Old Fashioned Fourth of July Celebrations Gazette July 2004

We are indebted to the “Popular Educator” for valuable suggestions regarding this Flag Drill.

Music, a march in 4-4 time.

Sound of marching feet; enter Captain dressed in red, white and blue, and wearing a plume of same colors on head; an army of twelve boys or girls follo—if girls, two couples may wear dresses of red, two couples of white, and two of blue; if boys they may wear trimmings of the same colors.

Flags furled are held with both hands so as to cross the body from the left shoulder to the right side, right hand at the waist grasping flag; left hand a little above right. Captain takes place at one side of front of stage, side to audience. Army marches once across front of stage, once across side of stage, once across back of stage.

Captain.—Halt! (one measure of music—four counts).

Right About Face.—Army turns so as to face audience (four counts).

Present.—Flags held as described above and moved outward from body as far as possible without removing either hand (four counts).

Ground.—Staffs touch floor.

Unfurl.—Banners are unwound from staff (four counts).

Raise.—Flags held high with right hand (four counts).

Lower.—Flags held straight out with both hands from body, in front and on a line with the shoulders (four counts).

Shoulder.—Bottom of staff on left shoulder, flags upright (four counts).

Lower.—Lower as before (four counts).

Carry.—Flags are placed in the position they were brought in.

Advance.—Advance to front of stage keeping line unbroken (twelve counts).

Charge.—Advance right foot with a stamp and thrust flags forward, with both hands, in a straight line (four counts).

Retreat.—Fall back a few paces (four counts).

Advance.—Step forward (four counts).

Cowardice.—Turn a little to one side as though ready to run away, flags held so that the colors are out of sight behind the body (eight counts).

Courage.—Heads upright, right foot slightly advanced, flags held in front with both hands and slightly advanced (eight counts).

Determination.—Bring the right foot and end of staff smartly to the floor (eight counts).

Defense.—Flags held with both hands and so as to form a straight line from left to right; they should be held high enough to convey the idea of warding off a blow (eight counts).

Supplication.—Sink to partially kneeling posture, look up, flag held vertically by both hands (twelve counts).

Anger.—Stand upright, strike air in front with flags.

War.—Alternately wave flags in air and charge as before four time (sixteen counts).

Suspense.—Flags held as at first, body bent slightly forward, rather high and with both hands, eyes raised, body in partially kneeling posture (count sixteen).

Carry.—Flags as at first.

Right About Face. March.

Colonel Mavers On Life Everchanging

It is chequered with trouble, joy, pleasure and sorrow!
But what happens to-day may not happen to-morrow.

My Hearers: when I take a bird's-eye view of the natural world, I find it to be an emblematical picture of human life. It has its ups and downs; hills and valleys; desolate places and blooming gardens; barren deserts and teeming fields; smooth flowing rivers and dashing cataracts; calm, silvery lakes and wild, stormy oceans. The scenes of life are equally as changing as the scenery represented by a journey from the Green Mountains of the north to the low savannas of the south. In traveling through this world (which is but the narrow hall-way to one worth talking about) you mustn't suppose that you keep going round and round, like the fingers of a clock, or an old blind cider-mill horse, and that every morning you meet is the same morning that you met months and years ago. No—you are taking a bee-line from time to eternity; and what you have once passed you will never pass again. Every day brings new objects to your visions—new hopes to your hearts—fresh fears to your doubts, and either puts something in your pockets or takes a penny out of them.

My dear friends: you are constantly changing. Your fancies form as many different figures as those produced by the kaleidoscope; and joy and sadness alternate with you like sunshine and shadow in the month of April. One moment you sit singing in your hearts as merrily as a cricket in the chimney corner, and the next go drooping about like a sick gosling. Your joys are like the golden hues of morning—the brightest when blackest the background; and the more brilliant is the rainbow of hope, the darker is the bosom of the cloud upon which it is painted. But these pass away like a pleasant dream; and then care, trouble and sorrow come to serve THEIR time. There is no certainty belonging to the future; and as for relying upon the pie-crust promises of hope, you might as well place trust in the lunar gentleman for a snug berth after death. The world wriggles about so much, it is impossible to tell what you may catch when you make a grab. You grasp at butterflies and prick your fingers with thistles; and then there is so much deception and disappointment hidden under the skirts of anticipation. Like foolish boys, you dive to the bottom of muddy creeks for a tempting penny and come up with nothing but a handful of mud. You tear your trowsers in climbing the tree of ambition for the golden eggs in the nest of fame; but when you have climbed about half-way, you come to the conclusion that you can't get at them—and down you come, perchance with much greater velocity than you ascended.

