See America First

O >> Orville O. Hiestand >> See America First

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While visiting the university buildings of Harvard we saw the
photographs of men who had sacrificed their lives during the
World War. Our thoughts wandered far away and we seemed to see a
road that led through Verdun to the front. Its beginning was an
avenue of stately buckeye trees in their autumn livery of faded
green and gold. Back and forth along this road went Red Cross
ambulances on their ceaseless journeys of mercy. The sky that
should have been blue and fair was filled with gray smoke. The
air that in times of peace throbbed with the notes of the lark
now trembled with the report of heavy guns and crashing shells.
Great sheets of camouflage stretched along the road to screen
the view.

One day while making an advance in the Argonne forest, taking
the place of a captain who had been killed, Lieut. Harry Hanley
of Boston fell upon the field of battle. His hip had been
fractured and he was removed to Glorieux hospital, where E. H.
No. 15 was located. It was here that we learned to know and love
him. His hopeful, helpful spirit shone above the dark gloom of
the time like a beacon light. How often, when we wistfully
sought to help those patient sufferers, while we were so weak
our faltering steps failed us ofttimes, did we hear the calm
voice of Lieutenant Hanley filling us with hope and inspiring us
with new courage.

Across the room lay a German suffering from abdominal wounds.
His pitiful moans caught the attention of Lieutenant Hanley and
he said: "I hate to see that German suffer so. How I do hope
this shall be the end of all wars." Such was the spirit of this
noble man.

Well do we remember the day when the regimental band of the 26th
division played for the wounded boys at Glorieux. It was a mild
October day. As they struck up some old familiar airs the face
of Lieutenant Hanley of the 101st Infantry, Company A, of that
division, grew radiant as he said: "How I love to hear those old
melodies." Then for a time he seemed to forget his hard lot and
wandered again in fair New England fields that grew tender and
beautiful in sunset light. A robin caroled softly from a crimson
maple, the meadow brook sang a rippling accompaniment as in
fancy once more he walked with loved ones in the homeland.

We do not know whether or not all these things passed through
his mind, but we do know that among his thoughts was the fond
sister, working and praying in Boston, and a brother fitting
himself for the air-service, and a lovely mother walking and
praying in her lonely home. The burden of their prayer is ever
'the same; morning and night it rises to Him for the safe return
of a dear brother and son. As that absent one turned through the
leaves of the New Testament, wherein he found such comforting
messages in those weary days and long, anxious nights of
suffering, he too sent up a prayer for the loved ones back home.

The day of his departure, how shall we ever forget it? As we
moved about among the cots of Ward E, the cheerful voice of
Lieutenant Hanley came to us as he clasped our hands for the
last time, while he said "I shall never forget you." As the
litter bearers were passing through the door he put up his hand
as a last farewell, saying he would write us on reaching home.
But many months passed before we received the tear-stained
letter from a broken-hearted mother, telling us he had wandered
to fairer fields.

Where broad between its banks stretches the Meuse, mirroring the
bloom in the west and the evening star, where the cornflowers
look up with heaven's own blue and the poppies cover the fields
like a crimson sea, where the skylark unseen is still soaring
and singing, and the nightingale from the snowy hawthorn spray
warbles divinely at even. French mothers who have lost all their
sons in the war shall come with their tribute of blossoms to
those vast cities of the dead. Here while the flowers fall
unnoticed from their trembling hands and with tears streaming
down their careworn faces and with prayers of gratitude upon
their lips, they shall bless the memory of those noble American
boys who poured out the rich, red blood of youth who lie in a
land they crossed the ocean to save.

Among the priceless treasures we have at home is a picture of
Lieutenant Hanley standing among a bower of roses. This was sent
to his mother just before he left the United States. How like
those roses was he--the most perfect flower of all. The dew of
youth, the rosy bloom of manhood, the purity of those fragrant
petals in his soul, all speak to us from that portrait. It seems
as if:

A happy smile flits 'cross his face,
The dream of fair Elysian fields,
A vision of the old home place
To darkened memories swiftly yields.

God had turned the trenches to roses again
When they bore him home across the wave
He was true to self, to God, and man
And was leaving a land he died to save.

How quiet on that August morn
The tolling bell gave forth its sound.
In star-draped casket, slowly borne,
A treasure not of earth was found.

