Chapter VIII: Introduction: By George Perry Morris (6)

Into the stagnation of this shallow pool of American letters, Emerson, in 1836, cast the smooth stone of his philosophical first book,--_Nature_. It made little immediate stir; the denizens of the pool paid small heed to it, and few of them guessed what it meant. It was written in Concord, and chiefly at the Old Manse, where Emerson dwelt with his mother and kindred before his second marriage in 1835, and where Hawthorne afterward made the house and himself widely known. The fixing of his own residence in this town by Emerson was due in part to ancestry, and still more to a perception of the fitness of the region for the abode of a poet and sage. The same perception, by Hawthorne, Alcott, Ellery Channing and others,--together with the important fact that it

was Emerson’s chosen retreat,--brought those literary men here. Thoreau, the most original and peculiar genius of the whole group, was born here, and never had much inclination to leave Concord, although in youth he talked of adventuring to the wild West,--Kentucky and Illinois at that time,--whither his friend, Ellery Channing, afterward did in fact go. Around Emerson, this circle, with many who only lived here temporarily (like Margaret Fuller and George William Curtis), or not at all, gathered as friends and brothers, or else as disciples,--and thus the name of Concord became associated, and justly, with a special and remarkable school of thought and literature. Thousands now visit the graves of these worthies, to which, and to their haunts in life--their walks and seats and sylvan places of resort,--an increasing host of pilgrims come year by year.

The Arabs have a proverb,--“Though a hundred deserts separate the heart of the Faithful from the Kaaba of Mecca, yet there opens a window from its sanctuary into thy soul.” For those who have the true inward illumination, therefore, pilgrimage is not needful; yet to all it is agreeable, and it has been the practice of mankind for ages, and will be, so long as we remain ourselves but pilgrims and wayfarers on this earth. Nasar, the son of Khosrou, who wrote in the time of Haroun Al-Rashid, and called his book _The Traveller’s Wallet_, was not the first, nor Bunyan, with his _Pilgrims Progress_, the last, to look on life as a journey; but let us hear what that Persian says of it:

“Man, endowed with intellect, must search into the origin of his
existence,--whence he came, and whither he shall go,--reflecting
that in this world he is making a toilsome journey, without stop or
stay,--not even for the twinkling of an eye,--until he has
traversed the measure of that line which marks the time allotted
for his existence. For that we are but pilgrims here on earth, God
has mysteriously declared.”

The attraction of Emerson and the rest of the Concord authors, whose homes or tombs so many pilgrims visit, comes chiefly from the recognition by them of this search by mankind after the Infinite,--their insight into the nature and worth of this pilgrimage of life which all are making. Man loves and seeks amusement to beguile his toilsome or monotonous journey,--and hence the pleasure so many take in the lighter and more graceful or laughable forms of literature. But sooner or later, and in many persons at all times, what Tennyson calls “the riddle of the painful earth” is before us all for consideration, if not for solution. We see that the universe is moral,--even if we cannot read the moral aright,--and we seek those who can give us “the word of the enigma,” as the French say. Emerson gave it in his manner, Hawthorne in his, Thoreau in still another way; and these three Concord authors not only had much vogue in their lifetime, but are yet more widely read since their death. Others, like Ellery Channing, found little audience in youth, and time has not yet essentially enlarged the circle of their readers. With the same moral view of life which his more successful friends took, Channing, the poet (who must always be distinguished from Dr. Channing, the divine, his uncle), had in his style something of that distraction which Montaigne declares is needful to poets.

“The precepts of the masters,” says this eccentric Gascon, “and
still more their example, tell us that we must have a little
insanity, if we would avoid even more stupidity. A thousand poets
drawl and languish in prose; but the best ancient prose (and ’tis
the same with verse) glows throughout with the vigor and daring of
poesy, and takes on an air of inspiration. The poet, says Plato”
(and here Montaigne gives his own quaint form to the familiar
passage in Plato’s Laws), “sitting on the Muses’ tripod, pours out
like mad all that comes into his mouth, as if it were the spout of
a fountain; without digesting or weighing it. So things escape him
of various colors, of opposite natures, and with intermittent flow.
Plato himself is wholly poetic; the old theology, say the scholars,
is all poetry; and the First Philosophy is the original language of
the gods.”

To this wild rule more than one of the Concord philosophers conforms; there is a perceptible lack of method, even when their meaning is fairly clear. Hawthorne incurs less of this censure than the rest; but he confessed that he did not always comprehend his own allegories, nor know exactly the moral he would insinuate. Emerson goes more directly to his mark; a Frenchman (Chantavoine) has said of him, “In his Essays he is first of all a philosophic moralist, never quite forgetting that he was once a preacher.” But, in contrasting him with French writers, Chantavoine admits that Emerson has something which the light and brilliant Parisian essayists lack:

“We are afraid, I suppose, of losing touch with things, if we rise
much above them; we do not soar high, content to skim the surface;
we distrust those generalities, however eloquent or edifying, which
might lead us too far aside. Yet, should we borrow something of
Emerson’s manner, French criticism, both historical and literary,
would gain by it; there might possibly be less ease, less lightness
of touch, less glancing wit in our essays; but in return there
would be more earnestness and depth in our judgments on men and
affairs.”

