THE GLORIOUS FOURTH.
By C.P. MACOMBER, (nine years.)
“Hurrah for the Glorious Fourth of July,
When sky-rockets mount to the sky,
When fire-crackers are whizzing so fine,
And all is Majesty Grandeur an’ sublime.
“If I could have the whole day to myself,
I would fire off crackers all day like an elf,
The Giant Torpedoes would fall to the ground,
And all would come down with a terrible sound.
“What good are little paper caps?
I would not give two ginger snaps,
They do not make a noise worth hearing,
But fire-crackers, the ladies are fearing.”
If Charlie should write this again, he would change the above, but it is too late to alter now, and we give it as preserved in our note-book. Furious applause followed this ebullition of poetic genius.
The collation was followed by the raft-race. The ditch that ran beside the railroad embankment widened in one place to forty feet. Half a dozen logs were here floating. The keeper of the great seal had brought with him a hammer and a handful of nails, and seeing on his way several strips of board, he had picked them up and now nailed the six logs together in pairs, making three rafts.
“There will now be a race between our first treasurer, our sentinel, and the keeper of the great seal,” pompously announced Sid. “This will be the first race. I expected Tony and the governor would compete, but they have gone home. The Fourth was too much for them.”
They both began to be sick after the collation. Rick, with his usual pertinacity, wanted to “stick it out,” but his feelings overcame him, and he adjourned. He and Tony had eaten too much green-tinted candy. The participants in the raft-race were preparing for the contest, Charlie having already boarded his craft and pushed off into position, when a cry from Pip arrested the attention of all and made them think of something besides rafting.
“Down-townieth!” he shrieked, and pointed up the railroad embankment. There stood a stout boy whom Charlie recognized immediately as one of the evil force that raided on the club the day of the grand march! It was Tim Tyler, one of the hardest boys in Seamont, aged fifteen. Back of him was a smaller boy, but a competitor in vice, Bobby Landers. How many others might soon show themselves, no one could say, but the down-townies were clannish and loved to turn out in crowds, and to the club the probability appeared to be, that others would speedily rise up and charge along the railroad track. Sid Waters, who had urged freemen to stand for their rights, was now turning on his heel. He headed for a fence that separated the railroad lot from the woods. It was evident that the first club race would be, not on the water, but the land, and that Sid Waters’s legs would take an unexpected but active part in it. Other legs followed his, and this race of freemen for their rights became a general one. At first, it was not positively certain who would reach the fence first and so beat in the race, but Sid’s alacrity in starting was so great that he gained the prize, or would have taken it, had any been offered. The others though made very good time, and showed what freemen could do when hard pushed by their oppressors. Charlie, alas! was too far from shore to share in their good fortune, and, besides, Tim Tyler was on hand to object to any such movement.
“Don’t be in too much of a hurry to leave,” he said provokingly to Charlie, and seizing a pole left by one of the retreating club, pushed off the raft that Charlie had shoved near the shore.
“Leave me alone,” growled Charlie.
“I have, haven’t I? I don’t see how any one could be much more aloner than you are off there.”
Charlie looked like a jar of pickles, a keg of gunpowder, and a small thunder-cloud combined. He was so angry that he could now say nothing. When Tim had repeatedly pushed Charlie’s vessel back from the shore, Charlie as obstinately pushing toward it again, Tim cried out, “Say, I will make you an offer. Do you see that?”
He pulled out of his pocket a dirty bottle and held it up.
“There, some of the best beer made anywhere is in that. If you will take a swaller, I’ll let you come ashore.”
Charlie could hardly contain himself now. He was scarcely able to sputter out this defiance, “When you catch me tasting that stuff, you’ll know it!”
“O jest hear him, Bob!” said Tim, mockingly. “I s’pose this young sailor, who don’t know enough about sailin’ to get his craft ashore, has jined a temperance society.”
“Yes,” said Charlie, “I belong to Mr. Walton’s at St. John’s.”
“What saint is that?”
The wrathful Charlie gave Tim a look of contempt and turned away.
“O, so he wont turn his pretty face this way, wont he?”
Having said this, Tim changed his tone and shouted fiercely, “You’ve got to look this way, sir. Bob, you get on that other raft and I will take this one here, and we will catch that young saint.”
The two unoccupied rafts were immediately brought into service. Never did an innocent merchantman fleeing from two pirates make a harder exertion than did Charlie to get away from Tim and Bob. They gained on him, though, rapidly.
“There they come,” thought Charlie, giving one look back at the dirty, saucy buccaneers. Tim had now reached the middle of the little pond when a thing greatly in his favor proved to be a serious thing against him, and that was the strength of his push. The fastenings of the log-raft were not equal to any violent pressure upon them, and suddenly they gave way and the logs separated. Tim’s legs separated with them till they could part no farther, and then he tried to spring from one log to the other. Alas for him, he put his foot in the wrong place, and that wrong place was the water! Down he went into as thorough a bath as ever a young rascal got in this world. The water was not over his head, and he was soon on his feet, but the dip had been complete enough to satisfy the most vindictive members of the Up-the-Ladder Club, and Tim was spitting and sputtering, then spitting and sputtering again, trying to clear month, eyes, nose, ears, of the unwelcome, dirty ditch-water.
“Give—us—a—hand, Bob,” he gasped.
Charlie did not stay to see any further developments, but pushed for the shore, safely reaching it, and then made his way to the fence, climbing it and gaining the wood-lot. In the meantime, the other members of the club had halted and were consulting together. It was Juggie who arrested their flight. “It is too bad,” he said, “to leave Charlie.”
