Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 08.djvu/127

Rh world as if his coat had swallowed him. These fancy uniforms, capped with the far-famed Confederate hat, which assumed under exposure to the weather every hue of color and every possible transformation of shape, made up a regiment of which Falstaff himself might justly have been proud.

The soldiers of the garrison had their guard mountings, and so had we. We were their prisoners—the rats were ours. Every morning our guard was duly mounted. A sentinel was stationed at each hole where the rats were burrowing beneath our walls. When the alarm was sounded and the enemy under chase, the "Department of the Patapsco" expected every man to do his duty, and woe to the unfortunate sentinel who suffered the enemy to escape.

The great event of the day in the Federal garrison was the brilliant dress parade, held every evening a little before sunset in full view of our barracks, and attended by many elegant people from the city. Our dress parade was our chef d'ouvre, too, being held immediately after the other, just outside of our barracks and in view of a considerable portion of the garrison. The Federal regiment prided itself on its band of music, the leader or drum-major of which was a handsome Pole, of almost giant stature, whose tall form was rendered still more imposing by his lofty Cossack hat and plume, and by the immense mace which he balanced gracefully in his hand, marking time for his musicians as he led them along the line of flashing bayonets in the parade.

We had a drum-major, too—a noble-hearted Virginian, whose hand I have recently had the pleasure of shaking at Orange Courthouse. Nearly as tall as the Pole, we made up the additional height by stacking some of our old Confederate farmer-shaped hats one upon another. He had carved out of wood a fair counterpart of the mace of his Yankee rival, and, when thus equipped, he moved up and down along the line of the regiment, followed by his band, one with a half flour-barrel suspended from his neck for a drum, another with two tin plates as cymbals, a third with an old cracked flageolet which had been thrown away by some soldier of the fort, and the fourth with a coarse comb, covered with a slip of paper, after the well-remembered mechanism of our childhood, the scene was striking beyond description, especially when, as was generally the case, the full power of the orchestra was exhausted upon Hail Columbia, Yankee Doodle, or some other favorite National air.