a brass band hired by the job to play furiously. Browne admires the
gallant firemen as they step along bravely, winking at the pretty
girls on either side--at the machine which glistens in the sun, and
maintains a lively jingling of bells and brass-work as it joggles over
the pavement. "Ah," thinks Browne, "this is gorgeous!" It is. Browne's
instincts are generally correct.

The man who assists in carrying the bass drum has a sore thumb,
a sensitively sore thumb. Nothing more natural, when Sherman goes
"marching through Georgia," than that this thumb should come in for a
share of attention. The bang it gets sends the acutest pain running up
and down its owner's spine. In a frenzy (in a moment, we may say, of
emotional insanity) he draws a tomahawk and buries it in the head of
the captain of that bass drum. The infuriated musician, supposing it
to be the cornet who has mutinied, at once gets his Smith & Wesson in
range. When the smoke has cleared away three shots are found to have
taken effect--two of them in a span of high-stepping horses attached
to the elegant turnout of old Mrs. P----. That estimable lady is
spilled into the third-story window of an establishment where sits our
old friend Hannah binding shoes. The shock so far upsets poor Hannah's
reason that she turns a blood-curdling somersault out upon an awning,
bounces back, and on her return trip carries away a swinging sign
and a barber's pole. These heavy articles strike on a copper
soda-fountain, which explodes with a fearful noise, and mortally
wounds a colored man uninsured against accident. (Full particulars for
the next twelve months in the insurance journals.) The gallant boys in
red flannel, assuming from the commotion that a fire must be under
way in the neighborhood, set the machine to work in a twinkling. The
leading hoseman in his hurry rams his bouquet into the fire-box, tries
to screw his silver trumpet on the end of the hose, and stands on his