ing Columbia as bees a honeysuckle he observed to Dr. Moses: "She may not be much of a teacher, but I think she'd be considerable of a wife!" and subsequent events proved that he meant what he said!

VI

HIS STAR

Now all was ready; the moment of fate was absolutely at hand; the fife and árum corps led the way and the States followed; but what actually happened Rebecca never knew; she lived through the hours in a waking dream. Every little detail was a facet of light that reflected sparkles, and among them all she was fairly dazzled. The brass band played inspiring strains; the mayor spoke eloquently on great themes; the people cheered; then the rope on which so much depended was put in the children's hands, they applied superhuman strength to their task, and the flag mounted, mounted, smoothly and slowly, and slowly unwound and stretched itself until its splendid size and beauty were revealed against the maples and pines and blue New England sky.

Then after cheers upon cheers and after a patriotic chorus by the church choirs, the State of Maine mounted the platform, vaguely conscious that she was to recite a poem, though for the life of her she could not remember a single word.

"Speak up loud and clear, Rebecky," whispered Uncle Sam in the front row, but she could scarcely hear her own voice when, tremblingly, she began her first line. After that she gathered strength and the poem "said itself." while the dream went on. She saw Adam Ladd leaning against a tree; Aunt Jane and Aunt Miranda palpitating with nervousness; Clara Belle Simpson gazing cross-eyed but adoring from a seat on the side; and in the far, far distance, on the very outskirts of the crowd, a tall man standing in a wagon-a tall, loose-jointed man with red upturned mustaches, and a gaunt white horse headed toward the Acreville road.

Loud applause greeted the State of Maine, the slender little white-clad figure standing on the mossy bowlder that had been used as the centre of the platform. The sun came up from behind a great maple and shone full on the star-spangled banner, making

it more dazzling than ever, so that its beauty drew all eyes upward.

Abner Simpson lifted his vagrant shifting gaze to its softly fluttering folds and its splendid massing of colors, thinking:

"I don' know's anybody 'd ought to steal a flag-the thunderin' idjuts seem to set such store by it, and what is it, anyway? Nothin' but a sheet o' buntin'!"

Nothing but a sheet of bunting? He looked curiously at the rapt faces of the mothers, their babies asleep in their arms; the parted lips and shining eyes of the whiteclad girls; at Cap'n Lord, who had been in Libby prison, and Nat Strout, who had left an arm at Bull Run; at the friendly, jostling crowd of citizens, happy, eager, absorbed, their throats ready to burst with cheers. Then the breeze swerved, and he heard Rebecca's clear voice saying:

"For it's your star, my star, all the stars together, 'That make our country's flag so proud To float in the bright fall weather."

"Talk about stars! She's got a couple of 'em right in her head," thought Simpson.

Spunky little

"If I ever seen a young one like that lyin' on anybody's doorstep I'd hook her quicker'n a wink (though I've got plenty to home, the Lord knows!). And I wouldn't swap her off neither. creeter, too; settin' up in the wagon lookin' 'bout's big as a pint o' cider, but keepin' right after the goods! . . I vow I'm 'bout sick o' my job! Never with the crowd, allers jest on the outside, 's if I wa'n't as good's they be! If it paid well, mebbe I wouldn't mind, but they're so thunderin' stingy round here, they don't leave anything decent out for you to take from 'em, yet you're reskin' your liberty 'n' reputation jest the same! Countin' the poor

pickin's 'n' the time I lose in jail I might most's well be done with it 'n' work out by the day, as the folks want me to; I'd make 'bout's much, 'n' I don' know's it would be any harder!"

He could see Rebecca stepping down from the platform, while his own red-headed little girl stood up on her bench, waving her hat. with one hand, her handkerchief with the other, and stamping with both feet.

Now a man sitting beside the mayor rose from his chair and Abner heard him call: "Three cheers for the women who made the flag!"

"Hip, hip, hurrah!”

"Three cheers for the girl that saved the flag from the hands of the enemy!"

"Hip, hip, hurrah! Hip, hip, hurrah!" It was the Edgewood minister, whose full, vibrant voice was of the sort to move a crowd. His words rang out into the clear air and were carried from lip to lip. Hands clapped, feet stamped, hats swung, while the loud huzzahs might almost have wakened the echoes on old Mount Ossipee.

The tall, loose-jointed man sat down in the wagon suddenly and took up the reins. "They're gettin' a little mite personal and I guess it's 'bout time for you to be goin', Simpson!"

