This grand fact I learned by two senses.  If hundreds of thousands roared it into my ears, thousands slapped it into my back.  My fellow-citizens smote me on the knapsack, as I went by at the gun-rope, and encouraged me each in his own dialect.  “Bully for you!” alternated with benedictions, in the proportion of two “bullies” to one blessing.

I was not so fortunate as to receive more substantial tokens of sympathy.  But there were parting gifts showered on the regiment, enough to establish a variety-shop.  Handkerchiefs, of course, came floating down upon us from the windows, like a snow.  Pretty little gloves pelted us with love-taps.  The sterner sex forced upon us pocket-knives new and jagged, combs, soap, slippers, boxes of matches, cigars by the dozen and the hundred, pipes to smoke shag and pipes to smoke Latakia, fruit, eggs, and sandwiches.  One fellow got a new purse with ten bright quarter-eagles.

At the corner of Grand Street, or thereabouts, a “bhoy” in red flannel shirt and black dress pantaloons, leaning back against the crowd with Herculean shoulders, called me,—­“Saaey, bully! take my dorg! he’s one of the kind that holds till he draps.”  This gentleman, with his animal, was instantly shoved back by the police, and the Seventh lost the “dorg.”

These were the comic incidents of the march, but underlying all was the tragic sentiment that we might have tragic work presently to do.  The news of the rascal attack in Baltimore on the Massachusetts Sixth had just come in.  Ours might be the same chance.  If there were any of us not in earnest before, the story of the day would steady us.  So we said goodbye to Broadway, moved down Cortlandt Street under a bower of flags, and at half-past six shoved off in the ferry-boat.

Everybody has heard how Jersey City turned out and filled up the Railroad Station, like an opera-house, to give Godspeed to us as a representative body, a guaranty of the unquestioning loyalty of the “conservative” class in New York.  Everybody has heard how the State of New Jersey, along the railroad line, stood through the evening and the night to shout their quota of good wishes.  At every station the Jerseymen were there, uproarious as Jerseymen, to shake our hands and wish us a happy despatch.  I think I did not see a rod of ground without its man, from dusk till dawn, from the Hudson to the Delaware.

Upon the train we made a jolly night of it.  All knew that the more a man sings, the better he is likely to fight.  So we sang more than we slept, and, in fact, that has been our history ever since.

PHILADELPHIA.

At sunrise we were at the station in Philadelphia, and dismissed for an hour.  Some hundreds of us made up Broad Street for the Lapierre House to breakfast.  When I arrived, I found every place at table filled and every waiter ten deep with orders.  So, being an old campaigner, I followed up the stream of provender to the fountain-head, the kitchen.  Half a dozen other old campaigners were already there, most hospitably entertained by the cooks.  They served us, hot and hot, with the best of their best, straight from the gridiron and the pan.  I hope, if I live to breakfast again in the Lapierre House, that I may be allowed to help myself and choose for myself below-stairs.