“There’s a new poster across the street,” said Stephen.  He indicated a big advertisement decorated with a flying eagle.

  DOWN WITH SECESSION!

  The Government Appeals to the
  New York Fire Department for One Regiment of Zouaves!

  Companies will select their own officers.  The roll is
  at Engine House 138, West Broadway.

    ELSWORTH, COL:  ZOUAVES.

“That’s a good, regiment to enlist in, isn’t it?” said the boy restlessly.

“Cavalry for me,” replied Berkley, unsmiling; “they can run faster.”

“I’m serious,” said Stephen.  “If I had a chance—­” He turned on Berkley:  “Why don’t you, enlist?  There’s nothing to stop you, is there?”

“Nothing except constitutional timidity.”

“Then why don’t you?”

Berkley laughed.  “Well, for one thing, I’m not sure how I’d behave in battle.  I might be intelligent enough to run; I might be ass enough to fight.  The enemy would have to take its chances.”

The boy laughed, too, turned to the window, and suddenly caught Berkley by the arm: 

“Look!  There’s something going on down by the Astor House!”

“A Massachusetts regiment of embattled farmers arrived in this hamlet last night.  I believe they are to pass by here on their way to Washington,” remarked Berkley, opening the window and leaning out.

Already dense crowds of people were pushing, fighting, forcing their way past the windows, driven before double lines of police; already distant volleys of cheers sounded; the throb of drums became audible; the cheering sounded shriller, nearer.

Past the windows, through Broadway, hordes of ragged street arabs came running, scattered into night before another heavy escort of police.  And now the on-coming drums could be heard more distinctly; and now two dusty officers marched into view, a colonel of Massachusetts infantry attended by a quartermaster of New York militia.

Behind them tramped the regimental band of the 6th Massachusetts, instruments slung; behind these, filling the street from gutter to gutter, surged the sweating drummers, deafening every ear with their racket; then followed the field and staff, then the Yankee regiment, wave on wave of bayonets choking the thoroughfare far as the eye could see, until there seemed no end to their coming, and the cheering had become an unbroken howl.

Stephen turned to Berkley:  “A fellow can’t see too much of this kind of thing and stand it very long.  Those soldiers are no older than I am!”

Berkley’s ironical reply was drowned in a renewed uproar as the Massachusetts soldiers wheeled and began to file into the Astor House, and the New York militia of the escort swung past hurrahing for the first Northern troops to leave for the front.

That day Berkley lunched in imagination only, seriously inclined to exchange his present board and lodgings for a dish of glory and a cot in barracks.