THE DAILY LIFE OF THE WEST POINT CADET.

IN describing the daily life of a cadet it is unfortunately necessary, at the outset, to refute the idea that this life is made up largely of leisure and frolic. Nothing could be further from the truth. No college in the country manages to crowd into a course of four years so extensive a curriculum. Yet, in addition to all the long hours spent in study and recitation, every cadet is obliged to master thoroughly all the intricacies of drill, minor tactics, the outdoor application of academic studies, and, in general, the essentials of a sound technical and military training. A young man there is obliged to rise at six o'clock every morning except Sunday, when he may stay abed until seven. Just enough time is allowed him in which to dress properly, and to "police" the room which he shares with one other cadet. "Policing" consists in what would be called. chamber work in civil life, but in no hotel in the country is this work so systematically and tidily performed as by cadets, for in the army neatness is insisted on as one of the first duties of a soldier. By the time the police work is over, the battalion forms and marches to breakfast in the Cadet Mess Hall. After the meal, forty minutes are allowed for rest and recreation.

Punctually at eight o'clock, the sections file to the various recitation rooms for the first recitations, an hour and a half in length. Sections alternate in hours. After eleven o'clock, recitations are an hour long. For two and a half hours in the morning, cadets are subjected to a long series of mental ordeals, the intervening hours being used for study. There is no chance for a cadet, even if he is so disposed, to shirk his recitations. He cannot offer the excuse of "not prepared." He must be ready. There is no hope for him to escape unnoticed in the recitation room, for each class is divided into sections, these sections consisting usually of eight men, and never of more than twelve. The professors and instructors have abundant time to draw out of each man just what

he knows of the subject under discussion. Nor is there any hope of hiding ignorance by asking the instructor what he means by a question. All the professors and instructors are conversant with these little artifices of the class room, and such an attempt on the part of a cadet would be sure to rebound upon the offender's head. The motto for academic work is, "Every cadet every day;" and the standard, "Every cadet proficient in everything."

From this strain of five hours' mental work in the morning, the only cadet who can expect to escape is the one who answers the "sick call" at 7.10 A.M., and is excused from duty. If he is ill, the young man is taken into the Cadet Hospital; but, if his illness is slight, he is ordered to keep to his quarters, and is excused from all work until his name is stricken from the "sick report." Each cadet is supposed to make up the time lost when he becomes ill. If he cannot do this, he is either turned back to the class. next below, or else is summarily dismissed. from the academy for deficiency.-Captain W. C. Rivers, U. S. A., in Success.

FALSE ECONOMY DESTROYS VITALITY.

WHAT Would you think of an engineer who would try to economize in lubricating oil at the expense of his machinery or engine? You would consider him very foolish, would you not? Yet many of us do much more foolish things. We do not economize in that which would injure the inanimate machinery, but do in cheerfulness, recreation, healthful amusements,--all that would lubricate life's machinery and make it last longer.

We economize in our friendships by neglecting them; we economize in our social life, pleading with ourselves that we cannot spare the time for visiting and receiving visits, until we are obliged to take long enforced rests from the arduous duties of our business or profession, because the ma

chinery of our bodies, so delicately and wonderfully made, has become worn, and is in danger of snapping at some vital point.

All this strain and pressure might be avoided if we would only take our fun each day as we go along, if we would only lubricate our machinery by taking a few minutes, now and then, to see the humorous side of life, to have a little chat with a friend, or to indulge in some innocent game which would relax the too rigid muscles about the mouth in a health-giving laugh.-Orison Sweet Marden, in "Success."

QUEER ORDERS.

A CHEMIST is making a collection of the queer orders he receives from people who send children to the store for things they need. Here are a few samples of them:

"This child is my little girl. I sent you a penny to buy two sitless powders for a groan up adult who is sike."

Another reads:

"Dear Dochter, ples gif bearer pennies. worse of Auntie Toxyn for to gargle babi's throte, and obleage."

An anxious mother writes:

"You will please give the lettle boi pennuf worth of epac for to throw up in a five months' old babe. N. B.-The babe has a sore stummick."

