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Here there were several collisions between, on one side, the Commonwealers and their welcomers, and, on the other, the police. At some towns the Army was not permitted to stop at all. At others it was officially received with music, speeches and rejoicings.

As these incidents became repetitious they ceased to be news, yet they were more important, merely by reason of recurring, than the bizarre happenings within the Army which as newspaper correspondents we were obliged competitively to emphasize, as, for example, the quarrel between Browne and the bandmaster, the mutiny led by Smith the Great Unknown, the development of the reincarnation myth and the increasing distaste for it among the disciples.

The size of the Army fluctuated with the state of the weather. Crossing the Blue Mountains by the icy Cumberland road in a snow storm was an act of fortitude almost heroic. Confidence in the leaders declined. Browne came to be treated with mild contempt. The line,—“Christ and Coxey,”—which had been painted on the commissariat wagon was almost too much. There was grumbling in the ranks. Everybody was discouraged when the expectation of great numbers had finally to be abandoned. Never did the roll exceed five hundred men, not even after the memorable junction in Maryland with Christopher Columbus Jones, forty-eight men and a bull dog, from Philadelphia.