RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
fact, he had received every possible attention in a most unusually hospitable community. The young Lieutenant bristled up and said:
"Sorry, sir, but I'm obeying orders; and I'd just like to tell you that I consider your remarks exceedingly impolite."
Upon which the gentleman from Washington left the pavilion and went down to stand in a place which the guards had been ordered to keep clear.
The rest of the story I heard afterward. It seems that both General Barry and General Davis saw him and took pains to go down and ask him up into the central pavilion, but he refused to go. Then one of the guards came up and politely informed him: "Orders, sir, you'll have to stand back." By this time he was infuriated and he turned on the guard and, after identifying himself, repeated his remarks about having made the Army and being determined to go back to Washington and unmake it.
"Well," said the guard, "I guess you can't unmake me. I've just been mustered out of the United States Army and am a plain American citizen. I don't understand that Congress can do much about unmaking American citizens." Which all goes to show that it doesn't do much good to lose one's temper. The gentleman took his party and stalked out of the plaza.
My hopes for the evening were blasted. About five o'clock the heavens opened and such a sheet of water descended upon my refreshment tent and my strings of gay paper lanterns as one never sees in the Temperate Zone. It was raining in torrents when our guests began to arrive, and if many of those invited had not been kept at home by the weather I don't know what I should have done with the crowd. I had a wide hall, a small reception-room, a dining-room and the verandah, but two thousand people are a good many, and I'm sure a large majority of them came in spite of the weather. It was a "crush," and a warm,
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