dilettanteism, the delicious idleness, the luxurious ease, fell away,
and were as though they had never been. All the airy dreams of a renewed
chivalrous age, of courage, of heroism, of sublime daring and
self-sacrifice, took substance and shape, and were for him no longer
visions of the night, but realities of the day.

Still, while flags waved, drums beat, and cannon thundered; while
friends said, "Go!" the world stood ready to cheer him on, and fame and
honor and greater things than these beckoned him to come; while he felt
the whirl and excitement of it all,--his heart cried ceaselessly, "Only
let me see her--once--if but for a moment, before I go!" It was so
little he asked of fate, yet too much to be granted.

In vain he went every day, and many times a day, in the brief space left
him, to her hotel. In vain he once more questioned clerk and servants;
in vain haunted the house of his aunt, with the dim hope that Clara
might hear from her, or that in some undefined way he might learn of
her whereabouts, and so accomplish his desire.

But the days passed, too slowly for the ardent young patriot, all too
rapidly for the unhappy lover. Friday came. Early in the day multitudes
of people began to collect in the street, growing in numbers and
enthusiasm as the hours wore on, till, in the afternoon, the splendid
thoroughfare of New York from Fourth Street down to the Cortlandt
Ferry--a stretch of miles--was a solid mass of humanity; thousands and
tens of thousands, doubled, quadrupled, and multiplied again.

Through the morning this crowd in squads and companies traversed the
streets, collected on the corners, congregating chiefly about the armory
of their pet regiment, the Seventh, on Lafayette Square,--one great mass