Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/392

 Audenried, the widow of Colonel Audenried, who was on the staff of General William T. Sherman during the war, a daughter of Coffin Colket of Philadelphia, a second cousin of mine, and a leader in the fashionable life of the city and country, gave a dinner to Mrs. Pennypacker and myself. A swarthy, dark-eyed woman, she was good-looking and entirely gracious. Our clothes had not arrived, due to the delay on the trains, and we were compelled to appear as we were dressed for the cars, and she treated the fact with due lenity. At the dinner were the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States and their wives, and Mr. and Mrs. Wayne MacVeagh. Mrs. Audenried's daughter married a French count, the Count Divonne, and lives on the shores of Lake Geneva and has been a figure in the social life of Paris.

The next day was bleak and cold. The military parade consisted of three divisions of about ten thousand men in each. The first was commanded by General Frederick D. Grant, of the Regular Army, a self-contained man who looked very much like his father, and whom I have encountered several times as I have gone through life. The second division, consisting of the troops of Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts, was under my command, with Governors Preston Lea of Delaware, Edward C. Stokes of New Jersey and Edwin Warfield of Maryland commanding the troops of their states. The third division was commanded by Governor F. W. Higgins of New York. For the first time in my life I played the rôle of a major general. At the last minute Stokes of New Jersey fell by the wayside, it was said because of dread of the responsibility, and I had on the moment to put some one else in command of his brigade. At nine o'clock in the morning I bestrode a beautiful horse belonging to the police force in Philadelphia, and after forming my line beyond the capitol, and waiting on the hill in the cold wind for an hour or two, I rode down Pennsylvania Avenue in the presence 376