The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1888-06-20
CUPID ENTERS WEST POINT.
NOW A TEACHER AND AGAIN A PUPIL.
Henry Guy Carleton Gushes Over the West
Point Girl and Rhapsodizes on Her
Ravishing Charms-The Jolly Ca
det is Having n Picnic Now.
- IRLsl AS sorghum wooes bluebot-

knows which blows them in.
Whittier they go when the all-too-briet
DAYS of their conquests are done is mys-
terry which will battle investigation forever.
Oh, but they are dainty, the girly girls
infesting West Point! They are terror
to grim-visaged war, a destroyer OF discip-
line, a destruction to thoughts military,
but thing of beauty and a JOY forever,
these girls, bright as the morning, sweet
as the honey of Hybla, covetable but be-
yond reach as the crescent Of the young
midsummer moon, winsome, saucy, be-
quilting, all sparkle and color and smiles !;
merry girls, golden of hair and with
sapphire eyes; girls dark and pensive as
the Cenci, girls chubby and short, girls
lissome and tall, girls demure and girls
frolicsome, girls kittenish and girls coy,
girls stately and cold as new-crowned
Semiramis, girls voluble and way
ward as Peruvian paroquet, gushing
girls just out of grammar and bingham,
with their first long gown and the world
yet before them; girls of several seasons,
veterans, skilled in the ways OF the Point,
deadly with glance at short range, now
ing whole rows of plebes with a single
sweep of a smiles fairy scythe; last
chance girls, spruce of attire but trifle
dismal of eye; girls rich and girls I'M
lowered except In the treasure of sweet
ness and beauty; girls of all sizes, ages
conditions and creeds-all gathered in
the glory of the graduating cadet.
The West Point fever is an infectious
LODI
recover, and it generally leaves some car
daic affection which may take years to re-
move. Unusually begins in a slight attack
of filtration, followed by a more or less
severe congestion of the emotions, com
plicated with moonlight and tendency to
converse in whispers or even not converse
at ALL 1t rarely takes Il matrimonial turn,
but this is principally due to the prompt
ness with which the patient is given a
change of scene and air as soon as the
more virulent symptoms appear.
/ observed a singular phenomenon in
pursuing my studies of West Point affec-
ton. The large, naughty and proud-eyed
seniors catch all the delicious little red
Tipped, laughing and kissable fairies, riot
Gus with glee over their first experience
with brass-buttons and tender-voiced war.
The middle-class men capture the bright
plumed girls of two seasons or mOre-girls
who understand what the bugle-calls mean,
know the hours OF reveile and taps, think
a pontoon bridge bore and dress-parade
a tiresome performance, are acquainted
with every moss-grown rock OF Filtration
Walk, and can come to the point in thirty
minutes by the watch. The veteran girls
catch the plebs, the poor, despised, gawky
and inconsequentlal plebs, whom nobody
notices and only God loves
l heard a rogueish little sprite of seven
teen this morning in one glib half hour
make eleven different promenading en-
gagements for to-day, dress-parade com
plication and an alliance for dinner, COM
pletelv fill her card for a hop-to-night,
pledge herself forAFhe homeward stroll
and take several solemn oaths that to
gladden. one poor disconsolate she would
arise at reveille and be his until guard
mounting. Just then her belated knight,
the Newton of his class, arrived, breath
less and explanatory, to take the remnant
of his hour. She flashed him the saucest
of welcomes from her rose-leaf lips, and
then, as she tripped adown the path, shot
Parthian dart backward in a sunny smile
of promise, which every blessed one of
the bedizened. bell-buttoned military kids
took conceitedly as meant for himself
just, indeed, as the little mischief had in
tended he should. All, me! these girls
just out of pinafore and primer, whence
get they that archer's art?
The most pathetic sight of the day was
a poor yearling, whom a veteran had
clutched with the cold and never-let-go
grip. She winged him just after break
fast on the parade. He struggled feebly,
but to no purpose. There was that last
chance glitter in her steel-blue eyes which
cried no quarter.
IL am awfully sorry, doncherknow,
he said after an hours twitter. Il
really, you know, first call has blown for
the pontoon drill, and-er-that ISL
Really" She gave him a slow, inetfa-
bly, sweet smile-a glance soothing, soul
full, almost motherly. "Why, L thought,
Mr.. Budkins. that YOU said few minutes
ago that you were Jolly glad you were
to have nothing to do until dress parade.
"Er-ah-so | did---I---I had forgotten
-er---shall we take in the pontOon and
the
Again the seraphic triangle of her
mouth. "The pontoon? Don't you think
that really slow, MIR. Budkins? Do you
know, have been thinking all morning
how too sweet it would be to do the walk?
Do you know the old rock at the turn,
just where the river CLEANS through the
trees? / remember four years ago
when p
At this iuncture a formidable tempta-
ton to Budkins appeared on the piazza in
the shape of a pink-gowned blue-eyed
goddess with frizzy hair, dimples and the
cutest little gold filling in a front tooth,
whom all last evening he had worshipped
from afar and to whom Jack Stanton had
promised to present him at this very
hour Budkins essayed once more to
be free.
"Don't you think you may catch cold
on the walk and-er"-
Catch cold? /? oh, dear, no.'
"And then there are bugs down there,
and-and rattlesnake"-
"a rattlesnakel Indeedl How / do
hope we will see one. am very fond OF
natural history and"-
Here the pink-gowned goddess was
snapped up by a bouncing cadet, and
Budkins, wilted with agony, suffered him
self to be led away.
Just now it is in ripest bloom, this
bower OF love and cradle of war-more
love than war-West Point. Never more
vivid emeralds twinkled in the trees,
never poured the hidden trush his liquid,
full-throated song more blithely than
now; never did the crested hills tower
with more majesty, never the steel-bright
river sweep more quiet between, never
greater glory in the multitudinousg grasses,
never did that choir of June-wind, leaf
and bird-link silence unto silence with
more perfect, more enhancing threads of
song.
And now more girls. Girls swoop in at
eventide in coveys like quail, but not