Fling out our banner to the breeze, Our glorious stripes and stars; Unfurl our flag, o’er land and seas-- Our nation’s stars and bars! The emblem of our birthright wave, O’er hill, and vale, and plain, Till over every patriot grave Our flag shall float again. We sing to-day a nation’s pride, Sung through an hundred years, Yet pause to bless the brave who died, And mingle smiles with tears; For ’neath the hill and on the plain The fallen heroes sleep, And while we sing our glad refrain Their mem’ry still we keep. Thanks be to Him who rules on high, For this, our festal day-- Who holds the sparrows as they fly, And guides a nation’s way; May Freedom e’er maintain her cause, Unstained by passion’s wars, And Freedom e’er proclaim her laws Beneath the stripes and stars. --W. F. Fox. Wood-Folk Talk By J. ALLISON ATWOOD AUK’S MYSTERY. Without doubt most persons, should we ask them where Auk might be found, would laugh at us. “Auk?” they would say; “why he’s been dead for over half a century.” This seems very likely, since he has been neither seen nor heard of for a long time. But let me whisper a word in your ear: “Auk is still alive.” But why should he hide this way? Well, there is a very good reason for it, as you will see. To our mind Auk was badly treated. He was certainly not to blame for being unattractive: neither was it his fault that he was clumsy. He had lived on the shore of the Great South Bay for years, and supported himself comfortably by his industry. But he was kept from making friends by his awkward manners. It is easy enough for us to see the meaning of the word awkward now, even if it is spelled with a “w” instead of a “u,” but that is of little importance. Auk was a fisherman, and all his time, when not resting, was spent on the water. Although, as we have said, he was clumsy on land, Auk was a very graceful swimmer. More than that, he could stay under the water a long time, so that few fish, indeed, escaped him. This, of course, made many birds dislike him. They feared that there would be no fish left for them. To avert this danger, the Heron family, Tern, and most of the Gulls--all, in fact, except Black-head, who was too happy to quarrel with anyone--called a council. They would get rid of Auk. On the water, they knew, they could not harm him in the least: he was far too good a swimmer for that. But on the land he would be at their mercy. As every one knows, Auk could not fly. He had been growing too heavy of late years. So Tern proposed that the birds wait until night, when it was Auk’s habit to go back on the shore quite a way from the water to sleep. If they attacked him there he would be an easy prey.