flag leaps wildly in the wind this day.

On Twelfth Street the sun is shining, drums are beating, and bands are
playing, and bright aides dashing hither and thither on spirited
chargers. One by one the companies are marching up, and taking place in
line; the city companies in natty gray fatigue, the country companies
often in their Sunday clothes. But they walk with heads erect and chests
out, and the ladies wave their gay parasols and cheer them. Here are the
aristocratic St. Louis Grays, Company A; there come the Washington Guards
and Washington Blues, and Laclede Guards and Missouri Guards and Davis
Guards. Yes, this is Secession Day, this Monday. And the colors are the
Stars and Stripes and the Arms of Missouri crossed.

What are they waiting for? Why don't they move? Hark! A clatter and a
cloud of dust by the market place, an ecstasy of cheers running in waves
the length of the crowd. Make way for the dragoons! Here they come at
last, four and four, the horses prancing and dancing and pointing
quivering ears at the tossing sea of hats and parasols and ribbons. Maude
Catherwood squeezes Virginia's arm. There, riding in front, erect and
firm in the saddle, is Captain Clarence Colfax. Virginia is red and
white, and red again,--true colors of the Confederacy. How proud she was
of him now! How ashamed that she even doubted him! Oh, that was his true
calling, a soldier's life. In that moment she saw him at the head of
armies, from the South, driving the Yankee hordes northward and still
northward until the roar of the lakes warns them of annihilation. She saw
his chivalry sparing them. Yes, this is Secession Monday.

Down to a trot they slow, Clarence's black thorough-bred arching his long
neck, proud as his master of the squadron which follows, four and four.
The square young man of bone and sinew in the first four, whose horse is