about running away--was hunting and hunting and _hunting_ for him and
going nearly distracted and expecting every hair in her head to turn
pure white. She went about among all the rest, asking and calling and
wanting to know, and finally she made up her mind that she would not
stay where she was, but that she would run away and hunt for him. And
she did. And when all the things that were waiting to be born heard
about it, there was no holding them back either. So out they came,
lines and colours and musics and tops and blocks and flame and Noah’s
arks and mechanical toys and mountains and planets and paints and air
and water and alphabets and jumping-jacks, all, all came out in the
wake of the lost Special Baby. And some came early and some came late,
some hurried and some hung back. And among all these came people, and
many and many of the to-be-born things were hidden in peoples’ hearts
and did not appear till long after; and this was true of some things
which I have not mentioned at all, and of some that have not appeared
even yet. But some people did not bring anything in their hearts, and
they merely observed that it was a shameful waste, so many shining
balls swinging about and only the Special Baby to play with them, and
_he_ evidently eternally lost.
But the Special Baby’s real mother didn’t say a word. She only ran and
ran on, asking and calling and wanting to know. And at last she came
to the Outermost Way and near the Wild Wing of Things, and the Special
Baby heard her coming. And when he heard that, he made his choicest
coo-noise in his throat and he stretched out his arms to his real
mother that he was used to.
And when his real mother heard the coo-noise, she brushed aside the
Wild Wing of Things and took him in her arms--and she never saw the
Wind and the Great Black Hush at all, because they are that kind. So
she carried the Special Baby off, kicking and crowing and catching at
the swinging, shining balls--but they were too big to put in his mouth
so there was no danger--and _she_ hunted up a place where she could
make his clothes and mend his socks and tie on his shoes and rub his
little back. But about them all things were going on, and everybody
else was doing the same thing, so nobody noticed.
Then, all alone before their home on the Outermost Way and beneath the
Wild Wing of Things that was all brushed aside, the Great Black Hush
and the Wind looked at each other. And their look clung, as when they
had first found light, and they were afraid. For now all space was
glowing and shining with swinging balls, and all the things were being
born and making homes, and time was rushing by so fast that it awed
them who had never seen such a thing before.
“_What_ have we done?” demanded the Great Black Hush.
But the Wind was not so much concerned with that. She only grieved and
grieved for the Special Baby. And the Great Black Hush comforted her,
and I think he comforts her unto this day.
Only at night. Then, as you know, the Great Black Hush comes from the
Outermost Way and fills the air, and with him often and often comes the
Wind. And together they wander among all the shining balls--you will
know this, if you listen, on many a night--and together they look for
the Special Baby. But _he_ has grown up, long and long ago, only he
still stretches out his hands to everything, for he is the way he was
made.
XVIII
THE DECORATION OF INDEPENDENCE
That year we celebrated Fourth of July in the Wood Yard.
The town had decided not to have a celebration, though we did not know
who had done the actual deciding, and this we used to talk about.
“How can the _town_ decide anything?” Delia asked sceptically. “When
does it do it?”
“Why,” said Margaret Amelia--to whom, her father being a judge, we
always turned to explain matters of state, “its principal folks say so.”
“Who are its principal folks?” I demanded.
“Why,” said Margaret Amelia, “I should think you could tell that. They
have the stores and offices and live in the residence part.”
I pondered this, for most of the folk in the little town did neither of
these things.
“Why don’t they have another Fourth of July for the rest, then,” I
suggested, “and leave them settle on their own celebration?”
Margaret Amelia looked shocked.
“I guess you don’t know much about the Decoration of Independence,”
said she.
The Decoration of Independence--we all called it this--was, then, to go
by without attention because the Town said so.
“The Town,” said Mary Elizabeth, dreamily, “the Town. It sounds like
somebody tall, very high, and pointed at the top, with the rest of her
dark and long and flowy--don’t it?”
“City,” she and I were agreed, sounded like somebody light and sitting
down with her skirts spread out.
“Village” sounded like a little soft hollow, not much of any colour,
with a steeple to it.
“I like ‘Town’ best,” Mary Elizabeth said. “It sounds more like a
mother-woman. ‘City’ sounds like a lady-woman. And ‘Village’ sounds
like a grandma-woman. I like ‘Town’ best.”
“What I want to do,” Margaret Amelia said restlessly, “is to spend
my Fourth of July dollar. I had a Fourth of July dollar ever since
Christmas. It’s no fun spending it with no folks and bands and wagons.”
