the Junction Club of Ipley and Hillford, whose colours were yellow and
blue, was a seceder from the old-established Hillford Club, on which it
had this day shamefully stolen a march by parading everywhere in the
place of it, and disputing not only its pasture-grounds but its identity.

There is no instrument the sound of which proclaims such a vast internal
satisfaction as the drum. I know not whether it be that the sense we
have of the corpulency of this instrument predisposes us to imagine it
supremely content: as when an alderman is heard snoring the world is
assured that it listens to the voice of its own exceeding gratulation.
A light heart in a fat body ravishes not only the world but the
philosopher. If monotonous, the one note of the drum is very correct.
Like the speaking of great Nature, what it means is implied by the
measure. When the drum beats to the measure of a common human pulsation
it has a conquering power: inspiring us neither to dance nor to trail the
members, but to march as life does, regularly, and in hearty good order,
and with a not exhaustive jollity. It is a sacred instrument.

Now the drum which is heard to play in this cheerful fashion, while at
the same time we know that discomfiture is cruelly harrying it: that its
inmost feelings are wounded, and that worse is in store for it, affects
the contemplative mind with an inexpressibly grotesque commiseration. Do
but listen to this one, which is the joint corporate voice of the men of
Hillford. Outgeneraled, plundered, turned to ridicule, it thumps with
unabated briskness. Here indeed might Sentimentalism shed a fertile
tear!

Anticipating that it will eventually be hung up among our national
symbols, I proceed. The drum of Hillford entered the Brookfield grounds
as Ipley had done, and with a similar body of decorated Clubmen; sounding