'WE JOURNEY.
'It is spring, fragrant spring, the birds are singing. You do not understand their song? Then hear it in free translation:
''Seat thyself upon my back!' said the stork, the holy bird of our green island. 'I will carry thee over the waves of the Sound. Sweden also has its fresh, fragrant beechwoods, green meadows, and fields of waving corn; in Schoonen, under the blooming apple trees behind the peasant's house, thou wilt imagine thyself still in Denmark!'
''Fly with me,' said the swallow. 'I fly over Hal-land's mountain ridges, where the beeches cease. I soar farther toward the north than the stork. I will show you where the arable land retires before rocky valleys. You shall see friendly towns, old churches, solitary court yards, within which it is cosy and pleasant to dwell, where the family stands in circle around the table with the smoking platters, and asks a blessing through the mouth of the youngest child, and morning and evening sings a holy song. I have heard it, I have seen it, when I was yet small, from my nest under the roof.'
''Come! come!' cried the unsteady seagull, impatiently waiting, and ever flying round in a circle. 'Follow me into the Scheeren, where thousands of rocky islands, covered with pines and firs, lie along the coasts like flower beds; where the fisherman draws full nets!'
''Let yourself down between our outspread wings!' sing the wild swans. 'We will bear you to the great seas, to the ever-roaring, arrow-quick mountain streams, where the oak does not thrive and the birches are stunted; let yourself down between our outspread wings,—we soar high over Sulitelma, the eye of the island, as the mountain is called; we fly from the spring-green valley, over the snow waves, up to the summit of the mountain, whence you may catch a glimpse of the North Sea, beyond Norway. We fly toward Jamtland, with its high blue mountains, where the waterfalls roar, where the signal fires flame up as signs from coast to coast that they are waiting for the ferry boat—up to the deep, cold, hurrying floods, which do not see the sun set in midsummer, where twilight is dawn!'
'So sing the birds! Shall we hearken to their song—follow them, at least a short way? We do not seat ourselves upon the wings of the swan, nor upon the back of the stork; we stride forward with steam and horses, sometimes upon our own feet, and glance, at the same time, now and then, from the actual, over the hedge into the kingdom of fancy, that is always our near neighborland, and pluck flowers or leaves, which shall be placed together in the memorandum book—they bud indeed on the flight of the journey. We fly, and we sing: Sweden, thou glorious land! Sweden, whither holy gods came in remote antiquity from the mountains of Asia; thou land that art yet illumined by their glitter! It streams out of the flowers, with the name of Linnæus; it beams before thy knightly people from the banner of Charles the Twelfth, it sounds out of the memorial stone erected upon the field at Lutzen. Sweden! thou land of deep feeling, of inward songs, home of the clear streams, where wild swans sing in the northern light's glimmer! thou land, upon whose deep, still seas the fairies of the North build their colonnades and lead their struggling spirit-hosts over the ice mirror. Glorious Sweden, with the perfume-breathing Linea, with Jenny's soulful songs! To thee will we fly with the stork and the swallow, with the unsteady seagull and the wild swan. Thy birchwood throws out its perfume so refreshing and animating, under its hanging, earnest boughs—on its white trunk shall the harp hang. Let the summer wind of the North glide murmuring over its strings.'
There is true fatherland's love there. I doubt if there was ever yet real patriotism in a hot climate—the North is the only home of unselfish and great union. Italy owes it to the cool breezes of her Apennines that she cherishes unity; had it not been for her northern mountains in a southern clime, she would have long ago forgotten to think of one country. But while the Alps are her backbone, she will always be at least a vertebrate among nations, and one of the higher order. Without the Alps she would soon be eaten up by the cancer of states' rights. It is the North, too, which will supply the great uniting power of America, and keep alive a love for the great national name.
Very different is the rest—and yet it has too the domestic home-tone of the North. In Sweden, in Germany, in America, in England, the family tie is somewhat other than in the East or in any warm country. With us, old age is not so ever-neglected and little honored as in softer climes. Thank the fireside for that. The hearth, and the stove, and the long, cold months which keep the grandsire and granddame in the easy chair by the warm corner, make a home centre, where the children linger as long as they may for stories, and where love lingers, kept alive by many a cheerful, not to be easily told tie. And it lives—this love—lives in the heart of the man after he has gone forth to business or to battle: he will not tell you of it, but he remembers grandmother and grandfather, as he saw them a boy—the centre of the group, which will never form again save in heaven.
Let us turn to