ee";--

for the beautiful little banner was only twenty inches square! When
Lafayette visited this country in 1824, this little flag was borne in
the procession which welcomed him to Baltimore.

In the midst of the grief and horrors of war, there was one day when all
the armed ships in the Delaware River were ablaze with the colors of the
United States in token of rejoicing. It was July 4, 1777, the first
anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Thirteen cannon were
fired, a great dinner was served to the members of Congress and the
officials of the army and of the State. The Hessian band, which had been
captured at Trenton six months previously, performed some of their
merriest music. Toasts followed the dinner, each one honored by a
discharge of artillery and small arms and a piece of music by the
Hessians. At night the city was illuminated and the streets resounded
with hurrahs and the ringing of bells. Then came fireworks, which began
and ended with thirteen rockets in honor of the thirteen United States.

"Thirteen" appeared not only as the number of stars on the flag, but
everywhere else, and at Valley Forge, in the rejoicing over the new
alliance with France, the officers marched up to the place of
entertainment thirteen abreast and with arm linked in arm. A
disrespectful English paper declared that the "rebels" ate thirteen
dried clams a day, that it took thirteen "Congress paper dollars" to
equal one English shilling, that "every well-organized rebel household
has thirteen children, all of whom expect to be major-generals or
members of the high and mighty congress of the thirteen United States
when they attain the age of thirteen years."

When the war had come to an end, the artist Copley was in London working
on the portrait of an American, Elkanah Watson. In the background of the
portrait was a ship supposed to be bearing to America the news of the
acknowledgment of Independence. The rising sun was shining upon the
place where the flag should have been, but no flag was there. Copley's
studio was often visited by the royal family, so he waited. But a day
came when the artist heard the speech of the King acknowledging the
Independence of America. He went straightway to his studio and painted
in the flag floating in the rays of the rising sun.

Soon after the close of the war, a wide-awake skipper of Nantucket, who
had some whale oil to sell, appeared at London. Nantucket was so
helpless for both off