The tone was jocular, but the red mustaches drooped and the half-hearted cut he gave to start the white mare on her homeward journey showed that he was not in his usual devil-may-care mood.

"Durn his skin!" he burst out in a vindictive undertone, as the mare swung into her long gait. "It's a lie! I thought 'twas somebody's wash! I hain't an enemy!"

While the crowd at the raising dispersed in happy family groups to their picnics in the woods; while the goddess of liberty, Uncle Sam, Columbia, and the proud States lunched grandly in the Grange hall with distinguished guests and scarred veterans of two wars, the lonely man drove, and drove,

his wardrobe or stock of swapping material. At dusk he reached a miserable tumbledown house on the edge of a pond.

The faithful wife with the sad mouth and the habitual look of anxiety in her faded eyes came to the door at the sound of wheels and went doggedly to the horse-shed to help him unharness.

"You didn't expect to see me back right away, did ye?" he asked satirically; "leastwise not with this same hoss? Well, I'm here! You needn't be scairt to look under the wagon-seat, there hain't nothin' there, not even my supper, so I hope you're suited for once! No, I guess I hain't goin' to be an angel right away, neither. There wa'n't nothin' but flags layin' roun' loose down Riverboro way, 'n' whatever they say, I hain't sech a hound as to steal a flag!"

It was natural that young Riverboro should have red, white and blue dreams on the night after the new flag was raised. A stranger thing, perhaps, is the fact that Abner Simpson should lie down on his hard bed with the flutter of bunting before his eyes, and a whirl of unaccustomed words in his mind. "For it's your star, my star, all our stars together."

"I'm sick of goin' it alone," he thought; "I guess I'll try the other road for a spell;" and with that he fell asleep.

By Edwin

FROM the Past and Unavailing
Out of cloudland we are steering;
After groping, after fearing,
Into starlight we come trailing,
And we find the stars are true.
Still, O comrade, what of you?
You are gone, but we are sailing,
And the old ways are all new.

For the Lost and Unreturning
We have drifted, we have waited;
Uncommanded and unrated,

We have tossed and wandered, yearning
For a charm that comes no more
From the old lights by the shore;
We have shamed ourselves in learning
What you knew so long before.

FF Oyster Bay on the 3d of September last more than one-third of our naval force was reviewed by the President. A most impressive assembly of men-o'-war it was, in tonnage and weight of metal the greatest ever floated by the waters of the western hemisphere.

The last of the fleet had arrived on the night before. From the bluffs along the shore they might have been seen approaching with a mysterious play of lights across the shadowy waters. In the morning they were all there. Hardly a type was lacking -the last 16,000-ton double-turreted battle-ship, the protected and heavy-armored cruisers, monitors, despatch boats, gunboats, destroyers, attendant transport and supply ships. Fifty ships, 1,200 guns, 16,ooo men: all were there, even to the fascinating little submarines with their round black backs just showing above the water. It was that chromatic sort of a morning when the canvas of the sailing-boats stands out startlingly white against the drizzly sky and the smoke from the stacks of the steamers takes on an accented coal-black, and, drooping, trails low in a murky wake. Rather a dull setting at this early hour; but not sufficiently dull to check the vivacity of the actors in the scene.

The usual types of attendants at marine functions were there: the palatial yacht of the notable millionaire-railroad, oil, or whatever it was-large enough, some of them, for even the chronic landsmen to circumnavigate the globe in comfort, and fast enough to serve as scouts in the service should war break out. Famous sailing craft were there, too; notably the recordholder of the ocean passage, probably the

fastest schooner afloat; and long, low, not rakish-they don't rake their masts nowadays, slant them forward rather-but properly devilish and heavy-sparred she looked; and painted black she was aiso. But the expensive yachts of note have become rather conventional appendages nowadays. To vary the monotony, there were also here the inland water craft--the local dinghees of the unpainted clay-marked sides and the much-patched sail, wherewith the barefooted boy ferries himself over the flats to the good fishing pockets where lurk the hesitating cunners on sunny mornings. The boy himself was there with the two broken oars and the necessary tin bailer, without which he would probably sink at his moorings. Because it is a momentous occasion he is wearing shoes to-day; but on any other day you could have seen the rich, black, juicy mud squidging up between his crusted toes.

