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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Old Coast Road, by Agnes Rothery
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Old Coast Road
+       From Boston to Plymouth
+
+Author: Agnes Rothery
+
+Illustrator: Louis H. Ruyl
+
+Release Date: June 21, 2007 [eBook #21895]
+[Most recently updated: July 27, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: David Garcia, Josephine Paolucci, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD COAST ROAD ***
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+      Minor typographical errors have been corrected.
+
+      Carats (^) designate a superscript (example: y^e, in
+      which the "e" is a superscript).
+
+      Footnotes have been moved to the end of each chapter.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD COAST ROAD
+
+From Boston to Plymouth
+
+by
+
+AGNES EDWARDS
+
+With Illustrations by Louis H. Ruyl
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company
+The Riverside Press Cambridge
+1920
+
+Copyright, 1920, by Agnes Edwards Pratt
+All Rights Reserved
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD COAST ROAD
+
+_From Boston to Plymouth_
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+BOSTON: A FOREWORD                                 ix
+
+I. DORCHESTER HEIGHTS AND THE OLD COAST
+ROAD                                                1
+
+II. MILTON AND THE BLUE HILLS                      19
+
+III. SHIPBUILDING AT QUINCY                        35
+
+IV. THE ROMANCE OF WEYMOUTH                        57
+
+V. ECCLESIASTICAL HINGHAM                          75
+
+VI. COHASSET LEDGES AND MARSHES                    92
+
+VII. THE SCITUATE SHORE                           111
+
+VIII. MARSHFIELD, THE HOME OF DANIEL WEBSTER      123
+
+IX. DUXBURY HOMES                                 142
+
+X. KINGSTON AND ITS MANUSCRIPTS                   157
+
+XI. PLYMOUTH                                      175
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+
+A BIT OF COMMERCIAL STREET IN WEYMOUTH   Frontispiece
+
+THE STATE HOUSE FROM PARK STREET                   ix
+
+MAP OF THE SOUTH SHORE                    _facing_  1
+
+DORCHESTER BAY                                      1
+
+OFF FOR PLYMOUTH BY THE OLD COAST ROAD             18
+
+GREAT BLUE HILL                                    19
+
+MILTON ESTATES                            _facing_ 20
+
+THE FORE RIVER SHIPYARD                            35
+
+THE ADAMS HOUSES IN QUINCY                         56
+
+THE WEYMOUTH WATER-FRONT                           57
+
+RATTLING ALONG THE OLD COAST ROAD                  74
+
+THE LINCOLN HOUSE IN HINGHAM                       75
+
+THE OLD SHIP MEETING-HOUSE                _facing_ 76
+
+INTERIOR OF THE NEW NORTH CHURCH IN HINGHAM,
+WITH ITS SLAVE GALLERIES                           91
+
+COHASSET LEDGES AND MINOT'S LEDGE LIGHT            92
+
+MODERN COHASSET                                   110
+
+DRYING SEA-MOSS AT SCITUATE HARBOR                111
+
+FOURTH CLIFF, SCITUATE                            122
+
+THE WEBSTER HOUSE                                 123
+
+MARSHFIELD MEADOWS                       _facing_ 136
+
+A DUXBURY COTTAGE                                 142
+
+A BAY VIEW TO DUXBURY BEACH                       156
+
+THE STANDISH MONUMENT AS SEEN FROM KINGSTON       157
+
+OLD RECORDS                                       174
+
+THE MEMORIAL BUILDING FOR THE TOWN OF
+PLYMOUTH, DESIGNED BY LITTLE AND RUSSELL,
+ARCHITECTS                                        175
+
+VIEW FROM STEPS OF BURIAL HILL, PLYMOUTH,
+SHOWING THE TOWN SQUARE, LEYDEN STREET,
+THE CHURCH OF THE PILGRIMAGE, THE FIRST
+CHURCH, AND, IN THE DISTANCE, THE PILGRIM
+MONUMENT IN PROVINCETOWN                 _facing_ 192
+
+CLARK'S ISLAND, PLYMOUTH                          203
+
+
+
+
+BOSTON: A FOREWORD
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+To love Boston or to laugh at Boston--it all depends on whether or not
+you are a Bostonian. Perhaps the happiest attitude--and the most
+intelligent--is tinged with both amusement and affection: amusement at
+the undeviating ceremonial of baked beans on Saturday night and fish
+balls on Sunday morning; at the Boston bag (not so ubiquitous now as
+formerly); at the indefatigable consumption of lectures; at the
+Bostonese pronunciation; affection for the honorable traditions, noble
+buildings, distinguished men and women. Boston is an old city--one must
+remember that it was settled almost three centuries ago--and old cities,
+like old people, become tenacious of their idiosyncrasies, admitting
+their inconsistencies and prejudices with complacency, wisely aware that
+age has bestowed on them a special value, which is automatically
+increased with the passage of time.
