Il6 HORSE, FOOT, AND DRAGOONS. 



fellow, whose whole countenance betrays his origin, wearing a 

 bright green silk scarf, typical of the land that gave him birth. 

 The officers, too, have not put on their " best clothes " for this 

 prairie campaigning. Most of them wear white sun -helmets, 

 but there are two or three of them with the old regulation 

 slouched hat, and one straight, fine -looking young gentleman 

 wears a great, broad-brimmed " cow-boy " hat pulled down over 

 his eyes. We cannot help smiling as we think of what the 

 astonishment of some of our European friends — the natty 

 English artilleryman, the dashing French chasseur, or closely 

 buttoned, precise German dragoon — would be, could they be 

 dropped down here in front of this command, and how they 

 would inwardly comment in no very favorable terms on the 

 appearance of Uncle Sam's troopers in the field. And we can- 

 not help but ask, and we do so in all good feeling, would it 

 not, without cari-ying the " pomp and circumstance " of military 

 life to the extreme that our more warlike neighbors do, be of 

 equal practical benefit to the comfort and health of the soldier, 

 and more productive of a feeling of soldierly self-respect, if a 

 little more uniformity, a little more attention to details, and 

 greater regard for appearance, even in the field, and on such 

 rough service as our little army, unlike the European services, 

 is so constantly engaged in, were insisted on. 



The trumpet sounds. As if an electric shock had trav- 

 ersed the assemblage, the scattered groups form in serried 

 ranks. Another trumpet blast. Like one man they rise into 

 their saddles and sit motionless. Still another signal, and like 

 a machine started by some invisible power the column moves. 

 Let us, too, mount and ride across the prairie, till we reach 

 the head of the column, swinging out now and following the 

 course of the little stream ; we can stop a moment and let it 

 pass. In spite of the guerilla like and careless look of the 



