Page:Visit of the Hon. Carl Schurz to Boston, March 1881.pdf/81

68 Some of them he grievously hit with his fist; and some of them, seizing by the nape of the neck and what Oliver Wendell Holmes has described as the ampler part of the pantaloons, he cast forth. The struggle was still progressing, when the town guard arrived, and, charging bayonets, drove the crowd out of the square. I remember that I pulled a rouleau of Napoleons out of my boot, in which I had prudently placed them, and went to sleep again.

The farce of the night was, I regret to state, followed by a tragedy. The next day the “Reds” rose; pulled up the pavements, confiscated omnibuses, and made barricades. As by magic the city was filled with troops. Those scenes of our youth are pretty vivid to us all through life; and I can hear now, as I did then, the measured, heavy tramp of the Prussian infantry in their coal-scuttle helmets, and that of the Austrians in their white coats, as they marched steadily up the high street to the attack; and the sound of the platoon firing in the upper part of the town, and the rapid spattering shots from the barricades are still in my ears. In those remote days, Mr. President, we had no very high opinion of the German Liberals; and there was some reason in this, for this very Diet whereof I speak, which in the beginning had the power of all Germany between its finger and thumb, instead of proceeding to any organization of government, began to consider the abstract rights of mankind; and, if I recollect right, their first essays were