO-
pirate to the occasion. The fact that
the assemblage is rather youthful must
however, be studiously avoided in con-
versation. The cadets speak Of each
other always as men. The cadet officers,
with sashes tied around their slim
waists, are considered terrible fellows
among the girls by the rest of the corps.
At the balls, the girl who gets an ado
lescent officer with a sash, is looked upon
as a mortal blessed by the gods.
The two hours slip by like lightning.
At a quarter to ten a cadet with drum
appears at the door of the ball room.
The band twists "Home, Sweet Home"
into a queer sort of waltz, the cadets,
meanwhile, dancing for all they are
worth now in these last few precious
minutes. Then the band slides into
''Take back the Heart, done as another
waltz, highly appropriate and sugges-
tive air, selected on purpose as a final
warning to the young ladies, and sud
denly the drummer, who has been eye
ing the clock, seizcs his drum stick, and
a loud rattle, rattle, bang, whir-r-r re-
sounds. 1t is like the crack of doom. |
Every blessed little cadet tucks his part
ner under his arm and makes Il dash for
the doorway. The young ladies who
want to be escorted to their omnibuses I.
are quick in getting on their wraps, and .
in half an hour from the rolling of the .
drum the girls are trundled off and the /.
cadets are snug IN bed.