Also there came bowling down the line that fine archaic model, the good old wallsided, round-bowed, and plumb-sterned creation, the safe and sane vehicle of the rotund corps which furnished so many commodores for our yacht clubs a generation ago. Descended to plebeian uses now is the able galliot, owned, doubtless, by some shore-abiding party, one who has use for her only on Sundays or feast days like this, who probably gives clam-chowder parties in the cuddy and has to take his family along. At least the family are on this one now, the boy looming up in the bow like any commodore and the perspiring full-dressed ladies, not yet quite at home on the vasty deep, clinging with grim fingers to the top of the house and not for an instant losing sight of the main boom. Of one thing rest assured: in case that long

pole slats across the floor again they don't intend to be caught unawares and have their bonnets swept into the ocean.

The excursion craft of to-day are of a greater latitude in design and size than even a cup-race day could show. Whether it is that a voyage to Sandy Hook demands a certain measure of seaworthiness and tonnage in the medium of conveyance, or whether it is that the navy in action appeals to a larger democracy than anything yet engineered by the small group who for so long have had the cup-race in charge, or whether it is that these are the sheltered waters of Long Island Sound, or whether it is something of all, certain it is that almost anything that can be sculled a mile off-shore and for a few hours thereafter nursed to stay afloat, finds this day a ready charter.

At any rate, whatever their rig or rating -cat, sloop, yawl, schooner, and the nondescript-they jibe and wear, shiver and fill, haul to and swing off, shoot and scoot with irrepressible zest over the debatable ground. To every helm is a master mariner, caring little on whom he proves his seamanship. They worry the souls of the men on picket duty, making as if to break into the sacred reservation, but always sheering off precipitately when the navy chaps, growing impatient, stand up on the thwarts and really order them off. After all, there is real authority behind the men-o'-war's men. Get them really mad and there is no telling -they might pick a fellow up, take him aboard some cruiser and maybe throw him into the brig.

The President comes up the side of the Mayflower and, arrived at the head of the gangway, stands rigid as any stanchion to attention while his colors are shot to the truck and the scarlet-coated band plays the national hymn. Then, ascending to the bridge, he takes station by the starboard rail with Secretary Bonaparte at his shoulder. The clouds roll away, the sun comes out, and all is as it should be while he prepares to review the fleet, which thereafter responds aboundingly to every burst of his own inexhaustible enthusiasm.

And this fleet, which is lying to anchor in three lines of four miles or so each in length, with a respectful margin of clear water all about, is, viewed merely as a marine pageant, magnificent; as a display of potential

fighting power, most convincing. No man might look on it and his sensibilities-admiration, patriotism, respect, whatever they might be remain unstirred. To witness it is to pass in mental review the great fleets of other days and inevitably to draw conclusions. Beside this armament the ilì-destined Armada, Von Tromp's stubborn squadrons, Nelson's walls of oak, or Farragut's steam and sail would dissolve like the glucose squadrons that boys buy at Christmas time. Even Dewey's workmanlike batteries (this to mark the onward rush of naval science) would be rated obsolete beside the latest of these!

It was first those impressive battle-ships; and bearing down on them one better saw what terrible war-engines they are. Of a gleaming white below they are, and unpleasing yellow-brown above but above and below every evidence of power. Big guns pointing forward, big guns pointing astern, long-reaching guns abeam, and little business-looking machine guns in the tops

their mere appearance suggests their ponderous might. A single broadside from any of these, properly placed, and there would be an end to the most renowned flagships of wooden-fleet days. And that this frightful power need never wait on wind or tide, nor be hindered in execution by any weather much short of a hurricane, is assured when we note that to-day, while the largest of the excursion steamers are heaving to the little whitecaps, these are lying as immovable almost as sea-walls.

It is, first, the flag-ship Maine, which thunders out her greeting-one, two, three

twenty-one smoke-wreathed guns-while her sailormen, arm to shoulder, mark in unwavering blue the lines of deck and superstructure. Meantime the officers on the bridge, admiral in the foreground, are standing in salute; and in the intervals of gun-fire there are crashing out over the waters again the strains of the "Star Spangled Banner." And the Maine left astern, the guns of the next in line boom out, and on her also the band plays and men and officers stand to attention; and so the next, and next. And the battle-ships passed, come the armored cruisers, which some think will be most useful of all. They ride the waters almost as ponderously as the battle-ships and are hardly less powerful, but much faster on the trail; and they may run

The fascinating little submarines with their black backs just showing above the water. - Page 659.

From a photograph, copyright 1900, by N. 1. Penfield.