s and faces, the cannoneers almost dragged
from the ranks by the clasping hands of men and women who seemed
powerless to let go. With their little brown carbines tossed jauntily
over the broad blue shoulders, half a regiment of regular cavalry,
dismounted, had gone trudging down to the docks, cheered to the gateway
of the pier by thousands of citizens who seemed to envy the very recruits
who, only half-uniformed and drilled, brought up the rear of the column.
Once within the massive wooden portals, the guards and sentries holding
back the importunate crowd, the soldiers flung aside their heavy packs,
and were marshalled before an array of tempting tables and there feasted,
comforted and rejoiced under the ministrations of that marvelous
successor of the Sanitary Commission of the great Civil War of the
sixties--the noble order of the Red Cross. There at those tables in the
dust and din of the bustling piers, in the soot and heat of the railway
station, in the jam and turmoil at the ferry houses, in the fog and chill
of the seaward camps, in the fever-haunted wards of crowded field
hospitals, from dawn till dark, from dark till dawn, toiled week after
week devoted women in every grade of life, the wife of the millionaire,
the daughter of the day laborer, the gently born, the delicately reared,
the social pets and darlings, the humble seamstress, no one too high to
stoop to aid the departing soldier, none too poor or low to deny him
cheer and sympathy. The war was still young then. Spain had not lowered
her riddled standard and sued for peace. Two great fleets had been swept
from the seas, the guns of Santiago were silenced, and the stronghold of
the Orient was sulking in the shadow of the flag, but there was still
soldier work to be done, and so long as the nation sent its fighting men
through her broad and beautiful gates San Francisco and the Red Cross
stood by with eager, lavish hands to heap upon the warrior sons of a
score of other States, even as upon their own, every cheer and comfort
that wealth could purchase, or human sympathy devise. It was the one
feature of the war days of '98 that will never be forgotten.

At one of the flower-decked tables near the great "stage" that led to the
main deck of the transport, a group of blithe young matrons and pretty
girls had been busily serving fruit, coffee, _bouillon_ and substantials
to the troopers, man after man, for over two hours. There was lively chat
and merry war o