Emerson was a reader and admirer of French prose; he did not find much poetry in French verse. The glancing of his wit was as quick and searching as that of Paris; but he belongs more to the literature of the world than most of the French prose authors since Montaigne and Pascal. In American literature he is unique; so, in his very different way, is Thoreau; so is Hawthorne; and no American, not even one of these three, can be compared with any of them on terms of similarity. There is that in their best writing which puts us upon our best thinking, and leads us along the upper levels of life. Particularly is this true of Emerson; Virtue, radiant, serene and sovereign, sways the realm where Emerson abides, and to which he welcomes his readers, who become his friends. It was said of Socrates, in a dubious compliment, that he “brought philosophy down from heaven to earth”; it might as truly be said of Emerson that he raises earth to the level of divine philosophy. His method in this is purely poetic; therefore, while in verse he lacks what is usually called creative power, he brings with him the atmosphere of poesy more constantly than any modern poet; nor, since Milton, Spenser, and Shakespeare, has any English poet excelled him in this. To this quality, as well as to his courage of opinion and his penetrating insight, do we owe it that he first proclaimed our intellectual independence of the mother-country, as Franklin, Washington and Jefferson declared our political independence. There is, indeed, a certain resemblance between Washington and Emerson which might escape the notice of those who look chiefly at the totally different work each had to do, and the diversity of life and opinion which contrasted Virginia and New England so sharply.

It must be confessed that, in 1732, Concord was hardly so constituted as naturally

to give birth to Washingtons; indeed, Virginia produced but this one, amid all her great men. The extreme narrowness of Puritan opinion, even when modified by Baptists and Quakers, was not favorable to the rise of men like the great Virginians of the eighteenth century. A milder intellectual climate, a temper less given to disputes about faith and works, election and reprobation, was needful to produce characters so broad, so moderate, and yet so firm, as Washington’s. New England did give birth to Franklin, in the very midst of Mathers and Sewalls; but he had to slip away to Philadelphia, in order to grow into his full stature as philanthropist and philosopher. The intolerance of New England deprived us, for more than a century, of the opportunity to produce genius and the gentler forms of heroism. We had the Adamses to set the Revolution on foot, the soldiers of New Hampshire and rural New England to fight its battles; but its noblest leader must come to us from the Potomac, and take us back there, when the long fight was won, to establish our government beside its waters, in sight of his own broad domain. It was not till this century, now declining, that Concord could show an intellectual Washington; and Emerson must be born in Boston, less provincial than our meadowy village, our “rural Venice,” as Thoreau called it in times of river-freshet.

Naturally, when men appear on earth of Washington’s or of Emerson’s stamp, there has been a long preparation for their advent. They are not found among Hottentots or corn-crackers, ‘longshoremen or cowboys; but in some long-tilled garden of the human species, where certain qualities have been inbred by descent and betterment for many generations. Poverty may be their birthright, as in the case of that greatest of Washington’s successors, Abraham Lincoln, but the experiences that are transmuted by descent into greatness are quite as often those of poverty as of wealth. Self-reliance, veracity, courage, and the gift of command are essentials in the founders and preservers of nations; these are fostered in all new colonies, and therefore were common qualities in New England, as in Kentucky and Virginia, in their early years. But among the planters of Virginia there grew up a form of society, now forever extinct there, in which these high qualities, together with courtesy and breadth of view, were cultivated and flourished to an extent which the Calvinistic rigors and enforced economies of New England never knew. That petty system of inquiring into creeds and points of doctrine which our ancestors brought with them from the Puritan parishes of England, and which was increased here by infusions from Scotland, and the tyranny of ecclesiastical control in Massachusetts and Connecticut, was not wholly unknown in Virginia; but its ill effects were dissipated by the customs of large landholding, outdoor sports, and certain traditions of honor and breeding which the best of the Virginians brought with them from England, and kept up by their habit of frequent intercourse with the mother-country.

It was no sin in Virginia to dance and play the fiddle; the Anglican Church, while prescribing a formal creed, did not concern itself to inquire every Sunday, or every Thursday, into all the dogmatic abstractions of the Westminster Assembly’s Catechism, longer or shorter; men’s minds were left to take the course most natural to them. But in New England, along with much acute speculation (the best type of which is Jonathan Edwards), there went a morbid conscientiousness, turning its eyes upon inward and even petty matters, and leading to numberless quarrels about Original Sin, Half-way Covenants, Justification by Faith, etc. Concord was less infested by this carping, persecuting, quarrelsome spirit than most of New England; yet the church records, and the collections of old Dr. Ripley, show there was much of it. Emerson declares, and justly, that good sense has marked our town annals: “I find no ridiculous laws, no eaves-dropping legislators, no hanging of witches, no ghosts, no whipping of Quakers, no unnatural crimes.” But the spirit which led to these mischiefs in other regions of Massachusetts and Connecticut was all about us; and it narrowed the minds and the opportunities of Concord before the Revolution. It was chiefly in New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont, where ecclesiastical domination was less rigid, that mental freedom manifested itself. In the other colonies of the North, wealth and culture were apt to be on the side of England, when our troubles began; in Virginia and the Carolinas, and to some extent in New Hampshire and Maine, wealth took the colonial side.

