X DECORATION DAY AMERICA celebrates no "Whit-Monday," but has Decoration Day instead; a great national festival, when medals are pinned on to veterans, the soldiers of the War of North against South are remembered, and the graves of heroes are decorated with flags and flowers. On Decoration Day, and again later, on Independence Day, the whole populace ceases work in the name of America, and flocks the streets, sings national songs and hymns, goes on procession, fires salutes, listens to speeches. We British are just wildly glad to get free from toil when Whit-Monday and August Bank Holiday come round. We have no national or religious fervour on these days. We have even been known to flock happily to Hampstead and Epping Forest to the strains of "England's going down the Hill." Upon occasion the British can be clamorously patriotic, but only upon occasion. But the American citizen is, to use his own phrase, “crazy about America" all the while. The "days-off" that we get are not only off work, but off everything serious. The American still nurses the hope with which he came across the ocean, and he is enthusiastically attached to the republic he has made and the principles of that republic. I spent Decoration Day at Clearfield, a little mining and agricultural town on the other side of the Alleghanies. I put up at a hotel for two or three days, and just gave myself to the town for the time. Early on the festival day I was out to see how the workaday world was taking things. All the shops were closed except the ice-cream soda bars and the fruiterers. There were flags on the banks and loungers on the streets. Young men were walking about with flags in their hat ribbons. The cycles and automobiles on the roadway had their wheels swathed with the stars and stripes. There were negroes and negresses standing endimanche's at street corners. Now and then a girl in white dress and white boots would trip from a house to a shop and back again. There was an air best expressed by the words of the song: Go along and get yer ready, Get yer glad rags on, For there's going to be a meeting Every town in America is a good old town, and on such occasions as Decoration Day you may always hear the worthies of the place giving their reminiscences in the lounge of a hotel. I sat and listened to many. We had a very quiet morning, and it seemed to me there was considerable boredom in the town. There was a fire in the Opera House about eleven, and I ran behind the scenes with a crowd of others and stared at the smoking walls. There was a sort of disappointment that the firemen put it out so promptly. But after dinner the real holiday commenced, and the houses began to empty and the streets began to fill. About four o'clock the "Parade" commenced, what we should in England call a procession. Every one who owned a car had it out, carrying roses and ferns and flags. There was a continual hooting and coughing of motor-horns, and an increasing buzz of talk. The "Eighth Regimental Band" appeared, and stood with their instruments in the roadway, chatting to passers-by and being admired. The firemen came with new hats on their work at the Opera House happily concluded. They now bore on their shoulders wreaths, which were to be carried to the graves of the heroes in the cemetery outside the town. The High School band formed up. A tall man brought a newbought banner of the Stars and Stripes, which hung from a bird-headed pole. Boy Scouts came in costume as it were in the rags of the war. The marching order was formed, and then came up what I thought to be the Town Militia, but which turned out to be the representatives of the Mechanics Union, with special decorations and medals on their breasts. The bands began to play; the automobiles, full of flowers and flags, began to cough and shoot forward; the flocks of promenaders on the side-walk and in the roadway set themselves to march in step to the festal music. I watched the whole procession, from the Eighth Regimental Band that went first to the eight veterans of the Spanish War, who, with muskets on their shoulders, took up the rear. I stopped several people in the procession and asked them who they were, what exactly was their rôle, for what reason were they decorated with medals, - and every one was glad to satisfy my curiosity. I found that the eight veterans considered themselves technically a squad, and their function was to fire a salute over the graves of the "heroes." The procession marched round the town to the strains of "Onward, Christian soldiers" and "O come, all ye faithful." All the people of Clearfield accompanied Americans, Poles, Ruthenians, Slovaks for Clearfield has its foreign mining population as well as its Anglo-Saxon urban Americans. As I was going alongside, a young boy ran up and put his hand. on my shoulder and addressed me in Polish. "What's that you say?" I asked. "Vairy good!" said he, and pointed to the procession. "I like it." "What are you, Ruthenian, Polish?" I asked. "Slavish." I spoke to him in Russian. "Oh-ho, he-he, da-da, I thought you were a Polak." And now he thought I was a Russian! It touched me rather tenderly. I was dressed like an American, and my attire was not like that of a Russian at all. How enthusiastic this boy was! It was a real holiday for him. The Slav peoples are emotional; they need every now and then a means of publicly expressing their feelings. This procession from the town to the graveyard was a link with the customs of their native land, where at least twice a year the living have a feast among the crosses and mounds of the cemetery, and share their joys and interests with the dear dead, whose bodies have been given back to earth. Among those accompanying the procession were Austrian Slavs, in soot-coloured, broad-brimmed, broken-crowned hats, not yet cast away; and I noted solemn-faced, placid Russian peasants in overalls staring with half-awakened comprehension. I saw a negro attired in faultless black cloth, having a bunchy umbrella in his hand, a heavy gold chain across his waistcoat, a cigar in his mouth, a soft smoky hat on his head. He tried to get to the front, and I heard one white man say to another, "Make way for him, it's not your funeral." The negro is a pretty important person considering that the war was really fought for him. Perhaps not many actively remember that now; it is not soothing to do so. It is the American |