Old Familiar Town By LILLIAN HINMAN SHUEY How pleasant in the after years To tread with quiet pace The spot once dear, and still as dear, To note quaint landmarks here and there In old familiar town. For there are trees and views and skies That somehow seem most kind; The thoughts that come with well known scenes And here a lawn whose statues white And there a stately home unchanged Around the corner, down the street, When coming in the passing years To old familiar town. The thought that broods, the dread that waits, We cannot thrust away, We live, we hope, aspire, or fear, And struggle still to-day. And on the grey, old-fashioned street We still crave fortune's crown With throbbing heart that loves its youth The whistles, bells, the jangling sounds The park, the elm, a bird's clear song, Though good or ill be in your fate To all who keep the vine-clad homes ON THE WAY TO THE OLD HOME F the many "institutions" for which New England stands sponsor, "Old-Home Week" is one of the most notable. Invented in its present form by a clever New Hampshire governor only seven or eight years ago, it has taken deep root in at least two of the New England states, has been adopted in a tentative way by the other four, and has been successfully tried in Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and several other Yankee commonwealths and Canadian provinces. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about it is that some of these outside observances of the reunion have been among the most elaborate of the lot. A case in point was the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, OldHome Week celebration in 1905, which was carried out on a scale befitting some great national event, and to a report of which the Philadelphia newspapers de oted whole. pages, with illustrations. There are some New England. movements that are treated with indifference, not to say levity, by those who live outside of this intellectual section; but Old-Home Week is so palpably a good thing on the. face of it that the rest of the country has been compelled to look upon it with favor. You never can tell. what is going to be the ultimate fate of a semi-sentimental movement of this kind, but even if OldHome Week falls into desuetude by next year, it will have accomplished an amount of good that will make its existence well worth the while.. The chances are that it will not be spoken of in the past tense next year or the year after, but that the idea of holding a periodical reunion of those who are living in New England towns to-day and those who have been away from the old home, perhaps in the far west or south, or a number of years, will remain a permanent feature of our life. Speaking from a very intimate knowledge of the Old-Home Week movement, particularly as applied to Massachusetts, I can testify that it has done great good in a practical as well as a sentimental way to the people of the old Bay State. That the residents of New Hampshire have benefited in an even larger degree ought to be evident to all who keep track of the tendencies of the times. It is a movenment which has genuine reciprocity for its basis, too, and the good that has come to the people of New England in entertaining their relatives and old-time. friends from distant points has been fully shared by those who have been entertained. In the March issue of the New England Magazine there was a simply-told tale describing the trip by ox team across the continent to a new home in the foothills of Colorado of a family from Massachusetts, forty years ago. Think what it would mean to the older members of that family, if they survived, and even to the younger ones, if they could come back to their old home in the east in a fast-flying train of Pullman cars and find their townsmen waiting to receive them with open arms and brass bands, decorations, street parades, public meetings and banquets. There would be a note of sadness in it all, perhaps, for the changes in the place would be marked and the vacant chairs many; but the joy of friendly reunion would be the dominant keynote, after all, and the visitors from the far west would go back again feeling that the old home ties had never been really sundered. It was a mournful visit for the old man who came back to his native town on Cape Cod during the Old-Home Week reunion a couple of years ago, after an absence in California of fifty years, and found that not a single one of his boyhood friends was left there; but even he got some joy out of his long journey and went back feeling the better for the pilgrimage. Nor have these re-visitations been confined entirely to those who have moved away to a distance. In the pretty town of Lunenburg, Massa |