We may call the imaginative force and

breadth of the Concord authors “Shakespearian” for lack of a better word; but there was a man of singular mental penetration sometimes visiting here,--Jones Very, of Salem,--who once made a wider generalization--whether wisely or not. When Very was asked to discriminate betwixt Wisdom and Genius, he said, “Wisdom is of God; Genius is the decay of Wisdom”; adding in explanation, “To the pre-existent Shakespeare, wisdom was offered; he did not accept it, and so he died away into genius.” We had a superior sage here (Bronson Alcott), who had little of the Shakespearian genius, but much of that mystic wisdom which Very thought older and nobler than genius. Religion was his native air,--the religion of identity, not of variety; he could not be polytheistic, as many Christians are, even while fancying themselves the most orthodox worshippers of the One God. He had that intense application of the soul to one side of this sphere of life, which led him to neglect the exercise of intellectual powers that were amply his. His gift it was, not to expand our life into multiplicity,--which was the tendency of Emerson, as of Goethe and Shakespeare,--but to concentrate multiplicity in unity, seeking ever the one source whence flow these myriad manifestations. His friends used to call him, in sport, the “Vortical philosopher,” because his speculations all moved vortically toward a centre, or were occupied with repeating one truth in many forms. He was a votary of the higher Reason; not without certain foibles of the saint; but belonging unmistakably to the saintly order. Of course he was the mock of the market-place, as all but the belligerent saints are; but he was a profound, vivifying influence in the lives of the few who recognized his inward light.

From Alcott, in his old age,--he was in his eightieth year when the experiment began,--came the impulse to that later manifestation of the same spirit which had led Emerson and his youthful friends to the heights and depths of Transcendentalism. I speak of the Concord School of Philosophy, which, in the last years of Emerson and Alcott, and with the co-operation of disciples of other philosophic opinion, gave to the town a celebrity in some degree commensurate with its earlier reputation. It began in the library of Alcott’s Orchard House, where his genial daughter, Louisa, had written several of her charming books; it was continued in a chapel, built for the purpose, under the lee of Alcott’s pineclad hill, and amid his orchard and vineyard. It brought to reside in Concord that first of American philosophers, Dr. W. T. Harris; and it gathered hundreds of eager or curious hearers to attend the lectures and debates on grave subjects which a learned body of teachers gave forth. It continued in existence from the summer of 1879 to that of 1888, when its lessons were fitly closed with a memorial service for Bronson Alcott, its founder, who had died in March, 1888. As was said by the Boston wit of the fight on the 19th of April,--“The Battle of Lexington; Concord furnished the ground, and Acton the men,”--so it might

be said of this summer university, that Concord provided chiefly the place in which St. Louis and Illinois, New York and Boston, Harvard and Yale, held converse on high topics. Yet Concord gave the school hospitality, and several of its famous authors took part in the exercises,--sometimes posthumously, by the reading of their manuscripts, as in the case of Thoreau.

Along with the events and the literature that have given our town a name throughout the world, there has flowed quietly the stream of civil society, local self-government and domestic life; broadened at critical times by manifestations of political energy, in which families like those of Hoar, Heywood, Barrett, Whiting, Robinson, Gourgas, etc., have distinguished themselves. Benefactors like Munroe, who built the Public Library, Dr. Ripley, who for half a century filled the pulpit and took pastoral care, and John Tileston, who brought the public schools to their present useful form; soldiers of the Civil War, like Colonel Prescott and Lieutenant Ripley, and hundreds of unnamed soldiers in the battle of life,--women no less than men,--have given their innumerable touch of vigor and grace to the ever-building structure of Concord life. Painters of our own have added color, and sculptors like French, Elwell and Ricketson have adorned the town with art. And so we pass on into the new century, with no conscious loss of vital power,--yet with a keen regret for the great men who have gone from among us.

PLYMOUTH

THE PILGRIM TOWN

BY ELLEN WATSON

“Glory of Virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the wrong;--
Nay, but she aimed not at glory, no lover of glory she;
Give her the glory of going on, and still to be.”
TENNYSON’S _Wages_.

To the stout-hearted Pilgrims who landed here in 1620 this “glory of going on, and still to be” has been meted in lavish measure. For nearly three hundred years the fire first kindled in far-away Scrooby in the hearts of John Robinson, Elder Brewster, Richard Clyfton, the youthful William Bradford and their devoted followers has burned with a clear flame; the torch of truth there lit by them has been handed on from generation to generation.

For the many latter-day pilgrims who visit the shrines of New England, the gray boulder on Clarke’s Island where the weary voyagers rested after their stormy cruise in the shallop; the humble rock on our shore where they at length found shelter; our noble statue of “clear-eyed Faith” and the not far distant monument on Bunker Hill, will ever bear like testimony to the courage of that little band of independent thinkers. Meeting in secret in the Manor-House of Scrooby, these far-sighted heroes, when they “shooke of the yoake of antichristian bondage” of the Church of England, made possible for their descendants a later Declaration of Independence!

And every year, with the new knowledge it brings, adds to the pathos of that early endeavor after religious and civil liberty. Many English scholars, generously overlooking the Separation of 1776, have traced on the mother soil of Old England the very beginnings of the Separatist movement, and thanks to their careful study of musty records and yellow parchments we now have a satisfactory, though still incomplete, record of those few eventful lives to which we proudly owe our present freedom.

One enthusiast even finds the earliest evidences of this movement in the concerted action of certain rebellious weavers of the twelfth

THE ORIGINAL IS NOW IN THE BOSTON STATE HOUSE.]

PULPIT ROCK, CLARKE’S ISLAND.]

century--thirty weavers of the diocese of Worcester--who were summoned before the Council of Oxford to answer a charge of making light of the sacraments and of priestly power. Though they answered that they were Christians and reverenced the teachings of the apostles, they were driven from the country as heretics, to perish of cold. This “pious firmness” on the part of the council, writes the short-sighted chronicler, not only cleansed the realm of England from the pestilence which had crept in, but also prevented it from creeping in again. But the pestilence did creep in again and again and the weeds grew apace, for which thanks are chiefly due to John Wyclif and his followers.

