“What are we in for now?”

“I can’t say.  To-day’s the time of the parade and meeting in City Hall Park.”

It was sunrise when the regiment drew up in the square facing the Park.  It was a lovely morning, with no sign of trouble in sight, unless the bulletin boards of the newspapers, which were chiefly devoted to the doings about the Central Station, could be taken as such.  Except for this, the regiment was the only indication that the universal peace had not come, and even this looked peaceful, as soon as it had settled down to hot coffee, bread and raw ham.

In the park, however, was a suggestive sight.  For not merely were all the benches filled with sleeping men, but the steps of the City Hall, the grass, and even the hard asphalt pavement were besprinkled with a dirty, ragged, hungry-looking lot of men, unlike those usually seen in the streets of New York.  When the regiment marched into the square, a few of the stragglers rose from their recumbent attitudes, and looked at it, without much love in their faces.  As the regiment breakfasted, more and more rose from their hard beds to their harder lives.  They moved about restlessly, as if waiting for something.  Some gathered in little groups and listened to men who talked and shrieked far louder than was necessary in order that their listeners should hear.  Some came to the edge of the street and cursed and vituperated the breakfasting regiment.  Some sat on the ground and ate food which they produced from their pockets or from paper bundles.  It was not very tempting-looking food.  Yet there were men in the crowd who looked longingly at it, and a few scuffles occurred in attempts to get some.  That crowd represented the slag and scum of the boiling pot of nineteenth-century conditions.  And as the flotsam on a river always centres at its eddies, so these had drifted, from the country, and from the slums, to the centre of the whirlpool of American life.  Here they were waiting.  Waiting for what?  The future only would show.  But each moment is a future, till it becomes the present.

While the regiment still breakfasted it became conscious of a monotonous sound, growing steadily in volume.  Then came the tap of the drum, and the regiment rose from a half-eaten meal, and lined up as if on parade.  Several of the members remarked crossly:  “Why couldn’t they wait ten minutes?”

The next moment the head of another regiment swung from Chambers Street into the square.  It was greeted by hisses and groans from the denizens of the park, but this lack of politeness was more than atoned for, by the order:  “Present arms,” passed down the immovable line awaiting it.  After a return salute the commanding officers advanced and once more saluted.

“In obedience to orders from headquarters, I have the honor to report my regiment to you, Colonel Stirling, and await your orders,” said the officer of the “visiting” regiment, evidently trying not to laugh.