The strain was finished; softly as the night

             Her voice died from the window, yet e'en then

           Fluttered and fell likewise a kerchief white;

             But that no doubt was accident, for when

           She sought her couch she deemed her conduct quite

             Beyond the reach of scandalous commenter,—

           Washing her hands of either gallant wight,

             Knowing the moralist might compliment her,—

             Thus voicing Siren with the words of Mentor.

           She little knew the youths below, who straight

             Dived for her kerchief, and quite overlooked

           The pregnant moral she would inculcate;

             Nor dreamed the less how little Winthrop brooked

           Her right to doubt his soul's maturer state.

             Brown—who was Western, amiable, and new—

           Might take the moral and accept his fate;

             The which he did, but, being stronger too,

             Took the white kerchief, also, as his due.

           They did not quarrel, which no doubt seemed queer

             To those who knew not how their friendship blended;

           Each was opposed, and each the other's peer,

             Yet each the other in some things transcended.

           Where Brown lacked culture, brains,—and oft, I fear,

             Cash in his pocket,—Grey of course supplied him;

           Where Grey lacked frankness, force, and faith sincere,

             Brown of his manhood suffered none to chide him,

             But in his faults stood manfully beside him.

           In academic walks and studies grave,

             In the camp drill and martial occupation,

           They helped each other: but just here I crave

             Space for the reader's full imagination,—

           The fact is patent, Grey became a slave!

             A tool, a fag, a "pleb"!  To state it plainer,

           All that blue blood and ancestry e'er gave

             Cleaned guns, brought water!—was, in fact, retainer

             To Jones, whose uncle was a paper-stainer!

           How they bore this at home I cannot say:

             I only know so runs the gossip's tale.

           It chanced one day that the paternal Grey

             Came to West Point that he himself might hail

           The future hero in some proper way

             Consistent with his lineage.  With him came

           A judge, a poet, and a brave array

             Of aunts and uncles, bearing each a name,

             Eyeglass and respirator with the same.

           "Observe!" quoth Grey the elder to his friends,

             "Not in these giddy youths at baseball playing

           You'll notice Winthrop Adams!  Greater ends

             Than these absorb HIS leisure.  No doubt straying

           With Caesar's Commentaries, he attends

             Some Roman council.  Let us ask, however,

           Yon grimy urchin, who my soul offends

             By wheeling offal, if he will endeavor

             To find—  What! heaven!  Winthrop!  Oh! no! never!"

           Alas! too true!  The last of all the Greys

             Was "doing police detail,"—it had come

           To this; in vain the rare historic bays

             That crowned the pictured Puritans at home!

           And yet 'twas certain that in grosser ways

             Of health and physique he was quite improving.

           Straighter he stood, and had achieved some praise

             In other exercise, much more behooving

             A soldier's taste than merely dirt removing.

           But to resume: we left the youthful pair,

             Some stanzas back, before a lady's bower;

           'Tis to be hoped they were no longer there,

             For stars were pointing to the morning hour.

           Their escapade discovered, ill 'twould fare

             With our two heroes, derelict of orders;

           But, like the ghost, they "scent the morning air,"

             And back again they steal across the borders,

             Unseen, unheeded, by their martial warders.

           They got to bed with speed: young Grey to dream

             Of some vague future with a general's star,

           And Mistress Kitty basking in its gleam;

             While Brown, content to worship her afar,

           Dreamed himself dying by some lonely stream,

             Having snatched Kitty from eighteen Nez Perces,

           Till a far bugle, with the morning beam,

             In his dull ear its fateful song rehearses,

             Which Winthrop Adams after put to verses.