“I’ve got my birthday dollar yet,” I contributed. “If I spent it for
Fourth of July, I’d be glad of it, but if I spend it for anything else,
I’ll want it back.”
“I had a dollar,” said Calista, gloomily, “but I used a quarter of
it up on the circus. Now I’m glad I did. I wish’t I’d stayed to the
sideshow.”
“Stitchy Branchitt says,” Betty offered, “that the boys are all going
to Poynette and spend their money there. Poynette’s got exercises.”
Oh, the boys would get a Fourth. Trust them. But what about us? We
could not go to Poynette. We could not rise at three A.M. and
fire off fire-crackers. No fascinating itinerant hucksters would come
the way of a town that held no celebration. We had nowhere to spend our
substance, and to do that was to us what Fourth of July implied.
The New Boy came wandering by, eating something. Boys were always
eating something that looked better than anything we saw in the
candy-shop. Where did they get it? This that he had was soft and pink
and chewy, and it rapidly disappeared as he approached us.
Margaret Amelia Rodman threw back her curls and flashed a sudden
radiant smile at the New Boy. She became quite another person from the
judicious, somewhat haughty creature whom we knew.
“Let’s us get up a Fourth of July celebration,” she said.
We held our breath. It never would have occurred to us. But now that
she suggested it, why not?
The New Boy leaped up on a gate-post and sat looking down at us,
chewing.
“How?” he inquired.
“Get up a partition,” said Margaret Amelia. “Circulate it like for
take-a-walk at school or teacher’s present, and all sign.”
“And take it to who?” asked the New Boy.
Margaret Amelia considered.
“My father,” she proposed.
The scope of the idea was enormous. Her father was a judge and wore
very black clothes every day, and never spoke to any of us. Therefore
he must be a great man. Doubtless he could do anything.
Boys, as we knew them, usually flouted everything that we
said, but--possibly because of Margaret Amelia’s manner of
presentation--this suggestion seemed to strike the New Boy favourably.
Afterward we learned that this was probably partly owing to the fact
that the fare to Poynette was going to eat distressingly into the boys’
Fourth money, unless they walked the ten miles.
By common consent we had Margaret Amelia and the New Boy draw up the
“partition.” But we all spent a long time on it, and at length it
read:--
* * * * *
“We the Undersigned want there should be a July 4 this year.
We the Undersigned would like a big one. But if it can’t be so
very big account of no money, We the Undersigned would like one
anyway, and hereby respectfully partition about this in the
name of the Decoration of Independence.”
There was some doubt whether or not to close this document with “Always
sincerely” but we decided to add only the names, and these we set out
to secure, the New Boy carrying one copy and Margaret Amelia another. I
remember that, to honour the occasion, she put on a pale blue crocheted
shawl of her mother’s and we all trailed in her wake, worshipfully.
The lists grew amazingly. Long before noon we had to get new papers. By
night we had every child that we knew, save Stitchy Branchitt. He had a
railroad pass to Poynette, and he favoured the out-of-town celebration.
But the personal considerations of economic conditions were as usual
sufficient to swing the event, and the next morning I suppose that
twenty-five or thirty of us, bearing the names of three or four times
as many, marched into Judge Rodman’s office.
On the stairs Margaret Amelia had a thought.
“Does your father pay taxes?” she inquired of Mary Elizabeth--who was
with us, having been sent down town for starch.
“On his watch--he used to,” said Mary Elizabeth, doubtfully. “But he
hasn’t got that any more.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Margaret Amelia, “whether we’d really
ought to of put down any names that their fathers don’t pay taxes. It
may make a difference. I guess you’re the only one we got that their
fathers don’t--that he ain’t--”
I fancy that what Margaret Amelia had in mind was that Mary Elizabeth’s
father was the only one who lived meanly; for many of the others must
have gone untaxed, but they lived in trim, rented houses, and we knew
no difference.
Mary Elizabeth was visibly disturbed.
“I never thought of that,” she said. “Maybe I better scratch me off.”
But there seemed to me to be something indefinably the matter with this.
“The Fourth of July is for everybody, isn’t it?” I said. “Didn’t the
whole country think of it?”
“I think it’s like a town though,” said Margaret Amelia. “The principal
folks decided it, I’m sure. And they _always_ pay taxes.”
We appealed to the New Boy, as authority superior even to Margaret
Amelia. How was this--did the Decoration of Independence mean
everybody, or not? Could Mary Elizabeth sign the partition since her
father paid no taxes?