+
+To tell the story of an old city is like cutting down through the
+various layers of a fruity layer cake. When you turn the slice over, you
+see that every piece is a cross-section. So almost every locality and
+phase of this venerable metropolis could be studied, and really should
+be studied, according to its historical strata: Colonial, Provincial,
+Revolutionary, economic, and literary. All of these periods have piled
+up their associations one upon the other, and all of them must be
+somewhat understood if one would sincerely comprehend what has aptly
+been called not a city, but a "state of mind."
+
+It is as impossible for the casual sojourner to grasp the significance
+of the multifarious historical and literary events which have transpired
+here as for a few pages to outline them. Wherever one stands in Boston
+suggests the church of San Clemente in Rome, where, you remember, there
+are three churches built one upon the other. However, those who would
+take the lovely journey from Boston to Plymouth needs must make some
+survey, no matter how superficial, of their starting-place. And perhaps
+the best spot from which to begin is the Common.
+
+This pleasantly rolling expanse, which was set aside as long ago as
+1640, with the decree that "there shall be no land granted either for
+houseplott or garden out of y^e open land or common field," has been
+unbrokenly maintained ever since, and as far as acreage goes (it
+approximates fifty acres) could still fulfill its original use of
+pasturing cows, a practice which was continued until 1830. It was here
+that John Hancock's cattle grazed--he who lived in such magnificence on
+the hill, and in whose side yard the State House was built--and once,
+when preparations for an official banquet were halted by shortage of
+milk, tradition has it that he ordered his servants to hasten out on the
+Common and milk every cow there, regardless of ownership. Tradition also
+tells us that the little boy Ralph Waldo Emerson tended his mother's cow
+here; and finally both traditions and existing law declare that yonder
+one-story building opening upon Mount Vernon Street, and possessing an
+oddly wide door, must forever keep that door of sufficient width to let
+the cows pass through to the Common.
+
+Let us stand upon the steps of the State House and look out over the
+Common. To our right, near the intersection of Boylston and Tremont
+Streets, lies the half-forgotten, almost obliterated Central Burying
+Ground, the final resting-place of Gilbert Stuart, the famous American
+painter. At the left points the spire of Park Street Church, notable not
+for its age, for it is only a little over a century old, but for its
+charming beauty, and by the fact that William Lloyd Garrison delivered
+his first address here, and here "America" was sung in public for the
+first time. It was the windiness of this corner which was responsible
+for Tom Appleton's suggestion (he was the brother-in-law of Longfellow)
+that a shorn lamb be tethered here.
+
+The graceful spire of Park Street Church serves not only as a landmark,
+but is also a most fitting terminal to a street of many associations. It
+is on Park Street that the publishing house of Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
+(now Houghton Mifflin Company) has had its offices for forty years, and
+the bookstores and the antique shops tucked quaintly down a few steps
+below the level of the sidewalk have much of the flavor of a bit of
+London.
+
+Still standing on the State House steps, facing the Common, you are also
+facing what has been called the noblest monument in Boston and the most
+successfully placed one in America. It is Saint-Gaudens's bronze relief
+of Colonel Robert G. Shaw commanding his colored regiment, and if you
+see no other sculpture in a city which has its full quota you must see
+this memorial, spirited in execution, spiritual in its conception of a
+mighty moment.
+
+If we had time to linger we could not do better than to follow Beacon
+Street to the left, pausing at the Athenæum, a library of such dignity
+and beauty that one instinctively, and properly, thinks of it as an
+institution rather than a mere building. To enjoy the Athenæum one must
+be a "proprietor" and own a "share," which entitles one not only to the
+use of the scholarly volumes in scholarly seclusion, but also in the
+afternoon to entrance to an alcove where tea is served for three
+pennies. Perhaps here, as well as any other place, you may see a
+characteristic assortment of what are fondly called "Boston types."
+There is the professor from Cambridge, a gentleman with a pointed beard
+and a noticeably cultivated enunciation; one from Wellesley--this, a
+lady--with that keen and paradoxically impractical expression which
+marks pure intellectuality; an alert matron, plainly, almost shabbily,
+dressed (aristocratic Boston still scorns sartorial smartness); a very
+well-bred young girl with bone spectacles; a student, shabby, like the
+Back Bay matron, but for another reason; a writer; a business man whose
+hobby is Washingtonia. These, all of them, you may enjoy along with your
+cup of tea for three cents, if--and here is the crux--you can only be
+admitted in the first place. And if you are admitted, do not fail to
+look out of the rear windows upon the ancient Granary Burying Ground,
+where rest the ashes of Hancock, Sewall, Faneuil, Samuel Adams, Otis,
+Revere, and many more notables. If you have a penchant for graveyards,
+this one, entered from Tremont Street, is more than worthy of further
+study.
