Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1896-07-05
THE DAY WE CELEBRATE.
It Should Be Kept Prominent and Dis
 tinct, Red-Letter Day.

btnct, a hed-Letter Day.
 It has been suggested that the Amer ican people should have more holidays, that they give more time and strength to out of door pleasures and set apart more days for relaxation.
 This may be well enough at some seasons, but the great midsummer holi- day, the pivotal day of the republic. the time when the bottled-up patriot ism of the American people is expected to be uneerl1ed and when the noise-pro- ducing element in the American young ster gets at work with fizz, a pop and a bang-this holiday amply fills the space between Decoration day and the first part of August. The juvenile son of Uncle Sam needs a month in which to replenish his eXchequer for the pro- yiding of freeraekers and other Nx- plosives, and sometimes-an woes the day!-needs more than month to patch his broken bones and get his physical eorporosity in working trim, even though it heals by first intentions.
 It would be well never to appoint any holiday between May and August for this reason, and also that Independence day might have no near neighbor to draw attention from it. It should be kept prominent and distinct, red-let- ter day-a day memorable above all other days in American history, and it's significance should be impressed by line upon line and precept upon pre- cept on the hearts of all the citizens of this comprehensive, resourceful land.
 It ought to be thanksgiving day, a gloriheation day, 8 pleasure day, reunion day, and to unite in it's 24 hours from midnight to midnight, and even far into the morning of the day fol- lowing, all of the most delightful ate tributes of a holiday and good times, good cheer, good wishes, good will and hurrahs galore-for without it where would we have been? We might have been chopped up into little principali- ties and kingdoms, lilliputian empires and proteetorates, with greedy foes to menace us on the right hand and on the left, and in front and rear-adversaries who yearned for our possessions and envied us our prosperity. if, indeed, we were blessed with any. We might have been under the heel of a foreign power and forced to pay tribute, as some nations of the world are now forced to do; to stand helplessly by and see taxes wrung from an overburdened people carried away to swell the cotfers oi some insatiate tyrant. Instead of this, we have peace, plenty and pros perity.
 We have no standing army to speak of, but the American citizen is the de- fender of our homes and ffresides. In almost every community there are we'll bred citizens banded into thoroughly equipped military companies, with quite enough knowledge of tactics and usages of war to make them formidable adversaries in any encounter. We are getting up navy on the same principle as our army, quantity of live material ready, on tap, as it were, to rush out and answer the demands of the govern ment. We have, and this is one of the greatest sources of congratulation, public-school system that makes it DOS sinle for every child within our borders to obtain fair amount of education. We are raising the standard of the pub lie school and putting the buildings in better shape. We are floating the Amer ican flag over most of the American schoolhouses, and will in time see it floating over all of them. Every n.orp- ing hundreds of thousands of school children go through with more or less extended exercises teaching them what patriotism is, what it's uses are and what tLe rights and duties of citizen com prehend.
 This work is as yet in it's infancy. but it has great and glorious possibili- ties. and some day we may hope that every schoolhouse will be a nursery of patriots, every teacher an apostle of faith, of liberty and independence, and eTery school board and commission high priests, ministering in the divine business of cultivating love of coun- try and a determination to make this one better and more worthy of it's high position among the nations of the earth.
 We lack long distance of being at the top of the ladder. but many of us are faithfully begging along, and for what we are and what we have we can truly say: ''The Lord be praised."- N, I. Ledger.