268 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST 
[July, 
[COPYRIGHT SECURED.] 
THE LITTLE DRILL-MASTER . —Drawn by Wm. M. Cary, by permission of Govpil cfc Co., from a painting by G. Arnold.—Engraved for the Am. Agriculturist. 
The Fourth of* July. 
Hurrah! you all say. So I say, 11 Hurrah for the Fourth 
©f July! ” What are we all going; to tlo? For every 
American hoy, horn or adopted, must do something on 
the Fourth. What a saving of cents (I won’t say pennies, 
for we have no such coin) there lias been in view of a 
proper celebration, and many will think necessary to go 
to some unusual expense in honor of the day. Per¬ 
haps you youngsters will ask me what I am going to do. 
I can recollect when I was foolish enough to stay up all 
night so as to be ready to make a terrible noise at day¬ 
break, and then be sleepy all the next day—a course that 
I can not recommend to any of you. Well, in the first 
place, the flag must go up; then, if my nephews happen 
to be here, there will be noise enough without the neces¬ 
sity for my making any. Living in a lone house in the 
country, I have kept up my old traveling habit of keeping 
a revolver in some safe place, and on the fourth day of 
the seventh month it occurs to me that the piece needs 
cleaning, and as I can not clean it without firing off the 
charges, why, off they go. Then the rest of the day I 
shall be very quiet, perhaps go up into my woods which 
cover the side of a hill, from the top of which I can see 
a wide landscape, and try to he thankful that my lot is 
cast in such a pleasant place, where any man of ordinary 
industry can own a piece of God’s beautiful earth, and 
there are no kings nor emperors to fear. But perhaps you 
will not be content with such a quiet Fourth, and must 
burn powder. I don’t exactly know why it Is necessary 
to celebrate with noise, or why we should be so fond of 
firing the crackers the Chinese use in their idolatrous 
worship upon our national festival. The fearful burn¬ 
ing of the city of Portland, a few years ago, which re¬ 
sulted from the use of fire-crackers, is enough to make 
one wish that these noisy explosives had never been in¬ 
vented. There is one safe rule for the Fourth of July 
(and for 364 other days) and that is, to do nothing of 
which your parents do not approve. If they sanction 
fireworks and gunpowder-burning, they will take care 
that no harm can come from them. 
It is possible to have a very good time without gun¬ 
powder. Look at the little fellow in the picture. I don’t 
know that it is the Fourth of July with him, but it might 
as well be, for he looks happy enough. He imagines that 
his army is passing in review, and is band and command¬ 
ing officer all in one, while the standard-bearer is quite 
up to the importance of the occasion. The one spectator 
is so taken up with the review that she does not see the 
enemy in the rear. 
Now, if you were to ask me what would be the best 
thing to do on the Fourth, I should first advise what not 
to do—do not undertake anything that will annoy any 
one else, and do not get so tired that on the morrow you 
will be glad that the holiday comes but once a year. 
What I would advise is, to get all the boys and girls to¬ 
gether, and have a nice picnic. There are plenty of 
flowers, and there can be wreaths and garlands, which 
are vastly better than powder and crackers, and then of 
course you will sing the “Star-spangled Banner,” “My 
Country, ’tis of Thee,” and such songs, and then some 
good reader can read the Declaration of Independence, 
and maybe some selections from patriotic writings can 
also be read, unless you can get up. an original Epeech 
yourselves. Do not have too many of these exercises, 
but just enough to make the Fourth-of-July picnic seem 
different from every other. Now, do you, boys and girls, 
both know why we celebrate this particular day ? It is 
because on this day our people declared themselves able 
to govern themselves without any help from a king and 
rulers away across the water. Our people are now so 
accustomed to self-government that we accept it as a mat¬ 
ter of course. So when you raise your flag on this day, 
think how much it stands for—the right of people to govern 
themselves without asking kings and princes what they 
may do ; the right of every one to worship God as seems 
best to him; the right of every man to his own self and the 
fruits of his own labor. So our Fourth of July is a day 
always to be remembered, and our flag is always an em¬ 
blem to bo respected, and even children can understand 
and be thankful for the blessings that make the day 
worthy and the flag honored. 
So after this bit of seasonable talk, which to my sur¬ 
prise I find has almost come to be a Fourth-of-July ora¬ 
tion, I say, don’t get tired, don’t burn your fingers, but 
have a jolly good time. This is the wish of 
The Doctor. 
