Even
babies echoed the names of our two heroes in their prattle.
We had great "training days," when drum and fife took our ears by
storm; When the militia and the Light Infantry mustered and
marched through the streets to the Common with boys and girls at
their heels,--such girls as could get their mother's consent, or
the courage to run off without it.(We never could.)But we always
managed to get a good look at the show in one way or another.
"Old Election," "'Lection Day" we called it, a lost holiday now,
was a general training day, and it came at our most delightful
season, the last of May. Lilacs and tulips were in bloom, then;
and it was a picturesque fashion of the time for little girls
whose parents had no flower-gardens to go around begging a bunch
of lilacs, or a tulip or two. My mother always made "'Lection
cake" for us on that day. It was nothing but a kind of sweetened
bread with a shine of egg-and-molasses on top; but we thought it
delicious.
The Fourth of July and Thanksgiving Day were the only other
holidays that we made much account of, and the former was a far
more well behaved festival than it is in modern times.
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