The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1890-07-03

| proposed three rousing cheers for Jack,
which were given so enthusiastically
and with such prolonged energy that
the older members of the family fully
expected to see the police at their gate.
When Jack was helped up TO- bed that
night he told his mother that he had
had almost as good a time as he ex-
pected to have. Perhaps the sweetest
moment Of all was when his mother,
| giving him her goodnight kiss, said:
%''You haven't celebrated the day,
dear, as you meant to do; but you have
made me very proud and happy by bear
ing so bravely all the pain and disap-
pointmcnt, and I really Link you have
shown yourself man."
To which Jack, somewhat irrever-
entity, but with an accompanying hug,
which prevented any reproof, replied:
| "Mother, you're daisy!'-Ada Sher-
| wood, in Christian Union.
| MOTHERS AND THE FOURTH.
They Dread the Day and Yet Would Provo
Themselves Young Americas Most
Faithful Champions.
The Fourth of July is not, for reasons
Of its own, the most joyous festival in
the calendar of feasts to women. To
men, apart from the sentiment of it,
it comes as what they call day of, il
not of rest, at any rate not of labor; by
boys, who begin to save their money, to
be spent in its enjoyment, at the open
! ing of the year itself, it is anticipated
as the year of jubilee once was; even
by little girls, who are not allowed the
use of the incendiary fire-cracker, or Of
the decorating torpedo, or the sputter-
| ing pin.wheel, it is most welcome. The
mother alone finds reverse to the
shining shield here. It is not that she
fails to recognize all the nobility of the
day which any wife of citizen, and a
mother of possible President, ought
to feel, that she does not see in the day
an exponent of the loftier condition of
her sex in free country, that she does
not also regard it as a representative
of the happy future Of the whole race
under the protection of the liberties for
which that day has been made, as it
were, the mouth-piece. 1t is not,
either that she breads the pic
MICS and sailing parties and gem
eral festivities belonging to the
occasion in their disastrous ef-
fects upon the various toilets she had
to prepare or superintend for the young
patriots of her family. 1t is not any
grudging of labor in furnishing lunch
baskets, in the making Of cakes and
tarts and salads and sandwiches and
confitures and the rest. The reverse to
the shield that she finds is solely and
simply gunpowder. From fear and
hatred Of that explosive rises feverish
| anxiety for her husbands safety, and an
Indignant concern as to her own neces-
1 s"ry sleep on the night preceding that
day issued in by cannonading and bell
ringing the land over. The Fourth of
July celebrates the facts of liberty, and
she is glad of it; but liberty to all does
not mean the infringement of the rights
of any; and she has right to sleep on
the night of the I'd of July-she who
has watched already too many nights;
but she is deprived of the exercise of
that right by the mode of cele bration OF
this liberty. For at midnight the toy
pistol begins to pop, the little cannon to
cry havoc, and the.., all about the town,
the big boy who has his rifle has sailed
out. the fire-cracker is fixing in every
alley, and the fish-horn is making night
hideous; and she wonders what other
mothers mean by allowing it; and she
does not hinder her boys from join
ing it. Does not? She can not.
Young America asserts its freedom
for that twenty-four hours, and sub
mits to no tyranny on the part OF
mothers or mother-countries. Alas! she
knows it. And that is the whole of it.
She knows that gunpowder was in
vented, not for war, but for the de-
struction of boys. Her own and their
mates have been making red fire and
green fire in secret places for weeks al
ready; copper filings, and zinc filings.
and sulphate of antimony. and salts OF
strontia and nitre, and sulphur, and
charcoal, all exist, in her excited i'm
agination. only to blow up these boys
with the Bengal-lights and Roman
candles and feeble rockets that they
essay to compound from them, or that
their hard-earned pocket-money has
gone to buy. She knows, from the
moment that her boys have surrepti-
tiously crept out of her back window,
with her full but hidden knowledge
and connivance, since there would be
no glory or liberty at all if they went
openly out of the front door, not one
4 moment of comfort or plactdam quieten
as to her hearts beating, till she sees
them come in again., in the course oil
the following day, worn and torn,
starved and soiled and smooched and
scorched and smeared, SO weary with
the pleasure of their gun-firing that no'
even cannon wake them If they
fall asleep, and only luck if the who,a
of them is there. She does not look for.
ward to a broken back for them, OF q
broken leg, or even a broken neck, ex
actly; but the loss Of certain number
= of fingers in the loading and dischargine
of their toy weapons, the peppering o.
their dear rosy faces with powder, the
loss of their eyes, and even the fracture
of their skulls and the conclusion u
their brains, are contingencies ever be-
; fore her. She. feels, long before tbe
welcome close of day, that conclusion u
her own brain, or something as bad, II
imminent. She does not allow herself
to remember what peace is till-the all
blown thin with powder, smell u
sulphur everywhere, fragments of ex
l ploded red Chinese paper lining al
i the sidewalks, and when silence, ex
i ceptfor. here and. there a GROUP Of be
lated jewellers, has ''healed the blows
Of sound"aathe boys andsthe rest Of thu
family srs sleeping ths lesp pf sis
freedohiHtoMea citizens Same seyel
then she is bestead by dreams Of posi-
BILE fires,- smoldering from the spark
of malicious and Smisdirected crack ers
/ to wrap them, after all the escapes o
the day, in flaming death at midnight
And yet if the father of the boy
prohibited the days excitements, re
fused the money for the fireworks
kept the lads under lock aud key, thi
mother would be the stoutest rebel 0
them all, fight their battles for them
and gain their freedom to go out an
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