drunk, and resumed his reins and seat, stood up
to listen.

Above the noise of the cheering, rolling steadily toward them over
the human ocean, came the deadened throbbing of drums. A far, thin
strain of military music rose, was lost, rose again; the double
thudding of the drums sounded nearer; the tempest of cheers became
terrific. Through it, at intervals, they could catch the clear
marching music of the 7th as two platoons of police, sixty strong,
arrived, forcing their way into view, followed by a full company of
Zouaves.

Then pandemonium broke loose as the matchless regiment swung into
sight. The polished instruments of the musicians flashed in the
sun; over the slanting drums the drumsticks rose and fell, but in
the thundering cheers not a sound could be heard from brass or
parchment.

Field and staff passed headed by the colonel; behind jolted two
howitzers; behind them glittered the sabre-bayonets of the
engineers; then, filling the roadway from sidewalk to sidewalk the
perfect ranks of the infantry swept by under burnished bayonets.

They wore their familiar gray and black uniforms, forage caps, and
blue overcoats, and carried knapsacks with heavy blankets rolled on
top. And New York went mad.

What the Household troops are to England the 7th is to America. In
its ranks it carries the best that New York has to offer. The
polished metal gorgets of its officers reflect a past unstained;
its pedigree stretches to the cannon smoke fringing the Revolution.

To America the 7th was always The Guard; and now, in the lurid
obscurity of national disaster, where all things traditional were
crashing down, where doubt, distrust, the agony of indecision
turned government to ridicule and law to anarchy, there was no
doubt, no indecision in The Guard. Above the terrible clamour of
political confusion rolled the drums of the 7th steadily beating
the assembly; out of the dust of catastrophe emerged its
disciplined gray columns. Doubters no longer doubted, uncertainty
became conviction; in a situation without a precedent, the
precedent was established; the _corps d'elite_ of all state
soldiery was answering the national summons; and once more the
associated states of North America understood that they were first
of all a nation indivisible.

Down from window and balcony and roof, sifting among the bayonets,
fluttered an unbroken shower of tokens--gloves, flowers,
handkerchiefs, tricoloured bunches of ribbon