That remark detained Billy, and then Sid, Wort, and Pip stopped.
Sid laughed and said, “My father has been in the army and he would call this the flying artillery. So you see it is all right.”
“I’m afraid it’s all wrong,” said Billy, “to leave Charlie behind.”
“Yes,” said Wort, “to run away from a member of the club.”
There was now a general feeling of indignation toward any member of the club that had deserted Charlie, if that member could be found, as each one’s motive had not been to desert another, but the prudent impulse to save himself.
Sid was among the fiercest to shout and the most furious to propose. “Charlie deserted!” he said. “Who’s deserted Charlie? That wont do! Back, fellers, to the rescue!”
A brave, sympathetic shout arose. A few minutes ago Sid would have been afraid of it as something that might attract the enemy’s attention, but he calculated that they must now be at a safe distance from the down-townies.
“Let’s make a flank movement on the enemy,” said the president.
“What ith that?” asked Pip.
“Why, not so much to go at them as to go about them and take them unawares in the rear.”
This mode of attack, which did not necessitate the actual facing of the enemy, was very popular and took wonderfully with the club. To Sid, in particular, it was a very agreeable mode. He boldly headed this movement. He intended to go off in a direction where no enemy would ever be met, but in his ignorance of the woods, he took a course that would have led the club back to the pond, and it was an agreeable thing for Charlie that he did, as that fugitive from the pirates soon was met.
“Hullo, there he is!” shouted Wort.
“Who?” asked Sid, trembling, and fearful that it might be Tim Taylor.
“Here I am, boys,” shouted Charlie.
“Ho, to the rescue!” cried Sid, now taking long leaps forward. “Charlie, I rescue thee!”
“We are coming to fank de enemy,” said Juggie, anxious to have a hand in winning the laurels now coming so rapidly to the Knights of the White Shield.
“Going to surround the enemy,” exclaimed the warlike Sid, “and also rescue Charlie, but—but—we might as well go back now. Did you have a hard time, Charlie?”
“I did have a time, I tell you,” and Charlie eagerly told the story of his adventures.
“How we will go back, boys,” said the president, “and go round home through the woods.”
“No, sir,” declared Billy, who had somewhat of his cousin’s resoluteness; “I’m going home the way we came, and if any body stops me, it is his lookout.”
The heroic sentiment was loudly applauded, and the club returning valiantly stormed the railroad fence and carried it—a remarkable feat considering that there was nobody on it to oppose them.
Billy Grimes in his earnestness even brought down the top-rail with him.
“Stop, fellers!” warned Sid. “The enemy!” Lifting their eyes to the top of the high railroad embankment, they saw Tim in the act of chastising Bob. It was afterward ascertained that Tim was rewarding Bob for not helping him more efficiently at the time of the raft accident. Tim completed the bestowal of this reward, and then noticing the club, he shook his fist at them. He did not linger, but followed sullenly by Bob, passed down the other side of the embankment. The club did not find out whether this was an intended retreat, or simply the taking of a convenient route to reach home. They put their own construction on it, and the movement was judged to be “a shameful retreat by the enemy.” Billy led off in a brave, determined charge up the embankment—Sid shouting, “Hurrah! Glory for us! Those getting the battle-field are victors, you know!”
Nobody disputed this, and the valiant knights continued their triumphant advance to their very homes.
The Fourth was drawing to a close. The sun was breaking out through the clouds that had covered the heavens, and so brilliant was the outburst of colors, it seemed as if the folds of an immense star-spangled banner had been suddenly let loose in the western sky. It very soon paled though. The clouds thickened everywhere and the easterly wind that had been blowing all the afternoon, bringing occasional mist, now drove to land a blinding fog. Finally it began to rain, and yet gently, as if reluctant to spoil any festivities of the Fourth. Gathering up all their pyrotechnic resources, it was found that the club boys could muster a few pin-wheels, five Roman candles, and a “flower-pot.” Most of these had been stored in the barn, but were now moved out-doors and taken to the shelter of a stout leafy maple by the side of the lane.
“The rain wont trouble us here,” said the president. “Where is Charlie?”
“He has gone to get his fire-works,” replied Billy Grimes. “He left them in the house and it is locked, for his Aunt Stanshy has gone out, and he’s waiting for her, I guess.”
“We had better begin, fellers, and he will come soon. The rain is coming,” said Sid, warned by a big drop that glancing through the branches smote him on the nose. Pin-wheels, candles, and the other attraction were pronounced a success, though their discharge was hastened on account of the thickening rain.
The boys separated, tired and sleepy, sorry to part with the Fourth, and yet secretly glad that there was such a thing as “bed.”
“Whar’s Charlie,” asked Juggie, as the boys separated. No one knew. “Good-bye, Charlie!” shouted one after the other, and all hastened to their homes.
Charlie was where he had been the last twenty minutes, occupying a seat out in the porch at the back door and waiting for Aunt Stanshy. He had fallen asleep, so thoroughly tired was this patriotic young American, and the day for him was ending as it began—in a chair. Aunt Stanshy came at last, feeling her way through the shadows in the porch and striving to reach the back door, whose key she carried.
“What’s this?” she said, running against the sleeper. “If it isn’t that boy! And here the rain has been working round into the porch and it is coming on him! If you don’t take cold, Charles Pitt Macomber, then I am mistaken! Wake up, wake up!”