So, although the grounds of the academy, with their lawns, and aged trees, and squirrels, and cadets, are charming, and although the solemn and industrious Baedeker assures me that the academy is the “chief lion” of Annapolis, and although I know that it is a great school, and that we need another like it in order properly to officer our navy, I prefer the old town with its old houses, and old streets bearing such reminiscent names as Hanover, Prince George, and Duke of Gloucester.

For certain slang expressions used by cadets I am indebted to a member of the corps.  From this admiral-to-be I learn that a “bird” or “wazzo” is a man or boy; that a “pap sheet” is a report covering delinquencies, and that to “hit the pap” is to be reported for delinquency; that “steam” is marine engineering, and to be “bilged for juice” is to fail in examinations in electrical engineering—­to get an “unsat,” or unsatisfactory mark, or even a “zip” or “swabo,” which is a zero.  Cadets do not escort girls to dances, but “drag” them; a girl is a “drag,” and a “heavy drag” or “brick” is an unattractive girl who must be taken to a dance.  A “sleuth” or “jimmylegs” is a night watchman, and to be “ragged” is to be caught.  Mess-hall waiters are sometimes called “mokes,” while at other times the names of certain exalted dignitaries of the Navy Department, or of the academy, are applied to them.

* * * * *

I shall never cease to regret that dread of the cold kept us from seeing ancient Whitehall, a few miles from Annapolis, which was the residence of Governor Horatio Sharpe, and is one of the finest of historic American homes; nor shall I, on the other hand, ever cease to rejoice that, in spite of cold we did, upon another day, visit Hampton, the rare old mansion of the Ridgelys, of Maryland, which stands amid its own five thousand acres some dozen miles or so to the north of Baltimore.  The Ridgelys were, it appears, the great Protestant land barons of this region as the Carrolls were the great Catholics, and, like the Carrolls, they remain to-day the proprietors of a vast estate and an incomparable house.

CHAPTER VIII

WE MEET THE HAMPTON GHOST

    There’s nothing ill can dwell in such a temple;
    If the ill spirit have so fair a house,
    Good things will strive to dwell with ’t.

    —­THE TEMPEST.

Hampton is probably the largest of Maryland’s old mansions, and the beauty of it is more theatrical than the beauty of Doughoregan Manor; for although the latter is the older of the two, the former is not only spectacular by reason of its spaciousness, the delicacy of its architectural details, and the splendor of its dreamlike terraced gardens, but also for a look of beautiful, dignified, yet somehow tragic age—­a look which makes one think of a wonderful old lady; a belle of the days of minuets and powdered wigs and