Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 117, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 May 1916 — MEMORIAL DAYS. OF PAST YEARS [ARTICLE]

MEMORIAL DAYS. OF PAST YEARS

. . ACRILEGE, we would have 4 4 W called it in my girlhood, to have failed to give very able assistance in celebrating Memorial day,” said a woman of middle age. “There was, first of all, the delight of gathering the flowers. How eagerly we watched the bushes, hoping that the loveliest blooms would open in time, or delay their coming till the great day. Peonies we could count on. Snowballs helped, despite their droopiness, and spirea was always to be had. We gasped in admiration over Miss Amy’s contributions of exquisite garlands of the pliable bridal wreath, with touches of scarlet columbine, or the faint pink of wild honeysuckle clustered here and there, but we could never evolve anything half so lovely. They were at once our Joy and our despair.” Boys were useful when it came to wild-flower gathering, even if picking garden "posies was not their forte. They knew where early laurel and wild azalea were to be found and they could be trusted to bring home columbine, wild geranium and buttercups. For there never was a Memorial day with too many flowers. There was the town hall to decorate, where the veterans assembled for a brief session before the march to the cemetery. The G. A. R. ladies saw to that, and beautiful it was to childish eyes when, brave with hunting and odorous with flowers, you saw it the night before, under the shelter of mother s enfolding gingham apron. There is only one proper sort of bouquet for village Memorial day, and sorry would one woman be should she ever see it superseded by anything modern. An up-to-date florist would be horrified at its make-up and bewail its lack of grace; an artist might take it as a horrible example of crudity of color scheme. But to many, the stiff, tightly-tied bunch of posies, con- . leal, or bullet-shaped, or flattened into a parti-colored disk, means mingled pathos and pleasure. To the making of these nosegays went all the patience and the primitive taste of the grown daughters of the household. .There must be a rosebud, for the center, grown in the house —for garden roses were still sleeping, and florists were a needless luxury in the town of girl- . hood dayß—and brought to punctual perfection by much watering and sunning. Then ip exact order of prece- '• dence, circle upon circle, came spice pinks, white or pale mauve, mock orange, candytuft,, pansies, purple and yellow, with an encircling fringe of liließ of the valley. And around all, emphasizing the. color scheme, was the green and rose geranium leaves or the striped slenderness of ribbon grass. It was redolent of spicy sweetness and of loving care, even if it were not artistic, this Decoration day bouquet, afld no debutante ever bore" her orchids more proudly than did youthful volunteer soldier boy or tottering veteran the posy of daughter or sweetheart. V ‘V There was one corner just by the First church where every extra bunch of flowers found its way. There, in charge of the minister’s wife, they

were ranged in bowls', in case any soldier be forgotten. Should there be any such, away raced Tom or Johnny, Will or Frank, or tomboy Nell, if the boys had all followed the drum corps, to supply the lack, glad *o be of use on this day of days, and pleased with the grateful “Thank you” of the recipient. “One Memorial day, a tragic day that I shall never forget,” said the lady of the letter, “grandniother promised that I should help make Uncle Henry’s bouquet, an honor that seldom fell to an eight-year-old. Together Aunt Emily and I constructed the masterpiece, a triumph in Bouquet building, for the climbing rose bloomed early that year, and our scheme was simple yellow and white. But Memorial day morning brought some childish ailment, and when Uncle Henry, resplendent in his uniform as a captain of volunteers, and carrying a silk flag just presented to the company, rode up to the door for his flowers, he found a weeping small girl clutching the bouquet and pushing away the sticky balsam remedy that was grandmother’s panacea for all aches. “In an instant he was off his horse and down on his knees, spoon in hand, coaxing me to obedience. In a frantic attempt to be good I Jarred his elbow, and the contents of the tablespoon splashed down over his spotless uniform and the shimmering red, white and blue of the banner. In the general confusion that followed, the white and yellow pyramid got badly damaged, and all that. I recall of the remainder of that holiday is the quiet haven of a big four-poster in a raftered room, and a comforting grandmother, who read me to sleep out of her illustrated Bible.

Parades were personal affairs in those days. Every other man in the procession was a friend, or at least an acquaintance. You knew even the distinguished gentlemen In the carriages. In the first rode the squire and'the First church minister, escorting the orator of the day, Hon. Mr. Brown, congressman of the district. Judge Smith and the school superintendent, with the editor of the Daily News, came next, and so on down the line of lesser notabilities. Cheers were loudest when the crippled, age-worn veterans rode by, in the village bandwagon, followed by Grand Army men who were still able-bodied. A goodly array they presented in that decade. More than half have gone since. Every man who could hobble held his place in the line till the cemetery was reached. There was a thrill in every blue coat, in each bit of tarnished metal, a story in the empty sleeve, a tale of adventure in halting step and twisted back. Bull Run and Chancellorsville, Gettysburg and Antietam, were near at hand when the thin blue columns passed us by. At the end of the company, the last man of all in the procession, one girl knew, there came inevitably German Charlie, general utility man in the newspaper office, so bent and crippled by wounds and rheumatic pains that his treacherous legs could not be relied on to keep time to the martial Btrains of the band. .But he plodded along, eyes shining under his service hat brim, a posy in his button-hole, a loyal veteran of the Union army he had enlisted in when a boyish immigrant, proud to the core of his uniform and his right to wear it. German Charlie has gone, and so have most of the men who marched with him; and bo, alas, has some of the spirit they kept alive.