Like dew upon a flower sleeping
Or fairest hue of sunset skies
A jewel in the master's keeping
A radiant pearl of greatest price.

Like amber-tinted clouds of May
By many vagrant breezes driven;
That frail form swiftly passed away
To melt and fade in dawn's fair heaven.

Death is but the mist of early morn
Seen rising o'er the placid river,
An open gateway into heaven
Where the pure with God shall dwelt forever.

CHAPTER X

LEXINGTON AND CONCORD

Coming into Lexington from the south one passes Follen church,
where Emerson preached. Farther along on the right is the house
of John Harrington, last survivor of the battle; then, near the
corner of Maple street, the great elm planted by his father.

About a quarter of a mile further, on the left, is the Munroe
Tavern, headquarters and hospital of Earl Percy, now the
property of the Lexington Historical Society. The granite cannon
by the High School marks the site of one of the field-pieces
placed by Earl Percy to cover the retreat of the British troops.
In the town hall is the admirable painting of the Battle of
Lexington, by Sandham; also in the town offices statues of
Hancock and Adams.

The Hayes memorial fountain, with an ideal statue of the Minute
Man, by Henry H. Kitson, sculptor, faces the line of approach of
the British from the easterly end of the common. Behind it a
granite pulpit marks the site of the old church past which
Pitcairn led his men; a boulder to the left locates the position
of the Old Belfry from which the alarm was sounded on its bell,
April 19, 1775. A boulder on the common to the right from the
fountain, together with the old monument, under which the eight
men killed during the battle are buried, marks the line of the
Minute Men. The Jonathan Harrington house, on the corner of
Bedford street, was the scene of a touching incident of the
battle. Across Bedford street is the Masonic Temple. The main
part of this building was erected in 1822 for the Lexington
Academy, and in this building the first normal school in America
was opened on July 3, 1839, with three pupils enrolled.

It is good to be here in this section of country not alone for
its historical associations, with which it is so rich, but for
the association of great minds, from which emanated those
flowers of song "that shall bloom in fragrance and beauty in the
gardens of the human heart forever." We note in journeying here
that the scenery is superb, yet we love the land more for the
noble souls who lived and labored here that humanity might rise
to higher things.

One does not wonder that Massachusetts can boast of so many
illustrious names, for "its lovely landscape and stern climate
seem to have been made for the development of genius," and no
other period of history could have afforded more telling
inspiration than that in which they lived. Their songs had in
them the purity of its crystal springs, the beauty of its autumn
landscapes, the strength of its rock-strewn hills.

How quiet was all the landscape on that Sabbath afternoon as we
stood on the North bridge, where once stood the embattled farmer
gazing up the elm-lined vista at the alert figure of the Minute
Man. As one writer has said, it seemed difficult to associate
this charming spot with strife, and try as we would it ever
remained what its name implies, "Concord."

How peaceful the dark, slow-moving stream glided by the town,
with scarce a murmur to break the serene stillness! How gently
the Old Manse looked from its leafy elms! The noise of
automobiles passing along the highway, the rippling laughter of
our little guide, or the gurgling melody of a red-winged
blackbird scarce disturbed its peaceful slumbers. On the golden
stillness of the hot mid-summer afternoon the almost
imperceptible current seemed more sluggish still. The graceful
foliage of willow, elm and alder, joined in friendly groups by
wild grape vines, leaned over the dark water "as if still
listening for the golden thoughts of Hawthorne, Chinning,
Emerson and Thoreau." It was their spirits that seemed to rule
over the brooding landscape rather than that of the Minute Man,
clothing each rock and tree with a luster the remembrance of
which shall illuminate many a somber-colored day of life.

Yet here was the first battle of the Revolution. The only flag
we saw was the vivid red of cardinal flowers, the blue of the
chicory, and the white of the elder. We heard no gun save that
of the bittern, which savored more of love than war. The calm
skies knew no harsher sound than the explosive boom of the night-
hawk. The only drum was that of the bullfrog, calling raw
recruits from among the lily-pads. The dark waters harbored no
submarine save a great turtle who slipped from a log and
submerged, sending a mass of ripples around a much-frightened
blue heron. The woods echoed to the bold bugle of the Carolina
wren. But there, on April 19, 1775, "murmured the first faint
tide of war" that continued until, as the stone on the right
tells us, "it gave peace to the United States."