My dear friends: there is no telling what is to happen pretty quick, by and by, and a hundred years hence. This winter you may be a member of congress, indulging in the enjoyment of eight dollars a day and the people's respects; but the next year may find you a mere mud-snipe, getting your living by suction, and always troubled with a long bill before your face. Time turns more out of office and place, and effects more changes than any emperor, king, or president, is capable of doing. He brings down the rich and the proud, and exalts the poor and the humble—builds up cities in the wilderness; and, with a single sweep of his powerful wing, he brushes more moths into the lap of eternity than you can find flies about a molasses-cup in midsummer.

My hearers: our to-morrows are liable to be quiet different from our to-days. We have no knowledge of what is to occur: what is to come, MUST come, and no man has the power to prevent it. Although you are to-day reveling in riches, and feel yourself secure against the assaults of adversity, you may find yourselves to-morrow as weak and unprotected for the want of the ‘pecuniary' as a rag-picker on the wrong side of Broadway. If, on the other hand, you are not supplied for the present with scarcely pennies enough to procure porridge, you mustn't despair; for Time works wondrous changes. Pushing perseverance, unceasing industry, and a good turn of the wheel of fortune, will enable you to rise higher than even your most ardent hopes ever thought of ascending. Bow in meek submission to the mandates of Him who rules the destinies of man, and you will be happy through life, whether arrayed in the splendid garb of a prince, or clad in the plain home spun apparel of the peasant. So mote it be!

[Originally published in Dow's Short Patent Sermons]

Godey's Lady's Book, July 1850

We rarely have allowed ourselves to take exception to prevailing fashions; but there is one subject to which we feel in duty bound to allude. This is the prevalent style of great display in dress at the table d'hote of a crowded watering place, where half the people are strangers, and openly remark upon the taste which one displays—nay, worse, you are thus subjected to the impertinence of penny-a-liners, who will, perhaps, relieve the tameness of their next letter by a description of the toilets to the minutest detail.

We know there are some to whom a notoriety like the last would be a source of self-gratification rather than annoyance; but there are a few of our countrywomen, we trust, whose ambition is so limited as to find gratification in seeing the color of her dinner-dresses reported in the Morning Herald, or to make a boast of having appeared in a different one at every meal.

Ostensibly a party goes to the Springs, or to the seashore, to regain wasted strength, to be the companions of an invalid friend, or, at least, to rest from the exhaustion of a round of winter enjoyments. But let us see if any of these things are so. Nowadays, the life of a fashionable woman seems divided into two seasons. The winter of gayety, when three parties on the same evening can be attended, if occasion require. The day is filled by seeing, in demi-toilet, those you have met the evening before, and expect to meet on the morrow, with the same empty, vapid nothings of conversation. Or perhaps a consultation with a milliner fills up an unoccupied hour; for new dresses must be had to support the “wear and tear” of society, at whatever cost of time or expense of purse.

A pause of spring follows; and while the earth is putting on its freshest garb to invite them to the country, they linger “at home—yet not at home,” in preparation for the summer jaunt. Then, when the sunshine falls the fiercest, and the quiet of home would seem more desirable than ever, July and August must be consumed in hurrying from one place to another, heated in crowded steamboat cabins, or parched in the dust of a rapid railroad car, until the final destination is arrived at; and the winter's round is repeated, with the exception that there are now several hundred indifferent spectators to the farce that was then enacted in your own private circle.

