To him
discipline was extremely irksome. He could maintain it among
others, but when it applied to himself it bored him. On the floor of
the Academy building on which was his room there was a pyramid
of cannon balls--relics of the War of 1812. They stood at the head
of the stairs, and one warm night, when he could not sleep, he
decided that no one else should do so, and, one by one, rolled the
cannon balls down the stairs. They tore away the banisters and
bumped through the wooden steps and leaped off into the lower
halls. For any one who might think of ascending to discover the
motive power back of the bombardment they were extremely
dangerous. But an officer approached McGiffin in the rear, and,
having been caught in the act, he was sent to the prison ship. There
he made good friends with his jailer, an old man-of-warsman
named "Mike." He will be remembered by many naval officers
who as midshipmen served on the _Santee_. McGiffin so won over
Mike that when he left the ship he carried with him six charges of
gunpowder. These he loaded into the six big guns captured in the
Mexican War, which lay on the grass in the centre of the Academy
grounds, and at midnight on the eve of July 1st he fired a salute. It
aroused the entire garrison, and for a week the empty window
frames kept the glaziers busy.
About 1878 or 1879 there was a famine in Ireland.
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