“Oh, I remember when he was brought home dead, and how, in the Independence Hall of the State House at Philadelphia, he lay in state, that the inhabitants who knew his deeds, and those of his father, John, and his uncle, Samuel, might see his face. I love the Adamses every one,” and she softly pressed the baby-caps that had been wrought by a mother, ere the country began, to her small Quaker lips, with real New England fervor for its very own. Tenderly she laid them down, to see, while the light was fading, a huge picture on the wall. She studied it long, trying to discern the faces, with their savage beauty; the sturdy right-doing men who stood before 158 them; and then her eyes began to glisten, and gather light from the picture; her lips parted, her breath quickened; for Patty Rutter had gone beyond her life associations in Massachusetts, back to the times in which her Quaker ancestors had make treaty with the native Indians.
“It is!” she cried with a shout; “It is Penn’s treaty!” Patty gazed at it until she could see no longer. “I’m glad it is the last thing my eyes will remember,” she said sorrowfully, when in the gloom she turned away, went down the hall, and entered her glass chamber.
“Never mind my watch,” she said softly. “When I waken it will be daylight, and I need not wind it. It will be so sweet to lie here through the night in such grand and goodly company. I only wish Mrs. Samuel Adams could come and kiss me good night.”
With these words, Patty Rutter laid herself to rest upon the silken quilt from Gardiner’s Island; and if you look within the Relic Room, opposite to Independence Hall, in the old State House at Philadelphia, in this Centennial summer, you will find her there, still taking her long nap, fully indorsed by Miss Adams, and in Independence Hall, across the passage way, you will see the portraits of more than fifty of the Fathers of the nation, but the Mothers abide at home.
BECCA BLACKSTONE’S TURKEYS AT VALLEY FORGE.
Turkeys, little girl and apple-tree lived in Pennsylvania, a hundred years ago. The turkeys—eleven of them—went to bed in the apple-tree, one night in December.
After it was dark, the little girl stood under the tree and peered up through the boughs and began to count. She numbered them from one up to eleven. Addressing the turkeys, she said: “You’re all up there, I see, and if you only knew enough; if you weren’t the dear, old, wise, stupid things that you are, I’ll tell you what you would do. After I’m gone in the house, and the door is shut, and nobody here to see, you’d get right down, and you’d fly off in a hurry to the deepest part of the wood to spent your Thanksgiving, you would. The cold of the woods isn’t half as bad for you as the fire of the oven will be.”
Becca finished her speech; the turkeys rustled in their feathers and doubtless wondered what it all meant, while she stood thinking. One poor fellow lost his balance and came fluttering down to the ground, just as she had decided what to do. As soon as he was safely reset on his perch, 160 Becca made a second little speech to her audience, in which she declared that “they, the dear turkeys, were her own; that she had a right to do with them just as she pleased, and that it was her good pleasure that not one single one of the eleven should make a part of anybody’s Thanksgiving dinner.”