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"The sun declines o'er land and sea, Creeps on the night."
(R. Walmsley, Canadian Presbyterian Hymnal.)
A favorite hymn with my husband was from the Canadian Presbyterian hymn book, "The sun declines
o'er land and sea, Creeps on the night." Mrs. Frost taught it to him, and he sang it constantly in subdued
but not uncheerful tones on our wedding trip, when I emerged on the upper deck at sunset.
But every time the sun declines we see it rise again, and now we have a new Camp, presided over by Horace Junior,
assisted by John, and managed by Miss Thompson and Miss Kleinre, in the true tradition of the founder.
In 1937 it was closed, for the only time except in 1918 for the First World War. In that summer, 1937, Hig visited
Camp from the Farm, and Klemmy and I visited it from the Monadnock House at Colebrook with Dr. and Mrs. Harold
Milligan of New York, we coming up from Ogunquit, and they meeting us there from their summer home in Vermont.
(Dr. Milligan is the well-known composer and master of Church organ, now doing special work on music with the Federal
Council of Churches.) Mrs. Brister was also at the Monadnock House, her brother John across the Street, and Bill
Speer at the Big Pond. We all felt the Camp was going on, whether officially or not.
In 1938 it was opened. The Taylors came as formerly, and prayers went up from Woodcroft Cabin. Now they are in
England under fire.
The various Ristines came all three of these summers. Dr. and Mrs. McCreary came in 1938, "as it was in the
beginning." After their long absence they joined in the games and talks and all the customs of the Camp and
were as dear and fine as ever; but "Doctor Bruce" was in failing health and very early that fall he died
in the Cumberland Valley where for so long he "went about doing good," and where they both have been
so greatly loved.
Dr. and Mrs. John Strong came in 1940 after twentyeight years' absence and were as if they had never been away.
(Bill Strong, the writer, their son, has died while this story was being written--he in Los Angeles, Miss Eisenhower
in Philadelphia, and Mr. Jarrett in Costa Rica.)
Dr. Cort of Siam, my almost life-long friend from Hopkins, and Mrs. Cort came in 1939. Dr. Harrison came again
from Arabia for two summers, 1939 and 1940, with our beautiful and dear new friend, the second Mrs. Harrison, and
her four children, Margaret, Monteith and the twins, "Ginny" and "Barfield," (Barbara and Virginia),
Bilkert. When asked if he did not think that some day Heaven might look a little like the spires of Hopkins in
the sunest, Dr. Harrison replied, "Of course, I guess we all thought so." He told us again about eating
those grasshoppers with the Arabs in the desert ;--and about Saint John at Patmos,-also in the desert. And then
we had to let them both go back to Arabia again, but they were here, and no one can ever really take them away.
The Cousleys from Philadelphia, (as told in Chapter IX), have lived in Hillcrest. And one summer the Gettys, also
from Philadelphia and from the same Church, were in Bide-A-While, and showed genius for leading the games in the
Assembly Hall. (Mr. and Mrs. Frank Getty and daughter Meredith. He is on the Presbyterian Board of Education.)
Judge and Mrs. Winnett of Philadelphia came, Mrs. Winnett a Goucher graduate like myself, much younger but recalling
our old professors,--new Jewish friends, as welcome as Professor and Mrs. Straubenmuller were, our German friends
in the previous World War, making us realize again that the hatreds existing in the world are as compierely ridiculous
and silly as they are profoundly wicked.
The new generation grew to manhood and to the professions. Armajani came, our dear and brave friend from Persia.
This is Rev. Yahya Armajani, Ph.D., who came to America first with the Hutchisons when lovely Mary was a little
child and Big Bill not yet thought of. He is the first man of his nation ordained as a Christian minister, and
going back to Persia with a Princeton doctorate of philosophy besides, parctically alone there in the field of
Christian Education until his recent fortuitous marriage. Bob Clover came again, Hig's and my great friend, (Robert
P. Glover, M. D. (now at the Mayo Clinic, and marrying Margaret Steel in June, 1941); Fred Corum, (now Reverend
Frederick and a Princeton M. A.), drove away from Camp to teach practically everything at the College of the Ozarks;
Ross Garner, (graduate at law at the University of Pennsylvania, now in the United States Army); Niel Weathers,
(Hig's Amherst room-mate, graduate at law from Yale, now in the United States Marines); Niel brought his mother;
Ted Boyden, (Theodore Childs Boyden, also Amherst '36, world-traveller and graduate student at Harvard); Fred Klemm,
(Ph.D. in German, teaching at the University of Pennsylvania), brought his bride. Amherst had travelled some half
century of time, more than onethird of her long history, since the original Dr. Stone of Baltimore, (seen in my
first chapter "with his oil lantern"), graduated there, when the class of Amherst '40, appeared on the
Camp Diamond scene with "Fireball" Stott and "Sleepy Joe" Ruthenberg, (the former now teaching
at Governor Dummer Academy, named for the old New Hampshire patriot, for whom our neighbor town of Dummer was also named; the latter to be married before these lines reach
print).
