FOURTH OF JULY IN KERIM.

BY WILLIAM O. STODDARD.

"Now, you boys, what on airth are you a-doin' with that there ellum?"

"Is that you, Squire Garnsey?" responded a very youthful voice from the darkness, many feet above the pile of rubbish at the foot of the tree, and against which more was at that moment heaping. "Now, Squire, don't you think this dead wood has stood here long enough?"

"What are you a-doin' with it?"

"We're going to let all Kerim know Fourth of July's come, quick as it strikes twelve."

"That's it, is it? I declare! what a swarm of 'em there is, and how they do work! Never saw the like of it. It's a fact, though, that old dead ellum's been an eye-sore on the green these three year."

It was not far from the centre of the broad but somewhat ill-kept open space in the middle of the village of Kerim, and the fact of its deadness may have been due to its use as a hitching-post for country people coming to church on Sundays, and for the academy boys to try their knives on of week-days. It was about thirty feet high, but it had never borne any fruit. Elms rarely do, but there were boys enough in that one now.

"Squire Garnsey," piped another voice at his elbow, "they're a-greasin' the tree so's it'll burn good."

"I declare! And I kem out here on purpose to put a stop to bonfirin'. It'll make the tallest kind of a blaze, it will."

He was a tall man himself, and broad-shouldered, and grim-faced, but he was puzzled for once. What should he do? All the great men of Kerim had solemnly decided that there should be no Fourth of July that year; no fire-works; no bonfires; no parade; no cannonading; no anything. People with too much patriotism were free to go over to Plumville, three miles east, and join the goings on there; but Kerim was to be a quiet village all day.

The boys had not been taken into that council of great men. Not one of them had been permitted to utter his voice in it; but they all uttered as much voice as they had as soon as the tyrannical decision was made public. Even now another of the shadowy speakers in the dead elm-tree defiantly announced:

"Yes, sir. We've been a-gatherin' of grease and tar and things these three weeks. It's after 'leven o'clock, now. Just you wait and see."

"I declare! Here's another lot of 'em comin'. There's a heap of public spirit into our boys. My grandfather he fit at Bunker Hill. I say, boys?"

"No, we won't. It's pretty nigh greased now, and the branches are tied full of things. It'd be a shame not to fire it off."

"So it would—so it would. Washington was a great man. I say, boys, there's a half-bar'l of tar over in my wood shed, and it's more'n a quarter full. If you'd git it, and paste the trunk of that ellum with tar—"

"Hurrah for Squire Garnsey!" shouted a pretty deep voice near him. "That's the talk. We're going to have a celebration tomorrow, Squire. None of our boys are going over to help the Plumvillains have a good time."

"I like that. I'm for home industry myself."

Four boys and a wheelbarrow were already on a clean run toward the Squire's front gate, across the green; but just then the sharp piping note at his elbow broke out again with, "Yes, sir; and Mr. Mortis is going to give us a 'dress, and Bill Allen's going to read the Decoration of Inderpendence."

"Good!" again remarked the Squire. "I don't know exactly what to make of myself, and I don't know what folks'll say, and somehow I feel as ef I was beginnin' not to keer. Boys, it'll be Fourth of July in less 'n half an hour."

"We're 'most ready. We've kept still about it, Squire, but we've laid up stuff to burn, we have."

The pile at the foot of the old elm looked like it, and no one could guess how they had daubed the branches. That, too, was nothing to the way they daubed the trunk of it after the tar came.

"Look a-here! how are we to get down? We can't climb over all that tar."

"Stay up there," responded the deep tones of Mr. Mortis, the "speaker of the day" that was to be. "You'll look first-rate when you're lighted up."

"I declare!" exclaimed Squire Garnsey. "Boys, throw a rope around that lower limb. They'll have to come down sailor fashion."

So they did, and no less than seven boys, of different sizes, were compelled to make use of that rope. There was evidently a good deal of "public spirit" among the younger generation of the people of Kerim.

The older people, with the single exception of the broad-shouldered Squire, had gone to bed at a healthy hour that evening, well assured that for once no patriotic racket would disturb their open-windowed slumbers. A quieter village there was not in the whole United States until just before the town clock prepared for the duty of telling them it was midnight.

The clock got ready. So did the Kerim boys. Squire Garnsey remarked, "I'll walk away a little, boys, so's I can see it burn."

Then a dozen matches were scratched at the same moment, and as many wisps of tarred paper were lighted and put in positions to do the most good.

How they did flash up, and how the fire did run! It was well there were no boys in that tree.

Bang! bang! bang!

"If they haven't managed to git out three anvils!" remarked the Squire. "Hear them guns. Crackers, too. Tin horns. They're workin' a hoss-fiddle on the back fence. There never was sech a racket in this 'ere town before. No, nor sech a blaze either. It beats a house a-fire."

So it did, but there was no insurance on the old elm.

When the good and quiet people around that square, on all sides except the one where the meeting-house and the academy stood, sprang out of bed and rushed to their windows, you could have read print, if it were large enough, anywhere about the middle of the green. And every head out of every window had something special to say about "those boys."

Up shot the flame over the pile of boxes and barrels, and the heap of broken boards and fence rails; up the well-tarred trunk, with a fierce fizzing and spluttering, and then it sprang along the boughs, and mounted and mounted, until every head at the windows was compelled to remark, also, "What on earth's got hold of that there tree?—it burns as if it was rosin."

Fourth of July had come, and all Kerim knew it; but before breakfast-time it was equally well known that the boys were going to have a "celebration," with all the regular honors.

"Mr. Mortis?" said everybody; "why, he can't make a speech. Bill Allen? It ought to have been one of the trustees, or somebody."

Perhaps so; but the old folks had thrown the day away, and the boys had picked it up, and they worked at it like a swarm of bumble-bees.

By noon there was a big lumber wagon pulled out close to the spot where the elm-tree had been.

It was a curious fact, but there were numbers of other wagons pulled up near that one before two o'clock, and a good many of the Kerim people had unexpected visitors of country friends from beyond Kerim, who said "they'd a sight ruther stay and hear the home doin's than go on to Plumville."

There was public spirit in them, and the thing spread so fast that when two o'clock came, and Mr. Mortis climbed into the wagon, followed by Bill Allen, and as many more of the boys as could get in, every man in Kerim who thought himself at all eloquent envied them the very respectable audience gathered around the elm-tree ash heap and the "celebration."

Mr. Mortis was barely twenty, but he was studying law, and the boys had picked him out because, as Bill Allen said: "He's got more voice than a bull. What we want is noise."

They got it from Mr. Mortis, and the whole crowd got a big surprise with it, for the "'dress" was wonderfully good. Bill Allen, too, did his part well, and read the "Decoration of Inderpendence" as if it were something in which he took a personal interest. Old Squire Garnsey stepped right forward at the end of it to say,

"Bill Allen, you read that thing just prime."

"I didn't make it up, though."

"And, Mr. Mortis, I'm proud of you. All Kerim is. We'd no idee you could do it."

"I knew it was a good one," said Mr. Mortis, calmly. "It's one Governor Skyward made ten year ago. There wasn't any use of me trying to get up a better one, so I took his'n. Guess I made everybody on the green hear it."

That was precisely what he had done for the great speech of Governor Skyward, and it was more than anybody else had ever done for that crowd.

As for the boys, they had won the day. That is, they had kept it from the very minute it began—only there was no dead elm-tree left in the middle of the green.

"There'll be heaps of public spirit in Kerim after this," said Squire Garnsey to the other trustees; but they all shook their heads very solemnly, and made no reply.