Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 85, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 June 1907 — "Hurrah for !" [ARTICLE]

"Hurrah for !"

lie wan an old, old man. Hin hair wan white as snow, bin tyu*k was bent, and he was almost blind and deaf. When the morning of Fourth of July came they noticed a look of longing on his face, and they placed him in his invalid chair and wheeled him out on his rernnda. He nodded and a smile came to his wrinkled face. He oould scarcely see the moving throng or bear the popping around him, but he hM here. « bey wsee and be knew

how things were going. He knew that flags were flying all around him, and that here and there drums were beating and some old veteran had brought qut his fife and was. showing yeunger generation how marching was done In his day. Then the old man’s thoughts went back a hundred years and more—to the stamp act —to throwing the tea overboard —to the scores of acts that drove the American colonies into rebellion. Ills father was at Bunker Hill, and Saratoga and Yorktown, and as a boy he had listened to many stories of war. He had beard how the patriots starved and suffered at Valley Forge—he had heard and read of the treason at West Point —he had been told of Cowpens, King’s Mountain and Lundy’s Lane. - It seemed to that old man as he sat there that he could hear the ringing of the Bell of Liberty after the names had been signed to the Declaration of Independence. There was the popping of the farmers’ rifles at Lexington—there was the roar of the musketry at Bunker Hill. Ills face lighted up, his dim eyes opened; and those who watched him whispered to each other: “No man is ever too old to love liberty." Then the old man remembered his own battles in Mexico and in the sunny South —how he marched with Scott and Taylor .—hoW he-fought under the banners of Grant and Sheridan, and all at once he lifted up a palsied arm, and from his wrinkled throat there came the cheer: “Hurrah! Hurrah for !’’ That was all. He fell back, and when they went over to him they found him dead. It was bis last Fourth of July.