they attended,
with some slight differences, like turned-over plates and tasselled
ends, to show that they were non-combatants. Altogether, as one looked
at the "fuss and feathers," the broad lapels, and the bob-tailed coats,
he might well recall Thoreau's description of the manner in which the
salt cod are spread out on the fish-flakes to dry: "They were everywhere
lying on their backs, their collar-bones standing out like the lapels of
a man-o'-war-man's jacket.... If you should wrap a large salt fish
around a small boy, he would have a coat of such fashion as I have seen
many a one wear at muster." Or, if we wish to go back still further, we
might exclaim, with Falstaff, "You would think that I had a hundred and
fifty tattered prodigals, lately come from swine-keeping, from eating
draff and husks.... No eye hath seen such scarecrows."

We are at the training "in the fall of the year,"--a far more important
occasion than that in the spring, because the annual "muster" is only a
week or ten days ahead. It is a private show. The uniformed infantry and
the flood-wood have met at Walton Centre, but they, and all the
spectators too, are from "our town," with its various outlying
settlements. Let the other towns boast, let Stormont show her
grenadiers, Leicester her riflemen, and Acton her artillery, but when
"muster-day" comes look out for Walton and her infantry. The law
requires every soldier to have a musket or rifle,--flint-lock of
course,--a bayonet, a priming-wire and brush, a knapsack, a
cartridge-box, and two spare flints. The lack of any one of these may
lead to a fine. The regular order of the manual is, open pan, tear
cartridge, prime, shut pan, ram down cartridge, ready, aim, fire. But
cartridges are not often to be had, and flasks must be used, with a
pause in the manual to allow the measuring of a charge. The lack of
cartridges leads also to the carrying of powder in bulk in the
pantaloons pocket, so that the soldier may move quickly when the order
is given to "load and fire as fast as possible." Still more quick in his
movements will the soldier be when, led on by the excitement of the
hour, he becomes careless of his pocket-magazine and allows it to
explode, with a great wreckage of hair, whiskers, and eyebrows, though
no one was ever known to lose his life thereby.

But the "evolutions" of the fall training-day make up its greatest
worth. It is not enough that squads of "our company" advance, fire, and
f