{"id":"01KG6G84A57ZHSDVHW0V3V4AX5","cid":"bafkreihpzdyaxffkwzpmilo6advpuvspscqtqa3cm4iapu4n7bxbtsuqhu","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":11834,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T03:48:16.157Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 5","source_file":"01KG6FXSCNX5F3D880P3YP3PKR","start_line":11773,"text":"tastes of one’s friends, you know.’ Here, suddenly reminded that an\r\nimmediate courtesy was due. ‘Of course, my good sir, you will join us.\r\nNay, I insist upon it. Not good for a man to be alone, especially on the\r\nimmortal Fourth. Tobias, come back. Tut, he’s gone. William! Go, say we\r\nwill dine at the round table in the south-west corner, and let there be\r\nfour covers--four, mind.’\r\n\r\nEven so, Major, or much so, on the last Fourth, sitting in the club\r\nparlour didst thou by turns ruminate and expatiate, and humorously rail\r\nand feelingly evoke the bygone and glow as in the poetic fervour of\r\nyouth, and involuntarily sigh the sigh of old philosophy, till in the\r\nend the home-sense of the eternal sagacity of all things did but result\r\nin awakening in thee but the more vividly thy relish for life and the\r\n_Chambertin_.\r\n\r\nBut on the forenoon of each thirtieth of May, seated--minus the\r\naforesaid historic decoration--in thy reserved corner of the club\r\nbalcony, in graven sort thou lookest down on the floral march of the\r\n_Grand Army_. Then seemed thou even less intent on returning the\r\ngreetings from some hale comrade in the ranks, or less hearty hero borne\r\nalong in open barouche; less dwelling, too, on the processional wains of\r\nnodding flowers, followed close by nodding plumes of the escort--to thee\r\nand the other veterans--a new generation of Mars--less absorbed by all\r\nthis, than musing on the many mounds those same flowers ere nightfall\r\nshall dress. Thy constitutional good spirits seem strangely overcast\r\nthat day. Thou forgoest the banquet. Nevertheless, it is observable that\r\nin the balcony thy empty sleeve is disposed more picturesquely, nay,\r\nsomehow more conspicuously on that aforesaid thirtieth of every May,\r\nthan on any other morning of the year. It more catches the eye. Now and\r\nthen, during pauses in the procession, the crowd on the sidewalk below\r\nglance up at it, and expressively, and thou turnest not aside.\r\n\r\n‘Ah, Major,’ I said, ‘I love thee; yes, and it is as much for thy queer\r\nlittle human foibles as thy not-so-common virtues. Come now, for all thy\r\nannual megrims, prouder art thou of that empty sleeve of thine than even\r\nof thy grandfather’s Revolutionary insignia, for _this_ thou didst but\r\ninherit, the other, conferred on thee at first hand, and by the God of\r\nBattles.’\r\n\r\nNot often dost thou discuss the tactics of thy Virginia campaigns, but\r\nwhat things hast thou told us of its byplay--the scouting, the foraging,\r\nthe riding up to lovely mansions garrisoned by a faithful old slave or\r\ntwo, servants to lovely damsels more terrible than Mars in their\r\nfeminine indignation at the insolent invader; in other instances being\r\ncoquettishly served at an improvised lunch on some broad old piazza by\r\nless implacable beauties reduced by the calamities to dispensing\r\nhospitality for the enemy’s greenbacks. In such and similar passages of\r\nthe war thou aboundest, passages luckily not susceptible of being\r\nformalised into professed history.\r\n\r\nBut the better for the felicity of thy friends, thou hast more than one\r\nstring to thy harp, Major. Did any listener ever tire of thy\r\nreminiscences of European travel? What signifies that they date so far\r\nback, before some of us were born? Even so do sundry inestimable\r\nvintages in the Club’s cellar. Pleasant it is when weary of the\r\nnever-ending daily news, the same sort of thing forever, how pleasant to\r\nbe spirited back by a tale, by some veteran’s living voice and eloquent\r\ngestures, to a period that is no news at all, a time prior to those more\r\npronounced changes which have come over so few portions of that ancient\r\nand manifold world across the Atlantic, a world to which we are bound by\r\nunsunderable ties of genealogy.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 5"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG6G6RG13WHMX37KHEWTF2ZK","peer_type":"frontmatter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG6FXSCNX5F3D880P3YP3PKR","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG2T49K0H5GDRB0G4YDTPG8H","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG6G84A5AMF02HXMSM2QMDY7","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG6G849Z12C7BZGGQ2ZA0GK3","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T03:48:16.325Z","ts":"2026-01-30T03:48:32.709Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}