th picturesque hills. And there was a
great white city of tents; and everywhere were parks of artillery and
divisions of cavalry and infantry waiting. We had hit a lucky moment,
evidently there was going to be a march-past or some thing like that. At
the front where the chief banner flew there was a large and showy tent,
with showy guards on duty, and about it were some other tents of a swell
kind.

The warriors--particularly the officers--were lovely to look at, they
were so trim-built and so graceful and so handsomely uniformed. They
were quite distinct, vividly distinct, for it was a fine day, and they
were so immensely magnified that they looked to be fully a finger-nail
high.--[My own expression, and a quite happy one. I said to the Duke:
"Your Grace, they're just about finger-milers!" "How do you mean,
m'lord?" "This. You notice the stately General standing there with his
hand resting upon the muzzle of a cannon? Well, if you could stick your
little finger down against the ground alongside of him his plumes
would just reach up to where your nail joins the flesh." The Duke said
"finger-milers was good"--good and exact; and he afterward used it
several times himself.]--Everywhere you could see officers moving
smartly about, and they looked gay, but the common soldiers looked sad.
Many wife-swinks ["Swinks," an atomic race] and daughter-swinks and
sweetheart-swinks were about--crying, mainly. It seemed to indicate that
this was a case of war, not a summer-camp for exercise, and that the
poor labor-swinks were being torn from their planet-saving industries
to go and distribute civilization and other forms of suffering among the
feeble benighted somewhere; else why should the swinkesses cry?

The cavalry was very fine--shiny black horses, shapely and spirited;
and presently when a flash of light struck a lifted bugle (delivering
a command which we couldn't hear) and a division came tearing down on
a gallop it was a stirring and gallant sight, until the dust rose
an inch--the Duke thought more--and swallowed it up in a rolling and
tumbling long gray cloud, with bright weapons glinting and sparkling in
it.

Before long the real business of the occasion began. A battalion of
priests arrived carrying sacred pictures. That settled it: this was war;
these far-stretching masses of troops were bound for the front. Their
little monarch came out now, the sweetest little thing that ever
travestied the human shape I think, and