| OCR Text |
Show Renascence at the University 75 bly make me quite hard and bitter. There are so many people with tight lips and hard eyes around here." She was charmed by the accent of a Brooklyn usher who talked like "I know a goil named Goitie." Although the scenery along the Hudson was indescribable, she wrote that it had "a green medieval beauty. The country homes are built like castles, and in-between are rugged gray cliffs almost hidden by the greenery." She and friends attended "the hop" at West Point, where she danced with two Mormon cadets and shook hands with General John J. Pershing, chief of staff of the Army, who gave her a big smile. He delivered the Commencement address at the graduation exercises the next day. As she journeyed from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., the train passed through Wilmington, Delaware, and over the Brandywine River. She thought about "Dear Grandma"-Sarah Maria Mousley Cannon-her childhood, her youth, "her coura geous venture into a new strange land, with new, strange peo ple." "Through it all," Madelyn wrote, "I could remember and reverence her ladyship and her utter fineness. My precious asso ciation with her has done so much for me; will always be infi nitely helpful and inspiring." In Washington she visited Mount Vernon, Arlington National Cemetery, the Congressional Library, the Capitol Building, Lincoln Memorial, and Washington Monument. She rode on trains, buses, steamboats, coastal cutters, canalboats, taxis, and took a drive in Montreal in a hackney coach called a "Victoria." She visited Niagara Falls from the Canadian side. In Cleveland she thought about family and home and remembered a little poem by Josephine Preston Peabody that suggested one had to go away in order to really learn about home and one's parents. She made notes for plays and short stories she wanted to write. She was also inspired to write poems, of which the fol lowing is an example. DREAMS Dreams, I am leaving you, dearly beloved, Leaving you now for the world as it is. |
