were standing, there engaged in secret conversation. As he joined them,
three other young men--Federalists--sauntered past, wearing black cockades,
with an eagle button on the left side. The six men saluted coolly.

Many another group and solitary figure he saw to remind him of the turbulent
history of the time and place. A parson, who had been the calmest of Indian
fighters, had lost all self-control as he contended out in the road with
another parson for the use of Dr. Watts' hymns instead of the Psalms of
David. Near by, listening to them, and with a wondering eye on all he saw in
the street, stood a French priest of Bordeaux, an exile from the fury of the
avenging jacobins. There were brown flatboatmen, in weather-beaten felt
hats, just returned by the long overland trip from New Orleans and
discussing with tobacco merchants the open navigation of the Mississippi;
and as they talked, up to them hurried the inventor Edward West, who said
with excitement that if they would but step across the common to the town
branch, he would demonstrate by his own model that some day navigation would
be by steam: whereat they all laughed kindly at him for a dreamer, and went
to laugh at the action of his mimic boat, moving hither and thither over the
dammed water of the stream. Sitting on a stump apart from every one, his dog
at his feet, his rifle across his lap, an aged backwoodsman surveyed in
sorrow the civilization that had already destroyed his hunting and that was
about sending him farther west to the depths of Missouri--along with the
buffalo. His glance fell with disgust upon two old gentlemen in
knee-breeches who met and offered each other their snuff-boxes, with a deep
bow. He looked much more kindly at a crave, proud Chickasaw hunter, who
strode by with inward grief and shame, wounded by the robbery of his people.
Puritans from New England; cavaliers from Virginia; Scotch-Irish from
Pennsylvania; mild-eyed trappers and bargemen from the French hamlets of
Kaskaskia and Cahokia; wood-choppers; scouts; surveyors; swaggering
adventurers; land-lawyers; colonial burgesses,--all these mingled and