owest. Examinations then were oral, not
written; and, preoccupied though I was with my own difficulties, I
could not but catch at times sounds of his. He was being questioned in
grammar and in parsing, which I have heard--I do not know whether
truly--are now looked upon as archaic methods of teaching; and the
sentence propounded to him was, "Mahomet was driven from Mecca, but he
returned in triumph." His rendering of the first words I did not hear,
my attention not being arrested until "but," which proved to him a
truly disjunctive conjunction. "But!" he ejaculated--"but!" and
paused. Then came the "practical" leap into the unknown. "'But' is an
adverb, qualifying 'he,' showing what he is doing." Poor fellow, it
was no joke to him, nor probably his fault, but that of circumstances.
When released from the ordeal, we stood round together, awaiting
sentence. He was in despair, nor could I honestly encourage him. "Look
at you," he said, "as quiet as if nothing had happened"--I was by no
means confident that I had cause for elation. "If I were as sure that
I had passed as that you have, I should be skipping all over the
place." I never heard of him again; but suppose from his name, which I
remember, and his State, of which I am less sure, that he took, and in
any event would have taken, the Confederate side in the coming
troubles. His loss by this failure was therefore probably less than it
then seemed.

An intruder, in breach of well-settled precedent, might have expected
to be looked on askance by the class which I thus unusually entered.
Not the faintest indication of discontent was ever shown, nor I
believe felt, even by those over whom I subsequently passed by such
standing as I established, although the fact meant promotion over
them. The spirit of the officer and the gentleman, which disdained
hazing, disdained discourtesy equally, and thrust aside with the
generosity of youth the jealousy that mature years more readily
cherishes towards competitors. The habit in those days was to
distinguish classes, not by the year of graduation, but by that of
entry--colloquially, the so-and-so "Date"--a manner derived from an
earlier period, when there was no other chronological point of
departure for the career; and in those "days before the flood" nothing
would have tempted us to depart from a time-honored custom. "Dates"
frequently established among their contemporaries reputations
analogous to those of individuals. At that ti