In the Historical Society's rooms in Portland hangs a banner first flung to the breeze on July 4, 1861, not forty miles from that city. It is fashioned of long strips of red and white ribbon, and in the center of its starry field is an eagle, made by the deft fingers of a pioneer woman. The old immigrant who donated it to the Historical Society has related how, when he heard the news of the fall of Sumpter, he immediately determined to celebrate the Fourth of July by flinging the Stars and Stripes to the breeze from his own home and with that end in view had procured the ribbon and caused his liberty loving wife to fashion it into his country's flag. This coming to the ears of certain hot-heads among his neighbors, he was called upon by a committee and asked if it was true that he intended hoisting the Old Flag on the anniversary of the nation's birth. To his affirmative reply came the sharp retort that it would never be allowed to stay, but would forthwith be torn down. "No man will haul down that flag except over my dead body," was the stern reply of the sturdy old pioneer. The days ran by and the self-formed committee thought that the old pioneer had heeded their warning, when one day the news spread that a flagstaff, tall and straight, and as unbending as the old man's determination, lay before the pioneer house. Then the elders of the hot-heads began to counsel moderation, to tell of the old neighbor's good deeds, of his unswerving sense of duty, of his faultless marksmanship that before that flag could be lowered not only the rough old patriot must lie cold in death but many of the attacking party would bite the dust. Reflection cooled the disunion ardor; perhaps "a tinge of sadness, a blush of shame o'er the face of the leader came," howbeit on the Fourth of July, 1861, that beautiful silken banner floated on the wings of the whispering wind and in the eagle's beak a dead serpent hung, sounding a note of derision as well as of triumph from the old man's heart. And while in a few days a more generous impulse came over him, and he himself took down the flag and had the serpent removed from the eagle's beak, yet with that single exception, until the final pæan of victory was sung at Appomattox, that silken emblem of his beloved country caressed by summer zephyrs and kissed by the soft mists of winter, floated undisturbed above his patriotic home.