THE HYMN THAT HELPED
[THE HYMN THAT HELPED.]
It was a warm night, late in May. For two long hours the battalion steadily had kept at it—ploying into column, deploying again into line, and varying things by an occasional march, in company front, around the great hall. But there comes an end to all things, even to a two hours' tramp over an unyielding floor, and at last the bugler, standing beneath the crowded spectators' gallery, puckered his lips, puffed out his cheeks, and blew the welcome bars of "Recall"—the signal that it was ten o'clock and time to wind up the evening's drill. One by one the companies filed out through the broad doorway, and as the last man passed over the threshold—even while the closing notes of the bugle-call still faintly rang among the arching trusses of the vaulted roof—the waiting armorer pressed down the lever which, at a single touch, extinguished the lights in the double row of chandeliers, and left the drill-hall to silence and darkness.
But if all was dark and still in the hall below, upstairs the state of affairs was in lively contrast, for in the company quarters there was light in plenty and the hum of many voices, while presently a yell of laughter from "K's" rooms, followed by a responsive roar from "A's" corner, across the corridor, seemed to show that the manœuvres of the evening had not brought the men to the point of complete exhaustion.
About the adjutant's desk, in the staff-room, a knot of officers had gathered to talk over the night's work, and speculate upon the weather of the morrow, for it was the night before Memorial Day, and the four companies detailed for escort duty in the coming parade had been going through a battalion drill, "To get shaken into shape for exhibition purposes," as the major put it.
"The boys measured off a good step to-night: thirty elegant inches, within an eighth," said the adjutant, footing up the last column of the drill report, and then gracing it with his undecipherable signature. "Yes, they stretched it out in gorgeous style, and the last time they came 'round the hall the company wheels were just as pretty as any you ever saw on a little, red wagon." This was in the days when Upton yet was law in the land; before the "new regulations" had come to vex the souls of company commanders.