Sioux County pioneer. (Fort Yates, Sioux County, N.D.) 1914-1929, 1916-10-06

the department of mathematics NM, = . ,,.,,
10 work to make our quarters at least hahitable
ooseinnieht furniture has an exasperating way of
representing the combined tastes of q long line
OF former occupants
we were assigned to top floor fiat in Colds
uofoush row, the one where Admiral Theodore
Porters daughter wrote her name with a dia.
mond on window pane when she was a child
ana ne but lieutenant. Admiral Benson our
present chief OF operations, lived in the same fiat
ana DOUBTLESS endured remnants of the same fur
niture when he was an ensign. The midshipmen
called the old place the Corrals and sometimes
the MISUNDERSTANDING devils! The whole row
IS gone now to make way for green lawn, but
Its memories will go out only with the last of the
souls who peOpled the shabby rooms
II think 1t must be this succession of people
facing at different times the same problems and
difficulties. stepping actually into each others
footsteps in work and play, which gives us that
splendid spirit of the service, the warm brother
hood of thought and action that no outsider may
really understand. It begins with the plebe class
in the academy and goes on down a mans life till
he is struck off the list forever and its warmth is
his children's heritage. 1t is the unspoken gene
rosfty Of the upper-class men at the academy to
lend hand to youngsters (third-class men) or
pebe alike. 1t begins in discipline and ends in
Justice
ut is the cooperation of officer with men,. It
stands behind our guns and sweats in the stoker's
hell. It is the chap who stays aboard to take
another fellows duty that some waiting wife
may be happy, some child discover that the pho
tograph he is taught to call father isn't just
makebelieve. 1t is, more than any other one
thing, fleet efficiency. Its steady, unchanging ex-
stence is the armament against which politicians
errors break like froth. It is our safeguard for
protection and against militarism.
"My father had never let me visit the naval
academy as girl for fear might marry naval
T o1roI 20 f{1rY fret
midshipman with curious bareback of youth,
almost as if I were to them through the eyes
of girl l had determined when we went to
duty at the academy to have home place for
the boys who were not invited out very much.
My husband told me once long years ago, when
1 had gone all the way from Boston to Gibraltar
to be with him for four days. that no one had
ever asked him out to single meal at the time
he was at the academy.
81 never forgot that little confidence or the look
in his eyes, and when picked my first midship-
man to invite to our quarters it was because he
said yes ma'am' to me and didn't know what to
do with his hands.
'The Sunday after S. reported we went to
chapel In the academy. We were seated well
back and in the shadow of one of the side bal
confess 1t was infinitely quiet there, the very
light held a quality of silence and the rows and
rows of empty pews beneath the splendid dome
seemed to be waiting tensely with me for some
expected sound.
II looked up into the rapidly filling balconies
So many girls, young and eager, men and
women, town folk and visitors. Then, as my