Before books came into my life, I was given to stargazing and daydreaming. When books were given me, I fell upon them as a glutton pounces on his meat after a period of enforced starvation. I lived with my nose in a book, and took no notice of the alterations of the sun and stars. But now, after the advent of George Washington and the American Revolution, I began to dream again. I strayed on the Common after school instead of hurrying home to read. I hung on fence rails, my pet book forgotten under my arm, and gazed off to the yellow-streaked February sunset, and beyond, and beyond. I was no longer the central figure of my dreams; the dry weeds in the lane crackled beneath the tread of Heroes. What more could America give a child? Ah, much more! As I read how the patriots planned the Revolution, and the women gave their sons to die in battle, and the heroes led to victory, and the rejoicing people set up the Republic, it dawned on me gradually what was meant by _my country_. The people all desiring noble things, and striving for them together, defying their oppressors, giving their lives for each other,--all this it was that made _my country_. It was not a thing that I _understood_; I could not go home and tell Frieda about it, as I told her other things I learned at school. But I knew one could say “my country” and _feel_ it, as one felt “God” or “myself.” My teacher, my schoolmates, Miss Dillingham, George Washington himself, could not mean more than I when they said “my country,” after I had once felt it. For the Country was for all the Citizens, and _I was a citizen_. And when we stood up to sing “America,” I shouted the words with all my might. I was in very earnest proclaiming to the world my love for my new-found country. “I love thy rocks and rills, Thy woods and templed hills.” Boston Harbor, Crescent Beach, Chelsea Square,--all was hallowed ground to me. As the day approached when the school was to hold exercises in honor of Washington’s Birthday, the halls resounded at all hours with the strains of patriotic songs; and I, who was a model of the attentive pupil, more than once lost my place in the lesson as I strained to hear, through closed doors, some neighboring class rehearsing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” If the doors happened to open, and the chorus broke out unveiled,-- “O! say, does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?” delicious tremors ran up and down my spine, and I was faint with suppressed enthusiasm.