now wish, sir?"

"You may."

Greg, his face again flushing painfully, tore the sheet into small
bits, turning and tossing them into his waste basket. Then he again
wheeled, standing at attention.

"Stand at ease, mister," ordered Mr. Edwards, dropping out of his
official tone and manner. "Now, mister, will it do you any good if I
explain a few little things about life here at West Point?"

"I shall be very glad, indeed, sir, if you will be good enough,"
replied Greg rather shamefacedly.

"In the first place, mister," went on the cadet lieutenant, sitting,
now, with one leg thrown over the corner of Greg's desk, "the
homesickness that has hit you touches every other man who comes
here. It's a mighty hard-working life here, and I'll admit, mister,
that it's very cheerless during the plebe year.

"You think you are looked down upon, and regarded as being
beneath contempt, mister. That sort of treatment for a plebe is
believed to be necessary here. Grant got it; so did Sherman; so did
Sheridan. George Washington would have been treated in just the
same manner had there been a West Point for him to go to.

"It isn't because of what we upper class men think of you. It's
because of what we're waiting to find out. I don't know anything
about your connections in your home town. You may have been a
great fellow there. You may, for all I know, have had a home of
wealth, luxury and refinement. Your father may be a man of great
importance in the nation. I don't know anything about that, and I
don't care about it, either, mister. From the moment you start in at
West Point, you start your life all over again, and you stand on
nothing but your own merits. We don't know how much merit you
have, and we shan't know until you've gone through with your
plebe year and have proved whether you're a man or not. If we
find, a year from this coming summer, that you're a man, we'll
welcome you into the heartiest comradeship of all the corps.
Mister, I've said a lot more to you than most upper class men
would waste the time to say. Choose your own course, and prove
where you stand."

Then Cadet Lieutenant Edwards turned around to Cadet Prescott
with a look that made that Gridley boy feel rather uncomfortable.

"As for you, mister, never again, while you're a plebe, be so b.j.
(fresh) as to try a joke with an upper class man. If there's one thing,
mister, that gets a plebe into three times as much trouble as any
other thing, then it's b