drawn a crowd to the drill grounds that
baffled the efforts of the guards. Carriages from camps and carriages
from town, carts from the suburbs, equestrians from the parks and
pedestrians from everywhere had gradually encroached within kicking
distance of the heels of the cavalry escorting the general commanding the
department, and that official noted with unerring eye that the populace
was coming up on his flanks, so to speak, at the moment when the
etiquette of the service required that he should be gazing only to his
immediate front and responding to the salutes of the marching column.
Back of him, ranged in long, single rank, was drawn up what the
newspapers unanimously described as a "brilliant" staff, despite the fact
that all were in sombre campaign uniform and several had never been so
rated before. In their rear, in turn, was the line of mounted orderlies
and farther still the silent rank of the escorting troop. Sentries had
been posted to keep the throng at proper distance, but double their force
could have accomplished nothing--the omniscient corporal could not help
them, and after asking one or two stray officers what they would do about
it, the sentries gave way and the crowd swarmed in. It was just as the
head of the long tramping column came opposite the reviewing point, and
the brigade commander and his staff, turning out after saluting, found
their allotted station on the right of the reviewing party completely
taken up by the mass of eager spectators. A minute or so was required
before the trouble could be remedied, for, just as the officers and
orderlies were endeavoring to induce the populace to give way--a thing
the American always resists with a gay good humor that is peculiarly his
own--a nervous hack driver on the outskirts backed his bulky trap with
unexpected force, and penned between it and the wheels of a newly-arrived
and much more presentable equipage a fair equestrian who shrieked with
fright and clung to her pommel as her excited "mount" lashed out with his
heels and made splinters of the hack's rearmost spokes and felloes. Down
went the hack on its axle point. Out sprang a tall officer from the open
carriage, and in a second, it seemed, transferred the panic-stricken
horsewoman from the seismatic saddle to the safety of his own seat and
the ministrations of the two young women and the gray haired civilian who
were the latest arrivals. This done, and after one quick glance at the
lady's he