Wind and water were fraught with the nameless peaceful intimations of the New World after the turmoil of the Old one. It is difficult to say how one seizes them, but they come with the Gulf Stream. I have always noticed that half-way over there is a change in the aura, the atmosphere. It throws a breath of balsam on the wind, and flashes on the waves that gleam which Cabot, Jacques Cartier, and the Pilgrims saw when they sighted land. It is that wonderful sense of going westward which, I suppose, is primal to the instinct. Going eastward, one is going back to beginnings, to things lived, to things over and done with. Going westward, all is hope. It is the onward reach, the upward grasp, the endless striving. It is the lifting of the hands, the straining of the power to achieve, the yearning of the inner man. The thing that is finished is left behind, and the thing to be wrestled with and done is in front of one. The very sun goes before one with a splendid gesture of beckoning—on to work, on to self-denial, on to triumph and success—and when it sets it sets with a promise of a morrow. We had already begun to feel that; and on my part in a spirit of compunction. I was going, as far as lay within my small powers, to turn the west back upon the east again, to reverse nature by making the stream flow toward its source. I was far from insensible to the pity of it, for I had seen the effect on my own country. I had seen my own country—that baby giant, whose very existence as a country antedated but little the year when I was born—I had seen it pause in its work, in its play, in its task of self-development—listen—shiver—thrill—throw down the ax, the spade, the hammer, the pick—go up from the field, the factory, and the mine—and offer itself willingly. It was to me as if that was fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet: “I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.” I had seen that first flotilla of thirty-one ships sail down the St. Lawrence, out into the ocean, and over to the shores of England, as the first great gift of men which the New World had ever made to the Old, as some return for all the Old had poured out upon the New. I had seen it, for I was on it. We went gaily, as hop-pickers go to a bean-feast. We knew it was war, but the word had no meaning for us. What it meant we found out at Ypres, at Vimy, at Lens. But when I think of my country now I think of her no longer as a baby giant. She has become a girl widow—valiant, dry-eyed, high-souled, ready to go on with the interrupted work and do bigger work—but a widow all the same. And the sword that had pierced one heart I was bringing to pierce another. I was sorry; but sorrow didn’t keep me, couldn’t keep me from being terribly in earnest. And in on these thoughts Regina Barry broke as if she had been following them.