His lordship Garmont was always of the very loud and firm opinion that nothing of worth could be made in this new country, and I hope I never disgraced myself by arguing against him. But you are in Paris, sir, looking at our engravings, and if there were a Charles X still on the throne, I know you would be straight out to chat to M. Petain at the Royal Chateau of Saint-Cloud.

Sir there is wampum to be made, and plenty of it, for which we can all thank the bounty of nature but there is a greater richness still and that is the hours you will spend-for I do know you sir-in silent perusal in your library. There is an added advantage to the purchase of this work and that is, should there be a spill or other misadventure with the Chambertin, the artist vouches himself ready to supply a new engraving, to you if no one else, at no charge at all.

I expect the mails are slow to reach you and it may be, when your eyes finally fall upon my words, that many months have passed since I wrote them. Therefore could I ask you, sir, if you agree with my assessment of the commercial aspects of this publication, that you communicate at your earliest convenience. I have persuaded my partners to invest a great deal of their very hard-won capital in this scheme and there is hardly a day goes by when one of them does not, on the advice of some idiot dealer or collector of stuffed butterflies, come to believe that my plan cannot work as I have promised. The Americans have all manner of opinions as to what the French will buy, one fool swearing that it is impossible to sell a print of any bird in Paris and that ants and caterpillars are all the go. From London they have more information, but no better in quality, and so you can imagine what great utility there would be in a letter of encouragement from your noble name. It seems to me, looking at the quality of Watkins' work, not at all mad to fancy that our mothers-yours and mine, high and base-gave birth so that at this point in the history of the universe a great work of art should be placed in the grand institutions of France and America and Britain, and in many other places besides-I know you have noble connections in Austria, for instance.

I do remember, as a child aboard the Samarand, being very frightened that I would be abandoned by yourself-I gave you your portrait on a stone which you were nice enough to make a keepsake-and today I can admit to feeling something of the same, and although I am not fearful as a child and the item I place in your hand is worth the attention of a king, we must each recognize the need for our continued profitable relationship.

Perroquet

HOW WOULD ONE expect the victors to celebrate the anniversary of the Glorious Fourth, that impossible date when the tides of history surged and, having finally receded, revealed crowns and broken scepters amid the flotsam on the flat sand. Here the new words, until now unimagined (I am the future and shall serve thee) shining in the wet dawn light.

After that tumult, that burst sac, that spilled blood, with that price paid and the impossible attained, would you not, on the yearly feast, assemble your brave soldiers and their sons and would not each wife and mother, with golden threads and scissors, bind those epaulettes and braid, not to the torn and bloodied remnants of battle but to cloth entirely new, the honorable costume of a great nation?

The Glorious Fourth.

What banners.

Behind the banners we will expect the new philosophers, the new statesmen, the composers of genius who may have been blinded in combat or even deafened by cannon roar but who can still, in the ceaseless ringing silence of peace, compose the triumphal and the pastoral and thus make hymns for the shining malodorous people who now march from awful serfdom to the light of day.

"It will make you American," Godefroy said.

What peace was I offered in those words. And I refer not only to dear Amelia, her hair the color of spun gold, but also the silver cornfields of Connecticut.

Independence Day would be my baptism, and my marriage would somehow be my christening, but it was hard to conceive the Glorious Fourth on the inglorious third, which we spent on a long slow mucky ride to Albany, mud to the axles and bullocks commandeered from an old Dutchman who did not mind renting us his oxen because plowing, he said, was useless in the mud, and he would rather rescue us than destroy his fields. He said-nay, everybody said-it was most unusual weather for July but having traveled a good deal by now and having suffered a typhoon and hail the size of eggs, I would say that all American weather is unusual.

We arrived in Albany in filthy darkness, nothing to eat but eggs and the inevitable toast. Attempting to complete my diary before bed, I managed to spill my ink across the carpet. Doubtless this damaged item will be valued at one thousand dollars by the morning.

At daybreak I was awakened by artillery explosion, a horrid sound for a Frenchman of my age. Forgetting my accident the night before I left dark blue footprints from my bed to the window where I understood Independence Day had now commenced. I flung aside the lace curtains and found the day was glorious indeed, the sun bright, the sky blue. Those wedding cake buildings had been washed clean and the small square outside the boardinghouse was a brilliant shining green. Every house, every window, was decorated with the stars and stripes.

Huzzah! I cried, wishing my new wife at my side.

The conversations about the ink were astonishingly civil. No one would accept a sou. Then my future father waited for me at the table with the bright eyes of an uncle, one of those imaginary chaps who arrive with splendid surprises on your birthday.

"Eat, eat," he cried.

It was a short while after dawn but there was already a crowd trampling the grass on the square, eager, I thought, to find a good position for the parade. I was slow in understanding that this was the parade and these were the dignitaries. And what were they doing, do you imagine? Why, they were deciding who had precedence in the parade.

How extraordinary, I thought. "Is not your precedence set?"

"It will be soon," said Godefroy.

"But this is not the first Independence Day."

"Oh no," said he, "but the precedence is different every year."

If I had been myself I would have laughed, but I was the guest of a great nation. I ordered a chop as was suggested, but had little time to eat it as Godefroy's friends Mr. Azariah Flagg and the lieutenant governor arrived and I was required to join them as a dignitary in the procession.

"But I am a foreigner," I said. "I have no right to march with the citizens."

"You are one with us," they cried.

I was most excited, I confessed, and what a very peculiar and blessed feeling it was to stand safely inside the Revolution, so to speak, to be on the unquestioned side of good.

The great day was in no way what I had anticipated as we toiled here through the mud. The gold thread was nowhere in evidence. There was nothing grander than a small militia escort, that is, quite rightly, the national guard of a country in which the military spirit is absolutely unknown.

And yet I did not laugh at this lack of martial splendor, and not merely from good manners or my own private commitment to America, but because there was such a spirit of gravitas and I was very moved to see the plain uncultured people in their pride-the deputations of all the trades and associations of the city, triumphantly turned out, bearing aloft the emblems of their professions.

Good Lord, I thought, my mother would die. But in this world my mother did not live.

It was completely original, without precedent. First came the fire department, all nine companies of men. At the front were twelve of the straightest and strongest. They carried on their shoulders, like pallbearers, and just as solemnly, a miniature fire engine which was at once the most magnificent toy and also the Virgin Mary being carried through a village on Assumption Day.