 | Eli Perkins (at large) |  |
THE MILITARY MAN.
The other day, I took a couple of “swell” young
ladies up to the West Point Military Ball. Miss Grace
Vanderbilt and Miss Mary Astor, Jack Astor's sister,
were their names, and their dresses cost $500 apiece—
awfully “swell” girls.
I had a hard time chaperoning these two pretty girls.
The cadets would get them away from me at every
corner. I couldn't keep my eyes on them any more
than I could have kept them on a dozen velocipedes in
a circus tent. Finally I lost sight of Grace and Mary
altogether. They disappeared in the mazes of the
dance like small boats in a fog. Now and then I would
see them waltzing toward me, and then before I could
speak to them their long trains would hop around and
wriggle out of sight. In vain — loaded down with
camel's hairs and opera-cloaks—I searched for them
through the reception-rooms and along the flag-draped
corridors. At length I found Grace dancing the German
three blocks from the main ball-room, while Mary
was flirting desperately with a cadet graduate in the
rooms of the Spoonological Museum. That is what
they call the Natural History rooms, into which steal
flirting cadets and sentimental young ladies, where they
can listen to the oft-repeated tales of love and hope.
Here in the half-light the cadet, with one hand on a
the jawbone of a whale, will tell the unsuspecting
young lady how he loves her better than war or gunpowder
or geometry. And all the time Mary's unsuspecting
mamma imagines her beautiful daughter to be
innocently walking backwards and forwards in the
Lancers.
“What was Cadet Mason saying to you in the
Spoonological Museum by the Rodman gun, Mary?”
I asked, as we came back from the Point on the
Chauncey Vibbard.
“Well, he talked very interesting — he — proposed,”
replied Miss Mary, blushing.
“How proposed?” I asked.
“Why, he said he loved me and wanted me to be
engaged to him.”
“And you—?”
“Why, I told him to ask father, and—”
“And he—?”
“Why, he said he wasn't really in earnest. He
ahemed, and said he didn't really mean anything serious.
Then he took my hand and said, `Why, really,
Miss Astor, I don't want to ask your papa.'
“`What do you mean then, Mr. Mason?' I asked.
“`Why, Miss Astor,' he said, `I only meant to extend
to you the regular and customary courtesies of
the Point!'
“The miserable, flirting cadet!” And Miss Mary's
eyes flashed as she said it.
| Eli Perkins (at large) | |