See America First

by Orville O. Hiestand; Charles J. Herr

How many songsters took part in this matitudinal concert, we are unable to state, but there were a great number. The volume of sweet notes would sometimes swell to a full-toned orchestra, and then for a brief time it would die away like the flow and ebb of the tides of a sea of melody. The robins were undoubtedly the most gifted of all the vocalists, and their old familiar songs heard along the seashore seemed to have an added sweetness; their notes being as strong and pure as those of a silver flute, making the seaside echoes ring. We have heard many robins sing, but never have been so impressed with the excellent quality of their songs as on that early morning, when they flung out their medley of notes upon the balmy air. No one could doubt that here were true artists, singing for the pleasure of it.

All along the shore lay huge boulders telling of a more ancient pilgrimage to these parts; of a great moving mass of ice in the gray dawn of time, that crept slowly over the land, leaving a "stern and rock bound coast." Perhaps Plymouth Rock itself may have been one of the number that, like these huge gray boulders on which we stood, arrived thousands of years ago.

We returned to the hotel and after breakfast, proceeded on our way to the old historic town of Plymouth. "The road that leads thither is daily thronged with innumerable wheels; on a summer day the traveler may count motors by the thousand." Yet if you pause here awhile you may soon find within a few rods of the fine highway primitive woodland that will give you an impression of what it must have been three hundred years ago. Here you will see heavy forest growths consisting of oaks, for the most part, with maple and elm, and here and there a tangle of green brier and barberry, interspersed with several varieties of blueberry and huckleberry bushes.

You will perhaps recall that Eric the Red, that fearless Viking, is reported to have landed on the coast several centuries before the English heard of the bold promontory of "Hither Manomet." It is well worth your time to saunter along some of the old trails to be found in this region that lead from the main highway of today into the "wilderness of old-time romance, where you will find them not only marked by the pioneer, but that earlier race who worked out these paths, no one knows how many centuries ago."

We now and then meet with people who profess to care little for a path when walking through a forest solitude. They do not choose to travel a beaten path, even though it was made centuries ago. They are welcome to this freak. "Our own genius for adventure is less highly developed and we love to wander along some beaten path, no matter how often it has been traveled before; and if really awake, we may daily greet new beauties and think new thoughts, and return to the old highway with a new lease on life, which, after all, is the main consideration, whether traveling on old or new trails."

Then the force of those old associations, how they gild the most ordinary objects! The trail you may be traveling may wander here and there, beset by tangles of briers or marshy ground or loses itself in a wilderness of barberry bushes, yet how much more wonderful to travel it, for its soil has been pressed by pilgrim feet. Some path may chance to lead you where a few old lilac bushes, a mound or perhaps a gray and moss-grown house, still stands where some hardy pioneer builded.

You will probably come across parties of boys who have spent hours in the broiling sun, picking blueberries or huckleberries in the woods or old stony pastures. Here grow a number of varieties, which make the woods beautiful and fragrant. They belong to the heath family and help to feed the world. If you would know the value of these berries, try and purchase some from the boys who are gathering them.

How delightful the thrill that we experienced on that lovely morning of July as we were nearing the shrine of the nation. It would have mattered little even though we had not tarried on our journey here, where memories of days of the past came thronging around us, nor little did it matter now that we saw no signs of earlier times as we first approached the town, for in this residence, manufacturing and thriving business center, fluttered hundreds of flags, giving to the place a meaning at once grand and significant; and we seemed to catch the fervent faith, the glad hope that must have swelled in the breasts of our forefathers three centuries ago.

All during the morning our thoughts wandered far away from the days of the Pilgrims, for there came thronging memories of those absent and distant friends with whom we could never talk again, but in whose memory we once had a place, and who will always live in ours. These dear friends have now gone to fairer shores and they are dwelling on the banks of the "river Beautiful, where grows the Tree of Life."

We came to visit the relatives of these departed friends, who have proven in those terrible days of the Meuse-Argonne that there is more in life than its grim reality; who have taught us that not only on the bloody field of battle but while they calmly awaited the last command from the Master of All to make that journey to fairer camping grounds, they were soldiers not only serving their country under General Pershing, but loyal and faithful servants of their country's God.