"Now you are laughing at me, but indeed I do not! Do you know, Mr. Lawrence, I have always wished we girls were Americans in real earnest—to live there, you understand. I love England, too, but while I was with Uncle Albert at Lynn, he used to talk to me a great deal about that grand United States and it seems to me a wonderful land. Faith was not so strong as I, and used to stay in more—you see, uncle was not really in the busy part, but well out where it was more like the country—and she did not go about with him as I did. Once he took me to Plymouth, and when he showed me that rock with the railing around it, and told me about those Pilgrim fathers braving the sea and savages, just to worship God as they thought was right, it seemed to me as if my whole soul bowed down in reverence! From that minute I was an American girl—a New England girl—and I have kept true to my father's country ever since."
"I think," said Mr. Lawrence, thoughtfully, "that there is something in the foundation of our New England which gives it an interest beyond that of almost any region known, and it certainly appeals to any nature which has an enthusiasm for the heroic and noble. Many countries have been acquired through bloodshed, by conquest and because of greed and glory, but a country whose foundations were laid in the rights of conscience only, whose progenitors took God alone for their Leader, and his rules and service for their code—who came in peace and poverty, demanding nothing but the right to live and die true men—ah! no wonder New England is proud of her forefathers."
"What Portuguese hero are you lecturing about now, uncle?" called back Dwight, saucily, but was at once suppressed by his mother. Hope answered lightly,
"We have found better heroes than those old Portuguese fighters, we think; haven't we, Mr. Lawrence?"
"Yes. Still, there is one man whom I greatly admire, of this nation, and I think we will visit his statue next. What do you know about Luiz de Camoes, or, as we write it, Camoens, Dwight?"
"Gracious! Nothing at all; never heard of him. Was he a fighter?"
"Hardly. At any rate he did his fighting in a noble way—rather like heaping coals of fire I should say. He was a writer."
"Oh, tell us about him, uncle."
"What! A lecture? But that is not admissible in polite society."
"Now, don't tease. You know we are all dying to hear about him.
Proceed!"