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 her friend 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 whose head was
turned toward the Acreville road.
Loud applause greeted the State of Maine, the slender littl
white-clad figure standing on the mossy boulder 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't 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 white-clad 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 farmers,
happy, eager, absorbed, their throats ready to burst with cheers.
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