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- 11632
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- not excluding Americans, are sinners--miserable sinners, as even no few
Bostonians themselves nowadays contritely respond in the liturgy.
However this be, both the omission and the abstention referred to are in
significant contrast with thy words relative to that elder war wherein
thy grandfather was one of the ‘rebels,’ a contrast emphasised though
involuntarily in thy social utterances upon every recurrence of our one
national holiday.
On the fourth morning of each July, about the tenth hour by the club
clock, spruced up in thy goodly person and decked at lapel with the
golden eagle suspended by the white-bordered blue ribbon, an order which
Washington and Lafayette and thy grandfather and father wore before
thee, thou takest thy customary place at the club’s bay-window. There
thou comfortably settlest thyself till lunch-time, discoursing at whiles
with whomsoever may, fortunately for himself, happen to be at hand.
Now thy Fourth-of-July outgivings, though indeed yearly varying in
expression, yet in spirit are much the same. Dost thou remember all that
thou saidest on the last Fourth, Major? Hardly. But I do; and will try
to refresh thy memory by reproducing it, with some accompanying
circumstances, and as if all were of to-day.
After gazing out of the open window for a time, noting the strange
Sabbatarian quiet of the Avenue, on other week-days so abounding with
diversified life, thou mutterest to thyself a strange litany of
lamentations touching the general falling-off in the old-time
celebration. ‘Well, well,’ thou mutterest, ‘it is getting along now in
its second century, this anniversary, and nearly everything falls off
with years. In Victoria’s reign is Guy Fawkes’ Day what it was in
Elizabeth’s? I trow not. _Sic transit, Sic transit!_’
Here some swift return of thought to its everyday channel causes thee
suddenly to wheel in thy revolving chair and face inward. Thou remarkest
the vacant lounges and sofas, thou absorbest the drear silence. Is it
the tabernacle on a week-day? Evidently, thou bethinkest thee of the
many absentees. Anon, with thy ample white handkerchief mopping the
beads from thy brow, thou exclaimest, ‘Shame upon them! Why, even the
thermometer, though a creature metallic, is more sensitive than these
renegades to the momentous occasion. Sure, the mercury rises to it! But
they--they run from it. Now degenerate, not only from their sires, but
their own boyhood. Ah, my good sir,’ giving another impulsive turn to
the revolving chair so as directly to face the one person present, a
somewhat reserved gentleman of mature years engaged in methodically
refolding a letter just perused, ‘Ah, my good sir, it is your boy who is
your true patriot. _He_ made on the _Third_ for Long Branch or
elsewhere? Nay, sir, on the Third, if not before, he lays in his
ammunition, his powder-crackers; at early dawn on the blessed Fourth he
crams his breeches-pockets with them, and though in his heedless
enthusiasm, mixing them up there with his matches, they get ignited and
suddenly begin going off like minute-guns hurried up, making him a
spluttering blunderbuss to himself and the crowd, what recks he if but
luckily he come out of it unharmed? Another boy, a yet more devoted
young acolyte of the Salii, should repeated discharges at last burst his
toy-cannon, and he go to Hades for it, what then? _Ducit amor patriae!_
That’s the inscription, sir, on General Worth’s monument you and I pass
every day. Ten to one you never noticed it--the inscription, I mean. Ah,
but he was a paladin, a homespun paladin, General Worth. And happy in
his surname, though indeed his _worth_ was of another sort than that of
the purse.’
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