+
+This is one of the many things we could enjoyably do if we had time, but
+whether we have time or not we must pay our respects to the State House
+(one does not call it the Capitol in Boston, as in other cities), the
+prominence of whose golden dome is not unsuggestive, to those who recall
+it, of Saint Botolph's beacon tower in Boston, England, for which this
+city was named. The State House is a distinctively American building,
+and Bulfinch, the great American architect, did an excellent thing when
+he designed it. The dome was originally covered with plates of copper
+rolled by no other than that expert silversmith and robust patriot, Paul
+Revere--he whose midnight ride has been recited by so many generations
+of school-children, and whose exquisite flagons, cups, ladles, and sugar
+tongs not only compared with the best Continental work of that period,
+but have set a name and standard for American craftsmanship ever since.
+
+If you should walk up and down the chessboard of Beacon Hill--taking the
+knight's move occasionally across the narrow cross-streets--you could
+not help treading the very squares which were familiar to the feet of
+that generation of authors which has permanently stamped American
+literature. At 55 Beacon Street, down near the foot of the hill and
+facing the Common, still stands the handsome, swell-front, buff-brick
+house where Prescott, the historian, lived. On Mount Vernon Street
+(which runs parallel to Beacon, and which, with its dignified beauty,
+won the approval of that connoisseur of beautiful streets--Henry James)
+one can pick out successively the numbers 59, 76, 83, 84, the first and
+last being homes of Thomas Bailey Aldrich, and the other two
+distinguished by the residence of William Ellery Channing and Margaret
+Deland. Pinckney Street runs parallel with Mount Vernon, and the small,
+narrow house at number 20 was one of the homes of the Alcott family. It
+seems delightfully fitting that Louisburg Square--that very exclusive
+and very English spot which probably retains more of the quaint
+atmosphere and customs of an aristocratic past than any other single
+area in the city--should have been the home of the well-beloved William
+Dean Howells. One also likes to recall that Jenny Lind was married at
+number 20. Chestnut Street--which after a period of social obscurity is
+again coming into its own--possesses Julia Ward Howe's house at number
+13, that of Motley the historian at 16, and of Parkman at 50. In this
+hasty map we have gone up and down the hill, but the cross-street,
+Charles, although not so attractive, is nevertheless as rich in literary
+associations as any in Boston. Here lived, for a short time, at 164,
+Oliver Wendell Holmes, and at 131--also for a short time--Thomas Bailey
+Aldrich. It is, however, at 148, that we should longest pause. This, for
+many rich years, was the home of James T. Fields, that delightful man of
+letters who was the friend of many men of letters; he who entertained
+Dickens and Thackeray, and practically every foreign writer of note who
+visited this country; he who encouraged Hawthorne to the completion of
+the "Scarlet Letter," and he, who, as an appreciative critic, publisher,
+and editor, probably did more to elevate, inspire, and sustain the
+general literary tone of the city than any other single person. In these
+stirring days facile American genius springs up, like brush fires, from
+coast to coast. Novels pour in from the West, the Middle West, the
+South. To superficial outsiders it may seem as if Boston might be
+hard-pressed to keep her laurels green, but Boston herself has no
+fears. Her present may not shine with so unique a brilliance as her
+past, but her past gains in luster with each succeeding year. Nothing
+can ever take from Boston her high literary prestige.
+
+While we are still on Beacon Hill we can look out, not only upon the
+past, but upon the future. Those white domes and pillars gleaming like
+Greek temples across the blue Charles, are the new buildings of the
+Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and surely Greek temples were
+never lovelier, nor dedicated to more earnest pursuit of things not
+mundane. Quite as beautiful and quite as Grecian as the Technology
+buildings is the noble marble group of the School of Medicine of Harvard
+University, out by the Fenlands--that section of the city which is
+rapidly becoming a students' quarter, with its Simmons College, the New
+England Conservatory of Music, art schools, gymnasiums, private and
+technical schools of all descriptions, and its body of over 12,000
+students. Harvard is, of course, across the river in Cambridge, and
+preparatory schools and colleges dot the suburbs in every direction,
+upholding the cultural traditions of a city which has proved itself
+peculiarly fitted to educational interests.
