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.
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