September. Think of the glorious
27th! How the cannon will boom, and the rockets whiz, and--' 'I won't
agree to put it off a moment beyond the 22d of February,' said Charles
Carroll of Carrollton. 'That won't do,' answered Thomas Jefferson.
'That's the birthday of the father of his country. Two holidays rolled
into one wouldn't be the thing. People would celebrate too hard. I'm
willing to make it the 13th of August.' 'Let's settle on the 10th of
March,' replied Charles Carroll of Carrollton. 'Thirty-first of July,'
said Jefferson. 'Fourteenth of April,' answered Carroll. They finally
compromised on the 4th of July."

"What history did you study?" asked Tommy, as the best way of exposing
his aunt's romancing.

"All of the good ones," she answered. "Smith's, and Brown's, and
Thompson's, and Robinson's, and Jones's. Wherever I found a good fact I
picked it up. I was always very fond of facts when I went to school. Did
you ever hear about the dispute Thomas Jefferson and Charles Carroll of
Carrollton had when they came to write and sign the Declaration of
Independence?"

"No," said Tommy, wondering what his aunt would say next.

"They had quite a little tiff. Jefferson, you see, wanted to have it
written on a typewriter, and--"

"But, Aunt, the typewriter wasn't invented then."

"That's just what Charles Carroll of Carrollton told him. But Jefferson
insisted on calling in the janitor, and having it invented while they
waited. 'Posterity can never read my handwriting,' said Jefferson.
'Besides, my fountain-pen won't work to-day; you know how it is with
these fountain-pens--some days ink will shoot out of them like water out
of a garden hose, and other times you can't get it out with a
corkscrew.'"

"Why didn't Charles Carroll of Carrollton tell Jefferson that
fountain-pens weren't invented either?" asked Tommy.

"I don't think he knew it. A great many people then thought that
fountain-pens were invented. And then they talked a long time, and
Thomas Jefferson tried to get Benjamin Franklin to set it up in type and
print it, but he said he had to go fishing with his kite that afternoon
for electricity and so couldn't; and then the others sided in with
Charles Carroll of Carrollton, and Jefferson had to write it after all,
with a quill pen, and with sand to dry the ink with instead of
blotting-paper, because the man who had promised to invent
blotting-paper had joined the army and gone off to fight the British. So
y