But the company continued to prosper just the same. Its membership was composed of excellent material, including young men from many of the best families of the city. All were earnest and ambitious in their efforts and they soon reached a high state of skill and efficiency in handling their guns and in all the details of the tactics in which they were instructed. They had showy uniforms for public occasions, with plenty of red in them, suggestive of sanguinary scenes, and presented a really gorgeous appearance when parading the streets. They won the applause of the multitude, the smiles of the fair, and admiring yells from the small boys. For in those ante-bellum days a cannon on wheels was regarded with unspeakable awe; and a man in military dress awakened the liveliest emotions in the popular mind. In February, 1852, the company was first called upon for military duty. On the 17th of that month a serious riot occurred at a medical college situated at the corner of Prospect and Ontario streets. The trouble grew out of the exposure of some human bones from the dissecting room. A citizen who imagined them to be the remains of his daughter, whose body he thought had been stolen for dissection, gathered a formidable mob of excited people and moved upon the college with the avowed purpose of razing it to the ground and of hanging the doctors and students to the nearest lamp posts. The sheriff soon found that he had more on hand than he could manage and ordered out the Light Artillery to his assistance. The members of the company responded with alacrity and promptly appeared upon the ground, unlimbering their pieces they double shotted them in full view of the rioters, who were warned that if they did not instantly disperse the guns would be fired. The men stood at their posts, ready to fire at the word, but the rioters broke and fled from the scene, in a slate of confused demoralization. For precautionary reasons the battery remained on duty, “holding the fort,” for forty-eight hours, by the end of which time the excitement had abated and there was no repetition of the hostile demonstration. This incident clearly showed the value of such a body of trained men, to meet emergencies liable at times to arise in a rapidly growing city, where sudden excitement, often without reason, leads unthinking men to acts of lawlessness, which set the civil authorities at defiance. The company had fairly won its first victory, fortunately a bloodless one. Its members were highly complimented for their prompt response to the call and their cool steadiness in the face of the excited mob. It was an occasion to test the stuff they were made of, though not to be compared with the scenes of carnage that some of those men faced without flinching in after years.