Excerpt
CHAPTER I "TWO TINY SPECKS OF NOTHING"
"How do you feel, Dick! As spruce as you did an hour ago!"
Candidate Greg Holmes put the question with a half-nervous laugh. He spoke in a whisper, too, as if to keep his agitation from reaching the notice of any of the score or more of other young men in the room of Mr. Ward, the aged notary at West Point.
"I'll be glad when I see some daylight through the proceedings,"Dick Prescott whispered in answer.
"I'm glad they allow us to talk here in undertones," pursued Greg.
"If we weren't allowed to do so, some of us would go suddenly crazy, utter a whoop and spring through one of the windows," grinned Dick.
For the tenth time he thrust his hands into his pockets—then as quickly drew them out again.
All of the young men now gathered in the room were candidates for cadetships at West Point; candidates who had been appointed by the Congressmen or Senators of their home districts or states, and who must now pass satisfactory physical and mental examinations, after which they would be enrolled as cadets in the United States Military Academy. Those of the cadets who thus passed the preliminary examinations, and who maintained good health and good standing in their classes during the following four years and three months would then be graduated from the Military Academy and forthwith be appointed second lieutenants in the Regular Army of the United States.
Hived in this room, awaiting their turn, a spirit of awe had gripped all these nervous young men.
Some of them dreaded a failure in the coming bodily tests before the keen-eyed, impartial surgeons of the United States Army.
Probably half of the boys in the room feared that they would fail in the academic examinations.
Boys? Some of the candidates didn't look the part. They had the physiques and general appearance, many of them, of men; for a candidate may be anywhere between the ages of seventeen and twenty-two years of age.
From all over the country they came. When the new, or plebe class should finally be assembled and put to work, that class would represent practically every state in the Union.
Readers of a former series of books, "THE HIGH SCHOOL BOYS SERIES," will not need to again be introduced to Dick Prescott and Greg Holmes. Such readers will well remember these two manly young Americans as members of that famous sextette, "Dick & Co.," famous in the annals of the good old Gridley High School.
Nor will such readers need to be told how Dick won, over the heads of forty competitors, the nomination of Congressman Spokes, the boy carrying all before him in a rigid competitive examination at the Gridley High School. The same readers will remember how Greg Holmes secured his own nomination from Senator Frayne. This was all related in the closing volume of the High School Series, "THE HIGH SCHOOL CAPTAIN OF THE TEAM."
Our former readers will also recall that Dave Darrin and Dan Daizell "ran away" with the nominations for cadetships at Annapolis, while Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton, the last of famous Dick & Co., went West seeking their careers as young engineers....