Captain Macklin | Page 6

and manners and scanty spending
money, the way these young collegians wagered their money at the
football match and drank from their silver flasks, and smoked and
swaggered in the hotel corridors, was something to be admired and
copied. And although I knew none of them, and would have been
ashamed had they seen me in company with any of my boy friends
from Dobbs Ferry, I followed them from one hotel to another,
pretending I was with them, and even penetrated at their heels into the
cafe of Delmonico. I felt then for a brief moment that I was "seeing
life," the life of a great metropolis, and in company with the young
swells who made it the rushing, delightful whirlpool it appeared to be.
It seemed to me, then, that to wear a green coachman's coat, to rush the
doorkeeper at the Haymarket dance-hall, and to eat supper at the
"Silver Grill" was to be "a man about town," and each year I returned to
our fireside at Dobbs Ferry with some discontent. The excursions made
me look restlessly forward to the day when I would return from my

Western post, a dashing young cavalry officer on leave, and would
wake up the cafes and clubs of New York, and throw my money about
as carelessly as these older boys were doing then.
My appointment to West Point did not, after all, come from General
Grant, but from President Arthur, who was in office when I reached my
nineteenth year. Had I depended upon my Congressman for the
appointment, and had it been made after a competitive examination of
candidates, I doubt if I would have been chosen.
Perhaps my grandfather feared this and had it in his mind when he
asked the President to appoint me. It was the first favor he had ever
asked of the Government he had served so well, and I felt more grateful
to him for having asked the favor, knowing what it cost him to do so,
than I did to the President for granting it.
I was accordingly entered upon the rolls of the Military Academy, and
my career as a soldier began. I wish I could say it began brilliantly, but
the records of the Academy would not bear me out. Had it not been that
I was forced to study books I would not have been a bad student; for in
everything but books, in everything that bore directly on the training of
a soldier and which depended upon myself, as, for example, drill,
riding, marksmanship, and a knowledge of the manual, I did as well, or
far better, than any of my classmates. But I could not, or would not,
study, and instead of passing high in my class at the end of the plebe
year, as my natural talents seemed to promise I would do, I barely
scraped through, and the outlook for the second year was not
encouraging. The campaign in Mexico had given my grandfather a
knowledge of Spanish, and as a boy he had drilled this language into
me, for it was a fixed belief of his, that if the United States ever went to
war, it would be with some of her Spanish-American neighbors, with
Mexico, or Central America, or with Spain on account of Cuba. In
consequence he considered it most essential that every United States
officer should speak Spanish. He also argued that a knowledge of
French was of even greater importance to an officer and a gentleman,
as it was, as I have since found it to be, the most widely spoken of all
languages. I was accordingly well drilled in these two tongues, and I
have never regretted time I spent on them, for my facility in them has
often served me well, has pulled me out of tight places, put money into
my pocket, and gained me friends when but for them I might have

remained and departed a stranger among strangers. My French
accordingly helped me much as a "yearling," and in camp I threw
myself so earnestly into the skirmish, artillery, and cavalry drills that in
spite of my low marks I still stood high in the opinion of the cadet
officers and of my instructors. With my classmates, for some reason,
although in all out-of-door exercises I was the superior of most of them,
I was not popular. I would not see this at first, for I try to keep on
friendly terms with those around me, and I want to be liked even by
people of whom I have no very high opinion and from whom I do not
want anything besides. But I was not popular. There was no disguising
that, and in the gymnasium or the riding-hall other men would win
applause for