+
+All this time we have, like _bona-fide_ Bostonians, stayed on Beacon
+Hill, and merely looked out at the rest of the city. And perhaps this is
+as typical a thing as we could have done. Beacon Hill was the center of
+original Boston, when the Back Bay was merely a marsh, and long after
+the marsh was filled in and streets were laid out and handsome
+residences lined them, Beacon Hill looked down scornfully at the new
+section and murmured that it was built upon the discarded hoopskirts and
+umbrellas of the true Bostonians. Even when almost every one was crowded
+off the Hill and the Back Bay became the more aristocratic section of
+the two, there were still enough of the original inhabitants left to
+scorn these upstart social pretensions. And now Beacon Hill is again
+coming back into her own: the fine old houses are being carefully,
+almost worshipfully restored, probably never again to lose their
+rightful place in the general life of the city.
+
+But if Beacon Hill was conservative in regard to the Back Bay, that
+district, in its turn, showed an equal unprogressiveness in regard to
+the Esplanade. To the stranger in Boston, delighting in that magnificent
+walk along the Charles River Embankment, with the arching spans of the
+Cambridge and Harvard bridges on one side, and the homes of wealth and
+mellow refinement on the other--a walk which for invigorating beauty
+compares with any in the cities of men--it seems incredible that when
+this promenade was laid out a few years ago, the householders along the
+water's edge absolutely refused to turn their front windows away from
+Beacon Street. Furthermore, they ignored the fact that their back yards
+and back windows presented an unbecoming face to such an incomparably
+lovely promenade, and the inevitable household rearrangement--by which
+the drawing-rooms were placed in the rear--was literally years in
+process of achievement. But such conservatism is one of Boston's
+idiosyncrasies, which we must accept like the wind and the flat A.
+
+Present-day Bostonians are proud--and properly so--of their Copley
+Square, with its Public Library, rich with the mural paintings of Puvis
+de Chavannes, with Abbey's "Quest of the Holy Grail," and Sargent's
+"Frieze of the Prophets"; with its well-loved Trinity Church and with
+much excellent sculpture by Bela Pratt. Copley Square is the cultural
+center of modern Boston. The famous Lowell lectures--established about
+seventy-five years ago as free gifts to the people--are enthusiastically
+attended by audiences as Bostonese as one could hope to congregate; and
+in all sorts of queer nests in this vicinity are Theosophical
+reading-rooms, small halls where Buddhism is studied or New Thought
+taught, and half a hundred very new or very old philosophies, religions,
+fads, fashions, reforms, and isms find shelter. It is easy to linger in
+Copley Square: indeed, hundreds and hundreds of men and
+women--principally women--come from all over the United States for the
+sole purpose of spending a few months or a season in this very place,
+enjoying the lectures, concerts, and art exhibitions which are so easily
+and freely accessible. But in this bird's-eye flight across the
+historical and geographical map of a city that tempts one to many
+pleasant delays, we must hover for a brief moment over the South and the
+North Ends.
+
+Skipping back, then, almost three centuries, but not traveling far as
+distance goes, the stranger in Boston cannot do better than to find his
+way from Copley Square to the Old South Church on Washington
+Street--that venerable building whose desecration by the British troops
+in 1775 the citizens found it so hard ever to forgive. It was here that
+Benjamin Franklin was baptized in 1706; here that Joseph Warren made a
+dramatic entry to the pulpit by way of the window in order to denounce
+the British soldiers; and here that momentous meetings were held in the
+heaving days before the Revolution. The Old South Church Burying Ground
+is now called the King's Chapel Burying Ground, and King's Chapel
+itself--a quaint, dusky building, suggestive of a London chapel--is only
+a few blocks away. Across its doorsill have not only stepped the Royal
+Governors of pre-Revolutionary days, but Washington, General Gage, the
+indestructibly romantic figures of Sir Harry Frankland and Agnes
+Surriage; the funeral processions of General Warren and Charles Sumner.
+The organ, which came from England in 1756, is said to have been
+selected by Handel at the request of King George, and along the walls of
+the original King's Chapel were hung the escutcheons of the Kings of
+England and of the Royal Governors.
+
+The Old State House is in this vicinity and is worthy--as are, indeed,
+both the Old South Church and King's Chapel--of careful architectural
+study and enjoyment. There are portraits, pictures, relics, and rooms
+within, and without the beautifully quaint lines and truly lovely
+details of the façade infuse a perpetual charm into the atmosphere of
+the city. It was directly in front of this building that the Boston
+Massacre took place in 1770, and from this second-story balcony that
+the repeal of the Stamp Act was read, and ten years later the full text
+of the Declaration of Independence.
+
+Perhaps the next most interesting building in this section of old Boston
+is Faneuil Hall, the "Cradle of Liberty" whose dignified, old-fashioned
+proportions were not lost--thanks to Bulfinch--when it was enlarged. A
+gift of a public-spirited citizen, this building has served in a double
+capacity for a hundred and seventy-seven years, having public
+market-stalls below and a large hall above--a hall which is never
+rented, but used freely by the people whenever they wish to discuss
+public affairs. It would be impossible to enumerate the notable speakers
+and meetings which have rendered this hall famous, from General Gage
+down to Daniel Webster, Theodore Roosevelt, and Marshal Joffre.
