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in its deep and thrilling vibrations, and proclaiming in loud and long accents over all the land, the motto that encircled it. Glad messengers caught the tidings as they floated out on the air and sped off in every direction to bear them onward. When they reached New York, the bells rang out the glorious news, and the excited multitude, surging hither and thither, at length gathered around the Bowling Green, and, seizing the leaden statue of George III, which stood there, tore it into fragments. These were afterward run into bullets, and hurled against his Majesty's troops.

When the Declaration arrived in Boston, the people gathered to old Faneuil Hall to hear it read; and as the last sentence fell from the lips of the reader, a loud shout went up, and soon from every fortified height and every battery the thunder of cannon re-echoed the joy.

-J. T. Headley

Words: conclave-council; recede-go back; fraught-filled; dissolved broken, destroyed; fervor-great earnestness; deferred-postponed; momentous — highly important; desponding — disheartened, discouraged.

Questions: What is the inscription on Liberty Bell? Do you know from what great book this inscription was taken? Could the maker of the bell have realized how wonderfully prophetic this inscription would prove? Where was the bell when it rang out the great news?

Pleasure Reading:

Guerber's Story of the Thirteen Colonies, pp. 248-253

INDEPENDENCE BELL

(At the request of thousands of people throughout our country, the city authorities of Philadelphia allowed the Liberty Bell to be taken to the great Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915. The bell was mounted on an open railroad car, and crossed the continent twice under a guard of honor. At every station the people turned out in great numbers to see and reverence the old Liberty Bell. Men bared their heads in its presence; mothers lifted their children up to kiss it; veterans of the Civil War shed tears at sight of it. If the old Liberty Bell could only speak, what a wonderful story it could tell of this trip and of the loyal, patriotic hearts of the American people. Perhaps some poet may write another poem telling of this triumphal procession-a poem worthy to be placed with this one describing the Liberty Bell's first great tidings to the American people.)

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"Will they do it?" "Dare they do it?"

"Who is speaking?" "What's the news?'' "What of Adams?" "What of Sherman?"

"Oh, God grant they won't refuse!"

"Make some way there!" "Let me nearer!"

"I am stifling." "Stifle then! When a nation's life's at hazard,

We've no time to think of men."

So they beat against the portal,
Man and woman, maid and child;
And the July sun in heaven

On the scene looked down and smiled.
The same sun that saw the Spartan
Shed his patriot blood in vain,
Now beheld the soul of freedom,
All unconquered, rise again.

See! see! the dense crowd quivers
Through all its lengthy line,
As the boy beside the portal
Looks forth to give the sign;
With his little hands uplifted,
Breezes dallying with his hair,
Hark! with deep, clear intonation,
Breaks his young voice on the air.

Hushed the people's swelling murmur;
List the boy's exulting cry!

"Ring!" he shouts aloud, "ring, grandpapa!

Ring! oh, ring for Liberty!"

Quickly at the given signal

The old bellman lifts his hand,

Forth he sends the good news, making

Iron music through the land.

How they shouted! What rejoicing!
How the old bell shook the air,
Till the clang of freedom ruffled
The calmly gliding Delaware.
How the bonfires and the torches
Lighted up the night's repose,
And from flames, like fabled Phoenix,*
Our glorious Liberty arose.

That cld State-House bell is silent,
Hushed is now its clamorous tongue;

But the spirit it awakened

Still is living-ever young;

And when we greet the smiling sunlight,
On the fourth of each July,

We shall ne'er forget the bellman
Who, betwixt the earth and sky,
Rang out loudly, "Independence,"
Which, please God, shall never die.

-Author Unknown

Questions: What men are mentioned in the third stanza? Why should these men be named? Who wrote the Declaration of Independence? Explain the reference to "the Spartan" in the fourth stanza. (See the book listed below under Pleasure Reading.) Who was "the Spartan"-the one man whom the poet had in mind? Explain fabled Phonix. (See note.)

Note: According to Egyptian mythology, the phoenix was a wonderful bird that had the power to renew its life in a marvelous manner. When it felt old age coming on, it burned itself on a funeral pyre, and then sprung new and young from the ashes.

Pleasure Reading:

Guerber's Story of the Greeks, pp. 119-131

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THE NAME OF OLD GLORY1

(This poem is a fitting tribute to our flag. We know no other poem which expresses so much love for the flag as does this one. Catch the wonderful swing of the lines, and the poem will thrill you ch and through.)

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And the long, blended ranks of the gray and the blue,-
Who gave you, Old Glory, the name that you bear

With such pride everywhere

As you cast yourself free to the rapturous air

And leap out full-length, as we're wanting you to?-
Who gave you that name, with the ring of the same,
And the honor and fame so becoming to you?-
Your stripes stroked in ripples of white and of red,
With your stars at their glittering best overhead-
By day or by night

Their delightfulest light

Laughing down from their little square heaven of blue !— Who gave you the name of Old Glory?—say, who

Who gave you the name of Old Glory?

The old banner lifted, and faltering then
In vague lisps and whispers fell silent again.

Old Glory: the story we're wanting to hear

Is what the plain facts of your christening were,-
For your name-just to hear it,

Repeat it, and cheer it, 's a tang to the spirit
As salt as a tear;-

And seeing you fly, and the boys marching by,
There's a shout in the throat and a blur in the eye
And an aching to live for you always-or die,

If, dying, we still keep you waving on high.

'From the Biographical Edition of the Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley. Copyrighted 1913 by the Bobbs-Merrill Company.

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