“I was staying at Barnum’s Hotel,” said George, delighted with the joy of seventeen at telling his own “Iliad,” “and early in the morning I was out on the streets which were crowded. Everybody knew the Yankee troops would be passed through Baltimore that day, and the people were determined that it shouldn’t be done without a struggle. The Governor, an infernal old rapscallion, would not call the State troops out, so we could only get together a lot of fighting men with stones and brickbats in their hands and revolvers in their pockets. There were hundreds of us around the station when the train full of bluecoats, thousands of ’em, came rolling in. I never saw so many soldiers in my life before. We began to throw stones at the train so as to force the soldiers to come out, and we did. There was a crash of breaking glass. I, myself, threw a stone at a car window out of which an officer was peering and I saw him fall back with blood upon his forehead. Then, after a fusillade, the bluecoats came pouring out of the train and met us face to face. We fired at them with our pistols and then the soldiers formed and charged up the street. Of course, we couldn’t resist them, so we scattered, but we made a stand at two or three places and did as good street fighting as was ever done in Paris. I had read how they made barricades by just upsetting a cart and tearing up paving stones. There were a lot of us youngsters and in ten minutes we had made a first-class barricade.” George’s face was flushed and he pushed his students’ cap still more rakishly to one side. He felt himself every inch a man and gloried at coming into the heritage of manhood. While he was speaking he turned his back to the open door. Before it came a lady, dark-haired and white-skinned like himself--his mother. Mrs. Charteris raised her hand for silence among the listening group and smiled, but her eyes, which were exactly like these of her tall stripling, sparkled as did his. George continued, folding his arms and drawing himself up as he talked: