United States or Philippines ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Other bodies of Belgian soldiers wore ludicrous little kepis with immense eye-shades, mostly broken or hanging limp in a dejected way. In times of peace I should have laughed at the look of them. But now there was nothing humorous about these haggard, dirty men from Ghent who had borne the first shock of the German attack.
It was the signal well known, the signal of permission to join in that wild vertigo for which every one of her spectators was panting; their pipes were flung away, their kepis tossed off their heads, the music clashed louder and faster and more fiery with every sound; the chorus of the Marseillaise des Bataillons thundered from a hundred voices they danced as only men can dance who serve under the French flag, and live under the African sun.
They sat very stiff and erect in the saddle, with their short cavalry jackets, broad red sashes and smart little kepis, accurate in distance and alignment and managing admirably their lean, wiry mounts, which were almost invisible under the heterogeneous collection of tools and camp equipage that they had to carry.
Following a gorgeous cavalcade of mounted princes of the blood, in uniforms of all colors, periods, and descriptions, their képis surmounted by towering ostrich plumes, came a long procession of the great dignitaries of the household the royal betel-box bearer, the royal cuspidor-carrier, and others bearing on scarlet cushions the royal toothpicks, the royal toothbrush, the royal toilet set, and the royal mirror, all of gold set with jewels.
About four o'clock of the afternoon, the engine slackens its speed, and stops at a landing-stage where awaits us there an old general, around whom sports a flock of young men, with headgear of red képis, breached in red and shod with boots with yellow spurs. The general passes us in review and divides us into two squads; the one for the seminary, the other is directed toward the hospital.
In one of the breaches appeared a red kepis followed by legs of the same color trying to clamber over the ruins. But this vision was instantly blotted out by the sprinkling from the machine guns, making the invaders fall in great heaps on the other side of the wall. Don Marcelo never knew exactly how the change took place. Suddenly he saw the red trousers within the park.
On some of them there are kepis, on others ointment for corns, on others statuettes of the two inseparables of Berlin, William and his little Bismarck, on others General Trochu and the members of the Government in gilt gingerbread.
Word Of The Day