and were for him no longer
visions of the night, but realities of the day.

Still, while flags waved, drums beat, and cannon thundered; while
friends said, "Go!" the world stood ready to cheer him on, and fame and
honor and greater things than these beckoned him to come; while he felt
the whirl and excitement of it all,--his heart cried ceaselessly, "Only
let me see her--once--if but for a moment, before I go!" It was so
little he asked of fate, yet too much to be granted.

In vain he went every day, and many times a day, in the brief space left
him, to her hotel. In vain he once more questioned clerk and servants;
in vain haunted the house of his aunt, with the dim hope that Clara
might hear from her, or that in some undefined way he might learn of
her whereabouts, and so accomplish his desire.

But the days passed, too slowly for the ardent young patriot, all too
rapidly for the unhappy lover. Friday came. Early in the day multitudes
of people began to collect in the street, growing in numbers and
enthusiasm as the hours wore on, till, in the afternoon, the splendid
thoroughfare of New York from Fourth Street down to the Cortlandt
Ferry--a stretch of miles--was a solid mass of humanity; thousands and
tens of thousands, doubled, quadrupled, and multiplied again.

Through the morning this crowd in squads and companies traversed the
streets, collected on the corners, congregating chiefly about the armory
of their pet regiment, the Seventh, on Lafayette Square,--one great mass
gazing unweariedly at its windows and walls, then moving on to be
replaced by another of the like kind, which, having gone through the
same performance, gave way in turn to yet others, eager to take its
place.

So the fever burned; the excitement continued and augmented till,
towards three o'clock in the afternoon, the mighty throng stood still,
and waited. It was no ordinary multitude; the wealth, refinement,
fashion, the greatness and goodness of a vast city were there, pressed
close against its coarser and darker and homelier elements. Men and
women stood alike in the crowd, dainty patrician and toil-stained
laborer, all thrilled by a common emotion, all vivified--if in unequal
degree--by the same sublime enthusiasm. Overhead, from every window and
doorway and housetop, in every space and spot that could sustain one, on
ropes, on staffs, in human hands, waved, and curled, and floated, flags
that were in multitude like the swells of the sea;