the battle-fields of our fathers, let us resolve, come weal or woe, we will, in life and in death, now and forever, stand by the stars and stripes. They have been unfurled from the snows of Canada to the plains of New Orleans, in the halls of the Montezumas, and amid the solitude of every sea; and everywhere, as the luminous symbol of resistless and beneficent power, they have led the brave to victory and to glory. They have floated over our cradles; let it be our prayer and our struggle that they shall float over our graves.

-Henry Ward Beecher

Words: effulgent-shining; emblazonry-decoration of a shield or banner; momentous-highly important; despondency-disheartenment; luminous-bright, shining; beneficent-wholesome, helpful.

Questions: When was our flag unfurled among "the snows of Canada"? "the plains of New Orleans"? "in the halls of the Montezumas"? Do you think the flag would carry a more definite meaning and message to you if it floated above the school building on certain days only, on anniversaries of great events in American history?

WHO PATRIOTS ARE1

HO are the patriots in America? No doubt many

WHO would answer at once, "The patriots are the men who

fight for their country; the men who stood with Warren on Bunker Hill, and with Sumter and Marion and Morgan in the Carolinas; the men who made Cornwallis surrender at Yorktown; the sailors who fought alongside of Paul Jones; the sailors on the good ship Constitution; the soldiers who followed Grant to Richmond; the men in Farragut's fleet; the men who rode with Custer on the plains of the far West, Dewey and his men at Manila, Roosevelt and Hobson at Santiago,-all these were patriots."

'From Charles F. Dole's The Young Citizen. Copyrighted by D. C. Heath & Company.

There is something wrong in thinking that patriots must be soldiers and sailors. What shall we say of the women who do not fight? What shall we call Martha Washington, who had to stay at home while her husband was at Valley Forge? What shall we call the thousands of women who sent their brothers and sons to help Washington and Grant? Were not these women as good patriots as their husbands and brothers? Indeed the women often had the hardest time. They had to carry on the farms, while the men were away; they suffered from anxiety and loneliness. For many a brave woman it would have been easier to die herself than to send her boy away to die with wounds or with fever. We must surely call all brave women patriots who love their country well enough to let their husbands and sons go to war for the sake of the flag.

We must not forget a multitude of men who, even in the War of the Revolution and in the great Civil War, were never soldiers or sailors, and yet were patriots. There was Benjamin Franklin, for instance. He did not fight, but who loved America better than he? If it had not been for his services at the French king's court, no one knows how many weary years the War of Independence might have lasted.

There was Samuel Adams; who ever heard of his fighting a battle? But he was as brave and sturdy a patriot as any soldier could be. There was Washington's friend, Robert Morris of Philadelphia, who helped get money to pay the soldiers.

To be a patriot is to love one's country; it is to be ready and willing, if need comes, to die for the country, as a good seaman would die to save his ship and his crew.

Yes! To love our country, to work so as to make it strong and rich, to support its government, to obey its laws, to pay fair taxes into the treasury, to treat our fellow-citizens as we like to be treated ourselves, this is to be good American patriots

-Charles F. Dole

AN ORDER FOR A PICTURE

(No matter how old we become, nor how far we may travel, there is always a tender feeling in our hearts for the home of our childhood. This helps explain why this poem is such a favorite with a great many men and women, as well as with children. It was written by Alice Cary, an American author.)

GOOD painter, tell me true,

Has your hand the cunning to draw Shapes of things that you never saw? Ay? Well, here is an order for you.

Woods and cornfields a little brown,

The picture must not be overbright,Yet all in the golden and gracious light Of a cloud when the summer sun is down.

Alway and alway, night and morn,
Woods upon woods, with fields of corn

Lying between them, not quite sere,
And not in the full, thick, leafy bloom,
When the wind can hardly find breathing room
Under their tassels,-cattle near,

Biting shorter the short green grass,
And a hedge of sumac and sassafras,
With bluebirds twittering all around,-

(Ah, good painter, you can't paint sound!)—

These and the little house where I was born,
Low and little and black and old.

With children, many as it can hold,
All at the windows, open wide,-
Heads and shoulders clear outside,

And fair young faces all ablush;

Perhaps you may have seen, some day,
Roses crowding the self-same way,
Out of a wilding, wayside bush.

Listen closer. When you have done

With woods and cornfields and grazing herds, A lady, the loveliest ever the sun

Looked down upon, you must paint for me;
Oh, if I only could make you see

The clear blue eyes, the tender smile,
The sovereign sweetness, the gentle grace,
The woman's soul, and the angel's face

That are beaming on me all the while!
I need not speak these foolish words;
Yet one word tells you all I would say,-
She is my mother: you will agree
That all the rest may be thrown away.

Two little urchins at her knee

You must paint, sir; one like me,-
The other with a clearer brow,
And the light of his adventurous eyes
Flashing with boldest enterprise:

At ten years old he went to sea,-
God knoweth if he be living now,—
He sailed in the good ship Commodore;
Nobody ever crossed her track

To bring us news, and she never came back.

Ah, 'tis twenty long years and more,
Since that old ship went out of the bay
With my great-hearted brother on her deck:
I watched him till he shrank to a speck,
And his face was toward me all the way.
Bright his hair was, a golden brown,

The time we stood at our mother's knee;
That beauteous head, if it did go down,
Carried sunshine into the sea!

Out in the fields one summer night

We were together, half afraid

Of the corn-leaves' rustling, and of the shade
Of the high hills, stretching so still and far,-
Loitering till after the low little light
Of the candle shone through the open door,
And, over the haystack's pointed top,
All of a tremble, and ready to drop

The first half-hour, the great yellow star,
That we, with staring, ignorant eyes,
Had often and often watched to see

Propped and held in its place in the skies
By the fork of a tall red mulberry-tree,
Which close in the edge of our flax field grew,-
Dead at the top,-just one branch full

Of leaves, notched round, and lined with wool, From which it tenderly shook the dew

Over our heads when we came to play

In its handbreadth of shadow day after day.

Afraid to go home, sir; for one of us bore
A nest full of speckled and thin-shelled eggs,-
The other, a bird, held fast by the legs,

Not so big as a straw of wheat:

The berries we gave her she wouldn't eat,
But cried and cried, till we held her bill,

So slim and shining, to keep her still.

At last we stood at our mother's knee.
Do you think, sir, if you try,

You can paint the look of a lie?

If you can, pray have the grace

To put it solely in the face Of the urchin that is likest me;

I think 'twas solely mine, indeed: