male Seminary at Wareham and said good-by to kind Miss Dearborn and
the village school.

There must have been other flag-raisings in history,--even the persons
most interested in this particular one would grudgingly have allowed
that much,--but it would have seemed to them improbable that any such
flag-raising, as theirs could twice glorify the same century. Of some
pageants it is tacitly admitted that there can be no duplicates, and
the flag-raising at Riverboro Centre was one of these; so that it is
small wonder if Rebecca chose it as one of the important dates in her
personal almanac. Mrs. Baxter, the new minister's wife, was the being,
under Providence, who had conceived the first idea of the flag. Mrs.
Baxter communicated her patriotic idea of a new flag to the Dorcas
Society, proposing that the women should cut and make it themselves.

"It may not be quite as good as those manufactured in the large
cities," she said, "but we shall be proud to see our home-made flag
flying in the breeze, and it will mean all the more to the young voters
growing up, to remember that their mothers made it with their own
hands."

"How would it do to let some of the girls help?" modestly asked Miss
Dearborn, the Riverboro teacher. "We might chose the best sewers and
let them put in at least a few stitches, so that they can feel they
have a share in it."

"Just the thing!" exclaimed Mrs. Baxter. "We can cut the stripes and
sew them together, and after we have basted on the white stars the
girls can apply them to the blue ground. We must have it ready for the
campaign rally, and we could n't christen it at a better time than in
this presidential year."

In this way the great enterprise was started, and day by day the
preparations went forward in the two villages.

The boys, as future voters and soldiers, demanded an active share in
the proceedings, and were organized by Squire Bean into a fife and drum
corps, so that by day and night martial but most inharmonious music
woke the echoes, and deafened mothers felt their patriotism oozing out
at the soles of their shoes. Dick Carter was made captain, for his
grandfather had a gold medal given him by Queen Victoria for rescuing
three hundred and twenty-six passengers from a sinking British vessel.
Riverboro thought it high time to pay some graceful tribute to Great
Britain in return for her handsome, conduct to Captain Nahum Carter,
and human imagination could contrive nothing more imp