Since that time the custom had grown up of doing this regularly.
It is true, at any rate of most of the states of the Union.
In some western and some southern states the cadetship is still
given as a matter of favor.
The young man who receives the appointment goes to the United
States Military Academy at West Point. He is now a "candidate"
only. At West Point he is subjected to another searching series
of physical and mental examinations. If he comes out of them
successfully he is admitted to the cadet corps, and becomes a
full-fledged cadet.
The candidate must report at West Point on the first of March.
If he succeeds in entering the corps, and keeps in it, four years
and three months later the young man is graduated from the Military
Academy. The President now commissions him as a second lieutenant
in the Regular Army. Thus started on his career, the young man
may, in later days, become a general.
While the cadet is at West Point he is paid a salary that is just
about sufficient for his needs and leaves enough over to enable
him to buy his first set of uniforms and other equipment as an
army officer.
West Point is no place for idlers, nor for boys who dislike discipline.
It is a severe training that the cadet receives, and the education
furnished him by the United States is a magnificent and costly
one. It costs Uncle Sam more than twenty thousand dollars for
each cadet he educates and graduates from the United States Military
Academy.
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