This one puzzled the druggist:

"I have a cue pain in my child's diagram. Please give my son something to release it." Another anxious mother wrote:

"My little babey has eat up its father's parish plasther. Send an anecdote quick as possible by the inclosed little girl."

The writer of this one was evidently in pain:

"I haf a hot time in my insides and wich I wood like it to be extinguished. What is good for to extinguish it? The inclosed sixpence is for the price of the extinguisher. Hurry, pleas."-Pearson's Weekly.

ACCORDING to the Journal of the American Medical Association, two important historical works have just been published in Paris on the subject of "Women in Medicine"-one by Melanie Lipinska, and the other by Marcel Baudouin. The latter was undertaken in honor of the semi-centennial of the admission of Elizabeth Blackwell to the medical profession, January 23, 1849. Woman's progress during the last decade has been remarkable. In Russia there has long been complete equality between men and women physicians, and women have recently won their cause in Hungary, Austria and Germany, and the prejudices against the admission of women to the medical profession are rapidly subsiding even in France. Spain still refuses to recognize medical women, although two and three centuries ago several Spanish women acquired some fame by their practice of medicine. Women physicians are now recognized in Belgium since 1890, in Italy since 1878, in Portugal since 1886, in Mexico since 1887, in Sweden since 1870, in Switzerland, Roumania, Bulgaria, in this country and Australia. Baudouin relates the history of Henrietta Faber, who practiced medicine in Havana for years, disguised as a man. She married in 1820 and was at once prosecuted and condemned to ten years of imprisonment. Medical women were numerous in ancient Greece and Rome, and in Italy during the Middle Ages.

THE DIFFERENCE.

THE longer I live, the more I am certain that the great difference between men, between the feeble and the powerful, the great and the insignificant, is energy, invincible determination-a purpose once fixed, and then death or victory! That quality will do anything that can be done in this world; and no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities, will make a twolegged creature a man without it.—Buxton.

THE SICILIAN OMERTA.

Richard Bagot in The National Review.

IT is this unwritten code of honor which constitutes the Sicilian Omertá. We have seen how from its earliest infancy the Sicilian youth is trained to believe that his hand must be against every man, and that every man's hand must be against him; and, indeed, it is impossible to study Sicilian history from the earliest times until the collapse of the iniquitous rule of the Bourbons without being obliged to admit that the Sicilian of the middle and lower orders had ample cause to entertain this demoralizing conviction. I have said that the principles of the Omertà are contained in an unwritten code, but at the same time there exist various popular maxims in the Sicilian dialect which throw a lurid light upon its moral factors. Some of them it may be worth while to reproduce here:

"A cu ti leva lu pari levacci la vita""Whosoever deprives you of the means of existence, deprive of his life."

"Secuppetta e mugghieri nun si 'mprestano”—“A gun and a wife are not lent." (It may be observed that the gun is mentioned before the wife.)

66

Si moru mi drivocu; si campu t' allampu"-"If I die they will bury me; if I live I will kill you."

"Vali cchiu n'amicu nchiazza ca cent'un n'sacca"-"An influential friend is worth more than a hundred onze (1,250 f.) in the pocket."

"Carzoi, malatu e nicissità provanu lu cordi di l'amici"-"Prison, illness and want prove the heart of friends."

"La furca è pri lu proveru la giustizia pri lu fissa"-"The gallows are for the poor, the law for the weak man, (i.e., for him who cannot take the law into his own hands.)

The above examples, taken from a mass of popular dicta, afford some insight into the principles which guide the Sicilian of the working and middle classes through life. To those who know the character of

THE SPLEEN IN SHAKESPEARE.

WHO, with our spleens, would all themselves laugh mortal.-Measure for Meas

ure, 2:2.

Was begot of thought, conceived of spleen and born in madness.-As You Like it, 4:1.

Haply thy presence may well abate the over-merry spleen.-Taming of the Shrew, Introduc., I.

Unto a mad-brained rudesby full of spleen. Taming of the Shrew, 3:2.

If you desire the spleen and will laugh yourselves into stitches, follow me. (This is evidently a Byronic stitch.-Twelfth Night, 3:2.

With swifter spleen than powder can enforce.-King John, 2:1.

Or teach thy hasty spleen to do me. shame.-King John, 4:3.

