By and by the quick rattle of wheels struck upon my ear, and looking in the direction of the sound, I saw a two-horse wagon coming furiously down the street with a collection of white, red, and black plumes, with bayonets and gun-barrels glistening above, and a great blue standard fluttering over the whole. A strain of martial music simultaneously struck up from amongst the warlike array, which array to my nearer vision, resolved itself into a dozen men, “armed and equipped as the law directs,” including a fifer, who was lengthening his visage into a puckered whistle upon his little yellow tube, a drummer, who was entangling his sticks in the loudest manner on the sounding sheep-skin, and a bass-drum player, who had hung his huge instrument, like a great barrel, at the end of the wagon, and who, being a little the worse for liquor, (shown by constant lurches,) came down upon the quivering circles each side with prodigious vigor at precisely the wrong times, thereby breaking up and almost overpowering the tune by an irregular succession of boom—boom—boom-boom-booms. As the wagon pulled up with an emphasis at Wiggins’s, three huzzas rent the air from the occupants, a dozen shots, in which were mingled the round, deep tone of the musket, and the short, peevish crack of the ride succeeded—and the “sodgers” bounded upon the stoop, streamed into the bar-room, calling for “liquor,” and lo! the “premonitory symptoms” of General Training. After this temporary ripple in the current, the village again settled down into its customary quiet. The sun disappeared—the golden glow crept up the western sky as if to greet the “hunter’s moon,” that looked in the sweet twilight like an orb of pearl, becoming, however, momentarily brighter, like the hope of a holy heart as the night of the grave approaches. And soon the gold was chased down by the silver, and the beautiful moonlight lay as if it was tangible sleep upon the village.