For 24 hours,
pistols and firecrackers are allowed to mutilate Young America ad
lib.
JULY 4, Independence Day. A national holiday, invented for the
benefit of popcorn and peanut promoters; tin horn and toy-balloon
vendors; lemonade chemists; dealers in explosives; physicians and
surgeons. A grand chance for the citizen-soldier to hear the roar
of battle, smell powder, shoot the neighbor's cat, and lose a
night's rest--or a finger.
LABOR DAY, First Monday in September. The only day when labor
works overtime. An occasion when the workingman takes a cane in
place of a dinner-pail and proudly tramps the streets behind a real
silk banner and a Hod Carrier on a Cart Horse.
THANKSGIVING DAY (Last Thursday in November). A day devoted to the
annual division of Turkey--with Greece on the side--by the Hung'ry
folks.
DECEMBER 25, Christmas Day. Another national holiday, marked by
the following observances: Filling the young and helpless with a
lot of fiction about Santa Claus, the old chimney fakir, who went
up the flue long ago; making a clothesline of the mantelpiece and
robbing the forest of its young; swapping several things we'd like
to keep for a lot of stuff we don't want; and, finally, putting on
in church a Sunday night performance of light opera, known as "The
Sabbath School Concert.
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