The reader will perceive that with Helen Cantrell, "Dotsy" Ristine,--and the twins--see above; with Betsy
Ann Ristine Davis and husband Bob,--and daughter Ann! another Camp grandchild,--and all the rest,--the Future is
not unrepresented. We have had short visits from our own "family-member" Phil, (Margaret Phillips, U.
of Pa., M. A., representing pedagogy), and from the Camp Baby of Chapter VII, ("a little Catherine more fair
than her mother," to misquote Francois Villon,--Catherine Waite Coleman, Bryn Mawr and Goucher '32; my "successor"
in social work at Hopkins and in Baltimore--my gift to Hopkins; my grateful thanks to Baltimore, but I must not
pursue this topic further). And I will leave it for some future narrator to speak of my two Phi Betes, except to
say of Horace Coates, Junior, (Amherst '36 and Penn Law School '41), what Mrs. James Bailey said when she heard
that he was born,-- (one who never went to Camp, but somehow one feels that the James Baileys should have done
so),--"It is nice to know there is another H. C. Coleman in the world"; --she never spoke a truer word;
and of John Macdonald, the philosopher, (Amherst '40 and Harvard Graduate School,he summers it as well as winters
it),--that he not only asked me to write this story but stood over me until I did so; hence at once my inspiration
and my colleague. Would it not ill-become me, Reader, to speak further of these my "gang," with my well-known
predilection for the young, lest bounds of properly spoken pride and hope and faith be over-stepped?
The Corums and the Hutchisons have been there to depend upon for everything from Church to Chinese Checkers, --not
excluding Golf and Monopoly. These two families have imperceptibly taken over some of the functions we were wont
to associate with "The Stonesandspeers" of tradition. Dr. Hutchison has been known to argue a little
with Dr. Harrison, (or perhaps it was a "Christian Discussion"). And Dr. Corum has been heard to say
on the Colebrook golf
links, having arrived at a dead-run from the lunch tabIe, and having traversed the course with the speed of a marathon
runner,--"Hurry, hurry, John, I hate to be late, and have to hurry !" But there they are,--and we depend
on them, and they do not fail us.
The Klebes are at the Farm; old Nelson still drives the two horses with the cart, ("old" is here a term
of affection, not of years, for this is Nelson Bunnell, with the young heart). Mr. Little is at his pretty white
house in Colebrook,
where the elms of New England shade the Colebrook
streets, often with his pretty granddaughter, Glenwin, who inherits his red hair that
we never saw but took on faith from his dear wife. The Ramsays drive by from the Big Pond. The hay is raised. The
milk is fetched. The deer go down to drink at evening. (It is a long way back to Sappho, who first gave words to
the surety that "all things come home at eventide").
The Lake is still fished; the white-throat sings in the Valley; the paint-brush gives place to the golden-rod and
fireweed; the Northern lights still flash and the moon rises over Sunset Hill and is followed in the same sky by
the morning star,--and the sun. The Word of God is preached in the Assembly Hall.
Now we have again a Great War over the world. But in the mercy of God we shall see--what we shall see. It was too
limited a statement as to Lincoln when he passed, "Now he belongs to the ages." That is true, but it
was not enough to say of Lincoln; and of my husband and of Camp Diamond too, I like to think, "Now they belong
to the Future." These are lasting values; the ripples will not cease to spread; I have yet to despair. I have
seen too many "go forth with weeping and return bearing precious sheaves"; I have seen too often that
"the Lord restores the years that the locust had eaten," and gives exceeding great reward,-"and
in this life also, an hundred-fold."
The End