"What do you guess us ladies had thought up for our procession,—with Insley back of us, letting us think we thought it up alone? Mebbe you'll laugh, because it wan't expensive to do; but oh; I think it was nice. We'd took everything in the town that done the town's work, and we'd run them all together. We headed off with the fire-engine, 'count of the glitter—and we'd loaded it down with flags and flowers, and the hook and ladder and hose-carts the same, wheels and sides; and flags in the rubber caps of the firemen up top. Then we had the two big sprinkling carts, wound with bunting, and five-foot flags flying from the seats. Then come all the city teams drawn by the city horses—nice, plump horses they was, and rosettes on them, and each man had decorated his wagon and was driving it in his best clothes. Then come the steam roller that Friendship Village and Red Barns and Indian Mound owns together and scraps over some, though that didn't appear in its appearance, puffing along, with posies on it. Then there was the city electric light repair wagon, with a big paper globe for an umbrella, and the electric men riding with their leggings on and their spurs, like they climb the poles; and behind them the telephone men was riding—because the town owns its own telephone, too—and then the four Centrals, in pretty shirtwaists, in a double-seated buggy loaded with flowers—the telephone office we'd see to it was closed down, too, to have its Fourth, like a human being. And marching behind them was the city waterworks men, best bib and tucker apiece. And then we hed out the galvanized garbage wagon that us ladies hed bought ourselves a year ago, and that wasn't being used this year count of the city pleading too poison poor; and it was all scrubbed up and garnished and filled with ferns and drove by its own driver and the boy that had use' to go along to empty the cans. And then of course they was more things—some of them with day fireworks shooting up from them—but not the hearse, though we had all we could do to keep Timothy Toplady from having it in, 'count of its common public office.
"Well, and then we'd done an innovation—an' this was all Insley's idea, and it was him that made us believe we could do it. Coming next, in carriages and on foot, was the mayor and the city council and every last man or woman that had anything to do with running the city life. They was all there—city treasurer, clerk of the court, register of deeds, sheriffs, marshals, night-watchmen, health officer, postmaster, janitor of the city hall, clerks, secretaries, stenographers, school board, city teachers, and every one of the rest—they was all there, just like they had belonged in the p'rade the way them framers of the first Fourth of July had meant they should fit in: Conscience and all. But some of them servants of the town had made money off'n its good roads, and some off'n its saloons, and some off'n getting ordinances repealed, and some off'n inspecting buildings and sidewalks that they didn't know nothing about, and some was making it even then by paving out into the marsh; and some in yet other ways that wasn't either real elbow work nor clean head work. What else could they do? We'd ask' them to march because they represented the town, and rather'n own they didn't represent the town, there they was marching; but if some of them didn't step down Daphne Street feeling green and sick and sore and right down schoolboy ashamed of themselves, then they ain't got the human thrill in them that somehow I cannot believe ever dies clear out of nobody. They was a lump in my throat for them that had sold themselves, and they was a lump for them that hadn't—but oh, the differ'nce in the lumps.
"'Land, land,' I says to Mis' Toplady, 'if we ain't done another thing, we've made 'em remember they're servants to Friendship Village—like they often forget.'
"'Ain't we?' she says, solemn. 'Ain't we?'
"And then next behind begun the farm things: the threshin' machines and reapers and binders and mowers and like that, all drawn by the farm horses and drove by their owners and decorated by them, jolly and gay; and, too, all the farm horses for miles around—we was going to give a donated surprise prize for the best kep' and fed amongst them. And last, except for the other two bands sprinkled along, come the leading citizens, and who do you guess they was? Not Silas nor Timothy nor Eppleby nor even Doctor June, nor our other leading business men and our three or four professionals—no, not them; but the real, true, leading citizens of Friendship Village and Indian Mound and Red Barns and other towns and the farms between—the children, over two hundred of them, dressed in white if they had it and in dark if they didn't, with or without shoes, in rags or out of them, village-tough descended or with pew-renting fathers, all the same and together, and carrying a flag and singing to the tops of their voices 'Hail, Columbia,' that the bands kept a-playing, some out of plumb as to time, but all fervent and joyous. It was us women alone that got up that part. My, I like to think about it.
"They swung the length of Daphne Street and twice around the market square, and they come to a halt in front of the platform. And Doctor June stood up before them all, and he prayed like this:—
"'Lord God, that let us start free an' think we was equal, give us to help one another to be free an' to get equal, in deed an' in truth.'
"And who do you s'pose we hed to read the Declaration of Independence? Little Spudge Cadoza, that Silas had been a-going to hev walk up and down Daphne Street with a board on his back—Insley thought of him, and we picked him out a-purpose. And though he didn't read it so thrilling as Silas would of, it made me feel the way no reading of it has ever made me feel before—oh, because it was kind of like we'd snapped up the little kid and set him free all over again, even though he wasn't it but one day in the year. And it sort of seemed to me that all inside the words he read was trumpets and horns telling how much them words was going to mean to him and his kind before he'd had time to die. And then the Glee Club struck into 'America,' and the whole crowd joined in without being expected, and the three bands that was laying over in the shade hopped up and struck in, too—and I bet they could of heard us to Indian Mound. Leastways to Red Barns, that we can see from Friendship Village when it's clear.
"The grand basket dinner in the Depot Woods stays in my head as one picture, all full of veal loaf and 'scalloped potato and fruit salad and nut-bread and deviled eggs and bake' beans and pickle' peaches and layer cake and drop sponge-cake and hot coffee—the kind of a dinner that comes crowding to your thought whenever you think 'Dinner' at your hungriest. And after we'd took care of everybody's baskets and set them under a tree for a lunch towards six, us ladies went back to the market square. And over by the marquee we see the men gathered—all but Insley, that had slipped away as quick as we begun telling him how much of it was due to him. Miss Beryl Sessions had just arrived, in a automobile, covered with veils, and she was introducing the other men to her City friends. Us ladies sort of kittered around back of them, not wanting to press ourselves forward none, and we went up to the door of the marquee where, behind the refreshment table, Mis' Sykes was a-standing in her white duck.