“Well,” said the New Boy, “it _says_ everybody, don’t it? But nobody
ever gets to ride in the parade but distinguished citizens--it always
says them, you know. I s’pose maybe it meant the folks that pays the
taxes, only it didn’t like to put it in.”
“I better take my name off,” said Mary Elizabeth, decidedly. “It might
hurt.”
So the New Boy produced a stump of pencil, and we found the right
paper, and held it up against the wall of the stairway, and Mary
Elizabeth scratched her name off.
“I won’t come up, then,” she whispered to me, and made her way down the
stairs, her head held very high.
Judge Rodman was in his office--he makes, I find, my eternal picture
of “judge,” short, thick, frock-coated, bearded, bald, spectacled,
square-toed, and with his hands full of loose papers and his
watch-chain shining.
“Bless us,” he said, too, as a judge should.
Margaret Amelia was ahead,--still in the pale blue crocheted
shawl,--and she and the New Boy laid down the papers, and the judge
picked them up, and read. His big pink face flushed the more, and
he took off his spectacles and brushed his eyes, and he cleared his
throat, and beamed down on us, and stood nodding.... I remember that he
had an editorial in his paper the next night called “A Lesson to the
Community,” and another, later, “Out of the Mouths of Babes”--for Judge
Rodman was a very great man, and owned the newspaper and the brewery
and the principal department store, and had been to the legislature;
and his newspaper was always thick with editorials about honouring the
flag and reverencing authority and the beauties of home life--Miss
Messmore used to cut them out and read them to us at General Exercises.
So Judge Rodman called a Town meeting in the Engine House, and we all
hung about the door downstairs, because they said that if children
went to the meeting, they would scrape their feet on the bare floor
so that nobody could hear a sound; and so we waited outside until we
heard hands clapped and the Doxology sung, and then we knew that it had
passed.
We were having a new Court House that year, so the Court House yard
was not available for exercises: and the school grounds had been sown
with grass seed in the beginning of vacation, and the market-place was
nothing but a small vacant lot. So there was only one place to have
the exercises: the Wood Yard. And as there was very little money to
do anything with, it was voted to ask the women to take charge of the
celebration and arrange something “tasty, up-to-date, and patriotic,”
as Judge Rodman put it. They set themselves to do it. And none of
us who were the children then will ever forget that Fourth of July
celebration--yet this is not because of what the women planned, nor of
anything that the committee of which Judge Rodman was chairman thought
to do for the sake of the day.
Our discussion of their plans was not without pessimism.
“Of course what they get up won’t be any _real_ good,” the New Boy
advanced. “They’ll stick the school organ up on the platform, and
that sounds awful skimpy outdoors. And the church choirs’ll sing. And
somebody’ll stand up and scold and go on about nothing. But it’ll get
folks here, and balloon men, and stuff to sell, and a band; so I s’pose
we can stand the other doin’s.”
“And there’s fireworks on the canal bank in the evening,” we reminded
him.
Fourth of July morning began as usual before it dawned. The New Boy and
the ten of his tribe assembled at half past three on the lawn between
our house and that of the New Family, and, at a rough estimate, each
fired off the cost of his fare to Poynette and return. Mary Elizabeth
and I awoke and listened, giving occasional ecstatic pulls at our bell.
Then we rose and watched the boys go ramping on toward other fields,
and, we breathed the dim beauty of the hour, and, I think, wondered if
it knew that it was Fourth of July, and we went back to bed, conscious
that we were missing a good sixth of the day, a treasure which, as
usual, the boys were sharing.
After her work was done, Mary Elizabeth and I took our bags of
torpedoes and popped them off on the front bricks. Delia was allowed
to have fire-crackers if she did not shoot them off by herself, and
she was ardently absorbed in them on their horse-block, with her
father. Calista had brothers, and had put her seventy-five cents in
with their money on condition that she be allowed to stay with them
through the day. Margaret Amelia and Betty always stopped at home until
annual giant crackers were fired from before their piazza, with Judge
Rodman officiating in his shirt-sleeves, and Mrs. Rodman watching in
a starched white “wrapper” on the veranda and uttering little cries,
all under the largest flag that there was in the town, floating from
the highest flagpole. Mary Elizabeth and I had glimpses of them all in
a general survey which we made, resulting in satisfactory proof that
the expected merry-go-round, the pop-corn wagon, a chocolate cart, an
ice-cream cone man, and a balloon man and woman were already posted
expectantly about.
“If it wasn’t for them, though,” observed Mary Elizabeth to me, “the
town wouldn’t be really acting like Fourth of July, do you think so? It
just kind of lazes along, like a holiday.”
