This is perpetually the fact; and it is the danger and the shame of the round dances. Young girls guarded, from babyhood, from all contact with vice, from all knowledge of men as they exist, in their own world of clubs and dissipation, suddenly “come out” to whirl, night after night, and week after week, in the arms of men whose lightest touch is profanation. It would be long before it would dawn upon the girl to dream of the evil in that man’s heart; far longer to learn the evil of his life; yet no less, to her, innocent and young, in the very association and contact there is unconscious pollution. There is a sacredness in the very thought of the body which God created to be the human home of an immortal soul. Its very beauty should be the seal of its holiness. Every where in Scripture its sacredness is recognized and enforced. Therein we are told that our bodies are the temples of God. We are commanded to make them meet temples for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit; and our very dress, in its harmony and purity, should consecrate, not desecrate, the beautiful home of the soul.
CHAPTER XXVII.
INAUGURATION DAY AT WASHINGTON.
My Own Private Opinion—Sublime Humanity in the Lump—The Climate Disagrees—The Little “Sons of War” Feeling Bad—“Think of the Babies”—Brutal Mothers—The “Boys in Blue”—“Broke their Backs and Skinned their Noses”—Our Heroes—Later Festivities—“Devoted to Art”—Scene in “the Avenue”—A Lively Time—The Mighty Drum-Major—West Point Warriors Criticised—Faultlessly Ridiculous—Pitilessly Dressed—“Taken for a Nigger”—Magnificent Display—The Oldest Regiment in the States—The President—The Senators—Invitation of the Coldstream Guards—The Strangers—Generals Sherman and Sheridan—Admiral Porter—Sketches of Well-known Men—The Diplomatic Corps—Blacque Bey—Full Turkish Costume—Sir Edward Thornton—The Japanese Minister—Senator Sumner Appears—The Supreme Court—Senator Wilson—Cragin, Logan, and Bayard—Vice-President Colfax—Enter, the President—Congress Alive Again—The Valedictory—Taking the Oaths—“The Little Gentleman in the Big Chair”—His Little Speech—His Wife and Family Behind—The New President—Memories of Another Scene—Grand Jubilation—The Procession—The Curtain Falls.
I don’t like Inauguration day, but I hope you do, or will, when I have told you what a gala day it is to many—to all who stay at home, and catch the splendor which it sheds, through lines of printer’s ink.
Surely, there is something inspiriting and uplifting in the sight of massed humanity, in throbbing drums and soaring music, in waving pennons and flashing lances, all laden with heroic memories, all bristling with intelligence and the conscious power of human freedom; but, in our climate, and at the inauguration season of the year, enthusiasm and patriotism demand a fearful price in nerve, muscle, and human endurance. If you doubt it, think of the West Point Cadets—those young sons of war, inured to martial training—who sank to the pavements in the ranks, at the last inauguration of President Grant, overcome, and insensible with the bitter cold which chilled and benumbed even the warm currents of their strong young hearts. Think of the babies who shuddered and cried in their mothers’ arms, who would see the sight, if baby died!
No less the second inaugural procession of President Grant transcended, in civic and military splendor, any sight seen in Washington since the great review when the boys in blue, fresh from the victory of bloody battle-fields, broke their backs and skinned their noses, in the June sun of 1865, for the sake of shouting thousands who came hither to behold them. Oh what a sight was that! when the bronzed and haggard, and aged-in-youth faces of the boys before us, made our hearts weep afresh at the thought of the upturned faces of the boys left behind—some in the cruel wilderness, some in half dug graves on solitary hill-sides, and lonely plains—all left behind forever, for freedom’s sake. Who that knew old Washington can forget it? This is another Washington. But here they come! Safe from cold and wind, thanks to—I look up. From this window, on Fifteenth street, you can see Pennsylvania avenue past the Treasury building, (whose marble steps are boarded in from the advancing people,) to the Executive Mansion, glittering white through the leafless trees just beyond. Opposite is Lafayette square, the prettiest little park of its size in the United States. Above, you see the towering mansard of Corcoran’s building, “Devoted to Art,” and just this side, the lofty brown front of the Freedman’s Savings Bank. The avenue opens before you—a broad, straight vista, with garlands of flags, of every nation and hue, flung across from roof to roof. Above glitters an absolutely cloudless sky, dazzlingly blue, and pitilessly cold. The very tree-boughs swing like crystals glittering and freezing in the sun. The air seems full of rushing fiends, or rushing locomotives running into each other with hideous shrieks, whichever you please (on the whole, I prefer locomotives, being fresher). Your imagination need not be Dantean to make you feel that there is a dreadful battle going on in the air, above you and about you. The imps come down and seize an old man’s hat, and fly off with a woman’s veil, and blow a little boy into a cellar. The bigger air-warriors, intent on bigger spoil, sweep down banners, swoop off with awnings, concentrate their forces into swirling cyclones in the middle of the streets, and bang away at plate-glass windows till they prance in their sockets.
Before such unfriendly and tricksy foes, through the biting air, comes the great procession. First, a battalion of mounted police; then West Point, with its band and drum-major. Not a sprite of the air has caught the baton of its drum-major. Not a sting of zero, has stiffened that fantastic arm as he lifts and swings the symbol of his foolishness. He is as inimitable in the bleak and dusty street as when I saw him last, on the velvet sward of West Point, that delicious evening in October. Something utterly ridiculous to look at, is refreshing, and anything more faultlessly ridiculous than the drum-major of West Point I never saw.
I believe it is fashionable to find fault with West Point; but I wouldn’t give much for anybody who could see these boys and not admire them. They have their faults (their caste and their army exclusiveness sometimes reaches an absurd pitch) but look at them! What faces, what muscle, what manhood! Their movement is the perfect poetry of motion; a hundred men stepping as one. What marching, and at what odds! They are so pitilessly dressed! Thousands of men come behind, warmly muffled; but the West Point Cadets have on their new uniforms, single jackets. More than one will receive through it the seeds of death this morning. What wonder, that two while standing in line sank insensible with the cold not an hour ago. But, dear me! to think that more than one of them should be taken for a “nigger!” The colored Cadet is whiter than a dozen of his class-mates, and has straight hair.
In the distance rises, wave on wave, a glittering sea of helmets; bayonets flash, plumes wave, bands play; all tell one story—the love of military pomp and parade, the pride and patriotism which brings these soldiers back to celebrate the second inauguration of their chief; and at what cost of suffering to many of them. What cold and hunger, and delay on the way, and now! what nerve and will it takes to march in a wind like this!
After West Point comes Annapolis. Pretty “Middies,” young and slender, in their suits of dark blue! As a body, they are younger than the West Pointers, and slighter. Nor can any comparison be drawn between their marching, for the Middies drag their howitzers. They look true sons of their class; and for intelligence, chivalric manners, and gentle manhood, the true officer of the American navy is unsurpassed.