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50 thought of uniforms. We wanted something that would distinguish us from the common herd. As it was, unless you carried your horn or drum all day at a picnic, they couldn’t tell us from the rest of the farmers, which reflected on the city. So again we levied a tax on the citizens, and some of them moved out of town to escape it, but under the head of education they contributed according to their means, as their property that lay in town would be enhanced in value by the uniforms.

We began to receive large booklets of uniforms, shown on handsome young men with pink cheeks. Ralph Geer was the only member of our band who looked like the lithographs, so after a long discussion we picked out the ones that were on the fellow that looked like Ralph, and ordered seventeen assorted uniforms, second-hand, from Lyon & Healy, of Chicago. They were supposed to be all sizes between such and such. The colored pictures of them showed them to be a beautiful light blue gray, with red stripes down the pants leg, and the coat was a long cutaway, with three rows of big brass buttons on the chest, and large red epaulettes on the shoulders, and a lot