“Come up here, then, if you please,” said Mrs. Leslie. “I am not a Fourth-of-July orator, and so I do not need to practise shouting, just now.”
So Johnny and Tiny and Veronica—who was Tiny’s oldest child, and was made of what had once been white muslin, with cotton stuffing—came upstairs, and had it explained to them that inalienable meant that which cannot be separated, or taken away.
“But, I don’t see how that works,” said Johnny, looking puzzled, “for folks do take our rights away; I’m having lots of mine taken away, all the time. I’m very fond of you, mammy, and you know it, but still you sometimes take away my rights yourself.”
“For a Fourth-of-July orator,” said Mrs. Leslie, gravely, “you are showing a painful amount of ignorance. We will suppose, for the sake of argument, that I take away, or deprive you of, certain things to which you have a right, but the right to have them is there, all the same. Taking away the things does not touch that. Do you see what I mean?”
“Yes, mamma, I think I do,” answered Johnny, thoughtfully, “but it’s kind of puzzling. It’s most as bad as ‘if a herring and a half cost a cent and a half, how much will three herrings cost?’ But I did get that through my head, and I suppose I can get this.”
“But, sometimes,” said Mrs. Leslie, “people’s ‘inalienable rights’ seem to conflict; I say seem, for they never really do. For instance, as you have a gentleman for a father, and a woman who tries to be a lady for a mother, I feel as if I had an inalienable right to a gentleman for a son, and a lady for a daughter; and when my son talks about getting a thing through his head, I begin to wonder what is becoming of my rights!”
“Now, mamma,” said Johnny, appealingly, “that’s just nothing at all to what some of the boys say. But I’d like to hear anybody say that you aren’t a lady, or that papa isn’t a gentleman!” and Johnny doubled his fists fiercely at the bare idea of such a statement.
“You may live to have that pleasure,” said Mrs. Leslie, “if you let the boys have more of a right in you than I have.”
Johnny caught his mother in a “bear hug.” “I never thought of it that way,” he said. “No ma’am! You’ve the very first, best right and title to me, Mrs. Mother, and the boys may go bang—oh, there I go again! I mean the boys may—what shall I say?”
“You might say that the boys may exercise their inalienable rights over somebody else,” said his mother, laughing and kissing him. “But now I’ll tell you what we will do—I really don’t think it would look well for a Fourth-of-July orator to read his oration out of an United States History, so when papa comes home, I will ask him to have the Declaration of Independence printed on two or three sheets of paper for you, and we’ll tie them together with a handsome bow of blue ribbon, and meanwhile, if you’ve no objection, you will practise in the barn.”