The morning call., 1890-07-04
THE FOURTH OF JULY.

How the Glorious Old Holiday Has
Changed Its Character.
Our old holiday, "the glorious Fourth, 4"
has changed its character somewhat and is
now a day of recreation rather than of pa
triotic Renaissance and eXhortation, writes
George William Curtis in the July number
of Harper's Magazine. Doubtless in old
Boston there were those who thought that
the 5th Of March, the day of the massacre in
King (or State) street in 1870, would be
always as pi0usly observed by patriotic Bos-
ton as when DR.. Warren and John Hancock
delivered the Grafton. But the observance
ended, Mr. Palfrey tells US, in 1888. and in
1875, perhaps with the same relief that the
nobeman regarded the death of an author.
because he could then "bind MIN up" and
place him on the library shelf, thirteen 9TH
of March orations were bound up, and the
celebration of the famous day was also laid
upon the shelf.
No such decline will be apprehended for
the Fourth of July, and as for binding up
the Orations upon that day! The old
character of the. holiday will revive upon
occasion, however, and a great orator will
always give it distinction by pointing a
present moral. There is no more noted
Fourth of July Grafton in all the long list
than that Of Charles Sumner in Boston in
1915 His theme was the true grandeur of
on the anniversary of the triumphant ma
tional independence resulting from great
war, and in the presence of the military
forces of the commonwealth. the discourse
was powerful philippe against war. 1t
was memorable Grafton, thoroughly char
acteristic of the man, which really dis
closed him to the public and perhaps to
himself. But nothing could have more
signally illustrated the orators want of a
quick sense of humOr.
ftrrn thAr Of ND folI
Boston Fourth of July orations. In 1858
Rufus Choate, in his most fervent and
characteristic vein, and flood of that
poetic rhetoric in which he is wholly IN
surpassed among American orators, deliv-
cred plea for the Union in the old conser-
vative sense; and Edward Everett, about
year before the war, reeOunted our great
ness and deprecated the inevitable. Both
orators were the 'pensve poets of a van
ished America. Closing his brilliant sur
vey, and Insisting that cur condition in 1858
assured our health, our strength, and our
future-as indeed they did, but not as the
orator surmised-Choate said, but with
anxious eXultatlon, just as the great civic
storm was about TO break: This shadow
that fits across our grasses and is gone,
this shallow ripple that darkens the sur
face of our broad and widening stream and
passes away, this little perturbation which
our telescopes cannot find, and which our
science can hardly find, but which we
know cannot change the course or hasten
the doom of one star-haye these any ter
rors for us ?''
These are voices Of Fourth OF July that
is gone. 1t was not fitting shadow nor q
shallow ripple that the orator saw. But
the tempest which they portended has puri-
fed the air, and the Fourth OF July elo-
quenee of this year may happily devote it
self to service which was then hopeless,
because the conditions Of its success did
not exist-the service Of weaving an ever
closer tie Of national union. The words Of
Choate. which when spoken were pro-
foundry painful and unreal from their vivid
contrast with the terrible fact, we can re-
peat to-day with the joy OF assured antici-
patlon: Happy, if such day shall not be
dcseeFated by our service; happy, if for US
that descending sun shall look out on a
more loving. more elevated, more united
America"