And then we were taken to the chapel, and there saw, displayed as trophies, two of our own dear old English flags.  I have seen many a banner hung up in token of past victory, and many a flag taken on the field of battle mouldering by degrees into dust on some chapel’s wall—­but they have not been the flags of England.  Till this day I had never seen our own colors in any position but one of self-assertion and independent power.  From the tone used by the gentleman who showed them to me, I could gather that he would have passed them by, had he not foreseen that he could not do so without my notice.  “I don’t know that we are right to put them there,” he said.  “Quite right,” was my reply, “as long as the world does such things.”  In private life it is vulgar to triumph over one’s friends, and malicious to triumph over one’s enemies.  We have not got so far yet in public life, but I hope we are advancing toward it.  In the mean time I did not begrudge the Americans our two flags.  If we keep flags and cannons taken from our enemies, and show them about as signs of our own prowess after those enemies have become friends, why should not others do so as regards us?  It clearly would not be well for the world that we should always beat other nations and never be beaten.  I did not begrudge that chapel our two flags.  But, nevertheless, the sight of them made me sick in the stomach and uncomfortable.  As an Englishman I do not want to be ascendant over any one.  But it makes me very ill when any one tries to be ascendant over me.  I wish we could send back with our compliments all the trophies that we hold, carriage paid, and get back in return those two flags, and any other flag or two of our own that may be doing similar duty about the world.  I take it that the parcel sent away would be somewhat more bulky than that which would reach us in return.

The discipline at West Point seemed, as I have said, to be very severe; but it seemed also that that severity could not in all cases be maintained.  The hours of study also were long, being nearly continuous throughout the day.  “English lads of that age could not do it,” I said; thus confessing that English lads must have in them less power of sustained work than those of America.  “They must do it here,” said my informant, “or else leave us.”  And then he took us off to one of the young gentlemen’s quarters, in order that we might see the nature of their rooms.  We found the young gentleman fast asleep on his bed, and felt uncommonly grieved that we should have thus intruded on him.  As the hour was one of those allocated by my informant in the distribution of the day to private study, I could not but take the present occupation of the embryo warrior as an indication that the amount of labor required might be occasionally too much even for an American youth.  “The heat makes one so uncommonly drowsy,” said the young man.  I was not the least surprised at the exclamation.