We had a very quiet time at home, John, on the Fourth with the exception of your distant relative, Uncle Joseph Carberry. Uncle Joe annexed about six mint juleps and then went to sleep on the front porch with five packs of firecrackers in his coat pocket. Full of the spirt [Transcriber's note: spirit?] of liberty, your interesting cousin, Randolph, set fire to your Uncle's pocket, and when last seen your Uncle Joe was rushing over hill and dale in the general direction of Hartford, Connecticut, with the firecrackers cheering him on. [Illustration: With the firecrackers cheering him on.] Liberty, John, is the only real thing in this world for a nation, but just why the glorious cause of freedom should be slapped in the face with an imitation of the bombardment of Port Arthur is something which I must have misconstrued. We had a very quiet time here at home on the Fourth, John, with the exception that another interesting cousin of yours, my young namesake, Peter Grant, tied a giant firecracker to the cat's tail, and the cat went to the kitchen to have her explosion. It took two hours and seven neighbors to get your good old Aunt Maggie out of the refrigerator, which was the place selected for her by the catastrophe. The stove lost all the supper it contained; little Peter Grant lost two eyebrows and his Buster Brown hair; the cat lost seven of its lives, and the glorious cause of Freedom got a send-off that could be heard nineteen miles. We all missed you, John, but maybe it is better you were not at home on the Fourth, because the doctor is occupying your room so that he could be near the wounded--otherwise, we are all well. I think, John, that when Freedom was first invented by George Washington the idea was to make it something quiet and modest which he could keep about the house and which he could look at once in a while without getting nervous prostration. But George forgot to leave full instructions, and nowadays when the Birthday of Freedom rolls around the impulsive American public wakes up at daylight, shoves up the window and begins to hurl torpedoes at the house next door, because a noise in the air is worth two noises on the quiet. We had a very quiet Fourth at home, John, with the exception of your second cousin, Hector, who patriotically attached himself to a hot-air balloon, and when last seen was hovering over Erie, Pa., and making signs to his parents not to wait supper for him. Most of our neighbors for miles in every direction have sons and daughters missing, but what could they expect when a child will try to put a pound of powder in four inches of gas pipe and then light the result with a match. The Fourth is a great idea, but I think this is carrying it too far, as the little boy said when he went over the top of the house on the handle of a sky-rocket.