Note 14 — Chapter XVIII

I remember when I was a child, seeing on the Sunday preceding the first Monday in May—the annual training day—in one of the most old-fashioned villages in Connecticut, the officers of the militia come into the meeting-house in their uniforms. The leader of the choir was a corporal, and the red stripes on his pantaloons, the red facings and bell-buttons of his coat, as he stood up alone, and pitched the psalm tunes, was impressed irretrievably on my mind.