It has been one hundred and thirty-six years
Since our forefathers laid aside all fears
Of the mother country, and boldly said:
The price of liberty in blood should be paid.
The Continental Congress in Philadelphia met
And resolved that we should independence get,
Thomas Jefferson wrote a long declaration,
Which England said was a sad desecration.
So our mother tried to exercise her right
To tax her children and forbidding the fight.
The battles of Lexington, Bunker Hill and others
Showed England that we were no longer brothers,
After the first gun of the revolution was heard
The Americans lost fear of King George the third;
They determined with Franklin together to stand
And hold fast at any cost the cherished land.
Over a century has passed, the patriots are dust,
In the homes of many daughters their good swords rust,
But the celebration of Independence on the Fourth of July
In the hearts of Americans we trust will never die.
[KITTY.]
Ethel Hillyer Harris.
Written for the Xavier Chapter of the D. A. R., Rome, Ga.
"Ah! woman in this world of ours,
What boon can be compared to thee?
How slow would drag life's weary hours,
Though man's proud brow were bound in flowers,
And his the wealth of land and sea,
If destined to exist alone
And, ne'er call woman's heart his own."
—Morris.
Prologue.
All day long there had been a vague unrest in the old colonial home, all day the leaves had quivered on the banks of the Mataponi River; the waves were restless, the dog in his kennel howled fitfully; the birds and the chickens sought their roosts quiveringly, whimsically, and when night had let her sable curtain down, a lurid glare shot athwart the sky, in a strange curved comet-like shape. It was the Indian summer, October in her glory of golden-rods, sumachs, and the asters in the wood. But, hist! hark! what breaks upon the autumn stillness and the quiet of the colonial household on the Mataponi, — — ?