Hurrying drum-beat, shrill fife-tones, wailing bugle-notes, and, by way of accompaniment, hurrahs from the urchins on the crowded sidewalks.

Here come the citizen-soldiers, each martial foot beating up the mud of yesterday's storm with the slow, regular, up-and-down movement of an old-fashioned churn-dasher.

Keeping time with the feet below, some threescore of plumed heads bob solemnly beneath me.

Slant sunshine glitters on polished gun-barrels and tinselled uniform.

Gravely and soberly they pass on, as if duly impressed with a sense of the deep responsibility of their position as self-constituted defenders of the world's last hope,--the United States of America, and possibly Texas.