Then he would go to the other extreme and cleanse himself to a foppery. But even this was mannishness, for he was a soldier.
He loved his family, his city, his nation, and his was that patriotism which proves itself by an eagerness to be ready to defend his altars.
“Any man who really loves his country,” he would say, “will keep himself strong enough to dig a ditch, build a wall, know a gun, and shoot it straight.”
He had joined the Seventh Regiment as soon as he could get in, though everybody knew that there was no chance of war and the soldiers were counted mere dandies.
Then a civil war broke out at home. New York City fought New York State. The Legislature at Albany, angered at the scandals of the city police, set up in its place a state police. Mayor Fernando Wood, who was always defying somebody, defied the Governor, the Legislature, the Supreme Court.
The criminals reveled in the joyous opportunity while the two police forces fought each other. When a warrant was issued for the Mayor’s arrest the town police made the City Hall their citadel; the state police besieged it.
The Seventh Regiment was marching down Broadway to take a boat to Boston for a gala week in honor of the new Bunker Hill monument. It passed by the battlefield of City Hall Park. Since it was a state force, its colonel marched into the park and demanded the surrender of the Mayor, who yielded forthwith. The Seventh thereupon went on its way with brass band blaring, all the youthful hearts persuaded that they were invincible.
The Seventh had hardly reached Boston when it was recalled to rescue the town from a venomous mob that gathered in the Five Points, put the police to flight, and promised to destroy the whole city. The mob broke on the bayonets of the Seventh after six men had been killed and a hundred wounded.
Keith came home to his horrified mother with a few bumps on the head. She was still pleading with him the next day to resign from the perilous life when he was called out with his regiment to quell another riot.
A little later there was a parade in honor of the laying of an Atlantic cable, which collapsed after two alleged messages were passed and was voted a gigantic hoax. But while the town laughed at it, the poor Seventh was dragged to Staten Island, where a thousand miscreants had set fire to the quarantine buildings. For three months Keith had to sit there on guard over the cold and malodorous ruins.