I have heard it said by a West Point graduate that a cadet cannot sit down and breathe for twenty-four hours without violating some rule.

The fact that a few men do escape being "skinned"-- that is, punished for derelictions of duty--does not prove that they have not committed any indiscretions, but that they have escaped detection.
Hard, however, as was the road for Dewey to travel, he never shrank or turned aside, for he knew the same path had been traveled by all who had gone before him, and he reasoned that what man had done man could do, and he did it.
It will be noted that the future Admiral entered the Naval Academy at a stirring period in the history of our country, over which the coming Civil War already cast its awful shadow, and, as the months and years passed, the shadow darkened and grew more portentous until the red lightning rent the clouds apart and they rained blood and fire and woe and death.
At the Annapolis Academy the lines between the cadets from the North and the South were sharply drawn.

They reflected the passions of their sections, and, being young and impulsive, there were hot words and fierce blows.

As might be supposed, George Dewey was prominent in these affrays, for it has been said of him that there was never a fight in his neighborhood without his getting into the thickest of it.
One day a fiery Southerner called him a dough-face, whereupon Dewey let go straight from the shoulder and his insulter turned a backward somersault.

Leaping to his feet, his face aflame with rage, he went at the Green Mountain Boy, who coolly awaited his attack, and they proceeded instantly to mix it up for some fifteen minutes in the most lively manner conceivable.