XX 
WATCHING THE PROCESSION 
Ir begins to go by my door about the first of 
March, and is three full months in passing. The 
participants are all in uniform, each after his 
kind, some in the brightest of colors, some in 
Quakerish grays and browns. They seem not to 
stand very strictly upon the order of their com- 
ing; red-coats and blue-coats travel side by side. 
Like the flowers, they have a calendar of their 
own, and in their own way are punctual, but 
their movements are not to be predicted with 
anything like mathematical nicety. Of some 
companies of them I am never certain which will 
precede the other, just as I can never tell 
whether, in a particular season, the anemone or 
the five-finger will come first into bloom. They 
need no bands of music, no drum-corps nor fifers. 
The whole procession, indeed, is itself a band of 
music, a grand army of singers and players on 
instruments. They sing many tunes; each uni- 
form has a tune of its own, but, unlike what 
