The Gun Club insisted on paying all the
expenses of the day, and the city compromised by being allowed to
celebrate in whatever way it pleased the reception of the Club men on
their return.
They started on their trip that same day in the midst of one of the
grandest ovations possible to conceive. They stopped for a little while
at Wilmington, but they took dinner in Philadelphia, where the splendor
of Broad Street (at present the finest boulevard in the world, being 113
feet wide and five miles long) can be more easily alluded to than even
partially described.
The house fronts glittered with flowers, flags, pictures, tapestries,
and other decorations; the chimneys and roofs swarmed with men and boys
cheerfully risking their necks every moment to get one glance at the
"Moon men"; every window was a brilliant bouquet of beautiful ladies
waving their scented handkerchiefs and showering their sweetest smiles;
the elevated tables on the sidewalks, groaning with an abundance of
excellent and varied food, were lined with men, women, and children,
who, however occupied in eating and drinking, never forgot to salute the
heroes, cheering them lustily as they slowly moved along; the spacious
street itself, just paved from end to end with smooth Belgian blocks,
was a living moving panorama of soldiers, temperance men, free masons,
and other societies, radiant in gorgeous uniforms, brilliant in flashing
banners, and simply perfect in the rhythmic cadence of their tread,
wings of delicious music seeming to bear them onward in their proud and
stately march.
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