There must be morning-dresses, too fine for actual use, and that require hours to complete them in their minutest detail. Dinner-dresses, where the absence of all drapery that can be decently, and sometimes immodestly, dispensed with, seems to be the chief aim. Evening-dresses, still more Parisian in their scantiness, and all this, as we have said before, in the face of a crowd, who feel at perfect liberty to remark upon every word you utter, every ribbon you may wear. And, besides, where is the personal comfort of such a display? You rise unrefreshed from the dance of the night before, and long for the freedom of a comfortable robe de camber . But no, curl papers must be released, the showy dress be donned, and you enter the breakfast-room too languid perhaps to raise the cup you have called for to your lips. Then, after a morning of violent exertion, riding, driving, boating, bathing, or bowling, in the warmest part of the day, it is necessary to change the whole dress (if you would be thought somebody by the crowd) for one as uncomfortable as stiff laces and tight corsages can make it, and steam over the soup, or faint in the odor of the roasts, with your hair in Jenny Lind bandeaux, and your feet in excruciating French slippers.

The evening dress is usually the most seasonable of all. It is light enough, it is thin enough, it is scant enough for the hottest day of the season; but then the wind may chance to blow up freshly when you are heated with dancing, or pursue a flirtation by moonlight on the piazza. Oh, a watering-place of all others, if this be the atmosphere of society, to promote health, ease, and comfort!

But is it not possible to change this “pursuit of pleasure under difficulties?” to make our summer resorts what they should be, places for social enjoyment and freedom from the thralls of the “absurd self-annoyances of fashion,” as some one has it? It seems to us, if some of our noble-minded ladies would attempt this, many could be found weary enough of the heartless incongruities of the past to join them in the reform. How many could then afford to seek health and relaxation at the Springs, from which they are now debarred by the necessity of doing as others do, while their limited purses will scarcely defray the expenses properly incident to the journey, and how much more of real satisfaction would be felt by all parties!

We should see no more of brocade breakfast-dresses, or of ladies sitting next to entire strangers, with dresses so low and sleeves so short that their own brothers blush for them, through the tediousness of three courses and a dessert. There would be fewer French bonnets worn upon the beach, and our pretty ladies would find themselves a thousand times more interesting in plain, close straws, protecting the face from the glare of a midday sun.

Now, in the height of the bathing season, we hope our strictures may not come amiss, and, trusting that a word to the wise is sufficient, leave them for the consideration of our fair readers.

The United States is the only country with a known birthday. All the rest began, they know not when, and grew into power, they know not how. If there had been no Independence Day, England and America combined would not be so great as each actually is. There is no “Republican,” no “Democrat,” on the Fourth of July—all are Americans. All feel that their country is greater than party. –James G. Blaine.

Let it not be forgotten that patriotism is one of the positive lessons to be taught in every home. Everything learned should be flavored with a genuine love of country. Every glorious fact in the nation's history should be emphasized. Every person should feel that he is entitled to a share, not only in the blessings conferred by his government, but also in the rich memories and glorious achievements of this country.—Richard Edwards.

Directions for the decoration of a dining-room on the Fourth of July are almost superfluous. Only flags, banners, bunting and flowers, representing the colors of the country are required to make it delightfully attractive.

Three eggs well beaten, with one cupful of sugar, one teaspoonful of cream of tartar added to one cup of sweet milk; mix all together, then stir in enough flour to make a thin batter and add one-half of a teaspoonful of soda dissolved in a little hot water and also a pinch of salt. Stir briskly and put in a buttered pan and bake in a quick oven. Nice served hot for supper.

Ed. Note: I think that “sweet milk” may just refer to fresh whole milk, as opposed to buttermilk. A “quick oven” is 375 - 400 degrees F.

For the sides, cut two pieces of white silk, and two of blue satin, measuring two and a half inches wide, and four inches long; sew each piece of blue to the white, and cover the satin with white net, and embroider it with gold thread, as shown in design; a small oval cushion, covered with satin, is sewn to the centre by the silk; fasten both leaves together, and pass a small stick, covered with gold paper, between the silk and satin, at both edges, and in the centre; the leaves inside the case are white cashmere, pinked at the edges; the handle is fine blue silk braid.

Chit-Chat

The following poem and flag drill were published in The Young American Annual , 1891

The Young American Flag Drill

Colonel Mavers On Life Everchanging