A Cadet's Honor by Upton Sinclair, Fiction, Literary

MARK MALLORY "Of course we have got to find somebody to whip him," said Bud Smith, who'd been made chirman of the rabble, by acclamation. "Then, too, Stanard lost his temper and attacked half a dozen of our class, for no other reason on earth than that they tied him in a sack and carried him out onto the cavalry plain. He, too, was victorious, I am told. And then, last of all, but of all the offenders most insolent and lawless, comes --" The chairman paused solemnly before he pronounced the name. "Mark Mallory." And the storm of hisses and jeers that followed could have been heard at barracks. It was evident that the yearlings had no love for Mark Mallory, whoever Mark Mallory might be. "Mark Mallory commenced his tricks," the chairman continued, "even before he was a cadet. He was impudent then. And the other day he dared to act as Powers' second. And, worse than all, yesterday, to show how utterly reckless and B.J. he is, he deliberately locked Bull Harris and Baby Edwards up in an icehouse, with the intention of making them absent at taps and compelling them to remain imprisoned all night. It was only by the merest accident, they succeeding in forcing the door, that this plan was frustrated. Now, gentlemen, this thing is about as serious as it can possibly be. Mark Mallory's conduct shows that he's gotten the idea into his head that not only can he avoid being hazed, but even turn the tables upon us and bid us defiance."

About the Author :
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (1878 - 1968) was an American writer who wrote nearly 100 books and other works in several genres. Sinclair's work was well-known and popular in the first half of the twentieth century and he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1943. In 1906, Sinclair acquired particular fame for his classic muckraking novel The Jungle, which exposed conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry, causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. In 1919, he published The Brass Check, a muckraking exposé of American journalism that publicized the issue of yellow journalism and the limitations of the "free press" in the United States. Four years after publication of The Brass Check, the first code of ethics for journalists was created. Time magazine called him "a man with every gift except humor and silence." He is also well remembered for the line: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." He used this line in speeches and the book about his campaign for governor as a way to explain why the editors and publishers of the major newspapers in California would not treat seriously his proposals for old age pensions and other progressive reforms. Upton Sinclair was considered a force of nature -- being not only prolific in his novel-writing but a political force of decided influence. Unknown to many of his admirers, Sinclair also wrote adventure fiction, under the name Ensign Clark Fitch, U.S.N.