When it was over everyone was eager to start for the public green outside the town, where the afternoon’s sports were to be held. It was not far, and we walked out, but almost a continuous stream of carriages was passing us in a common movement, and when we reached the bridge just outside the town the stream had narrowed to an unbroken line of vehicles moving slowly in single file. At the centre of the bridge which spans a narrow stream below the public green stood an interesting figure as we drew up. He was a tall, lean man of sixty, perhaps, but without a suggestion of old age in his lithe, sinewy frame; a Yankee by every gift of nature, with the sharply inquisitive face of a ferret and shrewd blue eyes with a gleam of humor in them and a little tuft of whiskers on his chin. Every vehicle, as it passed, underwent an interested scrutiny from him, and his whiskers worked comically up and down as he cordially greeted the occupants whom he knew. I was walking with Mr. Barton, and seeing us in the crowd on foot, he eagerly hailed Mr. Barton as a sympathetic old acquaintance. “John,” he said, “I was just thinking as I stood here how I was to the Fourth of July celebration in these parts thirty years ago to-day, in ’62. And my gracious, it’s hard to realize the change! Why, there warn’t a team of horses in the hull county then, and everybody come on foot or else behind a yoke of oxen. But just look at that percession now! There ain’t a ox-team in the hull outfit, and ther’s some rigs here that’s fine enough for the President to ride in.” The common presented a truly festive scene when we reached it. As large as a ten-acre lot, it was covered with a soft, rich turf and enclosed on three sides by beautiful woodland and on the fourth by the main-travelled road. Horses, tied in the shade along the outer rim of trees, were munching hay from piles which had been thrown down before them. Deserted vehicles, ranging from white-canopied prairie-schooners and rough market-carts to the smartest of new buggies, stood idly among the trees, and, with changing lights and shadows playing over them, were groups of picnickers seated on the mossy ground about white table-cloths which bore their viands, and some on rustic benches at rough tables hastily put up for the occasion.