The bugles rang sharper; the
drums and fifes of town and village and countryside were the drums and
fifes of a war that came closer and closer to every hearth between the
two oceans.
All the old symbols became symbols bright and new, as if no one had ever
seen them before. "America" was like a new word, and the song "America"
was like a new song. All the dusty blatancies of orating candidates,
seeking to rouse bored auditors with "the old flag"; all the mechanical
patriotics of school and church and club; all these time-worn flaccid
things leaped suddenly into living colour. The flag became brilliant and
strange to see--strange with a meaning that seemed new, a meaning long
known, yet never known till now.
And so hearts that thought they knew themselves came upon ambushes of
emotion and hidden indwellings of spirit not guessed before. Dora Yocum,
listening to the "Star Spangled Banner," sung by children of immigrants
to an out-of-tune old piano in a mission clubroom, in Chicago, found
herself crying with a soul-shaking heartiness in a way different from
other ways that she had cried.
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