THE LIBERTY PAGEANT
Nathalie was sure that she would never forget those tense, anxious
moments as she stared with strained eyes, trying to catch the first
glimpse of the coming show, while listening with alert ears to the
oncoming tread of many feet, the noise and bustle of moving equipages,
and the buzz and hum from the excited voices of the paraders and the
onlookers. High above the tumult floated snatches of patriotic song, as
sung by the Liberty Girls, and the loud outbursts of applause from the
villagers, who lined the street.
Ah, there it was! The girl’s heart leaped in wild bounds, she bent
forward eagerly, and then she was sitting with nervously clasped hands,
gazing with wide-open eyes at the slowly passing floats of the Liberty
Pageant. It was heralded by a procession of small maidens costumed as
Greek goddesses, who, while moving and swaying rhythmically, and holding
festoons of white flowers high above their heads, were singing Thomas
Paine’s “Liberty Tree.” As they burst out with the old familiar words:
“In a chariot of light from the regions of day,
The Goddess of Liberty came;”
Nathalie was forcibly reminded of the time when she had last heard that
song. Yes, it was almost a year ago, on Mrs. Van Vorst’s lawn, when the
Girl Pioneers had held their little playlet of “Liberty Banners.”
But her thoughts were again on the series of living pictures, and she
smiled with her neighbors at the two small boys, one gowned as a doctor
of the law, and the other as a brass-buttoned, blue-coated guardian of
the peace, mounted on small horses caparisoned in white, whose trappings
were marked in gold with the words “Law” and “Order.” As the diminutive
doctor removed a pen from behind his ear, and peered learnedly through
his goggles at a ponderous volume of law resting on a rack in front of
him, while his companion on the neighboring flower-bedecked steed
flourished a somewhat formidable-looking club, in token of the duties of
his office, roars of laughter broke from the spectators.
But as their eyes wandered on to the snowy chariot, where the Spirit of
Liberty stood with outstretched hands, one holding a branch of
evergreen, and the other a lighted torch, their laughter ceased, and a
strange hush stilled their noisy clamor. For this beautiful maiden in
loosely flowing garments, with eyes as bright and shining as the starry
chaplet that wreathed her golden, unbound hair, was the little hunchback
of the big gray house, Nita Van Vorst!
High above the “angel face,” as Nathalie heard some one designate the
girl’s countenance, beautiful in its inspiration of happiness and
patriotism—her deformity hidden by her white wings—was a large banner
inscribed with the words:
“Enter at Freedom’s porch,[1]
For you I lift my torch,
For you my coronet
Is rayed with stars
My name is Liberty,
My throne is Law.”
Guarding the Spirit of Liberty, while holding the streamers that floated
from the banners above, were three more white-robed figures,
representing the three great principles for which the world was
striving. The unbound tresses of each were banded with white, and the
first bore the word, “Democracy,” the girl holding a white dove on her
hand. The second was Humanity,—who cuddled a little Belgian refugee in
her arms; and the third was Justice, who held aloft a pair of scales.
Nathalie’s eyes radiated with gladness as she heard her neighbors voice
their commendations in praises of the snowy chariot, the symbol of
freedom, man’s divine heritage from God. She began to feel that the many
hours that she and Helen had spent in devising and planning the details
of this float and its mates, after all, might be appreciated.
The second picture was a marriage scene, a float marked “Virginia,
1607,” and bore the famous words of its well-known orator, “Give me
liberty, or give me death.” It was decorated with white flowers in honor
of the bride, Pocahontas,—impersonated by a Camp Fire girl in an Indian
deerskin robe wondrously embroidered, and gay with many-colored
beads,—who stood by the flower-decked pulpit amid a bower of green,
being united in the holy bands of matrimony to John Rolfe.
The pose of the Indian maiden, the sweet seriousness of her tawny-dyed
face and melting black eyes, the dignified pose of the Virginia planter,
so vividly portrayed the romantic episode of the first American colony,
that the many onlookers broke forth into shouts of approval. The
quaintly attired figures of the Jamestown settlers in the foreground,
and the group of Indian warriors with their war-plumes and dabs of paint
were backed by a miniature tower. Some one inquired if it was a
monument, much to the young president’s disgust, as she considered it a
noble work of art, which had been laboriously built of old bricks by the
Girl Pioneers to represent the ruined tower of Jamestown.
[Illustration: “My name is Liberty,
My throne is Law.”—Page 75.]
Massachusetts was identified by the words, “The Founders of Liberty,”
and a simulated boulder, which Blue Robin watched with great trepidation
for fear the blithesome Mary Chilton, who stood victorious on this
Forefathers’ Rock, in too zealous jubilation would shake it too much.
