But the lancers were perfection compared with the infantry. Here there was no attempt at uniformity of dress, appearance or movement; a few had coats, others jackets; a greater number had neither coats nor jackets, but appeared in shirt-sleeves, white or checked, clean or dirty, in edifying variety. Some wore hats, some caps; some had their own shaggy heads of hair. Some had fire-locks, some had old swords suspended in belts or stuck in waistbands; but the greater number shouldered sticks. An occasional umbrella was to be seen, but umbrellas were too precious to allow of liberties; some said, “But for these vile guns I myself would have been a soldier;” some were willing to enlist for gardin’, but not for shootin’. The word of command was thus given:--“Gentlemen with the umbrellas, take ground to the right; gentlemen with the walking-sticks, take ground to the left.” They ran after each other, elbowed and kicked, stooped, chattered; and if the commanding officer turned his back for a moment, very easily sat down. One officer made himself hoarse shouting out orders which no one thought of obeying with the exception of two or three men in front. But the lancers flourished their lances, galloped, and capered, curvetted (and tripped) to the admiration of all. The captain of the lancers was the proprietor of the village store, and shortly after the military display might have been seen, plumed helmet in hand, vaulting over his counter to serve one customer a pennyworth of tobacco and another a yard of check. The parade day ended in a riot, in which the colonel was knocked down and one or two others seriously, if not fatally, injured. “Most elegantly drunk,” “superbly corned,” the gallant lancers, for want of an enemy, fought with one another. One invention of ’37 was a fuddleometer, an instrument designed to warn a man when he had taken his innermost utmost. But it does not seem to have been adopted at the War Office. Be that as it may, “these were the men who were out in ’37, and they did good work too.” A glance at the method of preparation at times employed by their enemies shows a uniformity in style. One captain, in calling his company together, enumerating “You gentlemen with the guns, ramrods, horsewhips, walking-canes and umbrellas, and them that hasn’t _any_,” could not get his men together, because at the time most of them happened to be engaged either as players in, or spectators of, a most interesting game of fives. The captain consulted his hand-book of instructions to see what was proper to do in such circumstances, and exhorted them persuasively and politely: