Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/286

 manner and the high-flown eloquence of his conversation. This eloquence he exerted without stint, to the amusement of many, while his honorable character was generally respected. At the outbreak of the Civil War he promptly offered his services to the government, and was eminently successful as the organizer of a volunteer regiment, the Eighth New York. Immediately upon my, arrival in New York I called upon him at his hotel, the Prescott House, and was received with magnificent cordiality. When I had accepted his invitation to drink a glass of wine and to smoke a cigar with him, he rang the bell and said to the astonished waiter: “Bring me a case of Burgundy and a box of your best Havanas!”  A few days later he invited my wife, who meanwhile had joined me, and myself, to inspect his regiment, which, if I remember rightly, was camped in Terrace Garden, East 58th Street. The fine regimental band struck up as we were conducted by Colonel Blenker, in full uniform, to a little platform erected for the purpose, and the regiment passed before us in parade, whereupon the officers were assembled to be introduced to “Lady Schurz,” as Colonel Blenker insisted upon calling my wife. This done, the officers were dismissed by Colonel Blenker with a wave of the hand that could not have been more imperial if Louis XIV himself had performed it. Of all the official functions that it has been my fortune to witness, none was more solemnly ceremonious than this.

In those days the marching of a newly-formed volunteer regiment down Broadway to the Battery, where it embarked for Washington, was every time an occasion for outbursts of patriotic enthusiasm on the part of the multitudes crowding the sidewalks and the doors and windows. The people seemed never to have enough of such spectacles. But when Blenker's regiment marched out, the popular demonstration passed all