This poor uncle, full of patriotism, opened his mouth
to hurrah, and a rocket went down his throat. Before that man could ask
for a drink of water to quench that thing, it blew up and scattered him
all, over the forty-five States, and--really, now, this is true--I know
about it myself--twenty-four hours after that it was raining buttons,
recognizable as his, on the Atlantic seaboard. A person cannot have a
disaster like that and be entirely cheerful the rest of his life. I had
another uncle, on an entirely different Fourth of July, who was blown up
that way, and really it trimmed him as it would a tree. He had hardly a
limb left on him anywhere. All we have left now is an expurgated edition
of that uncle. But never mind about these things; they are merely
passing matters. Don't let me make you sad.
Sir Mortimer Durand said that you, the English people, gave up your
colonies over there--got tired of them--and did it with reluctance.
Now I wish you just to consider that he was right about that, and that he
had his reasons for saying that England did not look upon our Revolution
as a foreign war, but as a civil war fought by Englishmen.
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