third class, and stands forty-six in the class,
which numbers eighty- five members. This is a
very fair standing, and Flipper's friends declare
that he is getting along finely in his studies,
and that he is quite up to the standard of the
average West Point student. Nevertheless they
intimate that he will never graduate. Flipper, they
say, may get as far as the first class, but there
he will be 'slaughtered.'

"A correspondent of the New York Times takes issue
with this opinion. He says there are many 'old
heads' who believe Flipper will graduate with honor,
and he thinks so too. The grounds for his belief,
as he gives them, are that the officers are
gentlemen, and so are the professors; that they
believe merit should be rewarded wherever found;
and that they all speak well of Flipper, who is a
hard student, as his position in his class proves.
From this correspondent we learn that Flipper is
from Georgia; that he has a light, coffee-colored
complexion, and that he 'minds his business and
does not intrude his company upon the other cadets,'
though why this should be put down in the list of
his merits it is not easy to understand, since, if
he graduates, as this writer believes he will, he
will have the right to associate on terms of perfect
equality with the other cadets, and may in time come
to command some of them. We are afraid there is some
little muddle of inconsistency in the brain of the