Even before the Reformation Foxe tells of “secret multitudes who tasted and followed the sweetness of God’s Holy Word, and whose fervent zeal may appear by their sitting up all night in reading and hearing.” But we must be content to trace our ancestry and our love of liberty to the early years of the seventeenth century, at which time, as we may now all read in the clear lettering of Bradford’s own pen,

“truly their affliction was not smale; which notwithstanding they
bore sundrie years with much patience, till they were occasioned to
see further into things by the light of y^{e} word of God. How not
only these base and beggerly ceremonies were unlawfull, but also
that y^{e} lordly & tiranous power of y^{e} prelats ought not to be
submitted unto; which thus, contrary to the freedome of the
gospell, would load & burden mens consciences, and by their
compulsive power make a prophane mixture of persons and things in
the worship of God. And that their offices & calings, courts and
cannons &c. were unlawfull and antichristian; being such as have no
warrante in y^{e} word of God; but the same that were used in
poperie & still retained.”

So these brave men, whose hearts the Lord had touched with heavenly zeal for His truth,

“as y^{e} Lords free people joined them selves into a church
estate, in y^{e} felowship of y^{e} gospell, to walke in all his
wayes, made known, or to be made known unto them, according to
their best endeavours, whatsoever it should cost them, the Lord
assisting them. And that it cost them something this ensewing
historie will declare.”

The charming scene of these secret meetings is now well known. In the little village of Scrooby, where the three shires of Nottingham, York and Lincoln join their borders, then stood a stately manor-house, once the favorite hunting-seat of the archbishops of York. Under this hospitable but already somewhat crumbling roof William Brewster, who had been appointed “Post” of Scrooby in 1590, welcomed these sufferers for conscience sake. Hither they stole through the green country lanes, from far around to listen to the “illuminating ministry” of Richard Clyfton,

“a grave & reverêd preacher who under God had been a means of y^{e}
conversion of many. And also that famous and worthy man, Mr. John
Robinson, who afterwards was their pastor for many years till y^{e}
Lord tooke him away by death.”

Here, too, from the neighboring hamlet of Austerfield, came the lad William Bradford, already eager for spiritual guidance.

Walking under the elm-trees of the highroad, and through the yellow gorse, across green meadows and by the banks of the placid Idle, he stopped perhaps to admire the mulberry-tree planted there by the world-weary Cardinal Wolsey. That arch-enemy of the Reformation little thought that a branch of this tree would one day cross the Atlantic, to be preserved with Pilgrim relics by friends of that “new, pernicious sect of Lutherans,” against which he warned the king!

Near Bradford’s birthplace in Austerfield now stands, completely restored, the twelfth-century parish church where he was baptized in 1590, and from which he “seceded” when about seventeen years old. Did the quaint old bell-cote with the two small bells, the beautiful Norman arch of the southern doorway with its rich zigzag ornament and beak-headed moulding, the wicked-looking dragon on the tympanum, with the tongue of flame--did this perfect picture of Old-World beauty flash across his memory when, some thirty years later, he helped build the rude fort on our Burial Hill, which served as the first “Meeting-House” in New England?

We like to believe that Bradford belonged to the honest yeoman class, that he “was used to a plaine country life & the innocente trade of husbandrey”; we know that he had a natural love of study which led him, despite the many difficulties he met, to master the Dutch tongue as well as French, Latin, Greek and Hebrew, which latter tongue he studied the more, “that he might see with his own eyes the ancient oracles of God in all their native beauty.”

THE OLD FORT AND FIRST MEETING-HOUSE, ON BURIAL HILL, 1621.]

Associated as teacher here with the venerable Richard Clyfton, “the minister with the long white beard,” and succeeding him as pastor, we have found the eloquent John Robinson, that winner of all men’s hearts, that helper of all men’s souls. A youthful student at Cambridge, living in an age and in an atmosphere of religious questioning, he was deeply troubled with scruples concerning conformity. He tells us “had not the truth been in my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, I had never broken those bonds of flesh and blood wherein I was so straitly tied, but had suffered the light of God to have been put out in mine unthankful heart by other men’s darkness.” Happy in finding congenial spirits in the new community at Scrooby, Bradford tells us he soon became

“every way as a commone father unto them.” “Yea, such was y^{e}
mutuall love and reciprocall respecte that this worthy man had to
his flocke and his flocke to him that it might be said of them as
it once was of that famouse Emperour, Marcus Aurelious and y^{e}
people of Rome, that it was hard to judge wheather he delighted
more in haveing such a people, or they in haveing such a pastor.
His love was greate towards them, and his care was all ways bente
for their best good, both for soul & body.”

Under his inspiring guidance, and with William Brewster as their especial stay and help, they were mercifully enabled to “wade through things.” Some twenty-three years older than Bradford, we learn from that modest chronicler, who wrote “in a plaine stile, with singuler regard unto y^{e} simple trueth in all things,” that Brewster had also a wider experience of the world.

“After he had attained some learning, viz., the knowledge of the
Latin tongue and some insight into the Greek, and spent some small
time at Cambridge, and then being first seasoned with the seeds of
grace and virtue, he went to the Court, and served that religious
and godly gentleman, Mr. Davison, divers years, when he was
Secretary of State, who found him so discreet and faithful, as he
trusted him above all others that were about him, and only employed
him in matters of greatest trust and secrecy.”

