... No two companies have been drilled alike; no three consecutive soldiers perform the same antic at the same time (Page [212])
Arms are trailed, right-shouldered, presented, ordered; bayonets are fixed, unfixed, or transfixed; rammers are sprung and imaginary cartridges are subjected to supposititious mastication. Over and over again, in bewildering diversity of succession, are the orders inaccurately given and confusedly executed, until the colonel's martial rage is seemingly appeased. Man wants but little here below, while woman wants many things and wants them all marked down. Both man and woman ought to find in this notable performance a maximum of quantum suf.
The perfunctory reading of orders; the reports of first sergeants; the grand spectacular advance of the officers, might each inspire a modern society poem, printed on linen paper with ink worth a dollar a pound. The final dismissal of parade; the departure of companies to their respective quarters—these are mere routine. They are essential, perhaps, but dull, tasteless, flameless as unleavened sanctimony. It is vanity and vexation to be born with a silver spoon in one's mouth, if there is nothing in the spoon.
Throughout its bellicose career, when occasion permits, the regiment renews its daily practice of this imposing observance. Leaf by leaf the roses fall; day by day the snare-drums call. But practice makes perfect. Within a twelvemonth after muster-in the alert, alive and agile volunteers will have become so facile in their exercise that every motion is pivotal and simultaneous—a thousand with a single joint who hear and move as one. The veteran reverts to his plebe camp experiences even as the aged grandsire recalls the sorrowful coffee and sad biscuit of early matrimonial days. The halo of romance encircles them still!
Every man to his trade, cries the bigamous cobbler, with shell-bark resonance, and tenaciously sticks to his last. Every crank to his whim, every fool to his folly, says common-sense, with some slight conscientious twinges. When uncle Silas comes from South Squam, and, for the first time, confronts the dizzy delights of a gay metropolis, there is danger in the air. Look not upon Monte Carlo when it is red; shun humbugs as you would shun a land title based on love and affection. The events we commemorate happened, to all intents and purposes, on a different planet from that now occupying our orbit.
If ever a Dress Parade of hobbies, a review of sham or an inspection of human nature could be displayed, there are grounds for a suspicion that serious complications would ensue. They would equal the ferment from an accidental mixture of gin, gingerbread and sauerkraut, prime standard products of the early Knickerbockers and first exports from New Amsterdam. Bulwer says: "Beware of the poor devil who is always railing at coaches and four; book him as a man to be bribed."
More than thirty years ago, for the last time in the volunteer army of the Union, the welcome call, "Parade is dismissed," rang along the attenuated line of some lingering battalion, and it dissolved into history. Parades, marches and battles were finished. But victory was assured; its results are embedded and embalmed in the nation's splendid destiny.
It is an inspiring thought that this destiny opens broad and bright before us, and we need only be faithful to our trust to ensure a realization of the fondest dreams of the heroes, saints and martyrs of the olden time. Unrolled around us lies a continent, clothed with verdure as with a garment, heavy with its stores of hoarded wealth, all reserved for us in virgin purity and freshness since earth's creation morn. Our race is inheritor of the best blood, the best energies, the best principles, the best talent, that have illumined and vivified the human family through all its glorious past.