Librarian, Ella Maud Frye, Halifax, Nova Scotia.
The convention of 1896 is to meet in Washington, D. C. Dues in the N.A.P.A. are small. Address Recruiting Committee or Mr. Hancock. There is also a New England Press Association, of which Miss Susan D. Robbins, Abington, Mass., is president. She will give information concerning it to all who ask.
Celebrating the "Fourth" Abroad.
The other day we went in the cars to a little town on the Elbe's bank, and there took a steamboat and went up the river. The view was lovely, and looked like a mixture of the Rhine and the palisades on the Hudson, with high cliffs on each side—some green with trees, and others with the bare gray rocks worn by the wind and rain into a thousand queer shapes. In some places there were quarries for the soft buff sandstone of which these cliffs are composed, lending another color (yellow) to the cliffs of gray and green. You can well imagine how lovely it was.
As we neared the town the country changed, and now it resembled the Thames, with villas here and there among the trees. The King of Saxony has his summer palace here, with pleasure-boats moored to the wharf. We reached the brightly lighted city on our return just at twilight, wishing our journey was not over so soon.
We went to the Belvedere on the Fourth of July. It is a large garden by the river. It is crowded every night, a good half of the people being English and Americans. Of course the "Fourth" was a great American night, the programme being printed in English. The band played everything it knew of American music, with some of the English composers for the English part of the audience. You should have heard the clapping for "Hail Columbia." The musicians played the beautiful "Largo" too, and the hush that fell over every one was nice to see, even a lot of students who sat at the next table stopped talking and laughing.
Last of all came a great mixture of all the American tunes. Everybody, or at least a great number, sang; and you can well imagine the noise when "Yankee Doodle" came. "Marching through Georgia" was sung loudly, every one clapping in time. By everybody I mean the Americans. "Old Black Joe" was most highly appreciated, and when it came to "Way Down upon the Suwanee River," the voices, it seemed to me, beat any opera chorus in the world. A great many voices were "quavery" at "Home, Sweet Home," and my sister and I indulged in rather a "watery" smile.
I never knew the pathos of that song till I was in a German garden, with some of my countrymen around me, three thousand miles from "home." I could just hear the waves beating on the beach at dear old East Hampton, with the moonlight shining over all; the light in the dear little "chalet," and our footsteps sounding on the board walk, as we came in, in time for dinner, with the bright table and father just in from town. And I could see the funny old house with the willows in front, and the quiet old graveyard bright in the still white light. Across the way Daisy's house with the yellow lamplight shining through, and Daisy's black shadow passing across the light through the window. John Howard Payne must have seen the same "Home, Sweet Home" as I did that minute.
Edith S. Mills.
Dresden, Germany.