ave seen the picture of
your Monitor. To my eye it looks like a flat-iron, with the handle in
the water; but it did good work, and so did you. Grant knows it. My own
immortal statesman will appreciate it."

Commodore Worden bowed, and smiled, and squoze my hand so long that I
began to feel anxious about my white gloves. But he dropped it at last,
and we all moved on, my white feather waving in front, just like that
which King Henry of Navarre wore in battles. Only mine was a peaceful
emblem, dyed in the milk of human kindness, and curled up in the
sunshine of prosperity.

We marched through dull streets and round deserted corners, cutting in
and out every which way till we came to a large gate, which shut the
Navy Yard out from the rest of mankind.

Then we filed through into a beautiful meadow, with the grass cut short,
sprinkled over with trees, and cut into footpaths. Part of it was
bounded by water, the rest by rows of handsome houses and great
buildings that looked like factories shut up for want of work.

The minute I and Mr. Iwakura walked through the gate, bang! went a
cannon; bang, bang, bang! seventeen times.

"What on earth is that?" says I, turning to Dempster, who was just
behind me.

"It is a salute for us," says he.

"Us!" says I, with accents of disdain that put him in his place at once.

"For you, then," says he, smiling in a way I didn't like, for, having no
envy in my own disposition, I cannot endure it in others.

Mr. Iwakura and I walked on slowly. He looked at me and smiled as the
guns kept going off, till I counted seventeen; then they stopped and I
was glad of it, for I remembered that our meeting-house bell tolls once
for every year, when a person dies, and I felt a little anxious about
the number of guns they might pile on to live folks. But they stopped
short at seventeen, which is an age no girl need be ashamed to own, and
which showed how young some persons can look in spite of hard literary
toil.

Well, first we went into Commodore Worden's house, where Mr. Iwakura and
I were introduced to Mrs. Worden and some other ladies. Then the rest
came in for a little notice, and we filed off into the grounds again,
where there was a general training of boys in blue jackets, with buttons
and things, all armed with guns, which they handled like old militia
men. Sometimes, when they poked their guns right at us, I kind of got
behind Mr. Iwakura, who, being small, wasn't much of a shelter, b