Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE ENSIGN AT THE PEAK. THE students on board of the Young America were between the ages of fourteen and seventeen. By the regulations, no boy under fourteen or over seventeen could be admitted, and they averaged about fifteen. They had, therefore, reached the years of discretion. Among them were a great many who were disposed to be wild boys, and not a few who had found it difficult to remain in similar institutions on shore. They were not criminal or depraved, but simply wild ; with a tendency to break through reasonable restraint; with a taste for mad pranks, and a contempt for authority. Of this class, who were a trial and a torment to the teachers of the ordinary high schools and academies, the larger proportion would have scorned to steal, or commit any wanton outrage upon the persons or property of others. There were many high-minded, noble- hearted young men, who could not tamely submit to authority, and were prone to insubordination, and who only needed the right kind of discipline to make them earnest and faithful men and useful citizens. There were few, if any, dunces or blockheads among them, for a life on shipboard had no attractions forsuch boys. They were, almost without an exception, wide-awake, bold, daring fellows, who had a taste for stirring events; fellows who wanted to climb the Rocky Mountains, visit the North Pole, and explore the Mammoth Cave. They were full of fun and mischief, and it would have been easy at any time to get up a party among them to march the principal's cow into the parlor of the Academy ; to climb to the belfry on a winter's night, and fill the inverted bell with water, where it would freeze solid before morning ; or to convey the occupants of the hen-coop to the recitation room. It was Mr. Lowington's task to re...