Lauriel; the love letters of an American girl

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1902 Excerpt: ...foam. Why? Not because a great sea-fight had centuries ago been fought here and lost and won. Not because Pericles built temples on its shore which Phidias decorated. Not a bit of it! Simply because historians wrote of the battles, poets sang them, and because' archaeologists have resurrected towns of wondrous beauty. Why, it does not compare to Gloucester Bay--God bless her!--nor the shore of Eastern Point. Yet only a limited class of artists rave about our home ports, our home seas and mountains and slopes and defiles and gorges. We have history, but where is our Herodotus or Zenophon? Poetry--but where is our Horace and where our Virgil? America had as great men as Europe before Columbus was born. Where is our Plutarch? We haven't begun to recreate the Mayas, the Incas, the Montezumas, and the Moundbuilders. Were they not patriotic? And was not their civilisation one of the marvels of the world? Had they no Sappho and no Phidias? You and your last letter have made me so proud of our unknown history, that I almost forget my Dutch and English descent. Five hundred years from now the tourists of Europe and Asia will invade the United States, not for its game, or mountain climbing, or its vastness, but because of its historical interest. Unlike most girls, but like Ruskin's ideal in "Sesame and Lilies," I was turned loose as soon as I could read, to browse in Prescott, Motley, Bancroft, and Parkman, and Fiske. Such writers will be the saviours of our national pride. When you wrote, "Do not be ashamed to know your own country first," and "Do not be carried away by Illeria. Its only interest lies in its discovered past," you opened my eyes, dear friend, as you always do,--and you led me back to my childhood, when I used to curl up...