Were you there in--"
"Listen!" she cried. "The procession is coming. Look at the crowd!" The
parade had seized a psychological moment.
There was a fanfare of trumpets in the east. Lines of people rushed for
the street, and, as one looked down on the straw hats and sunbonnets and
many kinds of finer head apparel, tossing forward, they seemed like surf
sweeping up the long beaches.
She was coming at last. The boys whooped in the middle of the street; some
tossed their arms to heaven, others expressed their emotion by
somersaults; those most deeply moved walked on their hands. In the
distance one saw, over the heads of the multitude, tossing banners and the
moving crests of triumphal cars, where "cohorts were shining in purple and
gold." She _was_ coming. After all the false alarms and disappointments,
she was coming!
There was another flourish of music. Immediately all the band gave sound,
and then, with blare of brass and the crash of drums, the glory of the
parade burst upon Plattville. Glory in the utmost! The resistless impetus
of the march-time music; the flare of royal banners, of pennons on the
breeze; the smiling of beautiful Court Ladies and great, silken Nobles;
the swaying of howdahs on camel and elephant, and the awesome shaking of
the earth beneath the elephant's feet, and the gleam of his small but
devastating eye (every one declared he looked the alarmed Mr.
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