was to have much the same powers as our Congress of
to-day; but there must be a place in the scheme for the King, of
course; so Franklin proposed that the King should appoint a president
who should have the right to veto the acts of the Grand Council. This
was the "Albany Plan." Franklin was much in earnest about the matter,
and had a cut made for the _Pennsylvania Gazette_ picturing a rather
unpleasant device, a snake sliced uncomfortably into ten parts, the
head marked "NE," for New England, and each of the other pieces with
the initials of some one of the other nine colonies. With the motto,
"Unite or die," this work of art appeared for a number of issues at
the head of the _Gazette_; but many years passed before the colonies
began to make any practical use of the wisdom of Franklin in 1754.

CHAPTER IV

THE LAND OF MANY FLAGS

When Paul Revere galloped through the villages of Middlesex, calling
"for the country folk to be up and to arm," there was not much spare
time for collecting flags, and probably when

"The farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard wall,"--

they did not trouble themselves to flourish a flag before they shot.
Yet, if we may trust a family tradition, at least one flag waved over
the plucky farmers. It seems that for a long while one member or another
of the Page family of Bedford had been accustomed to carrying the colors
of the militia, and therefore when the alarm was given and Nathaniel
Page started for Concord, it was as natural for him to seize his flag as
his gun. Moreover, this story has the bunting to back it up, for the
Bedford flag remained in the Page family until presented to the town a
century after the close of the war. It is rather a pity that it did not
come a little sooner, for an old lady of Page descent confessed that in
her giddy girlhood she had irreverently ripped off the silver fringe to
make trimming for her ball dress.

The Revolution was fairly on, and two months later, the battle of
Bunker Hill was fought. Possibly the colonists thought of spades
rather than standards when they were throwing up the fortifications,
and yet I fancy that to these flag-loving fighters a battle without a
banner would have seemed like an undignified riot. Some writers say
positively that no flag was to be seen--rather a difficult statement
to prove. The daughter of one of the soldiers declared that her father
helped hoist the standard kn