We looked critically at the sunswept street. The general aspect of the
time was that people had seized upon it to do a little extra watering,
or some postponed weeding, or to tinker at the screens.
“How could it act, though?” I inquired.
“Well,” said Mary Elizabeth, “a river flows, don’t it? And I s’pose a
mountain towers. And the sea keeps a-coming in ... and they all act
like themselves. Only just a Town don’t take any notice of itself--even
on the Fourth.”
That afternoon we were all dressed in our white dresses--“Mine used
to have a sprig in it,” said Mary Elizabeth, “but it’s so faded out
anybody’d ’most say it was white, don’t you think so?”--and we
children met at the Rodmans’--where Margaret Amelia and Betty appeared
in white embroidered dresses and blue ribbons and blue stockings, and
we marched down the hill, behind the band, to the Wood Yard. The Wood
Yard had great flags and poles set at intervals, with bunting festooned
between, and the platform was covered with bunting, and the great
open space of the yard was laid with board benches. Place in front
was reserved for us, and already the rest of the town packed the Yard
and hung about the fences. Stitchy Branchitt had given up his journey
to Poynette after all, and had established a lemonade stand at the
Wood Yard gate--“a fool thing to do,” the New Boy observed plainly.
“He knows we’ve spent all we had, and the big folks never think
your stuff’s clean.” But Stitchy was enormously enjoying himself by
deafeningly shouting:--
“Here’s what you get--here’s what you get--here’s what you get.
Cheap--cheap--_cheap_!”
“Quit cheepin’ like some kind o’ bir-r-rd,” said the New Boy, out of
one corner of his mouth, as he passed him.
Just inside the Wood Yard gate I saw, with something of a shock, Mary
Elizabeth’s father standing. He was leaning against the fence, with
his arms folded, and as he caught the look of Mary Elizabeth, who was
walking with me, he smiled, and I was further surprised to see how
kind his eyes were. They were almost like my own father’s eyes. This
seemed to me somehow a very curious thing, and I turned and looked at
Mary Elizabeth, and thought: “Why, it’s her _father_--just the same as
mine.” It surprised me, too, to see him there. When I came to think of
it, I had never before seen him where folk were. Always, unless Mary
Elizabeth were with him, he had been walking alone, or sitting down
where other people never sat.
Judge Rodman was on the platform, and as soon as the band and the
choirs would let him--he made several false starts at rhetorical pauses
in the music--he introduced a clergyman who had always lived in the
town and who prayed for the continuance of peace and the safe conquest
of all our enemies. Then Judge Rodman himself made the address, having
generously consented to do so when it was proposed to keep the money
in the town by hiring a local speaker. He began with the Norsemen and
descended through Queen Isabella and Columbus and the Colonies, making
a détour of Sir Walter Raleigh and his cloak, Benedict Arnold, Israel
Putnam and Pocahontas, and so by way of Valley Forge and the Delaware
to Faneuil Hall and the spirit of 1776. It was a grand flight, filled
with what were afterward freely referred to as magnificent passages
about the storm, the glory of war, and the love of our fellow-men.
(“Supposing you happen to love the enemy,” said Mary Elizabeth,
afterward.
“Well, a pretty thing that would be to do,” said the New Boy, shocked.
“We had it in the Sunday school lesson,” Mary Elizabeth maintained.
“Oh, well,” said the New Boy. “I don’t mean about such things. I mean
about what you _do_.”
But I remember that Mary Elizabeth still looked puzzled.)
Especially was Judge Rodman’s final sentence generally repeated for
days afterward:--
“At Faneuil Hall,” said the judge, “the hour at last had struck. The
hands on the face of the clock stood still. ‘The force of Nature could
no further go.’ The supreme thing had been accomplished. Henceforth
we were embalmed in the everlasting and unchangeable essence of
freedom--freedom--_freedom_.”
Indeed, he held our attention from the first, both because he did not
read what he said, and because the ice in the pitcher at his elbow had
melted before he began and did not require watching.
Then came the moment when, having completed his address, he took up
the Decoration of Independence, to read it; and began the hunt for his
spectacles. We watched him go through his pockets, but we did so with
an interest which somewhat abated when he began the second round.
“What _is_ the Decoration of Independence, anyhow?” I whispered to Mary
Elizabeth, our acquaintance with it having been limited to learning it
“by heart” in school.
“Why, don’t you know?” Mary Elizabeth returned. “It’s that thing Miss
Messmore can say so fast. It’s when we was the British.”
