Next day there was a general changing of minds, however. It was Sunday, and the emigrants, a God-fearing and reverent lot of people, did not move out of camp. Others had come in during the night, for this was a famous camping-place, well known throughout all the region. Here were wood, water, and grass, the three requisites for campers, as they had already found. The country was undulating, interlaced with creeks; and groves of black-jack, oak, and cottonwood were here and there broken by open glades that would be smiling fields some day, but were now wild native grasses. There was a preacher in the camp, a good man from New England, who preached about the Pilgrim's Progress through the world, and the trials he meets by the way. Oscar pulled his father's sleeve, and asked why he did not ask the preacher to give out "The Kansas Emigrant's Song" as a hymn. Mr. Bryant smiled, and whispered that it was hardly likely that the lines would be considered just the thing for a religious service. But after the preaching was over, and the little company was breaking up, he told the preacher what Oscar had said. The minister's eyes sparkled, and he replied, "What? Have you that beautiful hymn? Let us have it now and here. Nothing could be better for this day and this time." Oscar, blushing with excitement and native modesty, was put up high on the stump of a tree, and, violin in hand, "raised the tune." It was grand old "Dundee." Almost everybody seemed to know the words of Whittier's poem, and beneath the blue Kansas sky, amid the groves of Kansas trees, the sturdy, hardy men and the few pale women joyfully, almost tearfully, sang,-- We crossed the prairie, as of old The pilgrims crossed the sea, To make the West, as they the East, The homestead of the free! We go to rear a wall of men On freedom's Southern line, And plant beside the cotton-tree The rugged Northern pine! We're flowing from our native hills As our free rivers flow; The blessing of our Mother-land Is on us as we go. We go to plant her common schools On distant prairie swells, And give the Sabbaths of the wild The music of her bells. Upbearing, like the Ark of old, The Bible in our van, We go to test the truth of God Against the fraud of man. No pause, nor rest, save where the streams That feed the Kansas run, Save where our pilgrim gonfalon Shall flout the setting sun! We'll tread the prairie as of old Our fathers sailed the sea, And make the West, as they the East, The homestead of the free!