Gage sent troops to proceed to Concord to destroy the military
stores collected there, but they, like Adams and Hancock in
Lexington, had vanished. They were as much surprised as the
farmer who planted his peas near a woodchuck den; when he went
out to look at them all he had was the smell. For the British,
too, only the smell of the powder remained. After they had left
a small force to guard the bridge, the troops set fire to the
court house. They then cut down the liberty pole, spiked several
cannon, threw several barrels of flour into the river, and
proceeded to hunt for the arms and ammunition that were not
there. The burning flames from the court house kindled the wrath
of the little force of Minute Men, who had seen the ominous
clouds of smoke on that April day. Soon four hundred men were on
their way to Concord. Two hundred regulars, on arriving, seized
the bridge. Here they received and returned the British fire and
were only overcome by numbers. Major Buttrick forced them back
into the village.

As we gazed across again at the Old Manse we thought of the
wonderful essays that had been written here. In the rear of the
old house is a delightful study. It was here that Emerson wrote
"Nature." Here, too, Hawthorne wrote "Mosses from an Old Manse."
We thought of the brave clergyman who, from the north window,
commanding a broad view of the river, stood watching the first
conflict of a long and deadly struggle between the mother
country and her child.

Realizing the danger they were in, the British troops began
their retreat of eighteen miles. They had eaten little or
nothing for fourteen hours. Ages ago freedom loving Nature had
conspired to aid the Americans by shaping the field of battle.
Huge boulders had been left by the glacier, the potent rays of
the April sun made dense masses of verdure in willows, which
thus became an ally of the pine. Stone fences and haystacks
became ready-made fortifications, and every rising spot was
filled with irate hostile yeoman who harried them with aim true
and deadly. They soon began to run and leave their wounded
behind, and in place of a retreat their disorderly flight must
have had the appearance of a Marathon race, the rattle of
musketry acting or serving as signals for each to do his best on
the home stretch.

They were almost exhausted when they fell into a little hollow
square made by Percy's men to receive them. Here the weary,
frightened Redcoats took refuge as in a sanctuary, and
immediately threw themselves upon the ground to rest. Many of
them had either lost or thrown away their muskets. Pitcairn had
lost both his horse and the elegant pistols with which. the
first shot of the war for independence had been fired. They may
now be seen in the town library of Lexington. When the British
soldiers reached Arlington, several miles from Boston, they had
an obstinate fight with the Yanks. The road swarmed with Minute
Men and they could not keep order--but at sunset, when they
entered Charlestown under the welcome shelter of the fleet, it
was upon the full run. Considered as a race, the British stood
far in the lead. Two hundred and seventy-three British were lost
and but ninety-three Americans.

As we still lingered on the banks of the sleeping river we
recalled these lines from Emerson: "My home stands in lowland
with limited outlook, and on the outskirts of the village. But I
go with my friend to the shore of our little river, and with one
stroke of the paddle I leave the village politics and
personalities behind and pass into a delicate realm of sunset
and moonlight." Alert and watchful still stood the figure near
the bridge, and as we turned away from this quiet spot "his
attitude of eternal vigilance still seemed prophetic." He became
at once the noble spirit of a brave Anglo-Saxon, standing for
Freedom and Right; the spirit that gained our independence; that
of 1867 that freed the slave; and that of 1917 that sent the
sons of America across the ocean. This glorious Freeman should
be placed on some lofty mountain peak in the pure, free air of
heaven, where all might read the lesson of Freedom and Human
Rights. This is one of America's shrines of which she may be
duly proud. Could the European tourist carry back no other
memory, it would be well to cross the Atlantic to see this
sight. Leaving the guardian at the bridge standing there, we
made our way to Sleepy Hollow.

We are not particularly fond of cemeteries, but the knowledge
that finally one has to go there himself makes a visit not
wholly purposeless. We strolled past. the quiet homes to the
more quiet plot of ground, "hallowed by many congenial and great
souls." Here on a lofty elevation of ground stood the headstones
of Louise May Alcott, Thoreau and Charming, with that of
Hawthorne enclosed by a fence and withdrawn a short distance.

"What a constellation of stars, whose radiance shall shine on
undimmed through countless centuries!"

