other serious question was, how would the masses behave upon the
breaking-out of this sudden danger, and what attitude would be assumed
by the foreign elements of the population. It was most important to
have some inkling as to how the Germans, the Irish, the Scandinavians,
the Italians and the various people of Slavonic nationality would act
when called upon to defend their new country. It was of course
absolutely certain that the two great political parties--the Republicans
and the Democrats--would work together harmoniously under the stress of
a common danger.

Francis Robertson, the well-known reporter of the _New York Daily
Telegraph_--called the Flying Fish on account of his streaming
coat-tails--had been on the go all day. He had scarcely finished
dictating the shorthand notes made on his last tour of inspection, to
the typewriter, when he received orders--it was at seven o'clock in the
evening--to make another trip through the streets and to visit the
headquarters of the various national and political societies. First he
went to a restaurant a few doors away, and in five minutes succeeded in
making way with a steak that had apparently been manufactured out of the
hide of a hippopotamus. Then he jumped into a taxicab and directed the
chauffeur at the corner of Twenty-ninth Street to drive as quickly as
possible through the crowd down Broadway. But it was impossible for the
chauffeur on account of the mob to move at more than a snail's pace, and
the cab finally came to a dead stop at Madison Square, which was packed
with excited people. Robertson left the cab and hurled himself boldly
into the seething mass of humanity, but soon discovered that if he
wished to make any progress at all he would have to allow himself to be
carried forward by the slowly moving crowd. At the corner of
Twenty-second Street he managed to disentangle himself and hurried
through the block, only to find a new crowd on Fourth Avenue.

He intended to cross Fourth Avenue and then push on to Third Avenue, in
order to reach Tammany Hall by that route, but he was doomed to
disappointment, for the human stream simply carried him down Fourth
Avenue as far as Union Square, where it ceased moving for a time.
Presently it got under way again, proceeding even more slowly than
before, and Robertson soon found himself in the middle of the square,
being suddenly pushed against the basin of the fountain upon which he
climbed for the double purpose of reg