st chicken and
gravy, and I was obliged to insist on his going to bed early in order to
be up and in good condition for the parade next day.

"I've no desire to march in the ranks," he said. "I'm perfectly content
to sit on the fence and see the columns pass."

"You needn't sit on the fence," I replied. "I've got two of the best
seats in the Grand Stand. You can rest there in comfort all through the
parade."

He didn't know how much I paid for our chairs, but a knowledge that he
was in the seats of the extravagant pleased him while it troubled him.
He was never quite at ease while enjoying luxury. It didn't seem
natural, someway, for him to be wholly comfortable.

We were in our places hours before the start (he was like a boy on
Circus Day--afraid of missing something), but that he was enjoying in
high degree his comfortable outlook, made me almost equally content.

At last with blare of bugle and throb of drum, that grand and melancholy
procession of time-scarred veterans came to view, and their tattered
flags and faded guidons brought quick tears to my father's eyes. Few of
them stepped out with a swing, many of them limped pitifully--all were
white-haired--an army on its downward slope, marching toward its final,
silent bivouac.

None of them were gay and yet each took a poignant pleasure in sharing
the rhythm of the column, and my father voiced this emotion when he
murmured, "I ought to be down there with my company."

To touch elbows just once more, to be a part of the file would have been
at once profoundly sad and sadly sweet, and he wiped the tears from his
cheeks in a silence which was more expressive than any words could have
been.

To me each passing phalanx was composed of piteous old men--to my sire
they were fragments of a colossal dream--an epic of song and steel. "In
ten years he and they will all be at rest in 'fame's eternal camping
ground,'" I thought with a benumbing realization of the swift,
inexorable rush of time--a tragedy which no fluttering of bright flags,
no flare of brave bugles could lighten or conceal. It was not an army in
review, it was an epoch passing to its grave.

* * * * *

After the parade was over, as we were going home in the car, tired,
silent and sad, I perceived my father as others saw him, a white-haired
veteran whose days of marching, of exploration were over. His powerful
figure, so resilient and so brave was stooping to its end.