Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point

How do you feel, Dick! As spruce as you did an hour ago! Candidate Greg Holmes put the question with a half-nervous laugh. He spoke in a whisper, too, as if to keep his agitation from reaching the notice of any of the score or more of other young men in the room of Mr. Ward, the aged notary at West Point. "I'll be glad when I see some daylight through the proceedings," Dick Prescott whispered in answer. "I'm glad they allow us to talk here in undertones," pursued Greg. "If we weren't allowed to do so, some of us would go suddenly crazy, utter a whoop and spring through one of the windows," grinned Dick.

H. Irving Hancock was an American chemist and writer who wrote prolifically in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Best known for his fictional novel centered on the idea of a German invasion of the United States, Hancock also held an avid interest in health and exercise. His writings on Jiu-Jitsu were some of the first to be widely read in the United States. He died in 1922.