hat for?" inquired Higgins, starting up as the sound of drum
and fife broke on his ear. Mrs. Harmar went to the front window, and
reported that a Volunteer company of soldiers was coming down the
street. The old men instantly crowded round the window, and expressed
their gratification at the sight that presented itself. The volunteers
were neatly uniformed and very precisely drilled. They marched with
the firm and uniform tread of regulars. The "ear-piercing fife and
spirit-stirring drum" discoursed the music sweetest to the ears of the
old warriors, and their eyes brightened and they made an effort to
straighten themselves, as if "the old time came o'er them." They
lingered at the window as long as they could catch the sound, and long
after the volunteers had turned the corner of the street. Perhaps, if we
had possessed sufficient mental insight, we might have been with those
old men in the scenes that came back to their minds like a tide that had
seemed to have ebbed away for ever. We might have been with them where
the drum and fife were as strong drink to the warriors, firing their
hearts and steeling their nerves for the bloody struggle. But we are
left to conjecture what was present to their imaginations by what they
express in conversation.

BATTLE OF GERMANTOWN.

"Those fellows look very neat and prim; they march well, and their
muskets are polished very bright. I wonder how they would stand fire,"
said Higgins, after the party had seated themselves.

"I doubt if they would like it as well as parading the streets; but
there may be some stout hearts among them," replied old Harmar.

"They should have been at Brandywine or Germantown. At either place they
would have had a chance to prove their stuff. Fife and drum would have
been necessary, I think, to stir them up," said Wilson.

"I paid a visit to Germantown, the other day," said Mr. Jackson Harmar.
"I passed over the chief portion of the battle-ground, and examined
Chew's house, where some of the British took refuge and managed to turn
the fortunes of the day. The house is in a good state of preservation,
and bears many marks of the conflict."

"I have seen it since the day of the battle, and have also walked over
the neighboring grounds," said Smith "You are wrong in stating that the
troops that threw themselves into that house turned the fortune of the
day. Our defeat was the result of many unlooked-for circumstances, which
no general could have been