I acknowledged the receipt by falling off the front step and barking my shoulder.
You should always remember, John, that the Fourth is the day when your patriotic voice should climb out of your thorax and make the welkin ring, but it isn"t really necessary to get up a row between a stick of dynamite and a keg of giant powder to prove that you love the cause of liberty.
You will find that some of our best citizens--men who love liberty with an everlasting love--are hiding in the cellar with both hands over their ears from July 3d to July 5th.
We had a nice quiet time at home on the Fourth, John, with the exception that your second cousin, Randolph, tried to explode a toy cannon and removed the apex of his thumb and about half of the dining-room window.
It may be necessary to celebrate the birth of freedom by bursting forth into noise, but my idea, John, is that Old Glory would like it much better if we were more subdued and kept our children on the earth instead of letting them go up in the air in small fragments.
We had a very quiet time at home, John, on the Fourth with the exception of your distant relative, Uncle Joseph Carberry. Uncle Joe annexed about six mint juleps and then went to sleep on the front porch with five packs of firecrackers in his coat pocket.
Full of the spirt [Transcriber"s note: spirit?] of liberty, your interesting cousin, Randolph, set fire to your Uncle"s pocket, and when last seen your Uncle Joe was rushing over hill and dale in the general direction of Hartford, Connecticut, with the firecrackers cheering him on.
[Ill.u.s.tration: With the firecrackers cheering him on.]
Liberty, John, is the only real thing in this world for a nation, but just why the glorious cause of freedom should be slapped in the face with an imitation of the bombardment of Port Arthur is something which I must have misconstrued.
We had a very quiet time here at home on the Fourth, John, with the exception that another interesting cousin of yours, my young namesake, Peter Grant, tied a giant firecracker to the cat"s tail, and the cat went to the kitchen to have her explosion.
It took two hours and seven neighbors to get your good old Aunt Maggie out of the refrigerator, which was the place selected for her by the catastrophe.
The stove lost all the supper it contained; little Peter Grant lost two eyebrows and his Buster Brown hair; the cat lost seven of its lives, and the glorious cause of Freedom got a send-off that could be heard nineteen miles.
We all missed you, John, but maybe it is better you were not at home on the Fourth, because the doctor is occupying your room so that he could be near the wounded--otherwise, we are all well.
I think, John, that when Freedom was first invented by George Washington the idea was to make it something quiet and modest which he could keep about the house and which he could look at once in a while without getting nervous prostration.
But George forgot to leave full instructions, and nowadays when the Birthday of Freedom rolls around the impulsive American public wakes up at daylight, shoves up the window and begins to hurl torpedoes at the house next door, because a noise in the air is worth two noises on the quiet.
We had a very quiet Fourth at home, John, with the exception of your second cousin, Hector, who patriotically attached himself to a hot-air balloon, and when last seen was hovering over Erie, Pa., and making signs to his parents not to wait supper for him.
Most of our neighbors for miles in every direction have sons and daughters missing, but what could they expect when a child will try to put a pound of powder in four inches of gas pipe and then light the result with a match.
The Fourth is a great idea, but I think this is carrying it too far, as the little boy said when he went over the top of the house on the handle of a sky-rocket.
We had a very quiet time at home on the Fourth, John, with the exception of our parlor which took fire when your enthusiastic cousin, Randolph, tried to make some j.a.panese lanterns by setting fire to the lace curtains.
The firemen put out the fire and most of our furniture.
Your cousin was also much put out when I spanked him.
We hope to recover from the excitement before the next Fourth, but your Aunt hopes that somebody will soon invent a new style of noise, which will not be so full of concussion.
Yours with love, UNCLE PETER.
CHAPTER IV
JOHN HENRY ON MOSQUITOES
When Peaches and I were married we were sentenced to live in one of those 8x9 Harlem people-coops, where they have running gas on every floor and hot and cold landlords and self-folding doors, and janitors with folding arms, and all that sort of thing.
Immense!
When we moved into the half-portion dwelling house last spring I said to the janitor, "Have you any mosquitoes in the summer?"
The janitor was so insulted he didn"t feel like taking a drink for ten minutes.
"Mosquitoes!" he shouted; "such birds of prey were never known in these apartments. We have piano beaters and gas meters, but never such criminals as mosquitoes."
With these kind words I was satisfied.
For weeks I bragged about my Harlem flat for which no mosquito could carry a latch-key.
The janitor said so, and his word was law.
I looked forward to a summer without pennyroyal on the mantelpiece or witch hazel on the shin bone, and was content.
But one night in the early summer I got all that was coming to me and I got it good.
In the middle of the night I thought I heard voices in the room and I sat up in bed.
"I wonder if it"s second-story men," I whispered to myself, because my wife was away at the seash.o.r.e.
She had gone off to the shimmering sands and left me chained to the post of duty, and I tell you, boys, it"s an awful thing when your wife quits you that way and you have to drag the post of duty all over town in order to find a cool place.
Wives may rush away to the summer resorts where all is gayety, and where every guess they make at the bill of fare means a set-back in the bank account; but the husbands must labor on through the scorching days and in the evenings climb the weary steps to the roof gardens.
"Ping-ding-a-zing-a-boom!" exclaimed the voices on the other side of the bed.
"If they are after my diamonds," I moaned, "they will lose money," and then I reached under the pillow for the revolver I never owned.
"Ping-ding-a-zing-a-boom!" went the conversation on the other side of the bed.
"There is something doing here," I remarked to myself, while I wished for daylight with both hands.
"Ping-ding-a-zing-a-boom!" went the conversation on the other side of the bed.
"Who is it?" I whispered, waiting for a reply, but hoping no one would answer me.
"Ping-ding-a-zing-a-boom!" said the same mysterious voices.
Then suddenly it struck me--the janitor was a liar.
Those voices in the night emanated from a convention of mosquitoes.
In that nerve-destroying moment I recollected my parting admonition to my wife when she went away, "Darling, remember, money is not everything in this world and don"t write home to me for any more. And remember, also, that when the Jersey mosquito makes you forget the politeness due to your host, flash your return ticket in his face and rush hither to your happy little home in Harlem, where the mosquito never warbles and stingeth not like a serpent, are you hep?"