After the innocent Davison was committed to the Tower by the treacherous “Good Queen Bess,” Brewster retired to Scrooby, where he greatly promoted and furthered their good cause: “he himself most commonly deepest in the charge, and sometimes above his ability, and in this estate he continued many years, doing the best he could, and walking according to the light he saw, until the Lord revealed further unto him.”

But these assemblies, however humble and secret, could not long escape the vigilant eye of the law. They were now

“hunted and persecuted on every side, so as their former
afflictions were but as flea-bitings in comparison of these which
now came upon them. For some were taken and clapt up in prison,
others had their houses besett & watcht night and day, & hardly
escaped their hands; and y^{e} most were faine to flie and leave
their howses and habitations, and the means of their livelihood.”
“Seeing them selves so molested, and that ther was no hope of their
continuance ther, by a joynte consente they resolved to goe into
the Low-Countries, wher they heard was freedome of Religion for all
men.”

This quitting their native soil, their dear friends and their happy homes to earn their living, they knew not how, in a foreign country, was indeed considered by many of them to be “an adventure almost desperate, a case intolerable, & a misserie worse than death.” But after many betrayals, many delays, many hardships by land and sea, they finally weathered all opposing storms. At Amsterdam, that friendly city of the Netherlands Republic, whose Declaration of Independence dates from July 26, 1581, they met together again, with no small rejoicing.

But in the midst of the wealth of this fair city they soon saw “the grime and grisly face of povertie coming upon them like an armed man, with whom they must bukle and incounter, and from whom they could not flye.” For this reason, and to avoid religious contentions already rife there, in a year’s time they decided to remove to Leyden, “a fair and bewtifull citie, & of a sweete situation.” Here the story of the long siege of Leyden, bravely sustained in 1573, must have excited their ready sympathy, and the city’s choice of a university, offered by William of Orange, instead of the exemption the city could have had from certain imposts, must have won the admiration of these scholarly men.

The stay of the English exiles here of some twelve years--the period of the truce between Holland and Spain--was, though trying, no doubt a good preparation for the greater hardships they were to endure. While Bradford wove fustian and his fellow-workers carded wool, made hats and built houses, Brewster printed “heretical” books, and taught English “after y^{e} Latin manner.” The harmony of their peaceful and industrious lives attracted many friends, until some three hundred kindred spirits joined John Robinson in his prayers for “more light.”

One who soon proved himself to be an invaluable member of the community was Edward Winslow, a highly educated gentleman from Worcestershire. His energy, his diplomacy and practical experience of the world, his influence with Cromwell and other powerful friends in high places, removed many difficulties in the way of the struggling colony that was to be. Four times he was their chosen agent in England, and was thrice elected governor.

Here John Carver, a trusted adviser, who later became the first governor of New Plymouth, was chosen deacon of their church.

Serving in the troops sent over by Elizabeth to aid the Dutch in maintaining the Protestant religion against the Spaniards was the valiant soldier, Myles Standish, of the Dokesbury branch of the Standishes of Lancashire, who date from the Conquest. There the beautiful Standish church still bears on its buttresses the family shield--three standing dishes argent on a field azure--and Standish Hall is still hung with portraits of warriors in armor, beruffed lawyers with pointed beards, and gay courtiers of the Queen--the Roman Catholic ancestors of our plain fighter! Luckily for us all, he

Governor Edward Winslow]

cast in his lot with the plucky workers he met in Leyden, and his cheery presence and courage must have been of great service in planning the perilous voyage on which they were about to embark.

For, as the truce with Spain drew to a close, and as the older among them began to consider the uncertain future that lay before their children, they longed to take refuge on some freer soil, however far away. As Bradford writes, with a courage at once humble and sublime:

“Lastly (and which was not least) a great hope and inward zeall
they had of laying some good foundation, or at least to make some
way thereunto, for y^{e} propagating and advancing y^{e} gospell of
y^{e} kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of y^{e} world: yea,
though they should be but even as stepping-stones unto others for
y^{e} performing of so great a work.”

So, “not out of newfangledness, or other such like giddie humor, but for sundrie weightie and solid reasons,” the voyage was determined upon, and the King’s consent to their emigration to America sought.

Winslow tells us, in his _Briefe Narrative of the True Grounds for the First Planting of New England_, that when their plans were laid before King James he remarked that “it was a good and honest notion,” and asking further what profits might arise, he was answered, “fishing.” “So God have my soul,” he said, “so God have my soul, ’tis an honest trade; ‘twas the apostles’ own calling!” And we may state here, notwithstanding Bradford’s statement that in the beginning “we did lack small hooks,” New England, before 1650, annually sent to Europe £100,000 worth of dried codfish.

After many weary negotiations, a patent was at length obtained, but the future colonists were refused a formal grant of freedom in religious worship under the King’s broad seal. A loan was made by some seventy “Merchant Adventurers” in England, and late in July, 1620, we find our future colonists on the quay at Delfthaven, ready to embark on the _Speedwell_. They are surrounded by their tearful friends, for whom, Winslow says, “they felt such love as is seldom found on earth.”

Many of their number are to stay at Leyden under the faithful care of John Robinson, whose touching farewell words Winslow has preserved for us:

“he charged us before God and his blessed angels to follow him no
further than he followed Christ; and if God should reveal anything
to us by any other instrument of his, to be as ready to receive it
as ever we were to receive any truth by his ministry; for he was
very confident the Lord had more truth and light yet to break forth
out of his holy word.”

