But he couldn’t escape the census. He was at home. His feelings as a father and his duty as head of the household demanded that that paper should be filled up. Anna Maria couldn’t assist--there was another Robinson _en route_. So he entered the parlor on Sunday night, and sent the housemaid round to summon the clan. They came--in twos, in threes, in fours, and the last batch was half a dozen. He gazed upon the throng, and as he traced his nose in this one, his mouth in that, and the cast in his eye leered at him all round the room from other eyes, he felt like Noah--only Noah would have been nowhere with an ark of the dimensions used at the time of the Flood. He commenced his enumeration, and before any appreciable diminution had been made in the numbers present by the retirement of those whose descriptive particulars had been entered, his form, with its fifteen spaces, pegged out. The room was still full. Two or three of the boys were playing leap-frog in one corner, a few girls were dressing and comparing dolls in another, the twins were fighting under the table, the youngest but two was struggling with the coal scuttle, and some of them hadn’t come home from church yet. Then Robinson felt the full extent of his marital liabilities, and he laughed. “Ha! ha!” he yelled. “What’s the use of this bit o’ paper? Send me a volume, four hundred pages, bound in morocco, forty names on a page! I’ll fill ’em up. Order up your whole staff of enumerators, two or three barrels of ink, and a goods train to carry out the returns. I’m ready. There’s Robinsons enough round to make a census of their own. Oh, let us be joyful!” Then he began to dance, sang “A father’s early love,” and went up-stairs to swallow the latest arrival. It’s a pity Robinson was at home this census time.
Rank on rank they march together, Through the lanes and o’er the heather, And the rhythmic ringing beat Of their measured swinging feet Music bears in martial tone To the land they call their own. Happy land that proudly boasts, Not coerced, unwilling hosts, But around her throne can feel Hearts of oak and nerves of steel, Hearts whose love no bribes retain, Hands that never strike in vain.
Through the fields of yellow grain, Through the woods of leafy green, Here and there on many a plain, Are their snowy targets seen; And the mountains echo back From their peaks the rifles’ crack.