ΑΝ

N old-fashioned "Fourth of July" was to be held at Union Corners, and already (as the sun rose) had been fired a heavily-detonating cannon-shot for each and every state in the Union. The swifttraveling tones wheeling their way through the air as if upon tracks of invisible iron, had all reached the Atwood farm, and produced different sensations upon the different ears there.

"There ain't no use o' makin' all this racket jest because it's the Fourth of July," said Husbandman Atwood, "or of stoppin' work fur the same. We hev got our independence, so-called, what little. there is left of it, an' what's the use of wastin' a whole day every year braggin' about it? Everybody ought to be to work a-tryin' to make themselves more an' more independent, instid of burnin' up what little means of independence they hev. I know not what course others may take, but as fur me, give me a chance to do a good day's work in the field, an' others can burn up all the powder they can afford to."

"I believe," said Miss Julia, a spirited sister of Husbandman Atwood, who was, as she expressed it, just young enough not to be an old maid, and just old enough not to be a young girl, "that you're dead wrong, Broth. Everything that 'goes' must be advertised, nowadays. American. independence needs advertising just the same as any dry goods does. The Fourth is a great horizontal and perpendicular announcement that stretches all over the country and all over the world. If we do not keep up the spirit of '76, we will go

Love.

back into the depths of nothing with a minus sign in front of it!"

"Yes, Papa, Aunt Julia is right", cooed eighteen-year-old Jeanie, softly petting her father's shaggy hair. "Liberty and Union, now and inseparable, then and forever", she continued, slightly dislocating the famous statement of Daniel Webster, but in so charming a manner that Webster himself would have smiled indulgently. "And you know, also, Papa, that eternal liberty is the price of vigilance, because the Fifth Reader says so." Her dimpled cheek rested a moment on the back of his work-hardened hand, which she had lifted up with both of her own. Husbandman Atwood could not help loving such a daughter: but he had also a very strong. passion for his own opinions.

"I know what makes you so full of patr'otism today all of a sudden", he exclaimed, half pettingly, and half sternly. "You want to go to the Fourth-o'-July doin's with Mark Sutton. It's all nonsense, an' ain't safe, anyhow, an' you're li'ble to git hurt if the hoss should git scared." "But, Papa, Mark is such a good driver!"

"He'd better stay to home, an' drive his work. He's got three acres of corn now, that needs ploughin'. An' I shall tell him. so, ef I see him."

There was nothing more to be said when Husbandman Atwood made his mouth into one small line, and the breakfast was eaten in comparative stillness. The girls had an idea that if Mrs. Atwood had been home, she could have perhaps changed the decision: but she was caring

for a sick sister several miles away. And the thrifty farmer drove afield his steeds of the plough, with a last injunction: "Don't you go to no doin's, with Mark Sutton or any one else."

For the first hour, he luxuriated in his determination. "It's better not to let darters proclaim their declarations of independence too early", he said to himself. "They'll do that soon enough, when they git a little older--but I've al'ays noticed that the stricter they was brought up, the civiler they treated their parents af'rward. Go 'long, Jake!"

Still he was not quite satisfied about it, or he would not have gone on arguing to himself as follows:

"It's bad enough, when there is a war: but after it's all over an' fixed an' settled, what's the wuth then of actin' the thing all over ag'in? Better be raisin' crops fur to pay the expense it put us to.-- Gee, Jake!

"Besides," he continued, after a short pause, during which he inadvertently and disgustedly ploughed up a hill of corn, "they's more or less people killed every Fo'th of July, by fire-works gittin' loose an' mistakin' their mission. Haw, Jake!"

The ancient steed minded the mandate, but with a sniff toward town, as if he could smell some of the powder that was being wastefully burned there.

"Be

"G'long an' keep your face to'rds the end o' the row!" shouted his master. you a-gettin' the Independence Fever, too? Start ahead I tell ye!"

Jake started ahead as directed, after making a savagely independent nip at one of the corn-leaves through which he was traveling. Husbandman Atwood continued his talk-arguing mostly on one side of the question until noon. Then he hitched the complaisant animal where it

could have a good meal of its own, and went to dinner.

He wanted to argue the question still further, at the table: but he had to eat alone. A bountiful and appetizing meal was set for him, with himself the only one to enjoy it. He went to Jeanie's room, and peeped in.

He saw a sad, shrinking figure, with head bowed on the snowy couch, and looking the very personification of grief. He could not see her face, but somehow felt that she was weeping. She did not answer when he spoke to her.

There came an impulse, on the part of even this stern man, to go to the girl's side, and try, so far as he could in his rough way, to console and soothe her: but his hard heart triumphed, and he went back into the field--refreshed in body, but tired in soul.

"She might have spoken back agin," he muttered to himself, "even if she didn't want for to enter into a conversation. Mebby, though, she was cryin' so's she couldn't say nothin. Sometimes women's that way."

The grooming of the green stalks progressed unusually well that afternoon: Jake behaved beautifully, and work went on fast. Somehow, as the transactions among the corn-rows grew easier and more successful, the farmer's heart began. to soften a little.

He remembered how he, too, once was young; how he had loved and longed to visit and participate in scenes of amusement; and how he had run away once or twice from parents that did not approve of his leaving work for a day and enjoying himself.

He remembered, also, that when he became old enough to rule, in a manner, his own actions, he loved sometimes to take the girl that afterwards became his