Now, it was understood by all the published programmes of that day’s exercises that the address of the President was to be delivered at that historic spot known as the High Water Mark, which marks the uprushing tide, the foaming crest and insurmountable limit of the Rebellion, which thereafter receded in wavering surges to the south. In the great reservation, devoted as a monument to the battle which saved the Union, this spot is central, and the acres stretched about it would accommodate an army. It was quite inexplicable why this annoying interference and congestion prevailed. It turned out to be a military precaution. The President was to be installed safely at the speaker’s stand, escorted by veterans of the north and south, before the people should be permitted to assemble around him, and a cordon of military enclosed the little village, keeping confined within it the straining and impatient visitors. The village of Gettysburg, which was used in the great battle as a hospital, and which entirely escaped injury in the three days’ conflict, was more than a mile away from the place chosen for the ceremonies of the day. When the dam was removed it was seen there would be a dangerous stampede for position. Music, too, swept exhilaratingly over the throngs from the distant scene of the festivities, and its martial notes awakened to desperation the disappointed and vexed multitude. The large numbers twisted and irksomely tied up within the narrow streets, and turbulently mixed up on the little square of the village, groaned aloud. Voices suddenly rose high in altercation and abuse. A farmer whose rickety wagon, laden with his sons and daughters, had got packed between a curb and a particularly dense fragment of the crowd, made up of vituperative young men, and was in almost certain danger of being upset, was engaged in a lusty expostulation not unassisted by the quick and sharp lashes of his whip, over the heads of the dodging group. The latter, not averse to some retaliatory measures that might serve the purpose of freeing their general resentment at their imprisonment, attacked the irate proprietor of the wagon and pushed his shivering vehicle over, spilling its screaming and swearing occupants upon the heads of the bystanders, who were utterly unable to escape, and added their din to the commotion.