“Who decorated it?” I wanted to know.
“George Washington,” replied Mary Elizabeth.
“How?” I pressed it. “How’d he do it?”
“I don’t know--but I think that’s what he wanted of the cherry
blossoms,” said she.
At this point Judge Rodman gave up the search.
“I deeply regret,” said he, “that I shall be obliged to forego my
reading of our national document which, next to the Constitution
itself, best embodies our unchanging principles.”
And then he added something which smote the front rows suddenly
breathless:--
“However, it occurs to me, since this is preeminently the children’s
celebration and since I am given to understand that our public schools
now bestow due and proper attention upon the teaching of civil
government, that it will be a fitting thing, a moving thing even, to
hear these words of our great foundation spoken in childish tones. Miss
Messmore, can you, as teacher of the city schools, in the grades where
the idea of our celebration so fittingly originated, among the tender
young, can you recommend, madam, perhaps, one of your bright pupils
to repeat for us these undying utterances whose commitment has now
become, as I understand it, a part of our public school curriculum?”
There was an instant’s pause, and then I heard Margaret Amelia Rodman’s
name spoken. Miss Messmore had uttered it. Judge Rodman was repeating
it, smiling blandly down with a pleased diffidence.
“There can be no one more fitted to do this, Judge Rodman,” Miss
Messmore had promptly said, “than your daughter, Margaret Amelia, at
whose suggestion this celebration, indeed, has come about.”
Poor Margaret Amelia. In spite of her embroidered gown, her blue
ribbons, and her blue stockings, I have seldom seen anyone look so
wretched as did she when they made her mount that platform. To give her
courage her father met her, and took her hand. And then, in his pride
and confidence, something else occurred to him.
“Tell us, Margaret Amelia,” he said with a gesture infinitely paternal,
“how came the children to think of demanding of us wise-heads that we
give observance to this day which we had already voted to let slip past
unattended? What spirit moved the children to this act?”
At first Margaret Amelia merely twisted, and fingered her sash at
the side. Margaret Amelia was always called on for visitors’ days,
and the like. She could usually command her faculties and give a
straightforward answer, not so much because of what she knew as because
of her unfailing self-confidence. Of this her father was serenely
aware; but, aware also that the situation made unusual demands, he
concluded to help her somewhat.
“How came the children,” he encouragingly put it, “to think of making
this fine effort to save our National holiday this year?”
Margaret Amelia straightened slightly. She faced her audience with
something of her native confidence, and told them:--
“Why,” she said, “we all had some Fourth of July money, and there
wasn’t going to be any way to spend it.”
A ripple of laughter ran round, and Judge Rodman’s placid pink turned
to purple.
“I fear,” he observed gravely, “that the immediate nature of the event
has somewhat obscured the real significance of the children’s most
superior movement. Now, my child! Miss Messmore thinks that you should
recite for us at least a portion of the Declaration of Independence.
Will you do so?”
Margaret Amelia looked at him, down at us, away toward the waiting Wood
Yard, and then at Miss Messmore.
“Is it that about ‘The shades of night were falling fast’?” she
demanded.
In the roar of laughter that followed, Margaret Amelia ran down, poor
child, and sobbed on Miss Messmore’s shoulder. I never think of that
moment without something of a return of my swelling sympathy for her
who suffered this species of martyrdom, and so needlessly. I have seen,
out of schools and out of certain of our superstitions, many martyrdoms
result, but never one that has touched me more.
I do not know whether something of this feeling was in the voice that
we next heard speaking, or whether that which animated it was only its
own bitterness. That voice sounded, clear and low-pitched, through the
time’s confusion.
“I will read the Declaration of Independence,” it said.
And making his way through the crowd, and mounting the platform steps,
we saw Mary Elizabeth’s father.
Instinctively I put out my hand to her. But he was wholly himself,
and this I think that she knew from the first. He was neatly dressed,
and he laid his shabby hat on the table and picked up the book with a
tranquil air of command. I remember how frail he looked as he buttoned
his worn coat, and began to read.
“‘We, the people of the United States--’”
It was the first time that I had ever thought of Mary Elizabeth’s
father as to be classed with anybody. He had never had employment, he
belonged to no business, to no church, to no class of any sort. He
merely lived over across the tracks, and he went and came alone. And
here he was saying “_We_, the people of the United States,” just as if
he belonged.
When my vague fear had subsided lest they might stop his reading
because he was not a taxpayer, I listened for the first time in my life
to what he read. To be sure, I had--more or less--learned it. Now I
listened.