Drill, drill, drill! Up with the dawn, rain or shine; hurrying through their soldier toilets; rushing down the iron stairways and springing into rigid attention in the forming ranks; sharply answering to the rapidly called roll; scattering to their rooms to "spruce up" for inspection; sure of reprimand if anything went amiss, sure of silence only if all were well. Sweeping and dusting; folding, arranging, and rearranging each item of their few belongings; stumbling over one another's heels at first, yet with each succeeding day marching to meals with less constraint and greater appetite; spending long hours of toil and brief minutes of respite; twisting, turning, wrenching, extending, developing every muscle, most of them hitherto unsuspected and unknown; bending double, springing erect, roosting on tiptoe, swaying forward, backward, sideways, every ways; aching in every bone and joint, sore in every limb, yet expected to stick to it through thick and thin, until as days wore on and pains wore off, and all that was sore, stiff, and awkward grew little by little to be supple, easy, and alert. Wondrous indeed is the transformation wrought in two weeks of such drill under such drill-masters. The 1st of July arrived; George Graham and his fivescore plebe comrades had now spent a fortnight under surveillance and discipline strict and unrelenting as that of the days of grim old Frederick the Great, except that it tolerated no touch of the corporal's cane, no act of abuse. Sharp, stern, fiercely critical were the young cadet instructors, but after the first few days of soreness the native elasticity returned to both body and soul, the boys began to take heart again, and a spirit of rivalry to develop between the drill squads.
To Geordie the hours of soreness of spirit had been few as those of physical suffering. His years of life among the soldiers had prepared him for much that he had to encounter, and pride and pluck sustained him when wearied by the drills or annoyed by the sharp language of his instructors. But with poor Benny Frazier all was different. A pet at home, and the brightest scholar of the high-school of his native city; moreover, the boy officer of the high-school battalion, of whom it was confidently predicted that "He would need no drilling at all at West Point"; "He'd show those cadet fellows a thing or two they never dreamed of"—it was gall and wormwood to his soul to find himself the object of no more consideration at the Point than the greenest "country jake" from Indiana or Dakota; and to Benny's metropolitan mind anything from either Western commonwealth could be nothing but green. What made matters worse for Frazier was the fact that his father and mother had accompanied him to the Point on his arrival, and with pardonable pride, but mistaken zeal, had sought to impress upon the minds of such officers, cadets, and relatives of other plebes as they chanced to meet the story of Benny's manifold excellences as soldier and scholar—oft-told tales of how General This or Professor That had declared him the most accomplished young captain they had ever seen. Then poor Mrs. Frazier, who had pictured for her beloved boy a reception at the hands of the authorities in which gratification, cordiality, and respect should be intermingled, was simply aghast to find that he must take his stand with his fellows at the bottom of the ladder. Luckily for Benny, his parents' stay was limited to three days. Unluckily for Benny, they remained long enough to see him at his first squad drill, side by side with two unmistakably awkward boys, and faring but little better. Such was her grief and indignation that the good lady declared to acquaintances at the hotel that her boy should be drilling that horrid little martinet instead of being drilled by him—and such speeches are sure of repetition. Before Benny was a week older he was known throughout the battalion as "the plebe who had come to drill the corps of cadets," and nothing could have started him worse. One can only conjecture what the fond but unwise mother would have said could she have seen, a fortnight later, that boys who had never drilled at all—had never handled a musket—were grouped in the first squad, and making rapid and soldierly progress, while Benny was still fretting and fuming in the lower one. Yet what was so inexplicable and inexcusable in her eyes was perfectly plain and simple to those acquainted with the facts.