Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 June 1895 — WHEN WE WERE BOYS. [ARTICLE]

WHEN WE WERE BOYS.

A Picture of an Old-Time Celebration in the Country. “Now, Billy, don’t go near them anvils.” “Sammy, will you-stand back, or do you want to get Wowed up?” Aiul a stranger to boys and to the custom would have concluded that Sammy certainly did want to get “blowed up,” for it was the regular complaint of the men in charge that there “wouldn’t be a speck. of danger if it weren’t for the denied boys crowdin’ in so.” This was at 4 o’clock in the morning of a Fourth of July, years ago, in a couutry village. The boys were hurrying toward the public square, where the anvils were located, barefooted and clad for the most part only in low linen shirts and jean pantaloons and buttoning the latter as they ran, for the affair was too important to be missed on account of a little informality in toilet. And close after them came two or three mothers with nervous warnings ofj. caution. i

The rising sun showed the whole popnlation up, and in, the country as far as - boom of cannon or ringing of bells could be heard there was great excitement among the boys, each eager to get his breakfast and be off for the village. The men and women came in later if it wasn’t a “good harvest day.” ! By 10 o’clock all the town was out, and so uranrf rom the country that the village contained 3,000 or 4,000 people. If the season had been very early “down on the sand barrens,” a few watermelons were for sale, but not often. Of home-made beer, ginger cakes, currant pies, striped candy and the like, the sale was wonderful —a .stand‘ 3 fflrdtir every big tree. In the village grocery the big cheese was cut and regular customers invited to taste it “Cuba six” cigars (six for 5 cents) were so plentiful that every boy .could have one. The men gave way to unwonted generosity, and whisky they had always with them —“20 cents a gallon, and that that’s good.” Shutting up the “groceries”— they not called “saloons” till near the war—would have provoked a riot.

- far a few l vigorous whacks, pitied the “subjects of foreign despotisms,” congratulated his fellow citizens on their glorious freedom, and generally wound up with a statement that “but for our noble forefathers, who on this day so many years age declared these colonies free and independent, we, fellow citizens, would have been the subject of a despotism, perhaps trodden into the mire of slavery and compelled to give one-third of all we possessed to the king and his soldiers."—Boston Post.