This sad scene must have been still vivid in Bradford’s memory when he wrote some ten years later in Plymouth:

“truly dolfull was y^{e} sight of that sade and mournfull parting;
to see what sighs and sobbs and praires did sound amongst them,
what tears did gush from every eye, & pithy speeches peirst each
harte”; “but they knewe they were pilgrimes, and looked not much on
those things, but lift up their eyes to y^{e} heavens, their
dearest cuntrie, and quieted their spirits.”

After a good run with a prosperous wind they found the _Mayflower_ at Southampton, but as the _Speedwell_ proved unseaworthy they were again delayed, and after putting in for repairs to Dartmouth and Plymouth, the _Mayflower_ finally, on September 16th, sailed alone from Plymouth. Observe the group of brave voyagers setting forth on an unknown “sea of troubles,” trustful wives and children, manly youths and blooming maidens, as they wave a last good-by to dear Old England from the deck of the _Mayflower_. Their leaders form a notable band: Brewster, Carver, Bradford, Winslow, Standish, the soul, the heart, the head, the good right hand, the flashing sword, well-chosen instruments to unlock the frozen heart of New England, and to found there

“Empire such as Spaniard never knew.”

Perhaps George Herbert, prince of poets, referred to this sailing when he wrote in his _Church Militant_:

“Religion stands on tiptoe in our land,
Ready to pass to the American strand.”

Of the terrible discomforts and dangers of that perilous voyage of sixty-seven days who has not read the pitiful story? Have we not, all of us, “come over in the _Mayflower_,” and rejoiced with these patient souls when at length, one clear morning in November, the shores of Cape Cod lay fair before their expectant eyes?

Determining to put in to Cape Cod harbor, and so to land on a territory where their patent could confer no rights, the leaders of the expedition, after consulting together in the cabin of the _Mayflower_, there drew up and signed the historic “Compact” which was to convert the hundred voyagers into the founders of a commonwealth. There they solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and of one another, combined themselves into a civil body politic, to frame and enact such just and equal laws from time to time as should be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony, unto which they promised all due submission and obedience.

While their sloop-rigg shallop of some fifteen tons was made ready for exploration by sea, those who went at once far into the forest came back with reports of fine growths of oak, pine, sassafras, juniper, birch and holly, abundant grape-vines and red cedar, which like sandalwood

“Sheds its perfume on the axe that slays it.”

They found excellent springs, many deer and wild-fowl, and what proved to be their salvation in the wilderness, “divers faire Indian baskets filled with corn, which seemed to them a goodly sight.” For this precious seed-corn the Indian owners were conscientiously paid double price some six months later.

The weakness and illness natural after the discomforts of such a voyage now made themselves felt in an alarming manner, and an exploring party was hastily organized to select the spot for their final settlement. Setting forth in the frail shallop, a party of eighteen picked men, after a successful “First Encounter” with the Indians, were driven by a furious gale to take shelter in the lee of a little island lying in a friendly harbor to the west of their starting-point. After thawing out over a good cedar-wood fire and resting for a night, they explored the island and repaired their boat. Of this island, afterward named for John Clarke, mate of the _Mayflower_, Bradford writes:

“But though this had been a day and night of much trouble & danger
unto them, yet God gave them a morning of comforte & refreshing (as
usually he doth to his children), for y^{e} next day was a faire
sunshining day, and they found them sellvs to be on an iland secure
from the Indeans, wher they might drie their stufe, fixe their
peeces, & rest them selves, and gave God thanks for his mercies, in
their manifould deliverances. And this being the last day of y^{e}
weeke, they prepared ther to keepe y^{e} Sabath. On Munday they
sounded the harbor, and founde it fitt for shipping; and marched
into y^{e} land and found diverse cornfeilds and litle runing
brooks, a place (as they supposed) fitt for situation; at least it
was y^{e} best they could find, and y^{e} season & their presente
necessitie made them glad to accepte of it.”

So, on the 21st day of December, 1620, was made the now world-famous landing at Plymouth, of which these few words are the humble record.

After a week of anxious waiting their return must have been hailed with delight on board the _Mayflower_, and their good tidings warmly welcomed. As with all sails set the good ship made her way into the harbor, eager eyes doubtless watched with joy the high hills of Manomet, the wooded bluffs, the shining, protecting beaches, the fair island, the low friendly stretch of the mainland sloping back to the picturesque hillsides, which make Plymouth harbor at all times and seasons a goodly sight to look upon. And here at length lay safely at anchor the

” ... simple _Mayflower_ of the salt-sea mead!”

And now, “Courteous Reader,” as writes that most faithful secretary of the Pilgrims, Nathaniel Morton, in his _New England Memorial_ (1669), “that I may not hold thee too long in the porch,” even in such goodly company, I bid you welcome to the Plymouth of to-day. For in the harbor, the sand-dunes, the green hillsides and the fresh valleys and

meadows, in the blue streams and ponds, the past is inseparably blended with the present. A small theatre it is, and the actors were but few who played such important _rôles_ in the building up of a nation, but the few memorials in which that early struggle for existence is recorded are here lovingly preserved.

From the Rock where they landed we may follow their weary footsteps up the steep ascent of the first street, now named for Leyden, their city of refuge, and which may well be called the Via Sacra of Plymouth. Running back from the waterside to the foot of Burial Hill, and parallel to the Town Brook, it formed the centre of their daily toil, the scene of their early joys and sorrows. Here on either hand were staked out the homesteads for the nineteen first families; here with sturdy courage and endless labor they dragged the trees felled outside the clearing, and built their rude houses, thatching them with swamp-grass.

