THE DRUM-MAJOR.
DURING a certain Centennial celebration of a victorious episode in the national history which enlivened a city not a thousand miles from the Atlantic coast, and sent a thrill of patriotism through the insignificant, outlying dependencies which some newspapers are fond of describing as the "provinces," the writer found himself wedged at a street-corner into a solid mass of humanity, whose component parts were trampling, pushing, elbowing, and craning the neck, as one man, to get the first and best view of a procession which was coming up a long lane paved with cobble-stones and lined with rows upon rows of American citizens, whose liveliest emotion on such a day, one would have thought, would have been gratitude to the vanquished enemy who left his umbrella as well as his language and laws behind him when he turned his back on the land of the free. After a cycle of impatient waiting and fruitless watching, and a half-dozen groundless alarms, a murmur ran through the crowd. An Irishwoman in the front rank swooped down on a small son of Erin by her side, and, gathering him up in her motherly embrace, lifted him up on her shoulder, saving, "It's Moike as'd be afther seein' the illigant show! An' it's hoigher he is now than the hoighest av ye." Cries of "Down with that that brat!" "Get out of the way, Biddy!" went up. The blue eyes that had beamed love flashed out anger, and a Niagara of vituperative eloquence would have been unbound, but at that moment shouts of "Here they are! Hurrah!" were drowned in a sudden blast from a military band, and all eyes and ears were riveted upon the procession, which had been as long in coming as spring in New England, or Christmas holidays to boys at school, but was now come. The display, as all who saw it will vouch, was an interesting and creditable one, but it is only of one feature of it that I wish to speak, an invariable feature of such spectacles, as it is the most attractive and impressive. A feature, do I say? The feature would be nearer the mark. I allude to the figure of a man, gigantic in stature, with "Atlantean shoulders fit to bear the weight of mightiest empires," an eye to threaten and command, a front more awful than that of Jove, and a back that inspires more respect and maintains higher discipline than Cæsar's or Napoleon's. His official trappings are gorgeous. He wears a smart uniform, and his head-gear is extremely imposing, but these alone are not sufficient to account for the impression he creates. He owes nothing to the curvetings and caracolings and side-play of a fractious thoroughbred, for he is on foot. In his hand there is neither sword nor pistol, but only a simple bâton. Yet Mars was not a more splendid incarnation of war. He is a Pomp and Circumstance, a whole army with infantry, cavalry, artillery, banners, pontoon-bridges, battering-rams, mortars, catapults, and mangonels. He is a Drum-Major. When just opposite, he wheels suddenly upon an innocent-looking group of Teutons behind him, who with staring eyeballs and cheeks puffed out like Raphael's cherubs are blowing, drum-
