It is very fortunate that men
do like to march about in ranks and lines, even without any
distinguishing apparel. The Drawer has seen hundreds of citizens in a
body, going about the country on an excursion, parading through town
after town, with no other distinction of dress than a uniform high white
hat, who carried joy and delight wherever they went. The good of this
display cannot be reckoned in figures. Even a funeral is comparatively
dull without the military band and the four-and-four processions, and the
cities where these resplendent corteges of woes are of daily occurrence
are cheerful cities. The brass band itself, when we consider it
philosophically, is one of the most striking things in our civilization.
We admire its commonly splendid clothes, its drums and cymbals and
braying brass, but it is the impartial spirit with which it lends itself
to our varying wants that distinguishes it. It will not do to say that it
has no principles, for nobody has so many, or is so impartial in
exercising them. It is equally ready to play at a festival or a funeral,
a picnic or an encampment, for the sons of war or the sons of temperance,
and it is equally willing to express the feeling of a Democratic meeting
or a Republican gathering, and impartially blows out "Dixie" or "Marching
through Georgia," "The Girl I Left Behind Me" or "My Country, 'tis of
Thee.
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