+
+If you are fond of water sights and smells you can step from Faneuil
+Hall down to a region permeated with the flavor of salt and the sound of
+shipping, a region of both ancient tradition and present activity. Here
+is India Wharf, its seven-story yellow-brick building once so
+tremendously significant of Boston's shipping prosperity; Long Wharf, so
+named because when it was built it was the longest in the country, and
+bore a battery at its end; Central Wharf, with its row of venerable
+stone warehouses; T Wharf, immensely picturesque with its congestion of
+craft of all descriptions; Commercial Wharf, where full-rigged sailing
+vessels which traded with China and India and the Cape of Good Hope were
+wont to anchor a hundred years ago. All this region is crammed with the
+paraphernalia of a typical water-front: curious little shops where
+sailors' supplies are sold; airy lofts where sails are cut and stitched
+and repaired; fish stores of all descriptions; sailors' haunts, awaiting
+the pen of an American Thomas Burke. The old Custom House where
+Hawthorne unwillingly plodded through his enforced routine is here, and
+near it the new Custom House rears its tower four hundred and
+ninety-eight feet above the sidewalk, a beacon from both land and sea.
+
+The North End of Boston has not fared as well as the South End. The sons
+of Abraham and immigrants from Italy have appropriated the streets,
+dwellings, churches, and shops of the entire region, and even Christ
+Church (the famous Old North Church) has a Chiesa Italiana on its
+grounds. There are many touches to stir the memory in this Old North
+Church. The chime of eight bells naïvely stating, "We are the first ring
+of bells cast for the British Empire in North America"; the pew with the
+inscription that is set apart for the use of the "Gentlemen of Bay of
+Honduras"--visiting merchants who contributed the spire to the church in
+1740; vaults beneath the church, forbidden now to visitors, where lie
+the bones of many Revolutionary heroes; a unique collection of
+vellum-covered books, and a few highly precious pieces of ancient
+furniture. The most conspicuous item about the church, of course, is
+that from its tower were hung the signal lanterns of Paul Revere,
+destined to shine imperishably down the ever-lengthening aisles of
+American history.
+
+Before we press on to Bunker Hill--for that is our final destination--we
+should cast a glance at Copp's Hill Burying Ground, that hillside refuge
+where one can turn either back to the annals of the past or look out
+over the roof-tops and narrow streets to the present and the future. If
+you chose the latter, you can see easily Boston Harbor and Charlestown
+Navy Yard--that navy yard which has outstripped even its spectacular
+traditions by its stirring achievements in the Great War. "Old
+Ironsides" will lie here forever in the well-earned serenity of a secure
+old age, and it is probable that another visitor, the Kronprinzessin
+Cecilie, although lost under the name of the Mount Vernon and a coat of
+gray paint, will be long preserved in maritime memory.
+
+The plain shaft of Bunker Hill Monument, standing to mark the spot where
+the Americans lost a battle that was, in reality, a victory, is like a
+blank mirror, reflecting only that which one presents to it. According
+to your historical knowledge and your emotional grasp Bunker Hill
+Monument is significant.
+
+Skimming thus over the many-storied city, in a sort of literary
+airplane, it has been possible to point out only a few of the most
+conspicuous places and towers. The Common lies like a tiny pocket
+handkerchief of path-marked green at the foot of crowded Beacon Hill;
+the white Esplanade curves beside the blue Charles; the Back Bay is only
+a checkerboard of streets, alphabetically arranged; Copley Square is
+hardly distinguishable. The spires of the Old South Church, King's
+Chapel, the Old State House, and Faneuil Hall punctuate the South End;
+the North Church, the North End. The new Custom House Tower and Bunker
+Hill Monument seem hardly more than the minarets of a child's toy
+village.
+
+The writer, as a pilot over this particular city, alights and resigns,
+commending for more detailed study, and for delightful guidance, Robert
+Shackleton's "Book of Boston." Let us now leave the city and set out in
+a more leisurely fashion on our way to Plymouth.
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD COAST ROAD
+
+_From Boston to Plymouth_
+
+[Illustration: THE SOUTH SHORE OFMASSACHUSETTS BAY]
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD COAST ROAD
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+DORCHESTER HEIGHTS AND THE OLD COAST ROAD
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+The very earliest of the great roads in New England was the Old Coast
+Road, connecting Boston with Plymouth--capitals of separate colonies. Do
+we, casually accepting the fruit of three hundred years of toil on this
+continent--do we, accustomed to smooth highways and swift and easy
+transportation, realize the significance of such a road?
