THE booming of distant cannon had been sounding at intervals since
midnight, ushering in the Fourth, but Bowser, although disturbed in his
slumbers by each reverberation, did not rouse himself to any personal
demonstration until dawn. Then his patriotism manifested itself in a
noisy tattoo with a hammer, as he made the front of his store gay with
bunting, and nailed the word _Welcome_ over the door, in gigantic
letters of red, white, and blue.
When he was done, each window wore a bristling eyebrow of stiff little
flags, that gave the store an air of mild surprise. The effect was
wholly unintentional on Bowser's part, and, unconscious of the likeness
to human eyes he had given his windows, he gazed at his work with deep
satisfaction.
But the expression was an appropriate one, considering all the
astonishing sights the old store was to look upon that day. In the
woodland across the railroad track, just beyond Miss Anastasia Dill's
little cottage, preparations were already begun for a grand barbecue.
Even before Bowser had finished tacking up his flags, the digging of the
trench had begun across the way, and the erection of a platform for the
speakers. In one corner of the woodland a primitive merry-go-round had
already been set in place, and the first passenger train from the city
deposited an enterprising hoky-poky man, a peanut and pop-corn vender,
and a lank black-bearded man with an outfit for taking tin-types.
By ten o'clock the wood-lot fence was a hitching-place for all varieties
of vehicles, from narrow sulkies to cavernous old carryalls. A haze of
thick yellow dust, extending along the pike as far as one could see, was
a constant accompaniment of fresh arrivals. Each newcomer emerged from
it, his Sunday hat and coat powdered as thickly as the wayside weeds.
Smart side-bar buggies dashed up, their shining new tops completely
covered with it. There was a great shaking of skirts as the girls
alighted, and a great flapping of highly perfumed handkerchiefs, as the
young country beaux made themselves presentable, before joining the
other picnickers.
Slow-going farm wagons rattled along, the occupants of their jolting
chairs often representing several generations, for the drawing power of
a Fourth of July barbecue reaches from the cradle to the grave.
The unusual sight of such a crowd, scattered through the grove in gala
attire, was enough of itself to produce a holiday thrill, and added to
this was the smell of gunpowder from occasional outbursts of
firecrackers, the chant of the hoky-poky man, and the hysterical
laughter of the couples patronising the merry-go-round, as they clung
giddily to the necks of the wooden ostriches and camels in the first
delights of its dizzy whirl.
"Good as a circus, isn't it?" exclaimed Robert Akers, pausing beside
the bench where the old miller and the minister sat watching the gay
scene. "I'm having my fun walking around and taking notes. It is amusing
to see how differently the affair impresses people, and what seems to
make each fellow happiest. Little Tommy Bowser, for instance, is in the
seventh heaven following the hoky-poky man. He gets all that people
leave in their dishes for helping to drum up a crowd of patrons.
Perkins's boy sticks by the merry-go-round. He has spent every cent of
his own money, and had so many treats that he's spun around till he's so
dizzy he's cross-eyed. One old fellow I saw back there is simply sitting
on the fence grinning at everything that goes by. He's getting his
enjoyment in job lots."
"Sit down," said the minister, sociably moving along the bench to make
room beside him for the young man. "Mr. Holmes and I are finding our
amusement in the same way, only we are not going around in search of it.
We are catching at it as it drifts by."
"What has happened to Mrs. Teddy Mahone?" exclaimed Rob, as a red-faced
woman with an important self-conscious air hurried by. "She seems
ubiquitous this morning, and as proud as a peacock over something. One
would think she were the mistress of ceremonies from her manner."
"Or hostess, rather," said the miller. "She met me down by the fence on
my arrival, and held out her hand as graciously as if she were a duchess
in her own drawing-room, and I an invited guest.
"'Gude marnin' to yez, Mr. Holmes,' she said. 'I hope ye'll be afther
enjyin' yerself the day. If anything intherferes wid yer comfort ye've
but to shpake to Mahone about it. He's been appinted _constable_ for the
occasion, ye understhand. If I do say it as oughtn't, he can carry the
title wid the best av 'im; him six fut two in his stockin's, an' the
shtar shinin' on his wes'cut loike he'd been barn to the job.'
"Then she turned to greet some strangers from Morristown, and I heard
her introducing herself as Mrs. _Constable_ Mahone, and repeating the
same instructions she had given me, to report to her husband, in case
everything was not to their liking."
