"
That was why we wore our uniforms embroidered with gold (_dores_).
The Frenchmen, if they came, would understand the taunt.
But most of all we were proud of Solomon Hymen, our Major and our
Mayor of Troy.
I can see him now as he addressed us on the evening of our first
drill, standing beside the two long nineteen-pounders on the Old
Fort; erect, with a hand upon his ivory sword-hilt, his knops and
epaulettes flashing against the level sun. I can see his very
gesture as he enjoined silence on the band; for we had a band, and it
was playing "Come, Cheer Up, My Lads!" As though we weren't cheerful
enough already!
[But "Come, come!" the reader will object. "All this happened a
hundred years ago. Yet here are you talking as if you had been
present." Very true: it is a way we have in Troy. Call it a
foible--but forgive it! The other day, for instance, happening on
the Town Quay, I found our gasman, Mr. Rabling, an earnest Methodist,
discussing to a small crowd on the subject of the Golden Calf, and in
this fashion: "Well, friends, in the midst of all this pillaloo,
hands-across and down-the-middle, with old Aaron as bad as any and
flinging his legs about more boldacious with every caper, I happens
to glance up the hill, and with that I gives a whistle; for what do I
see but a man aloft there picking his way down on his heels with a
parcel under his arm! Every now and then he pulls up, shading his
eyes, so, like as if he'd a lost his bearin's.
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