Here is what Thoreau wrote concerning monuments: "When the stone
is a light one and stands upright, pointing to the sky, it does
not repress the spirits of the traveler to meditate by it; but
these men did seem a little heathenish to us; and so are all
large monuments over men's bodies from the Pyramids down."

A monument should at least be "starry-pointing," to indicate
whither the spirit has gone, and not prostrate like the body it
has deserted. There have been some nations who could do nothing
but construct tombs, and these are the only traces they have
left. They are the heathen. But why these stones so upright and
emphatic like exclamation points? What was there so remarkable
that lived? Why should the monument be so much more enduring
than the fame which it is designed to commemorate--a stone to a
bone? "Here lies ___" Why do they not sometimes write, "There
rises?" Is it a monument to the body only that is intended?
"Having ended the term of his natural life." Would it not be
truer to say, "Having ended the term of his unnatural life?" The
rarest quality in an epitaph is truth. If any character is given
it should be as severely true as the decision of judges, and not
the partial testimony of friends. Friends and contemporaries
should supply only the name and date, and leave it to posterity
to write the epitaph.

OPPOSITE THE OLD SHORE ROAD

The Old World bended low beneath a load
Of bigotry and superstitions dark,
When Liberty, amid the tottering thrones
Of despots born, with gladness filled the homes
Of men, e'en the Eternal City bade
Her gates imperial open wide; and, like
A cloud the darkness lifted from the land.
Then Freedom's gentle, buoyant spirit, like
The Magi's wand, extended far across
The sea, and thereupon the gloomy flood
Was parted wide asunder, and revealed
A glorious paradise for Freedom's sons.
Columbia, beneath thy banner's stars,
The mind of man in rare luxuriance blooms,
Unfolding one by one the attributes
Of deity. In vision we foresee
The perfect man. In form the image of
His Maker, God. In toleration filled
With charity for all. In Reason's Ways
Profound. In thought, he mounts the throne of power
And sways the world. He tries frolic Nature's grasp
To lure her secrets still untold till we,
Amazed at his bold course, recoil abashed.

--Willis Boughton.

CHAPTER XI

THE OLD SHORE ROAD AND THE PILGRIM SPIRIT

The breaking waves dashed high
On a stern and rock bound coast,
And the woods against the stormy sky
Their giant branches tossed.

"Thus sang Felicia Hemans in the early years of the last
century, and anyone who has sailed in by White Horse beach and
'Hither Manomet' when one of those fierce gales that winter
brings to this section of the coast sends great billows
thundering up against the cliff and churns all the sea into
froth and foam, will readily see how truthful this singer has
portrayed the scene he has beheld. True, you will not find
granite ledges, which follow the coast almost continuously
farther north, as at Scituate, Nahant, Rockport, and farther on;
but it is rock-bound, nevertheless, with great heaps of
boulders, thickly sown, of various shapes and sizes, with a
sombre gray color that makes them appear inexpressibly stern
even on a bland summer day."

The most picturesque of all the highways leading from Boston to
Plymouth is the South Shore road, passing through Milton,
Quincy, Hingham, Scituate, Cohasset, Marshfield, and Duxbury,
for one of the chief delights of this route is the frequent
glimpses of the sea, whose jagged, rocky coast Nature has
softened until we only feel that it is rock bound. When the day
is clear how the sunshine dusts the water with purplish bloom,
mellowing its hard, cold tint of greenish blue. Here one seems
to feel the spirit, the mystery of the ocean, and a voice at
once grand and irresistible calls from those walls of siren-
haunted rocks until he is among them, listening to the music of
the waves as they come rolling against their rugged sides. Then
one never tires of gazing at the beautiful homes so charmingly
embowered amidst their grand old trees and spacious grounds
adorned with many flowers, in brilliant masses of various
colors. Thus no time is lost by the ardent admirer of the
beauties of land and sea, and the ever-varied and changing
scenes allow just that variety which the most prosaic person
cannot help enjoying.

We shall always remember this road as a sort of traveler's
paradise. It is an almost ideal shore road, indeed one of the
finest that New England can boast, and one really regrets it is
not longer. How many times we have gone over it since that first
journey! "Memory and imagination are true yoke-fellows, and
between them they are always preparing some new and greater
pleasure as we allow them the opportunity."