Both listeners laughed at the miller's imitation of her brogue, and the
minister quoted, with an amused smile:
"'For never title yet so mean could prove,
But there was eke a mind, which did that title love.'
It is a pity we cannot dress more of them in 'a little brief
authority.' It seems to be a means of grace to a certain class of
Hibernians. It has Americanised the Mahones, for instance. You'll find
no patriots on the ground to-day more enthusiastic than Mr. and Mrs.
Constable Mahone. Fourth of July will be an honoured feast-day
henceforth in their calendar. It is often surprising how quickly a
policeman's buttons and billy will make a good citizen out of the
wildest bog-trotter that ever brandished a shillalah."
* * * * *
Later, in subsequent wanderings around the grounds, the young collegian
spied the little schoolmistress helping to keep guard over the
cake-table. He immediately crossed over and joined her. She was looking
unusually pretty, and there was an amused gleam in her eyes as she
watched the crowds, which made him feel that she was viewing the scene
from his standpoint; that he had found a kindred spirit.
"What incentive to patriotism do you see in all this, Miss Helen?" he
asked, when he had induced her to turn over her guardianship of the
cake-table to some one else, and join him in his tour among the
boisterous picnickers.
"None at all--yet," she answered. "I suppose that will come by and by
with the songs and speeches. But all this foolishness seems a legitimate
part of the celebration to me. You remember Lowell says, 'If I put on
the cap and bells, and made myself one of the court fools of King Demos,
it was less to make his Majesty laugh than to win a passage to his royal
ears for certain serious things which I had deeply at heart.' It takes a
barbecue and its attendant attractions to draw a crowd like this. See
what a hotch-potch it is of all nationalities. Now that Schneidmacher
family never would have driven ten miles in this heat and dust simply to
hear the band play 'Hail, Columbia,' and Judge Jackson make one of his
spread-eagle speeches on the Duty of the American Citizen. Neither would
the O'Gradys or any of the others who represent the foreign element in
the neighbourhood. Even Young America himself, the type we see here, is
more willing to come and bring his best girl on account of the
diversions offered."
"Well, that may be so," was the reluctant assent, "but if this is a
sample of the Fourth of July observances all over the country I can't
help feeling sorry for Uncle Sam. Patriotism has sadly degenerated from
the pace that Patrick Henry set for it."
"The old miller says not," answered the little schoolmistress. "I made
that same complaint last Washington's Birthday, when I was trying to
work my school up to proper enthusiasm for the occasion. He recalled the
drouth of the summer before when nearly every well and creek and pond in
the township went dry. Cattle died of thirst, gardens dried up like
brick-kilns, and people around here were almost justified in thinking
that the universe would soon be entirely devoid of water. The skies were
like brass, and there was no indication of rain for weeks. But one day
there was a terrific earthquake shock. It started all the old springs,
and opened new ones all over this part of the country, and the water
gushed out of the earth where it had been pent up all the time, only
waiting for some such touch to call it forth. 'And you're afraid that
patriotism is going dry in this generation,' he said to me. 'But it only
takes some shock like the sinking of the _Maine_, or some sudden menace
to the public safety, to start a spring that will gush from Plymouth
Rock to the Golden Gate. There is a deep underground vein in the
American heart that no drouth can ever dry. Maybe it does not come to
the surface often, but it can always be depended on in time of need.'"
The speakers for the day began to arrive, and Rob, seeing the crowds
gravitating toward the grand stand, took the little schoolmistress to
the bench where the miller had stationed himself.
"Watch that old Scotchman just in front of us," whispered the girl,
"Mr. Sandy McPherson. Last Thanksgiving there was a union service in the
schoolhouse. After the sermon 'America' was sung, and that old heathen
stood up and roared out through it all, at the top of his voice, every
word of 'God Save the Queen!' Wasn't that flaunting the thistle in our
faces with a vengeance? I am sure that he will repeat the performance
to-day. Think of the dogged persistence that refuses to succumb to the
fact that we have thrown off the British yoke! The very day we are
celebrating that event, he'll dare to mix up our national hymn with 'God
Save the King.'"
It was as she had predicted. As the band started with a great clash of
brazen instruments, and the whole company rose to the notes of
"America," Sandy McPherson's big voice, with its broad Scotch burr,
rolled out like a bass drum:
"'Thy choicest gifts in store,
On _him_ be pleased to pour.
