What pomp! what giddy rounds! Pennons, cock-feathers, clattering steeds, pealing salvos, banners, columns, ladies' favors, balls, concerts, toasts, the Free Gift Lottery--don't you recollect?--and this uniform and that uniform, brother a captain, father a colonel, uncle a major, the little rector a chaplain, Captain Ristofalo of the Tiger Rifles; the levee covered with munitions of war, steam-boats unloading troops, troops, troops, from Opelousas, Attakapas, Texas; and a supper to this company, a flag to that battalion, farewell sermon to the Washington Artillery, tears and a kiss to a spurred and sashed lover, hurried weddings,--no end of them,--a sword to such a one, addresses by such and such, serenades to Miss and to Mademoiselle.
Soon it will have been a quarter of a century ago!
And yet--do you not hear them now, coming down the broad, granite-paved, moonlit street, the light that was made for lovers glancing on bayonet and sword soon to be red with brothers' blood, their brave young hearts already lifted up with the triumph of battles to come, and the trumpets waking the midnight stillness with the gay notes of the Cracovienne?--
"Again, again, the pealing drum, The clashing horn, they come, they come, And lofty deeds and daring high Blend with their notes of victory."
Ah! the laughter; the music; the bravado; the dancing; the songs! "_Voilà l'Zouzou!_" "Dixie!" "_Aux armes, vos citoyens!_" "The Bonnie Blue Flag!"--it wasn't bonnie very long. Later the maidens at home learned to sing a little song,--it is among the missing now,--a part of it ran:--
"Sleeping on grassy couches; Pillowed on hillocks damp; Of martial fame how little we know Till brothers are in the camp."
By and by they began to depart. How many they were! How many, many! We had too lightly let them go. And when all were gone, and they of Carondelet street and its tributaries, massed in that old gray, brittle-shanked regiment, the Confederate Guards, were having their daily dress parade in Coliseum place, and only they and the Foreign Legion remained; when sister Jane made lint, and flour was high, and the sounds of commerce were quite hushed, and in the custom-house gun-carriages were a-making, and in the foundries big guns were being cast, and the cotton gun-boats and the rams were building, and at the rotting wharves the masts of a few empty ships stood like dead trees in a blasted wilderness, and poor soldiers' wives crowded around the "Free Market," and grass began to spring up in the streets,--they were many still, while far away; but some marched no more, and others marched on bleeding feet, in rags; and it was very, very hard for some of us to hold the voice steady and sing on through the chorus of the little song:--