New York is a city of millions. It is the biggest city on earth. It is the melting pot of nations. The crowd that lines the curb is of one sort. There is another sort marching the length of the avenue. And this is a mixture to bewilder any beholder. A countryman from New Jersey, with his wife and children comes to-day for this splendid free show of the troops that are to march; the countrymen from the reaches of New York along the Hudson, with the same purpose; his fellows from Long Island, from Connecticut. With these alien figures, treading the principal city street of the world, are others. Those who walk there daily walk there again to-day. The clubman, coated, hatted, gloved to perfection, takes his accustomed stroll on the avenue, and looks with contemptuous disgust on the crowd that forces him to walk gingerly where usually he struts as a master. He, too, is a patriot and he means to see the march of the troops, and to applaud it—but from his club window, if ever he is able to make his way there through the perspiring congestion of the motley crowd.
There is a crew of money-makers, busy along the avenue on an occasion such as this. These are hordes of itinerant merchants moving up and down with things to sell to the crowd. They offer canes and instruments of noise that by a twist of the wrist make a horrible din. Especially, they offer American flags—bigger or smaller according to the purchaser's taste and purse. These are bought with eagerness by the crowd, and the fakers reap a harvest from the enthusiasm of those assembled to witness the marching soldiers.
The boy with a box is dominant. Wherever a short, but eager watcher stands to look, the boy comes, with his offer of a box to stand on, a box to sit on, as the purchaser may please, for the nominal cost of ten cents. Always, one finds at hand this boy, with the box that he offers for your sitting or for your feet, as you will. One box bought, he shows another, offering it for sale. Whence he comes with boxes so multitudinous none may guess. But he goes away with nickles and dimes enough perhaps to provide an income that will continue over until another day of parade.
In the reviewing stand, there was seated a girl who watched the marching troops with an intentness that had in it something of desperation, something of despair. Yet, as the soldiers passed, she gave them little heed. She was always looking toward those advancing, as if in search for something that meant more to her than this moving mass of troops.
A band passed. Behind it, at the head of his men, rode Colonel Marion. As he came opposite the reviewing stand, his eyes swept over the crowd seated on the tiers of benches. They rested on the face of the girl, who had been so anxiously watching. He smiled and saluted. The girl—his daughter Ethel—waved her handkerchief eagerly in response. Then she turned, and spoke to the young man who sat beside her. There was love, touched with reverence, in her voice.
"Isn't Daddy splendid!"
Her companion, Roy Morton, answered with sincerity, in which was a tincture of irrepressible bitterness.
"He's every inch a soldier."
The bitterness came from the fact that a broken tendon—received during his last football fight for Yale—disqualified him for military service, for which he longed more than ever in this hour when he saw the girl beside him so thrilled by the pomp of war, when he saw her pride and exultation in the military bearing of the father she revered. He felt that he must seem a slacker in her eyes, even though she knew that no fault of his own kept him at home, while others marched away to serve their country.
For Roy loved Ethel and his chief desire always was to show perfect in her eyes. For that matter, he was successful enough, since the girl loved him. Their troth was plighted, and in due time they would be married with the full approval of Colonel Marion, who both liked and respected his prospective son-in-law. So, in preparation for his own absence from home on military service, he strictly charged Roy to watch over Ethel and guard her from any possible peril. It was only a father's instinctive act in protection of his child. As a matter of fact, what danger could by any possibility threaten the well-being of this Ethel, who would remain living quietly in her father's New York house, along with the elderly cousin who acted as chaperon to the motherless girl, and the staff of old and faithful servants?