Little is known about the life of Massachusetts-born Charles W. Harwood (1871–95), but his children’s poem about the flag, “The Color Guard,” was once widely anthologized. It appeared in 1894 in The Youth’s Companion, a Boston-published magazine for children that existed for over 100 years (1827–1929) until it merged with The American Boy. In 1892, the magazine published the first copy of the Pledge of Allegiance, written by staff member Francis Bellamy. It had one of the largest circulations of any American weekly magazine, passing the one half million mark in 1898.