"The first on Plymouth Rock to leap! Among the timid flock she stood, Rare figure, near the May Flower's prow, With heart of Christian fortitude, And light heroic on her brow." But whoever was the first to step upon this stone, that act we now cherish as the first one toward the founding of a nation, and as typical of the heroism and daring of its founders. "And such it will stand for all time as one of the grand stepping- stones of history." We wander once more along Town Brook listening to its soothing voice as the evening shadows begin to gather upon it. The sun, like an orb of fire, is sinking in a vast sea of gold through which a few fleecy clouds of a delicate rose color are slowly drifting. The shadowy forms of the night-hawk are plainly seen as they sweep the heavens for their evening meal of insects. We catch their eerie cries that fall from the rosy depths of the waning sunset to the darkening glades around us, and we hear the breeze softly sighing as it caresses the myriad leaves of the forest. The water of the brook grows dim in the deepening shadows. It is the sweetest hour of the day, and as this song of peace floats out over the twilight woods it calls to holy thoughts. It is as if one heard the Angelus of a distant village. On returning to Plymouth Rock hotel we were impressed with the crowded streets, for from far and near people had gathered to witness the Tercentenary of the Landing of the Pilgrims. In the gray half light of the evening we saw a majestic elm whose gigantic size told of an earlier time. It may not be so, yet we loved to think that the white settlers' cabins rose around it by the seashore. Perhaps the earliest of the Pilgrim fathers heard the first prayers on American soil uttered from beneath its now aged boughs. It probably saw the surrounding forest disappear and with it, the Indian villages, and now looks down on the thriving historic town of the white man. The youths of several generations have frolicked beneath its beneficent branches. Armies have marched by it. The soldiers of Plymouth may have passed it on their way to the harbor where they stepped on Plymouth Rock before embarking on that perilous journey in 1917; and here it is still standing a silent orator of golden deeds in a land of noble trees. In it one sees far more than so many feet of lumber to calculate. Its gleaming crest in autumn speaks eloquently of priceless deeds of valor and that distant time of the golden dawn of Freedom.