the pants hung to the boy's calves, covering
the limbs that far down. Therefore, it was difficult to decide at a
distance where the jacket ended and the pants began. In fact, the boy,
from a backside view at a little distance, seemed to be wearing a
long-tailed coat.

Going from you, Alfred looked like a grown man; coming towards you he
looked more natural. Wherever there appeared a bunch or angle that
seemed out of place, Lacy endeavored to modify the over abundance by
tacking on one of the ornaments taken from the old uniform of which a
great number were used. The shoulders of the jacket seemed to fit to
suit Lacy, therefore she used the epaulets from the shoulders of the old
soldier's uniform elsewhere. The seat of the pants hanging so low, Lacy
said looked too bare, whereupon she tacked the epaulets on that part of
the pants, with the yellow and red fringe hanging down.

There was a very large lump resembling "Richard the Third's" hump; on
this Lacy perched a brass eagle with wings spread as if about to fly off
with the coat. Red and yellow stripes ran up and down the outside seam
of the pants.

Lacy said they "looked so purty it was a shame the folds of the cloth
kivered so much of the stripe"; she "allowed it was too bad that more of
the folds had not found their way into the seat of the pants cos it
wa'n't noticed there, the epaulets hid it."

Lacy had such a great quantity of this yellow and red material, she
insisted on running a double row around the cuffs of the coat and
around the bottom of the pants. Aunt Betsy gently dissented but Lacy
seemed the moving spirit in the project and the elder woman deferred to
her. The aunt said the only fear she had was that folks might think the
suit too gaudy. Aunt Betsy said she feared they had not sewed the braid
on straight or the pants wouldn't pucker so at the knees.

All the ornaments, space could not be found for elsewhere, were tacked
on the cap. The vizor or brim was the only disappointment to the women.
No stiff leather procurable, they used cardboard and blackened it with
shoe polish. This soon broke and crumpled. Lacy remarked:

"The blame rim spiles the whole outfit."

It dangled in Alfred's eyes all the time, hence he generally wore the
vizor behind.

The soldier clothes were to Alfred a thing of beauty and joy until he
went to town. Alfred collected all the country boys he could enlist and
called them the "Red Stone Blues." He found an old, rusty sw