The painter's taste and heart were set to work, and with the money left him by his children and contributions from General Scott and others, he erected this simple and beautiful structure, as a memorial of hallowed utility. Its bell for evening service sounded a few minutes ago -- the tone selected, apparently, with the taste which governed all, and making sweet music among the mountains that look down upon it.

Willis is so quotable that another excerpt from another letter to his "Dear Morris" may be forgiven.

West Point 383

This time he is writing of " the grey- tailed l^ird of war" of his section of the nineteenth century :

Speaking of grey coats, I understand, at the Point, that this classic uniform of the miHtary Academy is to be changed to a blue frock. It will be a sensible and embellishing alteration, and the cadets will look more like reasoning adults and less like plover in pantaloons -- but what is to become of all the tender memories, "thick as leaves in Vallambrosa," which are connected with that uniform only? What belle of other days ever comes back to the Point without looking out upon the Parade from the windows of the hotel and indulging in a dreamy recall of the losing of her heart, pro tciii., on her first summer tour, to one of those grey-tailed birds of war? A flirtation with a greycoat at the Point is in every pretty woman's history, from Maine to Florida. Suppress those tapering swallow-tails! Whv, it would be a moulting of the feathers of first loves, which will make a cold shiver throughout the Union. I doubt whether the blue frock, with its similarity to the coats of common mortals, will ever acquire the same mystic irresistibleness which has belonged to that uniform of grey.