THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE 137 
manity been so steadily and unaffectedly adhered 
to. I give here a glimpse of him in Washington 
on a Navy Yard horse-car, toward the close of the 
war, one summer day at sundown. ‘The car is 
crowded and suffocatingly hot, with many passengers 
on the rear platform, and among them a bearded, 
florid-faced man, elderly but agile, resting against 
the dash, by the side of the young conductor, and 
evidently his intimate friend. The man wears a 
broad-brim white hat. Among the jam inside, near 
the door, a young Englishwoman, of the working 
class, with two children, has had trouble all the way 
with the youngest, a strong, fat, fretful, bright babe 
of fourteen or fifteen months, who bids fair to worry 
the mother completely out, besides becoming a how]l- 
ing nuisance to everybody. As the car tugs around 
Capitol Hill the young one is more demoniac than 
ever, and the flushed and perspiring mother is just 
ready to burst into tears with weariness and vexa- 
tion. The car stops at the top of the hill to let 
off most of the rear platform passengers, and the 
white-hatted man reaches inside, and, gently but 
firmly disengaging the babe from its stifling place in 
the mother’s arms, takes it in his own, and out in 
the air. The astonished and excited child, partly 
in fear, partly in satisfaction at the change, stops 
its screaming, and, as the man adjusts it more se- 
curely to his breast, plants its chubby hands against 
him, and, pushing off as far as it can, gives a good 
long look squarely in his face,— then, as if satisfied, 
snuggles down with its head on his neck, and in 
