His mother was by no means "sold" on the idea of his becoming a soldier either, and it was only when he assured her that there wouldn't be a gun fired in a hundred years, that she finally consented. If she could have looked ahead to his future career, and final part in the greatest war the world has ever known--one wonders what her emotions would have been!
Pershing passed his entrance examination by a narrow margin, and then entered a training school at Highland Falls, N. Y., for tutoring in certain deficient branches. At last in June, 1882, when he was just rounding his twenty-second year, he became a freshman in the great Academy on the Hudson.
The young plebe from the West speedily fell in love with the institution and all that it represented. He found the soldier life awakening in him, along with his desire for a good education. Four happy years were spent there--and while he didn't shine, being number thirty in a class of seventy-seven, his all-around qualities made him many friends among both faculty and students. He was made ranking cadet captain in his senior year, and chosen class president.
Twenty-five years later, writing from clear around the world, at Manila, to his class, at a reunion, he gives a long, breezy account of his experience there, from which we have space to quote only a few sentences:
"This brings up a period of West Point life whose vivid impressions will be the last to fade. Marching into camp, piling bedding, policing company streets for logs or wood carelessly dropped by upper classmen, pillow fights at tattoo with Marcus Miller, sabre drawn, marching up and down superintending the plebe class, policing up feathers from the general parade; light artillery drills, double-timing around old Fort Clinton at morning squad drill; Wiley Bean and the sad fate of his seersucker coat; midnight dragging, and the whole summer full of events can only be mentioned in passing.
"No one can ever forget his first guard tour with all its preparation and perspiration. I got along all right during the day, but at night on the color line my troubles began. Of course, I was scared beyond the point of properly applying any of my orders. A few minutes after taps, ghosts of all sorts began to appear from all directions. I selected a particularly bold one and challenged according to orders: 'Halt, who comes there?' At that the ghost stood still in its tracks. I then said: 'Halt, who stands there?' Whereupon the ghost, who was carrying a chair, sat down. When I promptly said: 'Halt, who sits there?' . . .