+
+A road is the symbol of the civilization which has produced it. The main
+passageway from the shore of the Yellow Sea to the capital of Korea,
+although it has been pressed for centuries immemorial by myriads of
+human feet, has never been more than a bridle path. On the other hand,
+wherever the great Roman Empire stepped, it engineered mighty
+thoroughfares which are a marvel to this day. A road is the thread on
+which the beads of history are strung; the beads of peace as well as
+those of war. Thrilling as is the progress of aerial navigation, with
+its infinite possibilities of human intercourse, yet surely, when the
+entire history of man is unrolled, the moment of the conception of
+building a wide and permanent road, instead of merely using a trail,
+will rank as equally dramatic. The first stone laid by the first Roman
+(they to whom the idea of road-building was original) will be recognized
+as significant as the quiver of the wings of the first airplane.
+
+Let us follow the old road from Boston to Plymouth: follow it, not with
+undue exactitude, and rather too hastily, as is the modern way, but
+comfortably, as is also the modern way, picking up what bits of quaint
+lore and half-forgotten history we most easily may.
+
+I think that as we start down this historic highway, we shall
+encounter--if our mood be the proper one in which to undertake such a
+journey--a curious procession coming down the years to meet us. We shall
+not call them ghosts, for they are not phantoms severed from earth, but,
+rather, the permanent possessors of the highway which they helped
+create.
+
+We shall meet the Indian first, running lightly on straight, moccasined
+feet, along the trail from which he has burned, from time to time, the
+underbrush. He does not go by land when he can go by water, but in this
+case there are both land and water to meet, for many are the streams,
+and they are unbridged as yet. With rhythmic lope, more beautiful than
+the stride of any civilized limbs, and with a sure divination of the
+best route, he chooses the trail which will ultimately be the highway of
+the vast army of pale-faces. Speed on, O solitary Indian--to vanish down
+the narrow trail of your treading as you are destined, in time, to
+vanish forever from the vision of New England!... Behind the red runner
+plod two stern-faced Pilgrims, pushing their way up from Plymouth toward
+the newer settlement at Massachusetts Bay. They come slowly and
+laboriously on foot, their guns cocked, eyes and ears alert, wading the
+streams without complaint or comment. They keep together, for no one is
+allowed to travel over this Old Coast Road single, "nor without some
+arms, though two or three together." The path they take follows almost
+exactly the trail of the Indian, seeking the fords, avoiding the
+morasses, clinging to the uplands, and skirting the rough, wooded
+heights.... After them--almost a decade after--we see a man on
+horseback, with his wife on a pillion behind him. They carry their own
+provisions and those for the beast, now and then dismounting to lead the
+horse over difficult ground, and now and then blazing a tree to help
+them in their return journey--mute testimony to the cruder senses of the
+white man to whom woodcraft never becomes instinctive. The fact that
+this couple possesses a horse presages great changes in New England.
+Ferries will be established; tolls levied, bridges thrown across the
+streams which now the horses swim, or cross by having their front feet
+in one canoe ferry and their hind feet in another--the canoes being
+lashed together. As yet we see no vehicle of any kind, except an
+occasional sedan chair. (The first one of these of which we have
+knowledge was presented to Governor Winthrop as a portion of a capture
+from a Spanish galleon.) However, these are not common. In 1631 Governor
+Endicott of Salem wrote that he could not get to Boston to visit
+Governor Winthrop as he was not well enough to wade the streams. The
+next year we read of Governor Winthrop surmounting the difficulty when
+he goes to visit Governor Bradford, by being carried on the backs of
+Indians across the fords. (It took him two days to make the journey.)
+
+It is not strange that we see no wheeled vehicles. In 1672 there were
+only six stage-coaches in the whole of Great Britain, and they were the
+occasion of a pamphlet protesting that they encouraged too much travel!
+At this time Boston had one private coach. Although one swallow may not
+make a summer, one stage-coach marks the beginning of a new era. The age
+of walking and horseback riding approaches its end; gates and bars
+disappear, the crooked farm lanes are gradually straightened; and in
+come a motley procession of chaises, sulkies, and two-wheeled
+carts--two-wheeled carts, not four. There are sleds and sleighs for
+winter, but the four-wheeled wagon was little used in New England until
+the turn of the century. And then they were emphatically objected to
+because of the wear and tear on the roads! In 1669 Boston enacted that
+all carts "within y^e necke of Boston shall be and goe without shod
+wheels." This provision is entirely comprehensible, when we remember
+that there was no idea of systematic road repair. No tax was imposed for
+keeping the roads in order, and at certain seasons of the year every
+able-bodied man labored on the highways, bringing his own oxen, cart,
+and tools.
