whom they never saw and in a cause
they never understood, but there can be "no footsteps backward" now.
The tide of riot has engulfed the great city of the West, and the
majesty of the law is but the laughing-stock of the lowest of the
masses. Huddled in their precinct stations the police are bandaging
their bruised and broken heads. Rallied at their armories, the more
determined of the militia are preparing to defend them and their
colors against the anticipated attack of fifty times their force in
"toughs,"--Chicago's vast accumulation of outlawed, vagabond, or
criminal men. The city fathers are well-nigh hopeless. Merchants and
business-men gather on 'Change with blanched faces and the
oft-repeated query, "What next? What next?" Every moment brings
tidings of fresh dismay. New fires, and a crippled and helpless
department, for the rioters slash their hose and laugh their efforts
to scorn. A gleam of hope shone in at ten o'clock, and the Board-room
rang with cheers at the president's announcement that the regulars
were coming,--a whole regiment of infantry from Omaha was already
more than half-way. But the gleam died out at noon when, with white
lips, an official read the telegram saying the strikers had
"side-tracked" the special trains bearing the soldiers and they could
not advance another mile.

And so they had on one road, but there are others, better guarded,
better run. The sun is well over to the west again, Chicago is
resigning itself to another night of horror, when from the suburbs
there comes gliding in to the heart of the city the oddest-looking
railway train that has been seen for years: a sight at which a host of
riotous men break away from the threatening front, dragging with them
those "pals" whom drink has either maddened or stupefied; a sight at
which skulking blackguards who have picked up paving-stones drop them
into the gutters and think twice before they lay hand on their
revolver butts. No puffing engine hauls the train: the motor-power is
at the rear. First and foremost is a platform car,--open, uncovered,
but over its buffer glisten the barrels of the dreaded Gatling gun,
and around the gun--can these be soldiers? Covered with dust and
cinders, hardly a vestige of uniform among them, in the shabbiest of
old felt hats, in hunting-shirts of flannel or buckskin, in scout-worn
trousers and Indian leggings, but with their prairie-belts crammed
with copper cartridges, their brawny brown hands gras