Dick Prescotts First Year at West Point | Page 7

address a Superior officer,
or any other cadet or candidate on official business always add 'sir.'"
Danvers nodded, but the nod Cadet Corporal Brayton ignored by
turning on his heel and stepping, with a magnificently military air and
carriage, over to another luckless candidate.
When ordered, the candidate fell in next to Mr. Danvers. Then the other
anxious youngsters fell into line.
"Candidates turn out promptly!" sounded snappily in another part of
barracks.
Another lot of newcomers began to tumble downstairs and out of doors
with feverish haste, to be confronted by another cadet corporal who
awaited them.
"Never mind that other squad!" admonished Cadet Corporal Brayton
sharply. "Favor me with your whole attention. Now, then, listen, and do
each thing as I tell you. Button your jackets and overcoats all the way
down! Stand erect, with your heels together, and your toes pointing out
at an angle of sixty degrees. Stand erect. Throw your shoulders back,
your chests out and hold your heads up. This is called 'the position of
the soldier.' Stand as I do."
Corporal Brayton favored his awkward squad with a profile view of
himself, as he took the exact position of a soldier. How the anxious
candidates wished they really could stand as this handsome young son
of Mars did! To them it seemed impossible ever to acquire such truly
military carriage. They did not realize that, between drills, gymnasium

work and the setting-up drills, they would, in a few weeks, be hard to
distinguish in elegance and perfection from their present instructor.
"Not quite so much like an ostrich, Mr. Prescott!" rasped out Corporal
Brayton severely.
Dick flushed painfully, all the more so because he heard one of the
other candidates snicker.
"Stop that laughing, Mr. Danvers!" cornmanded Corporal Brayton.
Greg, in trying to get the right position, had so exaggerated it that now
he found himself trembling from the strain of trying to maintain that
position.
"What ails you, Mr. Holmes!" demanded Brayton, with withering
scorn.
"I-I was trying to get the right position, sir," stammered Greg,
reddening.
"That isn't the position of even a respectable dromedary, Mr. Holmes,"
rejoined the cadet corporal crisply.
Then he poured a storm of refined abuse upon Greg. It wasn't intended
entirely for Greg, but for the benefit of all the awkwardly standing
green candidates. Not a word in Brayton's remarks went beyond the
limits of strict military propriety, yet every word cut.
"My, but I'd like to fall out and give this fellow a licking!" muttered
Greg to himself.
"Mr. Holmes," observed Cadet Corporal Brayton dryly, "clenched fists
do not go with the position of the soldier. Let your hands fall naturally
at your sides, each little finger resting against the seam of the trousers,
or where you judge the seam to be."
Again the blood shot up to the roots of Greg's hair, suffusing his face.
But Mr. Brayton had already turned to another candidate whom he

found in a ludicrously bad position. After some minutes of this attempt
to instruct the candidates in the seemingly simple matter of standing
correctly, Brayton gave the welcome order to rest.
By this time four other awkward squads were at the same work.
"I wish we had our uniforms," whispered Greg. "I'd feel better."
"I am glad I haven't a uniform yet," returned Dick in an equally low
voice. "I realize how like a fool I'd look in it when I don't even know
how to stand, let alone attempting to walk in a uniform. Just look at the
magnificent carriage of the man that's drilling us!"
"I'd like to hammer him until he needed a carriage to get anywhere in,"
muttered Greg vengefully. "That corporal is a brute, without a vestige
of good breeding."
"Then, for a fellow without breeding, he certainly carries himself like a
king," retorted Dick. "At least, I don't believe any European prince has
half as fine a carriage as Mr. Bray-ton."
"I wonder if they're all as bad as this corporal," demanded Greg.
"Brayton is a tyrant in gray."
"Greg! Greg! Get a brace on yourself, old fellow," whispered Dick
warningly. "This is only the morning of the first day, and we have
before us months-years-of taking our medicine. Don't lose the gait even
before you've got it. We came here to take our medicine and learn to be
soldiers, didn't we?"
"Squad, attenition!" rasped out Corporal Brayton, wheeling and once
more favoring his own green lot with his whole regard.
Repeatedly he showed these new men how to stand, how to hold
themselves and how to do it without appearing ridiculous. So crisp, so
rapping and even decorously abusive was Mr. Brayton that the boys
under his command at this moment would have gasped had they been
told that Brayton was considered one