y other Northern state, more to the South than any
other Southern state, and yet as a state would be a Republic unto
herself. What, then, might not be possible to these her sons on a
foreign shore? Intrepid youngsters, they were of royal State lineage,
Missourians from Kentucky, Kentuckians from Virginia, which was in the
beginning. Dauntless cavaliers of the Blood, if they chose to carve
themselves a kingdom, why not?

But they themselves answered the questions, questions that had men's
lives in them thicker than hard words in the Blue-back speller. The
business was as already done, and Mose Bledsoe could go back to his
chant with an easy mind. And once more Missouri's revered saga echoed
among the crags:

"I come from old Missouri,
Yes, all the way from Pike.
I'll tell you why I left there,
And why I came to roam
And leave my poor old mammy,
So far away from home."

Then, the bard leading in a fashion vociferous, the whole command helped
out:

"Says she to me, 'Joe Bowers,
You are the man to win;
Here's a kiss to bind the bargain,'
And she hove a dozen in...."

... Bivouacked under the black-lipped howitzers of Tampico's sullen
heights.... Dismal fens ... where fever exhaled its dread gray breath
thick over swamp and lagoon ... above, the vast aegis of the firmament,
wrought in a diamond dust of stars ... a sickly, jaundiced, moon tilted
drunkenly.... Through ooze and fetid slime the Americans crept
stealthily out of the reeds; and on, over cypress roots, silently in the
silent night; on, up the hill under the low walls of Fort Iturbide.
Gently and fleeting as a dark beauty's sigh in old Castile, they were
come in canister range.

"Steady, men," their leader whispered.

"Unto death," came the low-breathed response.

[No such words were uttered, as Daniel knew perfectly well, but he knew
that they should be--in the telling.].... A sharp cry ... fearful
alarums from the crest of the hill ... next a belching fury of grape....
But Tall Mose was happier for it. The seal was off his lips at last, and
out thundered his stentorian war-song:

"O Sally! dearest Sally!
O Sally! for your sake...."

... still upward, until the cannon fumes broke as a dun-colored wave
over pennant and plume ... and grimy troops fell as spring blossoms in a
balmy south breeze.... Dying as they loved to die, game to the last ...
they stumbled back to the river, which swept over the gallant stranger