Democratic Sentinel, Volume 21, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 July 1897 — “Celebration” and “Observance." [ARTICLE]

“Celebration” and “Observance."

The Sons of the American Revolution addreesed the town clerks in Massachusetts, asking that they endeavor to bring about a fitting and universal observance of the Fourth of July. “What!” every boy will exclaim, “do we not now observe that day? Does not all our spending money go for firecrackers and rockets and lemonade?” Yes, you do keep the day with as much noise r.s Webster suggested, in the “supposed speech of John Adams.” But do you observe it? The Fourth of July was at first observed as the anniversary of the day when the throwing off of the “British yoke” began. But the nation is now a hundred and twenty years old. We have outgrown our fear and our hatred of Great Britain. Now it is time to cease regarding the Fourth as “Independence Day” merely, to forget all the suggestions of England that the anniversary brings to mind, and to treat it as the nation’s birthduy, in the broadest sense. That means that it should call up before us all the glories of America, not simply the heroism of ’7O and ’6l, but the conqueat of the soil of the great West, the triumphs of industry and invention, the victories of education, art and culture, the spread of religion. These things cannot be adequately commemorated by burning gunpowder. We do not go so far as even to suggest that the firecracker be abolished. Yet while we ring the bells, and fire the cannon and flaunt the flag, let us all remember that the day is a solemn as well as a joyous occasion, and observe as well as celebrate it. Let us make it a day of commemorating glorious deeds in peace and in war, by speech and song and story. It should be a day of revival of patriotism, real and earnest; of consecration to the cause of good government; of stern reso-

lution against the evils which have gradually crept into our system.—Youth’s Companion.