+
+But as the Old Coast Road, which was made a public highway in 1639,
+becomes a genuine turnpike--so chartered in 1803--the good old coaching
+days are ushered in with the sound of a horn, and handsome equipages
+with well-groomed, well-harnessed horses ply swiftly back and forth.
+Genial inns, with swinging pictorial signboards (for many a traveler
+cannot read), spring up along the way, and the post is installed.
+
+But even with fair roads and regular coaching service, New England,
+separated by her fixed topographical outlines, remains provincial. It is
+not until the coming of the railroad, in the middle of the nineteenth
+century, that the hills are overcome, and she ceases to be an
+exclusively coastwise community and becomes an integral factor in the
+economic development of the whole United States.
+
+Thus, then, from a thin thread of a trail barely wide enough for one
+moccasined foot to step before the other, to a broad, leveled
+thoroughfare, so wide that three or even four automobiles may ride
+abreast, and so clean that at the end of an all-day's journey one's
+face is hardly dusty, does the history of the Old Coast Road unroll
+itself. We who contemplate making the trip ensconced in the upholstered
+comfort of a machine rolling on air-filled tires, will, perhaps, be less
+petulant of some strip of roughened macadam, less bewildered by the
+characteristic windings, if we recall something of the first
+back-breaking cart that--not so very long ago--crashed over the stony
+road, and toilsomely worked its way from devious lane to lane.
+
+Before we start down the Old Coast Road it may be enlightening to get a
+bird's-eye glimpse of it actually as we have historically, and for such
+a glimpse there is no better place than on the topmost balcony of the
+Soldier's Monument on Dorchester Heights. The trip to Dorchester
+Heights, in South Boston, is, through whatever environs one approaches
+it, far from attractive. This section of the city, endowed with
+extraordinary natural beauty and advantage of both land and water, and
+irrevocably and brilliantly graven upon the annals of American history,
+has been allowed to lose its ancient prestige and to sink low indeed in
+the social scale.
+
+Nevertheless it is to Dorchester Heights that we, as travelers down the
+Old Coast Road, and as skimmers over the quickly turning pages of our
+early New England history, must go, and having once arrived at that
+lovely green eminence, whitely pointed with a marble shaft of quite
+unusual excellence, we must grieve once more that this truly glorious
+spot, with its unparalleled view far down the many-islanded harbor to
+the east and far over the famous city to the west, is not more
+frequented, more enjoyed, more honored.
+
+If you find your way up the hill, into the monument, and up the stairs
+out to the balcony, probably you will encounter no other tourist. Only
+when you reach the top and emerge into the blue upper air you will meet
+those friendly winged visitors who frequent all spires--Saint Mark's in
+Venice or the Soldier's Monument in South Boston--the pigeons! Yes, the
+pigeons have discovered the charm of this lofty loveliness, and
+whenever the caretaker turns away his vigilant eye, they haste to build
+their nests on balcony or stair. They alone of Boston's residents enjoy
+to the full that of which too many Bostonians ignore the existence. Will
+you read the inscriptions first and recall the events which have raised
+this special hill to an historic eminence equal to its topographical
+one? Or will you look out first, on all sides and see the harbor, the
+city and country as it is to-day? Both surveys will be brief; perhaps we
+will begin with the latter.
+
+Before us, to the wide east, lies Boston Harbor, decked with islands so
+various, so fascinating in contour and legend, that more than one volume
+has been written about them and not yet an adequate one. From the point
+of view of history these islands are pulsating with life. From Castle
+Island (on the left) which was selected as far back as 1634 to be a
+bulwark of the port, and which, with its Fort Independence, was where
+many of our Civil War soldiers received their training, to the outline
+of Squantum (on the right), where in October, 1917, there lay a marsh,
+and where, ten months later, the destroyer Delphy was launched from a
+shipyard that was a miracle of modern engineering--every mile of visible
+land is instinct with war-time associations.
+
+But history is more than battles and forts and the paraphernalia of war;
+history is economic development as well. And from this same balcony we
+can pick out Thompson's, Rainsford, and Deer Island, set aside for huge
+corrective institutions--a graphic example of a nation's progress in its
+treatment of the wayward and the weak.
+
+But if history is more than wars, it is also more than institutions. If
+it is the record of man's daily life, the pleasures he works for, then
+again we are standing in an unparalleled spot to look down upon its
+present-day manifestations. From City Point with its Aquarium, from the
+Marine Park with its long pleasure pier, to Nantasket with its flawless
+beach, this is the summer playground of unnumbered hosts. Boaters,
+bathers, picnickers--all find their way here, where not only the cool
+breezes sweep their city-heated cheeks, but the forever bewitching
+passage of vessels in and out, furnishes endless entertainment. They
+know well, these laughing pleasure-seekers, crowding the piers and boats
+and wharves and beaches, where to come for refreshment, and now and
+then, in the history of the harbor, a solitary individual has taken
+advantage of the romantic charm which is the unique heritage of every
+island, and has built his home and lived, at least some portion of his
+days, upon one.
