t Point of to-day, and no worse than a dozen of our
greatest colleges. The corps still had its tales and traditions of
the old time Fourth-of-July dinners at the mess hall, when
everybody made a dash for the decanters and drank everything in
sight. It was the only day in the year on which wine was served.
It was in my time the invariable custom for the superintendent to
receive the Board of Visitors on the day of their arrival at his
quarters and to invite the officers and the graduating class to
meet them, and to set forth, as for years had been the fashion at
Washington, wine and punch in abundance, and the very officers
detailed as our instructors would laughingly invite and challenge
the youngsters so soon to shed the gray and wear the blue to drink
with them again and again. I have seen dozens of the best and
bravest of our fellows come reeling and shouting back to barracks,
and a thoughtless set of boys laughing and applauding.

"I was stationed at the Point soon after graduation, and the men
who drank were the rule, not the exception. Social visits were
rarely exchanged without the introduction of the decanter. The
marvel is that so many were 'temperate in our meat and drink,' as
my father and grandfather used to plead when, regularly every
morning, the family and the negro servants were mustered for
prayers. At every post where I was stationed, either in the East
or where I was most at home,--the far frontier,--whiskey was the
established custom, and man after man, fellows who had made fine
records during the war, and bright boys with whom I had worn the
gray at the Point, fell by the wayside and were court-martialled
out of service.

"In '70 and '71 we had a Board that swept the army like a seine
and relegated scores of tipplers to civil life, but that didn't
stop it. Little by little the sense and manhood of our people
began to tell. Little by little the feeling against stimulant
began to develop at the Point. It was no longer a joke to set a
fledgling officer to taste the tempter--it was a crime. Four years
after I was commissioned we had only one total abstainer out of
some fifty officers at the mess, and he was a man whose life and
honor depended on it. Three years ago, when I went to see you,
there were dozens at the mess who never drank at all, and only
eigh