Long may _he_ reign.'"
It drowned out every voice around him. "He ought to be choked,"
exclaimed Rob, in righteous indignation, as they resumed their seats.
"To-day of all days! The old Tory has been living in this country for
forty-five years, and a good living he's gotten out of it, too, for
himself and family. Nobody cares what he sings on his own premises, but
he might have the decency to keep his mouth shut on occasions of this
kind, if he can't join with us."
There was a gleam of laughter in the little schoolmistress's eyes as
she replied: "If the truth were known I have no doubt but that this
Fourth of July celebration is very like the pie in Mother Goose's song
of sixpence, when her four and twenty blackbirds were baked in a pie. If
this pie could be opened, and the birds begin to sing according to their
sentiments, there would be a wonderful diversity of tunes. One would be
twittering the 'Marseillaise,' and another 'Die Wacht am Rhein,' and
another echoing old Sandy's tune. America was in too big a hurry to
serve her national pie, I am afraid. Consequently she put it in half
prepared, and turned it out half baked. The blackbirds should have had
their voices tuned to the same key before they were allowed to become
vital ingredients of such an important dish."
"In other words," laughed Rob, "you'd reconstruct the enfranchisement
laws. Make the term of probationary citizenship so long that the
blackbird would have time to change his vocal chords, or even the
leopard his anarchistic spots, before he would be considered fit to be
incorporated in the national dish. By the way, Miss Helen, have you
heard Mrs. Mahone's allegory of the United Pudding bag? You and she
ought to collaborate. Get the storekeeper to repeat it to you sometime."
"You needn't laugh," responded the little schoolmistress, a trifle
tartly. "You know yourself that scores of emigrants are given the ballot
before they can distinguish 'Yankee Doodle' from 'Dixie,' and that is
only typical of their ignorance in all matters regarding governmental
affairs. Too many people's idea of good citizenship is like the man's
'who kept his private pan just where 'twould catch most public
drippings.' There is another mistaken idea loose in the land," she
continued, after a moment. "That is, that a great hero must be a man who
has a reputation as a great soldier. I wish I had the rewriting of all
the school histories. They are better now than when I studied them, but
there is still vast room for improvement. I had to learn page after page
of wars. Really, war and history were synonyms then as it was taught in
the schools. Every chapter was gory, and we were required to memorise
the numbers killed, wounded, and captured in every battle, from the
French and Indian massacres, down to the last cannon-shot of the
sixties. That is all right for government records and reference
libraries, but when we give a text-book to the rising generation, the
accounts of battles and the glorifying thereof would be better relegated
to the foot-notes. It is loyal statesmanship that ought to be exalted in
our school histories. We ought to make our heroes out of the legislators
who cannot be bribed and public men who cannot be bought, and the honest
private citizen who _lives_ for his country instead of dying for it."
The old miller beside her applauded softly, leaning over to say, as the
overture by the band came to a close with a grand clash, "If ever the
blackbirds are tuned to one key, Miss Helen, America will know whom to
thank. Not the legislators, but the patriotic little schoolma'ams all
over their land who are serving their country in a way her greatest
generals cannot do."
* * * * *
All day the Cross-Roads store raised its bristling eyebrows of little
flags, till the celebration came to a close. Savoury whiffs of the
barbecued meats floated across to it, vigorous hand-clapping and hearty
cheers rang out to it between the impassioned words of excited orators.
Later there were the fireworks, and more rag-time music by the band, and
renewed callings of the hoky-poky man. But before the moon came up there
was a great backing of teams and scraping of turning wheels, and a
gathering together of picnic-baskets and stray children.
"Well, it's over for another year," said Bowser, welcoming the old
miller, who had crossed the road and taken a chair on the porch to wait
until the crowds were out of the way.
"Those were fine speeches we had this afternoon, but seemed to me as if
they were plumb wasted on the majority of that crowd. They applauded
them while they were going off, same as they did the rockets, but they
forget in the next breath." As Bowser spoke, a rocket whizzed up through
the tree tops, and the old miller, looking up to watch the shining trail
fade out, saw that the sky was full of stars.
"That's the good of those speeches, Bowser," he said. "'_To leave a
wake, men's hearts and faces skyward turning._' I hadn't noticed that
the stars were out till that rocket made me look up. The speeches may be
forgotten, but they will leave a memory in their wake that give men an
uplook anyhow."