ke an explosion. Here he was, standing in the
car. There was the famous chin, the Sam Browne belt, the high laced
boots with spurs. Even the tan gloves carried in the left hand. There
was the smile, without which no famous man is properly equipped for
public life. There was Governor Sproul's placid smile, too, but the
Mayor seemed too excited to smile. Rattle, rattle, rattle went the
shutters of the photographers. Up the scarlet lane of carpet came the
general. His manner has a charming, easy grace. He saluted each one of
the fair ladies garbed in costumes of our Allies, but taking care not to
linger too long in front of any one of them lest any embracing should
get started. A pattering of tiger lilies or some such things came
dropping down from above. He passed into the hall, which was cool and
smelt like a wedding with a musk of flowers.

While the Big Chief was having a medal presented to him inside the hall
we managed to scuttle round underneath the grand stand and take up a
pencil of vantage just below the little pulpit where the general was to
speak. Here the crowd groaned against a bulwark of stout policemen.
Philadelphia cops, bless them, are the best tempered in the world. (How
Boston must envy us.) Genially two gigantic bluecoats made room against
the straining hawser for young John Fisher, aged eleven, of 332
Greenwich Street. John is a small, freckle-faced urchin. It was amusing
to see him thrusting his eager little beezer between the vast, soft,
plushy flanks of two patrolmen. He had been there over two hours waiting
for just this adventure. Then, to assert the equality of the sexes,
Mildred Dubivitch, aged eleven, and Eva Ciplet, aged nine, managed to
insert themselves between the chinks in the line of cops. An old lady
more than eighty years old was sitting placidly in a small chair just
inside the ropes. She had been in the square more than five hours, and
the police had found her a seat. "Are you going to put Pershing's name
in, too?" asked John as we noted his address.

Independence Square never knew a more thrilling fifteen minutes. The
trees were tossing and bending in the thrilling blue air. There was a
bronzy tint in their foliage, as though they were putting on olive drab
in honour of the general. Great balloons of silver clouds scoured across
the cobalt sky. At one minute to 11 Pershing appeared at the top of the
stand. The whole square, massed with people, shook with cheers.

Had it been any o