I am scalded with thy violent motion and spleen of speed.-King John, 4:7.

A weasel has not such a deal of spleen.Henry IV., 2:3.

Base inclination and the start of spleen. -Henry IV., 3:2.

A hair-brained Hotspur, governed by a spleen. Henry IV., 5:2.

It is foolish to make light of presentiments; though unexplicable, they are facts. How many soldiers, after taking part in scores of battles, have had a presentiment that they would die on a certain day, and have actually died on that day. Stories of such presentiments are to be found in many books. It was while under the influence of a presentiment that Mozart composed his immortal "Requiem." He felt sure that by the time it was finished he should be dead, and the event proved that he was right. It is said that President Lincoln had an unerring presentiment that he would be assassinated. During the night preceding his

death he dreamed that he walked down a flight of stairs which were draped with black cloth. When he asked the cause of this mourning he was told that the PresiIdent of the United States had been killed at the opera-house. He told Mrs. Lincoln of his dream, and she begged him, but in vain, not to go to the theater that evening. He smiled at her fear, and went calmly out to meet his doom. A singular story is told about M. de Lerizelles. This gentleman

was recently crossing a mountain at a little distance from his home, when he suddenly received, as it were, a severe shock, which plunged him into the deepest melancholy. He felt convinced that some terrible calam

I have no spleen against you.-Henry VIII., 2:4.

his family, and that he would hear of it on his arrival at home. He was right. Hardly had he crossed the threshold of his home

Such thing as might offend the weakest spleen. Troil. and Cress., 2:3.

The performance of our heaving spleens. -Troil. and Cress., 2:2.

With all the spleen of all the under fiends.-Coriolanus, 4:5.

It is a cause worthy my spleen and fury. -Timon of Athens, 3:5.

You shall digest the venom of your spleen.-Julius Cæsar, 4:4

Or I shall say you are all in spleen.Othello, 4:1.

W. A. DEWEY, in The Critique.

death of his father.-London Health.

SOCIETY AS THE DOCTOR SAW IT.

WHEN the doctor was asked what he thought of the reception he had attended the previous evening he said:

"It was a carbuncle."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Why, it was a great gathering and a swell affair."

MALODOROUS FEET.

I HAVE several patients under my care recently who have suffered, says Dr. E. A. Ormsby in the Medical Gleaner, from this distressing disease. The results of the treatment I employed were so prompt and good that I thought perhaps it would be an enlightenment to some to know of it. The treatment is as follows: Make a strong rock salt solution, warm in temperature, and soak the feet in the same for twenty minutes or one-half hour, then dry the feet, and apply 25 per cent. glycerole of tannin: put on thin socks. Apply each night for a week. or ten days, or as long as necessary to effect a cure.

behind trunks, packing each article in this preventive. When, a few weeks later, I open the door, the odor is so strong as to take away your breath, and I assure you I am free-absolutely free-from moths.

THE BANANA AS A FOOD.

A WRITER in the current number of Longman's Magazine waxes enthusiastic over the possibilities of the banana as a food, and suggests that those living in temperate climes should avail themselves of its nutritive properties.

The banana is to the dwellers in tropical lands, and especially to the South Sea Islanders, what oatmeal is to the Scotch peasant. The contributor to Longman's states that the banana as a form of nourishment can claim first place among vegetable products that are food for mankind, for it is twenty-five times as nutritive as the ordinary white bread eaten in this country, and forty-five times as nutritive as the potato.

Moreover, it satisfies that other essential condition of a breadstuff, namely, the possibility of an easy and abundant production.

The suggestion of its advocate is that the banana, like wheat, should be dried and. ground down into flour. Mills might be erected where it is grown, or within easy reach, and then, at the suitable time, the fruit could be gathered and dried, and transformed into flour. Banana bread has been voted excellent, is now made in Chicago, and might just as well be made in any other place, could the flour be obtained reasonably.

There would seem every reason in favor of the banana fruit being widely utilized as a food. In these days, when pessimists and even scientific men are warning us that the world's supply of wheat may in the not far distant future become insufficient, the act would be a wise one to cultivate and to procure the nutritive breadstuff which the banana so bountifully provides.