down our flags, shouting that we would
draw fire. He had to tell us that only once: our flags came down like
a shot. The fight was going on in the valley just beneath us. The sun
was setting, the windows of Mont Valerien shimmered with its slanting
rays, the green woods grew darker, and the blue smoke curled lazily
over the combatants. Away in the distance the aqueduct of Marly ran in
gray relief against the red of the evening sky. From this aqueduct,
as we learned afterward, King William, the crown prince, Moltke and
Bismarck were watching the struggle. Our little red-legged liners had
pushed the Germans across the open space and were pressing them in the
wood. We grew excited, and the boys began making for the crest of the
hill among the artillery, when one of our party, a well-known American
here in Paris, cried out, "Gentlemen, as a clergyman and father of a
family, I forbid you to go any farther forward and risk your lives."
Whereupon Mr. William Bowles, aroused, but in his usual manner in
moments of excitement--namely, with his hands in his vest pockets and
his eyes beaming through his gold spectacles--observed, "Gentlemen,
oh that be d----d! As an American and your captain, I command you to
follow me." And we followed him, singing at the tops of our voices,
"While we were marching through Georgia."

What would have become of us, carried away as we were, no one knows,
if we had not been marched back again by higher orders. We were
straightway sent down to the right, toward Malmaison, to gather the
wounded. We passed Trochu and staff, who saluted us, and we wound
down the hill, with the infantry before us, and the cannon and
mitrailleuses behind us bellowing over our heads. The French soldiery
sent up cheer after cheer for "les Americains" as we made our way,
still shouting, "While we were marching through Georgia." There were
twenty or twenty-five of us, and we made some noise. In the streets of
Rueil we found the dead and wounded very thick. We filled our wagons
with the wounded, and started back for our hospital at Paris. In our
wagon we had seven, so we had to walk along beside it. It was late in
the night when we reached the city gate. There we were confronted
by sentinels with glaring torches, challenged, asked the number of our
wounded, and then allowed to rattle and creak over the draw-bridge.
Just inside the walls we were met by a surging mass of anxious men,
women and children.

"What regiment have you