THE LOADED GUN[[3]]
I THREE GENTLEMEN OF PHILADELPHIA
At three o’clock in the morning, Gast, McGill, and Ravant were going down Twentieth street, in the vicinity of Walnut street. They were locked together in the fashion of a Roman phalanx. And even then their going was unsteady. With the memory of his classical studies somewhat revived, Ravant repeated Cæsar’s commendation of the Roman formation.
A little later, and a little further down the street, where lived many of the city’s elect, they were protesting in over-vociferous melody that they would not go home till morning.
“Make it midday, for the sake of ver-sim-ili-tude,” begged Gast, breathless with the word, “for it is morning now. Behold!”
And thereupon he also remembered the invocations to the rising sun, in which the ancients abound, and produced one—according to his memory:
“Aurora leaped upon the nether hills
And flung a kiss to Bacchus—’twas a day!”
The officer on the corner of the square came and looked on amicably.
His applause made McGill realize that the voices of his comrades, unlike his own, had never excelled in melody. He, therefore, attached himself to a lamp-post, and, in the fashion of a precentor, proposed to instruct them in the difficulties of “Annie Laurie.”