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.
“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.