The site of their first or “Common-House” is now marked, and near the lot assigned to Elder Brewster still we may stop to drink from the Pilgrim Spring: the “delicate water” is fresh and sweet now as when our thirsty forefathers delighted in it.

Copyright, 1891, by A. S. Burbank.]

Crossing Main Street, once the King’s highway, we find ourselves in Town Square, under the shade of beautiful old elm-trees, planted more than a hundred years ago. To the north was William Bradford’s homestead. Here came all those who sought advice and help in their sore need, and here in 1630 were begun those “scribbled writings” which, “peeced up at times of leasure afterward,” are now printed, in letters of gold in many a faithful memory! Here, perhaps, or in the vicinity of the Common House, was concluded their first treaty with a foreign power for mutual aid and protection, when the noble chief Massasoit, with his sixty Indian braves, was led thither by Samoset, the friendly sachem, whose English welcome had surprised the anxious colonists. Through Samoset they learned that some four years before a pest had devastated that region, called by them Patuxet. With him came Tisquantum, who became a valued friend and interpreter, teaching them to plant their corn when the oak-leaves were the size of a mouse’s ear, and to place three herring in each hill with the seed-corn, which novel practice awakened serious doubts in English minds.

In the autumn of 1621, this was the scene of the first Thanksgiving held in New England, when, their houses built, their crops garnered from some thirty fertile acres, their furs and lumber safely stored, they made merry for three days, with Massasoit and ninety Indians as guests. Even with fish, wild-fowl and deer in plenty, the good housewives must have spent a lively week of preparation for such a feast!

Farther up the slope was built, in 1637, their first meeting-house, and at the head of the Square now stands the lately completed stone church of the first parish. In the belfry hangs the old town bell, cast by Paul Revere, which for nearly a century has had a voice in the affairs of the town.

Following the now steep incline, we stop to take breath on the brow of the hill, the spot so wisely chosen by Captain Myles Standish for the building of the solid timber fort, whereon he promptly placed his cannon.

“Unable to speak for himself was he,
But his guns spoke for him right valiantly!”

And most persuasive did their voices prove, inspiring awe in the hearts of the “salvages” for many miles around!

Here in the shelter of the fort they met for worship; here their hymns of praise and prayers for guidance arose in the still air of the wilderness. In four short months one half of these brave souls had been laid to rest on Cole’s Hill by the waterside. And yet, when one April morning those who were left to mourn them stood here watching the _Mayflower_ weigh anchor, to flit with her white sails over the blue sea which parted them from Old England, not one soul faltered, _not one went back_!

The sad loss of their good Governor Carver, whose responsible place was taken by William Bradford, and the daily trials and hardships of that first long year, shook not their sturdy faith. Each day brought its absorbing task, and when, one morning in November, the sentry at the fort shouted, “Sail, ho!” and the _Fortune_ came sailing in by the Gurnet Nose, bringing the first news from the other side, they were ready with a return load of lumber, furs and sassafras for the Merchant Adventurers. Of this load, valued at £500, Edward Winslow modestly writes in his letter to England: “Though it be not much, yet it will witness for us that we have not been idle, considering the smallness of our numbers this summer.”

Two years later, after a trying season of drought and famine, when, their corn exhausted, “ground-nuts, clams and eels” were their only food, they still gave thanks to God that He had given them of “the abundance of the seas, and of the treasures hid in the sand.” When even the strongest men among them had grown weak for want of food, and their eyes were wearied with watching for a friendly sail, the good ship _Anne_ was sighted in the offing. Dear relatives and friends brought them timely succor and new courage; a season of rejoicing followed, and many happy weddings were celebrated.

In the _Anne_, perhaps, came the Old Colony record-book, in which was made the early registration of births, marriages and deaths. The first of the laws therein enacted, dating from December 27, 1623, established trial by jury, as may still be seen in the quaint handwriting of these hard-working heroes. This book, together with the Charter of 1629, curious old papers concerning the division of cattle brought over in the _Charity_ in 1624, ancient deeds signed by the Indians, the original owners of this our goodly heritage, and many another time-stained treasure, is now carefully preserved and gladly shown in the Registry of Deeds in the Court House.

Looking to the north, beyond the town of Kingston, lying, with its sweet rose-gardens, on the pretty winding river named for that arch betrayer, Captain Jones, of the _Mayflower_, we see Duxbury and the green slopes of Captain’s Hill, so named in honor of Myles Standish, who from the top of his gray stone monument still guards us in effigy. Lingering near the fort and the guns he loved so well, he must often have looked this way, and admired the fine position this hill offered for a homestead. And as with years the colony grew larger, as children came to him and Barbara, and when his first Company of Standish Guards were in perfect training and could be relied upon to defend the colony at need, he bought out Winslow’s share in the famous red cow, and led the way to the new fields he longed to conquer. There he was soon followed by John Alden and Priscilla, the Brewsters and other families, and at Marshfield, near by, the Winslows became their neighbors. So some eleven years after the landing came the first separation, which though not a wide one was a sore grief to their tender-hearted governor.

Among the now rare gravestones of the seventeenth century on Burial Hill, we look in vain for the most familiar names: Elder Brewster died in 1644, lamented by all the colony; Edward Winslow died at sea in 1655, and in the two years following this sad loss Myles Standish and Governor Bradford ended their labors. So closed the lives of these leaders of men. Descendants, brave, wise and strong like themselves, continued worthily the work they had nobly begun.

