THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE 197 



manity been so steadily and unaffectedly adhered 

 to. I give here a glimpse of him in Washington 

 on a Navy Yard horse-oar, 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 howl- 

 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 chUd, 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 



