The Foolish Dictionary Part 30

VULCAN. The Olympian blacksmith, who always had his hammer with him.

=But not all who carry hammers are blacksmiths.=

_Legal and Local Holidays in the United States._

=JANUARY 1, New Year's Day.= On this day the Flowing Bowl is filled--and emptied--and the Genial Palm circulated in forty-three States and Territories out of forty-nine. In Ma.s.sachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Arkansas, Oklahoma and the Indian Territory there is no celebration. The natives are too busy collecting good resolutions and bad bills.

=FEBRUARY 22, Washington's Birthday.= (George, not Booker), is remembered by thirty-eight of the States. On this day, in the public schools, are shown pictures of George Chopping the Cherry Tree and Breaking Up the Delaware Ice Trust, Valley Forge in Winter, and Mt.

Vernon on a Busy Day. The Pride of the Cla.s.s recites Washington's "Farewell to the Army," Minnie the Spieler belabors the piano with the "Washington Post March," and the scholars all eat Washington Pie, made of "Columbia, the Jam of the Ocean."

=MARCH 17, St. Patrick's Day and Evacuation Day=, when the British redcoats got out of Boston and Patrick evicted the snakes from Ireland. For observing the day, wear a turkey-red coat, or vest, and put a bit of green ribbon, or a shamrock, in the b.u.t.tonhole--the green above the red. On Easter day, wear a scrambled egg in the same place.

=APRIL 19, Patriot's Day.= A New England successor to FAST DAY--the slowest day of the year. Originally invented for Fasting and Prayer.

Now used exclusively for opening the Baseball Season, Locating a Seash.o.r.e Home for the Summer, and watching Red-Shirted Diogenes at his Tub.

Little drops of water, Little lines of hose, Make the mighty Muster As ev'ry Laddie knows.

=MAY 1, Moving Day.= Observed everywhere by The Restless Tenant.

=APRIL 26= } { =In "Dixie"= =MAY 30= } =Memorial Days= { =In the North=

A Symphony in Blue and Gray.

=JUNE 17, Bunker Hill Day.= Celebrated in Boston, Ma.s.s., by a procession of the Ancient and Horrible Distillery Company, a few of the City Fathers in hacks, a picked bunch of Navy Yard sailors and occasionally a few samples from a Wild West Show. For 24 hours, pistols and firecrackers are allowed to mutilate Young America _ad lib_.

=JULY 4, Independence Day.= A national holiday, invented for the benefit of popcorn and peanut promoters; tin horn and toy-balloon vendors; lemonade chemists; dealers in explosives; physicians and surgeons. A grand chance for the citizen-soldier to hear the roar of battle, smell powder, shoot the neighbor's cat, and lose a night's rest--or a finger.

=LABOR DAY, First Monday in September.= The only day when labor works overtime. An occasion when the workingman takes a cane in place of a dinner-pail and proudly tramps the streets behind a real silk banner and a Hod Carrier on a Cart Horse.

=THANKSGIVING DAY (Last Thursday in November).= A day devoted to the annual division of Turkey--with Greece on the side--by the Hung'ry folks.

=DECEMBER 25, Christmas Day.= Another national holiday, marked by the following observances: Filling the young and helpless with a lot of fiction about Santa Claus, the old chimney fakir, who went up the flue long ago; making a clothesline of the mantelpiece and robbing the forest of its young; swapping several things we'd like to keep for a lot of stuff we don't want; and, finally, putting on in church a Sunday night performance of light opera, known as "The Sabbath School Concert."