rackers was, and they
began to go off. Well, I never saw such a sight as she was. Her dress
was one of these mosquito bar, cheese cloth dresses, and it burned just
like punk. I had presence of mind enough to roll her on the grass and
put out the fire, but in doing that I neglected my own conflagration,
and when I got her put out, my coat tail and trousers were a total loss.
_My_, but she looked like a goose that had been picked, and I looked
like a fireman that fell through a hatchway. My girl wanted to go home,
and I took her home, and her pa was setting on the front steps, and he
wouldn't accept her, looking that way. He said he placed in my possession
a whole girl, clothed in her right mind, and I had brought back a burnt
offering. He teaches in our Sunday-school, and knows how to talk
pious, but his boots are offul thick. I tried to explain that I was not
responsible for the fireworks, and that he could bring in a bill against
the government and I showed him how I was bereaved of a coat tail and
some pants, but he wouldn't reason at all, and when his foot hit me I
thought it was the resurrection, sure, and when I got over the fence,
and had picked myself up I never stopped till I got to Duffy's and I
set up with him, cause I thought her pa was after me, and I thought
he wouldn't enter a sick room and maul a watcher at the bedside of an
invalid. But that settles it with me about celebrating. I don't care if
we _did_ whip the British, after declaring independence, I don't want my
pants burnt off. What is the declaration of independence good for to a
girl who looses her polonaise, and has her hair burnt off, and a nigger
chaser burning her stockings? No, sir, they may talk about the glorious
4th of July, but will it bring back that blonde wig, or re-tail my coat?
Hereafter I am a rebel, and I will go out in the woods the way Pa does,
and come home with a black eye, got in a rational way.

"What, did your Pa get a black eye, too? I hadn't heard about that,"
said the grocery man, giving the boy a handful of unbaked peanuts to
draw him out. "Didn't get to fighting, did he?"

"No, Pa don't fight. It is wrong, he says, to fight, unless you are
sure you can whip the fellow, and Pa always gets whipped, so he quit
fighting. You see, one of the deacons in our church lives out on a farm,
and his folks were going away to spend the 4th, and he had to do all the
chores, so he invited Pa and Ma to come out to the farm and have a nic