The entertainment at the Academy that night was supplied by an elaborate
"show" of the burlesque variety known as "The Follies," and it so
happened that in the course of this hodgepodge of color, comedy,
scenery, song, and female anatomy, there was presented a "number" in
which actors, garbed and frescoed with intent to resemble rulers of
various lands, marched successively to the front of the stage, preceded
in each instance by a small but carefully selected guard wearing the
full-dress-uniform of Broadway Amazons. This uniform consists
principally of tights and high-heeled slippers, the different nations
being indicated, usually, by means of color combinations and various
types of soldiers' hats. No arms are presented save those provided by
nature.

The King of Italy, the Emperor of Austria, the Czar, the Mikado, the
British Monarch, the President of France, the King of the Belgians, the
Kaiser (for the United States had not then entered the war), and, I
think, some others, put in an appearance, each accompanied by his
Paphian escort, his standard, and the appropriate national air.
Apprehending that this symbolic travesty must, almost inevitably, end in
a grand orgy of Yankee-Doodleism, I was impelled to flee the place
before the thing should happen. Yet a horrid fascination held me there
to watch the working up of "patriotic" sentiment by the old, cheap,
stage tricks.

Presently, of course, the supreme moment came. When all the potentates
had taken their positions, right and left, with their silk-limbed
soldiery in double ranks behind them, there came into view upstage a
squad of little white-clad female naval officers, each, according to my
recollection, carrying the Stars and Stripes. As these marched forward
and deployed as skirmishers before the footlights, the orchestra struck