ch places of interest
as always attracted visitors from out of town. My attention was
brought to this first by the need of limiting ourselves to amusements
that didn't cost anything, but chiefly by learning where the better
element down here spent their Sundays. You have only to follow this
crowd to find out where the objects of national pride are located. An
old battle flag will attract twenty foreigners to one American. And
incidentally I wish to confess it was they who made me ashamed of my
ignorance of the country's history. Beyond a memory of the Revolution,
the Civil War and a few names of men and battles connected therewith,
I'd forgotten all I ever learned at school on this subject. But here
the many patriotic celebrations arranged by the local schools in the
endeavor to instill patriotism and the frequent visits of the boys to
the museums, kept the subject fresh. Not only Dick but Ruth and myself
soon turned to it as a vital part of our education. Inspired by the
old trophies that ought to stand for so much to us of to-day we took
from the library the first volume of Fiske's fine series and in the
course of time read them all. As we traced the fortunes of those early
adventurers who dreamed and sailed towards an unknown continent,
pictured to ourselves the lives of the tribes who wandered about in
the big tangle of forest growth between the Atlantic and the Pacific,
as we landed on the bleak New England shores with the early Pilgrims,
then fought with Washington, then studied the perilous internal
struggle culminating with Lincoln and the Civil War, then the
dangerous period of reconstruction with the breathless progress
following--why it left us all better Americans than we had ever been
in our lives. It gave new meaning to my present surroundings and
helped me better to understand the new-comers. Somehow all those
things of the past didn't seem to concern Grover and the rest of them
in the trim little houses. They had no history and they were a part of
no history. Perhaps that's because they were making no history
themselves. As for myself, I know that I was just beginning to get
acquainted with my ancestors--that for the first time in my life, I
was really conscious of being a citizen of the United States of
America.

But I soon discovered that not only the historic but the beautiful
attracted these people. They introduced me to the Art Museum. In the
winter following our first summer here, when the out of