But the sprightly Pilgrim maiden, in gray cape and bonnet—it was the
Sport—remembered the perilous foundations, and her scorn was discreetly
tempered with caution as she gazed at the somewhat crestfallen John, who
stood with one foot on the rock, and the other in a miniature shallop,
where the Pilgrim Fathers stood dismally regarding this forerunner of
the progressive American girl.
New York’s contribution to the cause of freedom was a float brilliantly
rampant with the Stars and Stripes, and a little white flag with a black
beaver on it, the State’s emblem. This float, which bore the words, “The
Sons of Liberty,” was in commemoration of the brave lovers of freedom on
the little isle of Manhattan, who, in February, 1770, raised the first
Liberty Pole in America at what is now known as City Hall Park. To be
sure, it was cut down twice, but Liberty was afire, and it was finally
hooped with iron and set up the third time, this time to stay.
“Liberty Hall,” the name of the home of a one-time governor of New
Jersey, was conspicuously seen on the next float. The girls had had some
difficulty in getting an appropriate design for this little garden State
that could be conveniently staged on a small-sized platform. But they
had evidently succeeded, for the quaintly gowned young maiden who acted
her rôle in pantomime was loudly applauded as she flew to an improvised
window, only to exhibit wild alarm, and then in frenzied haste scurried
to an old-time escritoire. Here she rummaged a moment or so, and then
extracted a bundle of letters, which she hurriedly secreted behind a
loosened brick beside a simulated fireplace. In explanation of this
silent drama Nathalie told that the young girl was Susannah, the
daughter of William Livingston, the governor, who, when she saw the
redcoats marching towards the house in her father’s absence, quickly
remembered his valuable papers and hid them for safety.
Five girls in homespun gowns, sewing on a United States flag, composed
the New Hampshire float, which flew the State emblem, with its motto of
Liberty inscribed on its side. The flag-makers, out of their best silk
gowns, were making, in accordance with the description in the resolution
just passed by Congress, June 14, 1777, the first Stars and Stripes that
floated from the _Ranger_, to which Captain Paul Jones had just been
commissioned, and which became known as “the unconquered and unstricken
flag.”
The Connecticut float bore the words, “The Liberty Charter,” while a
Liberty Girl, in a good impersonation of Ruth Wyllis, stood by a ladder
resting against a somewhat strange simulation of the Charter Oak,
handing the supposed charter to the redoubtable Captain Wadsworth, who
quickly secreted it in the hollow of the tree.
Terra Marie, the land of Mary, not only blazoned the words, “The Rights
of Liberty,” but portrayed Margaret Brent, the first woman suffragist,
as she stood before the Maryland Assembly and pleaded with those
worthies, with masculine energy, for her right to a say in the affairs
of the little State, the State noted for its Toleration Act of 1649.
Surely the good woman, as the representative of the deceased Governor
Calvert, who had given his all to her with the words, “Take all, and
give all,” had a right to demand that she be heard.
The “Daughters of Liberty” made a brilliant showing in big letters on
the little Rhody float, to honor the seventeen young girls who, in 1766,
met at the home of good old Deacon Bowen, in Providence, and not only
voiced their disapproval of the Colonies’ tax on tea and on cloth
manufactured in England, but formed the first patriotic organization
known in America. It was the same inspiration of liberty that impelled
their emulators to adopt their name, and to plan and push through the
demonstration of which every one was so proud. As these Liberty maidens
sat and spun at their looms, or whetted their distaffs on the float
before the gaping crowd, they were guarded by two impersonations,—one
the father of toleration, Roger Williams, who looked benignantly down
upon these devotees of freedom, and the other, America’s first
club-woman, the learned and martyred Anne Hutchinson.
Ah, but who is this riding astride a horse of sable blackness, curveting
and prancing with chafing irritation at the tightened rein of its rider,
who
“Burly and big, and bold and bluff,
In his three-cornered hat and coat of snuff,
A foe to King George and the English state,
Was Cæsar Rodney, the delegate.”[2]
Of course there were a few who were not familiar with this little
incident in the history of Delaware, and how the aforesaid Rodney, a
member of the Continental Congress, spurred his horse from Dover to
Philadelphia, a distance of eighty-one miles, to reach Independence Hall
before night, in order to cast the vote of Delaware for freedom and
independence. It was, indeed, a great ride, and the townspeople must
have appreciated it, for the horse and rider were heartily cheered as
they read the words on the banner: “It is Liberty’s stress; it is
Freedom’s need.”
North Carolina proved most interesting, with the inscription, “The First
Liberty Bell of America,” on a big hand-bell resting in the center of
the float. The inscription and the bell aroused so much curiosity as to
why it should take precedence of the old Liberty Bell at Philadelphia,
that Nathalie was called upon by a group of friends sitting near, to
explain that it really was the first Liberty Bell used in the Thirteen
Colonies, having sounded its peal for liberty when rung by the patriots
of that State in 1771.
