day, drunk or sober, they spoke of this thing
with an ever increasing vehemence, and no man of reflection who had read
their history could say that they would be thwarted. One day Louisiana
would be theirs and their children's for the generations to come. One
day Louisiana would be American.

That I was alive and unscratched when I got as far as the tavern is a
marvel. Amongst all the passion-lit faces which surrounded me I could
get no sight of Nick's, and I managed to make my way to a momentarily
quiet corner of the porch. As I leaned against the wall there, trying to
think what I should do, there came a great cheering from a little way up
the street, and then I straightened in astonishment. Above the cheering
came the sound of a drum beaten in marching time, and above that there
burst upon the night what purported to be the "Marseillaise," taken up
and bawled by a hundred drunken throats and without words. Those around
me who were sufficiently nimble began to run towards the noise, and I
ran after them. And there, marching down the middle of the street at the
head of a ragged and most indecorous column of twos, in the centre of
a circle of light cast by a pine-knot which Joe Handy held, was Mr.
Nicholas Temple. His bearing, if a trifle unsteady, was proud, and--if
I could believe my eyes--around his neck was slung the thing which
I prized above all my possessions,--the drum which I had carried to
Kaskaskia and Vincennes! He had taken it from the peg in my room.

I shrink from putting on paper the sentimental side of my nature, and
indeed I could give no adequate idea of my affection for that drum. And
then there was Nick, who had been lost to me for five years! My impulse
was to charge the procession, seize Nick and the drum together, and drag
them back to my room; but the futility and danger of such a course were
apparent, and the caution for which I am noted prevented my undertaking
it. The procession, augmented by all those to whom sufficient power of
motion remained, cheered by the helpless but willing ones on the ground,
swept on down the street and through the town. Even at this late day
I shame to write it! Behold me, David Ritchie, Federalist, execrably
sober, at the head of the column behind the leader. Was it twenty
minutes, or an hour, that we paraded? This I know, that we slighted no
street in the little town of Louisville. What was my bearing,--whether
proud or angry or carelessly indifferent,--I know no