Graham busied himself with the study of a book on cavalry tactics borrowed from the old sergeant at the recruiting station, and with that experienced soldier’s help he picked up in the ten days that elapsed before he was sent away no little knowledge of the business before him. He was an enthusiastic student, took great pains to perfect himself in the ceremonious side of soldiering, and delighted in the punctilios which the regulations prescribed. He went at every opportunity to witness the drills of the national guard troops who were preparing to leave for the front; and began to acquire the feeling of superiority which the regular has for the volunteer, and to sniff at the little laxities of the guardsmen, and with the air of a veteran comment sarcastically upon them to the old sergeant: till he finally persuaded himself that his good angel had saved him from these amateurs to make a real soldier of him. Two days before Graham was sent away the 71st gave its farewell parade. Graham was there, of course. It was near sunset. The wide street was lined with spectators. The ranks were standing at rest, and the soldiers and their friends were saying all manner of good-byes. The band was blowing itself breathless in patriotic selections, and as it crashed into one after another soldiers and people cheered and shouted with gathering enthusiasm. Colonel Phillips, sitting on his horse by his wife’s carriage, said, "Orderly, tell Brandt to play ’Dixie,’" and, addressing the crowd of friends about him, "My mother was a South Carolinian," he added jocularly. When the band burst in on that unaccountably inspiring air the assemblage stood on its toes to yell and scream, and the tall Texas colour-sergeant came near letting "Old Glory" fall in the dust in his conscientious effort to split his lungs. Graham stood quite near the Colonel and his party, and was much interested in watching both this man of whom he had heard Harry Lodge speak so enthusiastically, and his daughters, Miss Elise and Miss Helen, who were abundantly attractive on their own account without the added distinction of being children of their father. It was interesting to him to note the differing expressions of patriotic enthusiasm as it forced itself through the well-bred restraint of the elder sister or bubbled up unrestrainedly in the unaffected girlish spirits of Helen. Her spontaneous outbursts were irresistibly fascinating to him, and he could hardly avoid staring at her. When the parade was formed, however, he was true to his new learning; and after the bugle had sounded _retreat_, and while the band was swinging slow and stately through that grandest and most uplifting of military airs, "The Star-Spangled Banner," he for the first time had uncovered and stood at _attention_, erect and steady as a young ash, his heart thumping like that of a young devotee at his first orison.