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Updated: June 10, 2025
Then, just before 6 o'clock roll-call, Co. Q, with every man in it cleaned up as for dress-parade, with Nathan Hartburn at the head, supported on either side by Si and Shorty, and flanked by the Adjutant and Chaplain, marched up the hill to the house, led by the fifers and drummers, playing the reveille, "When the Cruel War is Over," "Yankee Doodle," and everything else in their limited repertory which they could think as at all appropriate to the occasion.
Besides his Captain-Lieutenant, and first, second, and third Lieutenants, he had three sergeants, three corporals, six bombardiers, three gunners, two drummers, two fifers, a barber, and seventy-one matrosses, or assistant gunners.
Then the soft notes of the cavalry trumpets come floating up from the water-side, and soon, regiment after regiment, the field-music is all astir and the melody of the initial effort becomes one ringing, blaring, but most effectually waking discord. Loud in the nearest camp the little drummers and fifers are thumping away at "Bonnie Lass o' Gawrie."
When all was ready, the signal was given to "Go along!" A Band of fifers struck up a lively tune; the capstans were instantly in motion, and the men stepped round in a steady trot. All went well. The ropes gradually coiled in. As the strain increased, the pace slackened a little; but "Heave away, now she comes!" was sung out. Round went the men, and steadily and safely rose the ponderous chain.
The most effectual cure, though far more expensive than the former, is as follows: The relations hire for a certain sum of money a band of trumpeters, drummers, and fifers, and buy a quantity of liquor; then all the young men and women of the place assemble at the patient's house to perform the following most extraordinary ceremony.
The drum corps came first, twenty strong, snares and basses rattling and booming, the fifers with arms akimbo and cheeks like bladders. Hiram Look, ex-showman and once proprietor of "Look's Leviathan Circus and Menagerie," came next, lonely in his grandeur. He wore his leather hat, with the huge shield-fin hanging down his back, the word "Foreman" newly lettered on its curved front.
The two infantry companies at Sandy, at the time whereof we tell, were of an honored old regiment that had fought with Worth at Monterey one whose scamps of drum boys and fifers had got their teachings from predecessors whose nimble fingers had trilled the tunes of old under the walls of the Bishop's Palace and in the resounding Halls of the Montezumas.
The band of this company, some half-dozen fifers, were dressed in jackets of green damask rimmed with yellow braid, and had caps made of green and yellow, or green and white, of the same shape as those worn by the police. The operator on the big drum had a white jacket and green cap.
Soon the fifers struck up a lively air, and away went the cadets, down the road, around grounds, and to the mess hall for supper. The boys felt good to be in the ranks once more, and Captain Putnam congratulated them on their soldierly appearance. "It does me good to see that you have not forgotten your former instructions in drilling and marching," he said.
This stroke of policy was such a comfort that the spirits of the boys grew so jubilant that they laughed, chatted and sang, and even organized a parade in which Franz was drummer and Fritz and Paul fifers.
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