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Don Gordon's Shooting-Box
Don Gordon's Shooting-Box
CHAPTER I
THE MILITARY ACADEMY
“Well, now, I am disgusted.”
“So am I. I call it a most unusual proceeding.”
“That is a very mild term to be applied to it. I call it an outrage. The Professor has deliberately gone to work to disgrace the school and every student in it.”
“That’s my opinion. I shall give my father a full history of the case in the next letter I write to him; and I incline to the belief that he will order me to pack my trunk and start for home.”
“I know that is what my father will do. Why, fellows, just think of it for a moment! What if this street gamin, who has been brought here as the Professor’s pet, should accidentally win a warrant at the next examination?”
“Or a commission! That would be worse yet. Wouldn’t a gentleman’s son look nice obeying his orders – the orders of a bootblack?”
“I’ll never do that. I’ll stay in the guard-house until I am gray-headed first.”
“Well, I won’t. I’ll go home first.”
This conversation took place one cold, frosty morning in the latter part of January, 18 – , among the members of a little party of boys who were walking up the path that led to the door of the Bridgeport Military Academy. There were a dozen of them in all, and their ages varied from thirteen to sixteen years. They looked like young soldiers, dressed as they were in their neat, well-fitting uniforms of cadet gray, set off by light blue trimmings; but it seems that they were anything but good soldiers just then, for their words indicated a determination on their part to rebel against lawful authority.
The Bridgeport Military School was a time-honored, wealthy, and aristocratic institution. It was modeled after the school at “the Point,” and although its course of study differed materially from that pursued at the national academy, its rules of discipline were almost the same. It was intended to fit boys for college, for business, for civil or mining engineering, or for West Point, if they wanted to go there and could command influence enough to secure the appointment; and in order that they might begin early in life to realize the majesty and dignity of law, and to see the necessity of submitting to it as becomes good citizens of the republic, they were put through a course of military drill as strict as that to which they would have been subjected if they had been private soldiers in the regular army.