First the music must sound off. It is of the class that has functional relations with insomnia. Sad was the unlucky Kansas farmer who lost his wife and his best yoke of steers, all in the same week. Sad is the beatified spirit of the deceased alderman when he finds that the streets of heaven are already paved and there can be no rake-off. Sad is the fond wife, rummaging her husband's pockets, when she discovers through her tears that the coins are copper. But sadder than any, saddest of all, are they who by direful fortune are condemned to the slow torture of listening to a moulting military band. Yet it is an inescapable adjunct of Dress Parade. Now the rear rank must "open order," a strategic maneuver performed with a ludicroterrific multiplication of blunders, appalling to the articles of war and fatal to the flintiest risibles. Each witness wears the face of one who drinketh vinegar unawares. More calisthenics by the adjutant. More heaving of anchors and straining at cables and hoisting on beam ends along the phalanx line. For the jolly mariners of the prairie, fresh from the delights of home, with its pealing bells and magic spells and appetizing smells, are trying to box the compass of spectacular punctilio, with odds dead against them in generous installments. Their timidity gives one a pain; their temerity makes one tender to the touch of sarcasm. Marvel not that our infant industries require protection while they are teething. Then follow, in startling, swift succession, certain decisive events, decisive as the mystic, matrimonial rite which makes two mortals immortal. The adjutant faces toward the left flank, shoulders his tinseled pinking iron, and sets his teeth firmly, almost defiantly. He starts forward in an energetic amble, a melancholy glitter weltering in his optic, and his features bathed in gloom whose darkness might be bottled up and sold for Tyrian dye. He trots trippingly down to the axis of oscillation; wheels suddenly to the right; charges madly on the perplexed, expectant colonel standing promiscuous as aforesaid; thinks better of it halfway, and halts suddenly. He whirls entirely around at imminent risk of summersaulting. He explodes vociferously: "Shltr-r-r Hr-r-rms! Pr-r-rsnt Hr-r-rms!"