ad caps instead of hats with plumes. It was
strange that the other fellows somehow did not know who these boys were;
but they never knew, or at least my boy never knew. They thought more of
the marker than of the drummer; for the marker carried a little flag,
and when the officers holloed out, "By the left flank--left! Wheel!" he
set his flag against his shoulder, and stood marking time with his feet
till the soldiers all got by him, and then he ran up to the front rank,
with the flag fluttering behind him. The fellows used to wonder how he
got to be marker, and to plan how they could get to be markers in other
companies, if not in the Butler Guards. There were other companies that
used to come to town on the Fourth of July and Muster Day, from smaller
places round about; and some of them had richer uniforms: one company
had blue coats with gold epaulets, and gold braid going down in loops on
the sides of their legs; all the soldiers, of course, had braid straight
down the outer seams of their pantaloons. One Muster Day a captain of
one of the country companies came home with my boy's father to dinner;
he was in full uniform, and he put his plumed helmet down on the entry
table just like any other hat.

There was a company of Germans, or Dutchmen, as the boys always called
them; and the boys believed that they each had hay in his right shoe,
and straw in his left, because a Dutchman was too dumb, as the boys said
for stupid, to know his feet apart any other way; and that the Dutch
officers had to call out to the men when they were marching, "Up mit de
hay-foot, down mit de straw-foot--_links, links, links!_" (left, left,
left!). But the boys honored even these imperfect intelligences so much
in their quality of soldiers that they would any of them have been proud
to be marker in the Dutch company; and they followed the Dutchmen round
in their march as fondly as any other body of troops. Of course, school
let out when there was a regular muster, and the boys gave the whole day
to it; but I do not know just when the Muster Day came. They fired the
cannon a good deal on the river-bank, and they must have camped
somewhere near the town, though no recollection of tents remained in my
boy's mind. He believed with the rest of the boys that the right way to
fire the cannon was to get it so hot you need not touch it off, but just
keep your thumb on the touch-hole, and take it away when you wanted the
cannon to go off. Once he saw