In this way the great enterprise was started, and day by day the
preparations went forward in the two villages.
The boys, as future voters and fighters, demanded an active share in
the proceedings, and were organized by Squire Bean into a fife and drum
corps, so that by day and night martial but most inharmonious music woke
the echoes, and deafened mothers felt their patriotism oozing out at the
soles of their shoes.
Dick Carter was made captain, for his grandfather had a gold medal
given him by Queen Victoria for rescuing three hundred and twenty-six
passengers from a sinking British vessel. Riverboro thought it high time
to pay some graceful tribute to Great Britain in return for her handsome
conduct to Captain Nahum Carter, and human imagination could contrive
nothing more impressive than a vicarious share in the flag raising.
Living Perkins tried to be happy in the ranks, for he was offered no
official position, principally, Mrs. Smellie observed, because “his
father's war record wa'n't clean.” “Oh, yes! Jim Perkins went to the
war,” she continued. “He hid out behind the hencoop when they was
draftin', but they found him and took him along. He got into one battle,
too, somehow or 'nother, but he run away from it. He was allers
cautious, Jim was; if he ever see trouble of any kind comin' towards
him, he was out o' sight 'fore it got a chance to light. He said eight
dollars a month, without bounty, wouldn't pay _him_ to stop bullets for.
He wouldn't fight a skeeter, Jim wouldn't, but land! we ain't to war all
the time, and he's a good neighbor and a good blacksmith.”
Miss Dearborn was to be Columbia and the older girls of the two schools
were to be the States. Such trade in muslins and red, white, and blue
ribbons had never been known since “Watson kep' store,” and the number
of brief white petticoats hanging out to bleach would have caused the
passing stranger to imagine Riverboro a continual dancing school.
Juvenile virtue, both male and female, reached an almost impossible
height, for parents had only to lift a finger and say, “you shan't go
to the flag raising!” and the refractory spirit at once armed itself for
new struggles toward the perfect life.
Mr. Jeremiah Cobb had consented to impersonate Uncle Sam, and was to
drive Columbia and the States to the “raising” on the top of his own
stage. Meantime the boys were drilling, the ladies were cutting and
basting and stitching, and the girls were sewing on stars; for the
starry part of the spangled banner was to remain with each of them in
turn until she had performed her share of the work.
It was felt by one and all a fine and splendid service indeed to help
in the making of the flag, and if Rebecca was proud to be of the chosen
ones, so was her Aunt Jane Sawyer, who had taught her all her delicate
stitches.
On a long-looked-for afternoon in August the minister's wife drove up
to the brick house door, and handed out the great piece of bunting to
Rebecca, who received it in her arms with as much solemnity as if it had
been a child awaiting baptismal rites.
“I'm so glad!” she sighed happily. “I thought it would never come my
turn!”
“You should have had it a week ago, but Huldah Meserve upset the ink
bottle over her star, and we had to baste on another one. You are the
last, though, and then we shall sew the stars and stripes together, and
Seth Strout will get the top ready for hanging. Just think, it won't
be many days before you children will be pulling the rope with all your
strength, the band will be playing, the men will be cheering, and the
new flag will go higher and higher, till the red, white, and blue shows
against the sky!”
Rebecca's eyes fairly blazed. “Shall I 'fell on' my star, or buttonhole
it?” she asked.
“Look at all the others and make the most beautiful stitches you can,
that's all. It is your star, you know, and you can even imagine it is
your state, and try and have it the best of all. If everybody else
is trying to do the same thing with her state, that will make a great
country, won't it?”
Rebecca's eyes spoke glad confirmation of the idea. “My star, my state!”
she repeated joyously. “Oh, Mrs. Baxter, I'll make such fine stitches
you'll think the white grew out of the blue!”
The new minister's wife looked pleased to see her spark kindle a flame
in the young heart. “You can sew so much of yourself into your star,”
she went on in the glad voice that made her so winsome, “that when you
are an old lady you can put on your specs and find it among all the
others. Good-by! Come up to the parsonage Saturday afternoon; Mr. Baxter
wants to see you.”
“Judson, help that dear little genius of a Rebecca all you can!” she
said that night, when they were cosily talking in their parlor and
living “all over” the parish carpet. “I don't know what she may, or may
not, come to, some day; I only wish she were ours! If you could have
seen her clasp the flag tight in her arms and put her cheek against it,
and watched the tears of feeling start in her eyes when I told her
that her star was her state! I kept whispering to myself, 'Covet not thy
neighbor's child!'”
Daily at four o'clock Rebecca scrubbed her hands almost to the bone,
brushed her hair, and otherwise prepared herself in body, mind, and
spirit for the consecrated labor of sewing on her star. All the time
that her needle cautiously, conscientiously formed the tiny stitches she
was making rhymes “in her head,” her favorite achievement being this:
“Your star, my star, all our stars together,
They make the dear old banner proud
To float in the bright fall weather.”
There was much discussion as to which of the girls should impersonate
the State of Maine, for that was felt to be the highest honor in the
gift of the committee.
Alice Robinson was the prettiest child in the village, but she was very
shy and by no means a general favorite.
Minnie Smellie possessed the handsomest dress and a pair of white
slippers and open-work stockings that nearly carried the day. Still, as
Miss Delia Weeks well said, she was so stupid that if she should
suck her thumb in the very middle of the exercises nobody'd be a dite
surprised!
Huldah Meserve was next voted upon, and the fact that if she were not
chosen her father might withdraw his subscription to the brass band fund
was a matter for grave consideration.
“I kind o' hate to have such a giggler for the State of Maine; let her
be the Goddess of Liberty,” proposed Mrs. Burbank, whose patriotism was
more local than national.
“How would Rebecca Randall do for Maine, and let her speak some of her
verses?” suggested the new minister's wife, who, could she have had her
way, would have given all the prominent parts to Rebecca, from Uncle Sam
down.
So, beauty, fashion, and wealth having been tried and found wanting, the
committee discussed the claims of talent, and it transpired that to
the awe-stricken Rebecca fell the chief plum in the pudding. It was a
tribute to her gifts that there was no jealousy or envy among the other
girls; they readily conceded her special fitness for the role.
Her life had not been pressed down full to the brim of pleasures, and
she had a sort of distrust of joy in the bud. Not until she saw it in
full radiance of bloom did she dare embrace it. She had never read
any verse but Byron, Felicia Hemans, bits of “Paradise Lost,” and the
selections in the school readers, but she would have agreed heartily
with the poet who said:
“Not by appointment do we meet delight
And joy; they heed not our expectancy;
But round some corner in the streets of life
They on a sudden clasp us with a smile.”
For many nights before the raising, when she went to her bed she said to
herself, after she had finished her prayers: “It can't be true that I'm
chosen for the State of Maine! It just _can't_ be true! Nobody could be
good _enough_, but oh, I'll try to be as good as I can! To be going to
Wareham Seminary next week and to be the State of Maine too! Oh! I must
pray _hard_ to God to keep me meek and humble!”