d gray with snow, now smiling
in unforgettable beauty at my feet, bringing irresistibly to mind
the one who sang,

My soul today is far away,
Sailing the blue Vesuvian bay.

[Illustration: Birds of the Plymouth Woods, Wise and Otherwise]

At Naples indeed could be no softer, fairer skies than this June
day of late April brought to Plymouth Bay and spread over the
waters that nestled within the curve of that splendid young moon
of white sand that sweeps from Manomet to the tip of the sandspit,
with the Gurnet far to the right and Plymouth's white houses
rising in the middle distance. It lacked only the cone of Vesuvius
smoking beyond to make the memory complete.

Nor has the Bay of Naples bluer waters than those that danced
below me. Some stray current of the Gulf Stream must have curled
about the tip of Cape Cod and spread its wonder bloom over them.
Here were the same exquisite soft blues, shoaling into tender
green, that I have seen among the Florida keys. Surely it was like
a transformation scene. The day before the torn sea wild with wind
and the dun clouds of a northeast gale hiding the distance with a
mystery of dread, a wind that beat the forest with snow and
chilled to the marrow; and this day the warmth of an Italian
spring and the blue Vesuvian Bay.

*****

The Pilgrims had their seasons of storm and stress, but there came
to them too halcyon days like this when the mayflower bloomed in
all the woodland about them, the mourning cloak butterflies danced
with joy down the sunny glades, and the bay spread its wonderful
blue beneath their feet in the delicious promise of June. Nor is
it any wonder that in spite of hardships and disaster manifold
they yet found heart to write home that it was a fayere lande and
bountiful.

But for all the lure of Plymouth woods with their fragrance of
trailing arbutus, from all the grandeur of the wide outlook from
Manomet Heights, the hearts of all who come to Plymouth must lead
them back to the resting place of the fathers on the brow of the
little hill in the midst of the town. There where the grass was
not yet green and the buttercups that will later shine in gold
have put forth but the tiniest beginnings of their fuzzy,
three-parted leaves, I watched the sun sink, big and red in a golden
mist, over a land of whose coming material greatness Bradford and
his fellow Pilgrims could have had no inkling. Seaward the tropic
bloom of the water was all gone, and there a