Many have been the times since those memorable days spent on the
old Shore Road; that memory of them gave for a moment a pleasure
more real than any we had experienced while strolling at will
along that scenic highway. Sometimes seemingly imaginary
delights are far from being imaginary. We can see the lovely
stretches of beach this moment and hear the breakers booming
among the granite boulders--yes, and the grating of the pebbles
that are being ground to shifting sand to form the beach.

Then, too, who can ever forget the exhilarating effect of a dip
in those waves? The great unfailing attraction of the place,
then as now, is the ocean, forever an emblem of unrest,
changeable in its unchangeableness. To our minds the ocean seems
alive. We could sooner believe in sirens and water-nymphs than
in many existences that are commonly spoken of as much more
certain "matters of fact." We could believe in them, we say, but
do not.

Our communings are not with any monster of the unfathomable
deeps of the ocean, but with the spirit of the ocean itself. It
grows somber and sullen under a leaden sky, and its voice has in
it something of that inexpressible sadness heard in the raging
wind among the pines. Then on a calm day in mid-summer how
placid and serene its water appears, wearing on its bosom that
exquisite blue bloom, like the haze that clothes distant
mountains. It scintillates and sparkles like rare jewels in the
sunlight, and ever its dancing waves with silvery crests
proclaim it a thing of life and motion. You might say that it is
dead, yet after all, how many know what life really is? In
certain moods, especially when strolling by the sea, you will
feel measurably sure of being alive yourself; and the longer you
tarry by it the less liable you will be to entertain doubts
about the matter.

On the afternoon of our first journey along this Shore Road the
sky was overcast with low-hung clouds that foreboded rain.
Towhees were calling noisily from wayside thickets; catbirds
sang their self-conscious airs or mewed in derision as we
passed; chickadees were calling their names and occasionally
uttered their pensive minor strains; and far away in a dim-
lighted hemlock grove we heard a new bird song that seemed in
exquisite accord with our own thoughts.

Again and again the notes came from the forest. How delicious
the music was! A perfect song of peace and spiritual tone that
told us at once the singer was a thrush--but what thrush? We had
heard the song of the hermit among the Berkshire Hills and could
never confuse his wonderful hymn with that of another species;
yet here was a song possessing the same character of sacredness.
It was a restful lullaby like ,the mingled benediction of wood
and sea on the tired spirits of weary travelers. It had in it
nothing of "pride or passion," but contained the same serene
harmony that vagrant breezes draw from the myriad-stringed
pines; something of the melodies breathed from the ocean. It
proved to be the evening hymn of the veery.

The song of the nightingale, with its trills and phrases, would
make harmony seemingly crude if compared to either the hermit or
veery thrush, nor would the skylark, famous in poetry and song,
bear off the prize were the two birds to be heard alternately.
The English blackbird has a very sweet song, which made the
weary, homesick heart of the soldier in France rejoice, when he
announced that spring was near. Yet if the European traveler
complains that our songsters are not brilliant, let him visit
our land when the brown thrasher, the bobolink or mocking bird
are singing, and he will hear melodies as full of joy and
exuberance as any he may have remembered in his native land.

We have been straying a bit from the Shore Road but, as we said,
the scenery along it is varied, so will your thoughts be as you
move enraptured from place to place.

One almost forgets to eat while so much of beauty lies all about
him; but, once reminded that it is meal time, what a ravenous
appetite he seems to have! It almost provokes a smile now as we
think of the many places along the various roads that are
connected in our minds with the question of something to eat.
Many of the places (might say nearly all of them) were places
where we had dined the year before. Remembering how voracious
and indiscriminating our appetites were, we cannot help
wondering that we are here to tell the story; for how many new
fruits we sampled because we wanted to learn their flavor!

This feeling is no doubt shared by all who recall similar
excursions, when the open air and exercise whetted their
appetites to an unusual degree. We Americans are objects of much
comment in restaurants and hotels of foreign countries, and no
doubt many of the waiters think that we have been blessed with
more than a spark of life, else it would have been smothered
long ago by the constant fuel which we furnish for it. But on a
summer trip, where one all but lives out-of-doors, breathes
deeply the resin-scented air and has little to worry about,
there is not so much of a mystery connected with his ability to
keep on the go.

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