THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, July 3, 1909. _My Dear Mr. Macfarland_: I have your letter of July 1st with respect to the celebration of the Fourth of July. I am very sorry that I shall not be in the city on that day because of a previous engagement; but I am heartily in sympathy with the movement to rid the celebration of our country’s natal day of those distressing accidents that might be avoided and are merely due to a recklessness against which the public protest cannot be too emphatic. Very sincerely yours, (Signed) WM. H. TAFT. Hon. Henry B. F. Macfarland, Commissioner of the District of Columbia. This letter, sent out by the Press Association with a brief account of the celebration, must have helped the cause of the “safe and sane” celebration of Independence Day everywhere. NEW FOURTHS FOR OLD BY MRS. ISAAC L. RICE “When you are past shrieking, having no human articulate voice to say you are glad with, you fill the quietude ... with gunpowder blasts, and rush home, red with cutaneous eruption of conceit and voluble with convulsive hiccough of self-satisfaction.... It is pitiful to have dim conceptions of duty; more pitiful, it seems to me, to have conceptions like these of mirth.”—_John Ruskin._ When the preparations for the celebration of a great anniversary are identical with those for a battle, it is time to pause and reflect whether a better observance of the day might not be advisable—to ask ourselves whether one might not be planned which would honor and not dishonor a glorious memory. When Physicians, Boards of Health and Hospital Superintendents annually prepare for the reception and treatment of hundreds, or rather thousands, who will—before the close of the day—be brought in torn, burned, blinded; when undertakers prepare for the hideous aftermath of our National Birthday; when hundreds of thousands of the sick look forward with dread to the recurrence of this season of noise, which to them brings so much distress; when fathers and mothers all over the country shudder at the thought of what the Fourth may bring to their dear ones, I believe that one is justified in characterizing as a national disgrace that pseudo-patriotism which is responsible for so much agony.