Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/70

 the crowd, with deafening cheers, pressed around the victor, who now, as the new king, was adorned with the crown and chain of shields. Then the moment had come for the “young ensign” to show what he could do. He swung the flag so violently around himself that those standing nearest stepped back in alarm; he waved it over his head and around his breast like a wheel, then around his legs, then up and down, back and forward, until the veins in his forehead threatened to burst, and all this to the accompaniment of the drummer's most passionate beats. I always watched him with admiration, convinced that nothing greater in this line was possible, until, alas! one day I overheard an old peasant, shaking his head, remark: “He is nothing to what the old man was!” Again the procession marched three times around the tree and back to the village, the drummer at the head, making remarkable zigzags with his bowlegs, the gray-headed “young ensign” still waving his colors furiously and the marksmen punctuating the triumphal march with occasional blind shots. Happy was the boy to whom one of the men was willing to entrust the carrying of his rifle, thus allowing him to take part in the great event!

Then came the royal feast at the tavern, at which the new king entertained his predecessors in office, and the directors of the society, with ham, white bread and wine. Finally, in the evening followed a dance, the music for which was originally furnished by the drum, which in my time, however, had been superseded by an orchestra consisting of a violin, clarionette and double bass. The reason why this festival remained so vivid in my memory, even to the minutest detail, is that it excited in me for the first time something like a real ambition. It was the great public contest of skill in the arena of the world in which I lived; and when I saw the victor with the crown on