“These patriots,” went on the young Liberty Girl, “were the farmers and
yeomanry of that State, who, in a vigorous protest against the tyrannous
acts, misrule, and extortion during the administration of Governor
Tryon, banded themselves into a company known as the Regulators. This
bell was used to call them together in their struggle to maintain the
rights of the people. These Regulators were not only hounded,
persecuted, and sometimes executed as if they were rebels, but many of
their number were killed at the battle of the Alamance,—so named
because it took place on a field near that beautiful river,—when called
upon to defend themselves, when fired upon by the governor and a company
of the king’s troops. This battle has been called by some the first
battle of the Revolution,” continued the young girl, “and really
inspired the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, the forerunner of
the noted Declaration signed at Philadelphia. Some historians claim that
‘God made the flower of freedom grow out of the turf that covered these
men’s graves.’”
After this little story, the inscription,
“And well these men maintained the right;
They kept the faith and fought the fight;
Till Might and Reason both
Fled fast before the oath
Which brought the God of Freedom’s battles down
To place on patriot’s brow the victor’s crown!”[3]
on the float was eagerly read and doubly appreciated. By the bell stood
a tiny maid in the long skirt of the days of colonial childhood, wearing
a long white apron. With the crossed kerchief and two bright eyes
peeping from beneath the golden curls that strayed from below the little
one’s Puritan cap, she looked so sweet and demure that murmurs of
admiration surged through the crowd, as they recognized that this
diminutive lady represented the first white child born in America,
little Virginia Dare.
Perhaps only a few knew that the white fawn that she was holding by her
side featured the legend of the white doe that was said to haunt the
isle of Roanoke for many years after the return of John White, who found
only the word _Croatan_ to tell him that his dear little granddaughter
had disappeared, never to be found. The legend was so suggestive of the
romance of North Carolina that the girls could not forbear giving it
prominence on the float. They had had some trouble to find a white doe,
but they had succeeded, and as Nathalie gazed at it she was again
reminded of how the legend told that it used to stand mournfully gazing
out to sea, on a hill of the little isle. The Indians, tradition
asserted, had failed to kill it, until one day it was shot and killed by
a silver bullet from the hand of an Indian chieftain, who claimed that
the bullet had been given to him by Queen Elizabeth to kill witches,
when a captive in England. As the beautiful doe sank upon the green
sward and expired it was said to have murmured, “Virginia Dare! Virginia
Dare!”
South Carolina, glaringly conspicuous with red and blue bunting, was
marked “Liberty” in honor of one of the most famous flags used in the
Revolutionary War. It was an ensign of blue with a white crescent in one
corner, said to have been designed by Colonel Moultrie, of Carolina
fame, and was declared to have been the first flag raised for liberty in
the South.
In the center of the float a miniature trench had been raised, on the
parapet of which stood a young lad waving this little blue flag, in
honor of that gallant hero, Sergeant Jasper, who, when the flag was shot
down during the bombardment of Fort Moultrie, June 28, 1776, leaped
fearlessly to the top of the ramparts, received the colors, and held
them in his hand until another staff was found.
“Lo! the fullness of time has come,
And over all the exiles’ Western home
From sea to sea the flowers of Freedom bloom.”
This little quotation was an apt one, from the Poet Whittier, but it was
not necessary to make known to those gazing at it, that it stood for the
strongest and proudest of the sisterhood of States, the home of freemen
and heroes, of Robert Morris, Dr. Franklin and our good brother, William
Penn.
This promoter of tolerance, independence, and the equal rights of men
was fittingly portrayed by a Boy Scout. Benignant of face, mild of eye,
with long hair falling from beneath his broad-brimmed hat, this friend
of the friendless stood surrounded by a group of Indian warriors,
resplendent in all the trappings of their tribes, making one of the
numerous peace treaties.
But the Georgia float, buried in white to represent bolls of cotton, in
memory of Eli Whitney, aroused such loud and long cries of admiration
that Nathalie feared that after her hard labor the other floats had not
received their due mead of appreciation. But no, it was the rousing
melody of “Marching through Georgia,” with its telling lines of,
“So we made a thoroughfare for Freedom and her train,
Sixty miles in latitude—three hundred to the main;”
and the inspiration that always comes to every Northern heart when they
think of that gallant Son of Liberty, Sherman, and his triumphant march
to the sea, that had created the sudden tumult.
The few men in regimentals of the Union army,—in real life, boys in
brown from Camp Mills,—who were playing fifes and bugles on the float,
and the straggling darkies in the rear, who were shouting with verve and
gusto, as they followed in the wake of “Massa Sherman,” intensified the
appeal.
