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 not. The glare of Joe
Handy's torch fell on my face, Joe Handy's arm and that of another
gentleman, the worse for liquor, were linked in mine, and they saw fit to
applaud at every step my conversion to the cause of Liberty. We passed
time and time again the respectable door-yards of my Federalist friends,
and I felt their eyes upon me with that look which the angels have for
the fallen. Once, in front of Mr. Wharton's house, Mr. Handy burned my
hair, apologized, staggered, and I took the torch! And I used it to good
advantage in saving the drum from capture. For Mr. Temple, with all the
will in the world, had begun to stagger. At length, after marching
seemingly half the night, they halted by common consent before the house
of a prominent Democrat who shall be nameless, and, after some minutes of
vain importuning, Nick, with a tattoo on the drum, marched boldly up to
the gate and into the yard. A desperate cunning came to my aid. I flung
away the torch, leaving the head of the column in darkness, broke from
Mr. Handy's embrace, and, seizing Nick by the arm, led him onward through
the premises, he drumming with great docility. Followed by a few
stragglers only (some of whom went down in contact with the trees of the
orchard), we came to a gate at the back which I knew well, which led
directly into the little yard that fronted my own rooms behind Mr.
Crede's store. Pulling Nick through the gate, I slammed it, and he was
only beginning to protest when I had him safe within my door, and the
bolt slipped behind him. As I struck a light something fell to the floor
with a crash, an odor of alcohol filled the air, and as the candle caught
the flame I saw a shattered whiskey bottle at my feet and a room which
had been given over to carousing. In spite of my feelings I could not
but laugh at the perfectly irresistible figure my cousin made, as he
stood before me with the drum slung in front of him. His hat was gone,
his dust-covered clothes awry, but he smiled at me benignly and without a
trace of