the children, treated with deference by those grown up, and presented
to the guest as the central figure of the home. As the younger ones
dropped off to bed and things grew quieter, grandfather's chair was
apt to be the centre toward which all tended, and, of course, the old
man talked about his youth. Here are the reminiscences I heard once at
the end of a merry evening, and at other times I heard something not
unlike: "Children and grandchildren and guest from over the sea, when
I was a boy, Prussia was struggling with the first Napoleon; and
when I was eighteen I marched myself under Blücher beyond the Rhine.
Sometimes we went on the run, sometimes we got lifts in relays of
waggons, and so I have known the infantry even to make now and then
fifty miles a day. Matters were pressing, you see (_sehen Sie
'mal_). At last we crossed at Coblentz, and got from there into
Belgium the first days of June. We met the French at Ligny,--a close,
bitter fight,--and half my battalion were left behind there where they
had stood. We were a few paces off, posted in a graveyard, when the
French cavalry rode over old Marshal Vorwärts, lying under his horse.
I saw the rush of the French, then the countercharge of the Prussian
troopers when missed the General and drove the enemy back till they
found him again; though what it all meant we never knew till it was
over. Then, after mighty little rest, we marched fast and far, with
cannon-thunder in our ears in a constant mutter, always growing
louder, until in the afternoon we came at a quickstep through a piece
of woods out upon the plain by Waterloo, where they had been fighting
all day. Our feet sucked in the damp ground, the wet grain brushed our
knees, as our compact column spread out into more open order and went
into fire. What a smoke there was about La Haye Sainte and Hougomont,
with now lines of red infantry, or a column in dark blue, or a mass
of flashing cuirassiers hidden for a moment, then reappearing! It was
take and give, hot and heavy, for an hour or so about Planchenoit. A