Books, Arts & Manners: Pleasant Occasions

The geese marched by themselves, just as my friend Faith McFadden had told me they would. There were about a dozen and a half of them, marching sedately, in serried ranks, up Fifth Avenue and across 86th Street in New York City. Two children in peasant costume kept them in order with long wands.

The occasion was the Steuben Day Parade, which is for German-Americans what the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade is for the Irish. And who on earth was Steuben? Why, a German general who fought in the American Revolution and commanded in the Yorktown trenches. The geese did not march goose-stepping, as do the Soviet soldiers we see on the telly, but neither did they wobble. They were serious animals, determined to uphold the dignity of the day, and far more sedate than a large number of the human marchers.

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Nika Hazelton

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The geese marched by themselves, just as my friend Faith McFadden had told me they would. There were about a dozen and a half of them, marching sedately, in serried ranks, up Fifth Avenue and across 86th Street in New York City. Two children in peasant costume kept them in order with long wands.

The occasion was the Steuben Day Parade, which is for German-Americans what the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade is for the Irish. And who on earth was Steuben? Why, a German general who fought in the American Revolution and commanded in the Yorktown trenches. The geese did not march goose-stepping, as do the Soviet soldiers we see on the telly, but neither did they wobble. They were serious animals, determined to uphold the dignity of the day, and far more sedate than a large number of the human marchers.