Ah, but now comes another edition of Liberty; this time no less a
personage than Lillie Bell, who, in the old costume worn over a year ago
on the lawn of the big gray house, was standing on a chariot, an old
farm wagon ablaze with the colors of Freedom, driven by four soldiers,
representing France, England, Belgium, and America. The young goddess
with sad and tragic eyes shining from beneath her helmet, gazed straight
before her as she held a drawn sword clasped closely to her breast, in a
graceful pose beneath the colors of the Allies floating gayly above her
head.
Yes, there was no doubt, as Helen had often said, Lillie was born for
stellar rôles, for somehow she had the happy faculty of always falling
into the desired attitude and mood of the part she was to portray. A
sudden silence gripped the line of people standing on the curb, as they
saw this familiar figure of Liberty, in a new and strange rôle. On a
beflagged chair of state good old Uncle Sam was seated, driving
America’s symbol of Freedom with reins of roses. Yes, roses to typify
that the good protector of the United States’ joys and interests was on
the job,—as the Sport expressed it,—but doing it with the silken reins
of love.
In the rear of this float a very small one appeared, but it was large
enough to display a cannon and a pile of cannon-balls, and also a member
of the United States Marines’ crack quartet of machine-gunners. As he
was the genuine article, as one of the girls declared,—being one of the
town’s boys home on a leave of absence, and held a Lewis gun, he was
received with wild cheers. A Jackie was perched on what was supposed to
be a conning-tower, apparently on the watch for a submarine, while
another soldier of the seas was ramming an old cannon, which created
much laughter.
It wasn’t much of a naval display, Nathalie thought regretfully, but it
was the best they could do with their poor equipment, for these
Daughters of Freedom were resolved to give due honor to these brave
guardians of the sea.
A contingent of husky young chaps from Camp Mills were lionized as soon
as their khaki-clad figures were sighted on the next float, which was
marked, “Liberty Boys.” A somewhat crude representation of a trench,
piled with sand-bags, with a few boys in tin hats, with guns in their
hands, clambering over it, represented to the spectators an “Over the
Top” scene. In the rear of the trench a few soldiers were grouped around
a camp-fire, presumably in a rest _billet_, having “eats.” Every moment
or so a soldier on this float would break forth into some war-song,
which was quickly taken up by his comrades, and which helped to make the
scene very realistic.
A small float with the Red Cross insignia, bearing the words, “The Cross
of Liberty,” with a few nurses seated around a table making bandages,
now appeared. A white cot, with a soldier boy in it, suddenly silenced
the cheers,—it was so suggestive of what every heart held in silent
dread and fear, ever since the United States had buckled to the fray.
But the sudden quiet was broken as the next, and last, float hove in
sight. It was so artistically gotten up as a Liberty Garden, and
represented so much freshness and beauty with its Liberty Girls, each
one dressed to represent either a fruit or a vegetable, that it was
wildly cheered. Masses of fruit piled up here and there peeped from
bowers of green leaves, or hung in festoons across the float. Potatoes,
green and red peppers, onions, cucumbers, and many other products of the
garden were lavishly in evidence. Carol, the Tike, was arrayed as a
pumpkin, a row of yellow leaves standing above a bunch of green ones.
Carrots, cucumbers, turnips, even beans, beets, and strawberries were
ingeniously represented by crêpe paper.
But the love of every heart were the Morrow twins, standing in the front
of the float in blue overalls, wide-brimmed hats, and blue shirts, with
rakes and hoes in their hands, as farmerettes, each one vigorously
waving a flag. This float completed the series of pictures that Nathalie
now felt had been duly admired, and she smiled happily at the many
plaudits that again burst forth. But when the farmerettes and these
living representations of fruits and vegetables broke into[4]
“Yes, we’ll rally round the farm, boys,
We’ll rally once again,
Shouting the battle cry of ‘Feed ’em.’
We’ve got the ships and money
And the best of fighting men,
Shouting the battle cry of ‘Feed ’em.’
“The Onion forever, the beans and the corn,
Down with the tater—it’s up the next morn—
While we rally round the plow, boys,
And take the hoe again,
Shouting the battle cry of ‘Feed ’em!’”
it captured every heart present, and such prolonged applause rent the
air that Nathalie was duly satisfied.
As she turned to leave the grand-stand it seemed to the tired girl as if
every one in town stopped to shake hands, and to congratulate her on the
huge success of the Liberty Pageant. When she finally arrived home, it
was some hours before she reached her couch, for she found the family
unduly excited, all eagerly talking; no, not about the pageant, but
about a rather strange letter that had been received by Mrs. Page that
afternoon.
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Footnote 1:
“Liberty Enlightening the World,” E. C. Stedman.
Footnote 2:
“Rodney’s Ride.” Poems of American History. B. C. Stevenson.
Footnote 3:
“The Mecklenburg Declaration,” Wm. C. Elam.
Footnote 4:
“Patriotic Toasts,” Emerson Brooks.