From 1630, Plymouth held friendly intercourse with the Boston Bay Colony. The terrors of the war with Philip, treacherous son of the friendly Massasoit, had united her with the neighboring colonies against a common foe, and at length, after seventy-one years of nearly independent existence, we find her, in 1692, absorbed, with some regret, into the royal province of Massachusetts, but still ready to take her part in public affairs.

That the _rôle_ played by her was a worthy one, the tablets about us testify. Heroes of the expedition against Louisbourg, in 1745, lie here; more than a score of Plymouth patriots who served in the Revolution, and many a brave soldier who won his laurels in the War of 1861. Under this stone, with its quaint urn and willow-branch, rests the famous naval hero of the Revolutionary war, Captain Simeon Sampson, whose cousin Deborah spun, dyed, and wove the cloth for the suit in which she left home to serve as a soldier. Their story, and that of many another hero and heroine now lying here, have been well told by Mrs. Jane Goodwin Austin.

Beneath his symbolic scallop-shell we read the name of Elder Faunce, who knew the Pilgrims, and, living for ninety-nine years, formed an important link between two centuries. The stone consecrated to the memory of the Rev. Chandler Robbins, who for nearly twoscore years toward the close of the last century gave his faithful services to the first parish, reminds us that at one time the town fathers found it advisable to request him “not to have more horses grazing on Burial Hill than shall be really necessary!”

Here, in old times, could be had a grand view of the shipping, come from the West Indies and all parts of the world; from here the news of many fatal shipwrecks had been spread through the town, to rouse willing help for suffering sailors; here, too, no doubt, men’s souls were often tempted to incur the fine of twenty shillings, the cost of “telling a lie about seeing a whale,” in those strict days when a plain lie, if “pernicious,” was taxed at half that price!

Old Father Time with his scythe and hour-glass--symbols of his power--rules here over seven generations; but lingering while the setting sun illumines the harbor and the surrounding hills with the same radiance that rejoiced the first comers, while Manomet glows with a deeper purple, and the twin lights of the Gurnet shine out, we may still feel in very deed that

“The Pilgrim spirit has not fled.”

Turning from the story of Plymouth, as written on the lichen-covered headstones on Burial Hill, let us wend our way under the shady elms of Court Street to Pilgrim Hall, built in 1824 by the Pilgrim Society, instituted four years earlier. Here we may trace, in the many treasured reminders of their daily lives, the annals of those brave souls in whom

” ...persuasion and belief
Had ripened into faith, and faith become
A passionate intuition.”

On broad canvases are portrayed the tearful embarkation from Delfthaven, the landing on this cheerless, frozen shore. Here are hung charming pencil sketches of Scrooby and Austerfield, and many interesting portraits: Dr. Thatcher, the venerable secretary of the Pilgrim Society, and author of a charming history of Plymouth; the Rev. James Kendall, for nearly threescore years the beloved minister of the First Church; Gov. Edward Winslow and his son Josiah; Gen. John Winslow, who by royal command in 1755 helped to drive from their homes the French Acadians; Deacon Ephraim Spooner, whose “lining out” of the old hymns formed an impressive part of “Anniversary Day”; Daniel Webster, who lived in Marshfield, and whose glowing oration of 1820, in honor of the two hundredth anniversary[66] of the landing of the Pilgrims, was epoch-making in Plymouth annals.

Among the many priceless books and documents here we find the lately acquired _Speculum Europæ_ (1605) by Sir Edwin Sandys, the active friend of our Separatists in England;

Copyright by A. S. Burbank.

FROM THE PAINTING BY W. F. HALSALL, IN PILGRIM HALL.]

two autographs of John Robinson render this volume of special interest. A facsimile of the Bradford manuscript also is here, and a _Confutation of the Rhemists Translation_, printed by Brewster in Leyden, in 1618. Among the old Bibles worn by hands seeking for guidance and comfort is one belonging to John Alden, dated 1620. Here also are a copy of Robert Cushman’s memorable sermon on “The Danger of Self-love,” delivered by him in Plymouth in 1621; one of the seven precious original copies of _Mourt’s Relation_ the journal written by Bradford and Winslow in 1620-21, and so promptly printed in London in 1622; one of the four copies of Eliot’s Indian Bible (1685); the Patent of 1621, granted our colonists by the New England Company, and the oldest state paper in the United States.

A large copy of the seal of the colony, in handsomely carved oak, reminds us that the original seal was stolen in the days of Andros. Its appropriate motto, “Patrum pietate ortum, filiorum virtute servandum,” may be found

COPIED FROM AN OLD PAINTING ON GLASS.

CARVER BRADFORD STANDISH BREWSTER

used as a heading of the first _Plymouth Journal_, published by Nathaniel Coverly in 1785, of which one file is preserved in the library of rare old books. Here are the Original Records of the Old Colony Club, founded in 1769, but dissolved four years later when party feeling ran high between the Whigs and Tories. Its worthy members first instituted the celebration of “Forefathers’ Day,” and here we may read the bill of fare of their first dinner, “dressed in the plainest manner,” beginning with “a large baked Indian whortleberry pudding,” “a dish of Succotash,” “Clamms,” etc. The Indian dishes, succotash and nokake, and the five parched corns which recall the time when their last pint of corn was divided among them, still form part of the “twenty-second” dinner of every faithful descendant!

Here the sword of the truculent Myles Standish lies at rest, and beside it, in lighter vein, a bit of the quilt that belonged to his wife Rose, and a sampler skilfully embroidered by his daughter Lora. Between the ample armchairs in which Governor Carver and Elder Brewster must have pondered over many a weighty problem of government for the people and by the people, is the closely woven little Dutch cradle