He and the rest of us Sachems come on the stage wearin' stovepipe hats, accordin' to the constitution, but we can shed ours right off, while the Grand Sachem is required to wear his hat all through the celebration.

Have you any idea what that means?
Four hours under a big silk hat in a hall where the heat registers 110 and the smoke 250! And the Grand Sachem is expected to look pleasant all the time and say nice things when introducin' the speakers! Often his hand goes to his hat, unconscious-like, then he catches himself up in time and looks around like a man who is in the tenth story of a burnin' building' seekin' a way to escape.

I believe that Fourth-of-July silk hat shortened the life of one of our Grand Sachems, the late Supreme Court Justice Smyth, and I know that one of our Sachems refused the office of Grand Sachem because he couldn't get up sufficient patriotism to perform this four-hour hat act.

You see, there's degrees of patriotism just as there's degrees in everything else.
You don't hear of the Citizens' Union people holdin' Fourth-of-July celebrations under a five-pound silk hat, or any other way, do you?
The Cits take the Fourth like a dog I had when I was a boy.

That dog knew as much as some Cits and he acted just like them about the glorious day.
Exactly forty-eight hours before each Fourth of July, the dog left our house on a run and hid himself in the Bronx woods.