"Nay," said Rollins, with a laugh, "you are too good a lawyer for a rough soldier!" "Pray tell us," said Colonel Taunton, "what thought you of the American forces you saw?" "They seemed an unregenerate body," said Friend Waln. "I fear they are lost to the beauty of spiritual things. They are a prey to worldly desires." With that he pushed back his chair and rose. "I must be on my way, for I know not how I will enter the city at so late an hour." "That you can hardly do without a pass," said Colonel Taunton. "General Howe is very strict since the late battle. Moreover, there is a strong watch within the city." "Now what dost thou tell me!" cried Friend Waln, in great distress. "My Deborah will be beside herself! This is much worse than before the British came-and we hoped for so much from their occupation." "Nay," exclaimed the colonel, "say not so! I can give you a pass that will enable you to go where you will without trouble." "If thou dost that, I will remember it in thy favor," said the Quaker, with much show of gratitude; "and I will see to it that our meeting shall be open to thee if thou shouldst come to Philadelphia." "We shall soon be in Philadelphia," answered the colonel, "and, though 't is a confidence I am giving you, I feel certain 't will not be betrayed. I but await final orders to withdraw our troops within the city.” "But I should be on my way, for Deborah will be anxious." Colonel Taunton hurried to draw up a pass, and, with rather cool thanks for his entertainment, Friend Waln took his leave. By this time I had given up all hope of Captain McLane, and began to grow sleepy, but there was no way for me to escape from the pantry without being seen, except through the kitchen slide, and I did not care to go the way of a baron of beef before the soldiers and servants there, so, perforce, I waited. Dinner was long over, and the officers sat at dessert, when again there came a loud knocking at the front door. "Now who will be our visitor this time," said Colonel Taunton, just as Mummer entered with a basket of wine. "'T was a country bumpkin brought this, and said it was to be delivered to you,” he said, holding it out to the colonel. Around the neck of one of the bottles was a string, to which was tied the knave of clubs, with some writing upon it. "Rollins, cut off the card and read the message!" said the colonel. ""T is most polite of some one, and no doubt is a gift from a loyal subject of the king." "For Colonel Taunton," read the lieutenant. "To drink the success of the good cause and the health of his friend the enemy, Allan McLane, late Joshua Waln of the Society of Friends." "My faith! Done!" cried Rollins. "But 't is worth it to have dined with a man like that!" (To be continued.) "Thee interests me vastly!" said Friend Waln. COMING HOME AGAIN ("Simple Thoughts on Great Subjects") TWICE since boyhood I have had that eager feeling of wanting to throw my hat in the air and cry out, "Hurrah!" or "Hallo!" or some other good old boyish expression of wonder and delight. The first time was when I saw the ocean. I was nineteen years old, and had lived inland until I came east to enter college. My greatest "entrance exam" was when, in the very first week, I made my way by foot and trolley down to Morris Cove, and at a turn in the road, there it was! The Atlantic Ocean! I wonder if the people on that common, every-day trolley knew what an uncommon occurrence was taking place in the mind and heart of one fellow-passenger. I had to keep my hands in my pockets, for the impulse to fling up my hat was almost too strong to resist. To see the great body of water that had no visible other side to it was a hat-lifting event. The second time this same emotion seized me was when I returned, after three years abroad, to the shores of our country, and from the deck of the Deutschland watched the statue of Liberty loom up in New York harbor, and saw the Singer Building and its smaller sky-scraping neighbors make that jagged line called the sky-line of New York City. It is about this second impulse that I want to tell you, for it has a great deal to do with what we all ought to feel when we remember that we are American citizens. And I want to do it because so many have written about their sensations in "going abroad," but so few about their sensations on coming home. And surely the best thing about going to Europe, and Asia, and Africa, as I had almost done, is in coming back to America. We Americans are not thoughtless, yet sometimes when we talk of patriotism, we shout and "make the Eagle scream," instead of doing some honest thinking. As the Deutschland swung her big black form up the bay, my first thought was, "Home again!" Here was my own land, people of my own speech, the green shores of the vast country, peopled by ninety millions, and stretching unbroken from. New York Bay to San Francisco's Golden Gate -this great land that was "mine," for we all "own" the country of our birth. But, that morning, as the statue of Liberty lifted her hand to me, I felt more than this. I had been living in Russia, and had seen how small are the chances there for a man ever being a man in the same degree that he can be so here. Many things are said of Russia that are not true. There are many splendid things after all in that great country. But still it is true that, coming straight home from living two years in that empire, I realized afresh how wonderful America is in the chance that she gives to her sons to be really men, to work out their own natures, and to be themselves. It suddenly dawned upon me how few hindrances and obstacles my country had ever put in my way. I saw for the first time that from my birth everything in my country's methods had been planned for my good, and to help me, or at least to help me to help myself. To be sure, there are some unfair laws, and some evils in our government, but its general trend since the first has been to help each man, and not to hinder him. As I stood on deck that morning, one of hundreds of passengers, I understood, and my heart seemed to beat faster as I did so, that my country is really a challenge to me to be a superior quality of a man. I saw then that if I just looked around me, at our schools, our free institutions, all of which have been at my disposal since I knew how to use them, I would see enough to invite me to do my level best to rise above mean and low things, and to grow worthy of my country. In St. Paul's Cathedral in London, over one of the doorways, is a stone in memory of the archi tect, Sir Christopher Wren, which says, "Reader, if you would behold his monument, look around you." So did my country call on me as I stood on the Deutschland's deck, "If you would see your reasons for gratitude, for good living, for being a man in the largest sense, look around you!" Our country is so big that we may sometimes feel that we cannot "take it all in." Well, that 's just where the opportunity and the challenge lies. I must be large-hearted if I am going to measure up to my country, for, in that old oratorical phrase, she reaches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. To be a base-hearted man in America is worse than to be evil in any other country, and to throw away chances here is more unworthy than anywhere else in the world. It was a new call to me as I came back home from continents cut up like checker-boards to a continent spread out like a wheat-field. I did not love Europe less, but I did love America more; and I think I had the right to do so. For it seemed to me at that moment as if I owed to my land everything in me that could be called big, or noble, or fair, or decent, or worth while. New York, I suppose, is not often thought of as a particularly homelike city. It has never been my own home. Yet that morning I felt toward it as if it were as small and lovable as my native village; while at the same time it was representative of my whole great country. As I stood on the deck of the Deutschland, I understood, as never before, the old story of the three brothers. They were told that the one of the three who, on returning home, should be the first to kiss their mother, should be king. As soon as they landed, two of them ran off home as fast as they could to embrace their mother, but the third fell down on the shore, put his lips to the soil of his native land, and kissed the earth. That was his true mother. And he was the king. Every American is a king the moment he realizes what he owes to his country, and only so can he be that true modern king-a good citizen. Many immigrants were on the Deutschland with me that day, seeing the goddess of Liberty for the first time. None of them saw her with gladder eyes than I did. They were being born to this great land, I was being born again. They were coming to a new liberty, I was coming back to an old liberty which I had known but not appreciated before. As all this came to me, like something new yet old and dear, I did really this time take off my hat, as I had not done when I first saw the ocean. I did not shout, “Hurrah!” but I said, almost with tears: "Henceforth I will try to live up to the bigness of my country." |