s Liberty
enjoys it better than being kept on her feet all day, listening to
speeches and having her ear-drums split by cannon. Who knows? At all
events, Newry's programme certainly suits the firemen of the county,
from Smyrna in the north to Carthage in the south. And the firemen
of the county and their women are the ones who do their shopping in
Newry! Liberty was never known to buy as much as a ribbon for her
kimono there.

So it's the annual firemen's muster for Newry's Fourth! Red shirts
in the forenoon parade, red language at the afternoon tub-trials,
red fire in the evening till the last cheer is yawped.

So it was on the day of which this truthful chronicle treats.

Court Street, at ten, ante-meridian, was banked with eager faces.
Band music, muffled and mellow, away off somewhere where the parade
was forming! Small boys whiling away the tedium of waiting with
snap-crackers. Country teams loaded to the edges, and with little
Johnny scooched on a cricket in front, hustling down the line of
parade to find a nook. Anxious parents scuttling from side to side
of the street, dragging red-faced offspring with the same haste and
uncertainty hens display to get on the other side of the road--having
no especial object in changing, except to change. Chatter of voices,
hailings of old friends who signified delighted surprise by
profanity and affectionate abuse. Everlasting wailings of penny
squawkers!

Behold Newry ready for its annual: "See the Conquering Heroes Come!"

Uncle Brad Trufant stood on the post-office steps, dim and
discontented eyes on the vista of Court Street, framed in the
drooping elms.

"They don't get the pepper sass into it these days they used to,"
he said. "These last two years, if it wa'n't for the red shirts and
some one forgettin' and cussin' once in a while, you'd think they
was classes from a theological seminary marchin' to get their degrees.
I can remember when we came down from Vienny twenty years ago with
old Niag'ry, and ev'ry man was over six feet tall, and most of 'em
had double teeth, upper and lower, all the way 'round. And all wore
red shirts. And ev'ry man had one horn, and most of 'em tew. We broke
glass when we hollered. We tore up ground when we jumped. We cracked
the earth when we lit. Them was real days for firemen!"

"Ain't seen the Smyrna Ancient and Honorable Firemen's Association,
Hiram Look foreman, and his new fife-and-drum corps, and the rest
of the trimmin's, hav