Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/94

 that can properly be added to this earliest Harvard “roll of honor.”

If the Marti-Mercurian Band was kept alive through those bitter years it must have been in a state of suspended animation. That was no time for boys to be strutting in blue coats and nankeen smalls, and the “Province arms” were unquestionably reclaimed for more deadly purposes. After the war, though, it was floated again for a little while, until the great tide of military interests, that had slowly risen, engulfed the whole population, and as slowly sunk, left it hopelessly stranded on the sands of time. Its last known captain was Solomon Vose, of the class of 1787, although zealous antiquaries have traced its existence, in some form, as far as 1793.

There followed nearly a generation of peace. At Harvard the youthful instinct for “playing soldiers” flickered up now and then, especially among the under-class men, but died out again in a haze of speculation. Thus Timothy Fuller of 1801 in his diary:

But nothing came of such echoes of the brave days of old.