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My Homecoming
tongue, half Danish, half .English, to the utter bewilderment. of my surroundings.
The days passed all too quickly, altho I seemed to cram years and years of memories into one short day. To me it was the most wonderful thing of all' to come back to a place where time had passed and left so little change. The young people had grown up, the old ones were perhaps a little greyer, a little more bent. But these were only outward differences. To me they were the same boys and girls with whom I had played as a child, and to the old folks I was still the same “little Ann.” I think that spirit caught me as nothing else could ever do. I was just “little Ann” again, and one night when we were walking along the sand-dunes, I forgot so much my grown-up dignity that I turned cart-wheels and ran races, just for the sake of old times. But I couldn’t stay in Fano as long as I wished, for there were other relatives in other towns and villages to be visited.
By this time, it had become noised abroad that I was home again, and “little Ann” began to realize that she was something of a somebody. The news crept into the press. I was photographed and interviewed, and even ultra-conservative Danish newspapers devoted special columns to my career. At the little villages we passed on the way, the women and children would be there with flowers and a few halting words of welcome. It was all so simple, so sincere, I felt they were proud of me, and I was grateful for their affection and their pride.
One of the biggest thrills I got was on my visit to
the town where I had been to school. Well I re
one
I HADN’T slept a wink, tho. I went to bed very early, much as small children do on Christmas Eve — to make the day come faster. At about five in the morning, I threw on my clothes and went up on deck. Everything was still and quiet. The boat moved silently thru the grey twilight of the early dawn as tho piloted by phantom hands. I stood there shivering with cold, in spite of my warm wrap. But there was that wonderful glow in my heart which every wanderer feels who knows after years of absence, that at last he is nearing Home.
And I think one of the two most wonderful memories I shall always cherish of my trip was the first glimpse of the little island where I was born.
Such a tiny, insignificant, flat little island it must have looked to others, as its vague outline gradually took a definite shape thru the curtain of morning mists. But to me Paradise itself could not have seemed more beautiful, for it held that Earthly Paradise, childhood’s memories.
Of course, all my folks were there to welcome me, and my only recollections of that first meeting were tears and laughter, the warm embraces of the old people, arid the thrills of “placing” cousins and friends who had outgrown all recognition. I was so mad with excitement that I found myself chattering in a strange new
Ahne says: “If I were to say how many times I wejjt on that wonderful trip, you would imagine I had a thoroly miserable time . . . and yet they were all tears of pure joy”
(Sixty)