+
+Apple Island, that most perfectly shaped little fleck of land of ten
+acres, was the home of a Mr. March, an Englishman who settled there with
+his family, and lived there happily until his death, being buried at
+last upon its western slope. The fine old elms which adorned it are gone
+now, as have the fine old associations. No one followed Mr. March's
+example, and Apple Island is now merely another excursion point.
+
+On Calf Island, another ten-acre fragment, one of America's popular
+actresses, Julia Arthur, has her home. Thus, here and there, one
+stumbles upon individuals or small communities who have chosen to live
+out in the harbor. But one cannot help wondering how such beauty spots
+have escaped being more loved and lived upon by men and women who
+recognize the romantic lure which only an island can possess.
+
+Of course the advantage of these positions has been utilized, if not for
+dwellings. Government buildings, warehouses, and the great sewage plant
+all find convenient foothold here. The excursionists have ferreted out
+whatever beaches and groves there may be. One need not regret that the
+harbor is not appreciated, but only that it has not been developed along
+æsthetic as well as useful lines.
+
+We have been looking at the east, which is the harbor view. If we look
+to the west we see the city of Boston: the white tower of the Custom
+House; the gold dome of the State House; the sheds of the great South
+Station; the blue line of the Charles River. Here is the place to come
+if one would see a living map of the city and its environs. Standing
+here we realize how truly Boston is a maritime city, and standing here
+we also realize how it is that Dorchester Heights won its fame.
+
+It was in the winter of 1776, when the British, under Lord Howe, were
+occupying Boston, and had fortified every place which seemed important.
+By some curious oversight--which seems incredible to us as we actually
+stand upon the top of this conspicuous hill--they forgot this spot.
+
+When Washington saw what they had not seen--how this unique position
+commanded both the city and the harbor--he knew that his opportunity had
+come. He had no adequate cannon or siege guns, and the story of how
+Henry Knox--afterward General Knox--obtained these from Ticonderoga and
+brought them on, in the face of terrific difficulties of weather and
+terrain, is one that for bravery and brains will never fail to thrill.
+On the night of March 4, the Americans, keeping up a cannonading to
+throw the British off guard, and to cover up the sound of the moving,
+managed to get two thousand Continental troops and four hundred carts of
+fascines and intrenching tools up on the hill. That same night, with the
+aid of the moonlight, they threw up two redoubts--performing a task,
+which, as Lord Howe exclaimed in dismay the following morning, was "more
+in one night than my whole army could have done in a month."
+
+The occupation of the heights was a magnificent _coup_. The moment the
+British saw what had been done, they realized that they had lost the
+fight. However, Lord Percy hurried to make an attack, but the weather
+made it impossible, and by the time the weather cleared the Americans
+were so strongly intrenched that it was futile to attack. Washington,
+although having been granted permission by Congress to attack Boston,
+wished to save the loyal city if possible. Therefore, he and Howe made
+an agreement by which Howe was to evacuate and Washington was to refrain
+from using his guns. After almost two weeks of preparation for
+departure, on March 17 the British fleet, as the gilded letters on the
+white marble panel tell us, in the words of Charles W. Eliot:
+
+          Carrying 11,000 effective men
+                And 1000 refugees
+        Dropped down to Nantasket Roads
+                  And thenceforth
+                  Boston was free
+                A strong British force
+                  Had been expelled
+    From one of the United American colonies
+
+The white marble panel, with its gold letters and the other inscriptions
+on the hill, tell the whole story to whoever cares to read, only
+omitting to mention that the thousand self-condemned Boston refugees who
+sailed away with the British fleet were bound for Halifax, and that that
+was the beginning of the opprobrious term: "Go to Halifax."
+
+That the battle was won without bloodshed in no way minimizes the
+verdict of history that "no single event had a greater general effect on
+the course of the war than the expulsion of the British from the New
+England capital." And surely this same verdict justifies the perpetual
+distinction of this unique and beautiful hill.
+
+This, then, is the story of Dorchester Heights--a story whose glory will
+wax rather than wane in the years, and centuries, to come. Let us be
+glad that out of the reek of the modern city congestion this green hill
+has been preserved and this white marble monument erected. Perhaps you
+see it now with different, more sympathetic eyes than when you first
+looked out from the balcony platform. Before us lies the water with its
+multifarious islands, bays, promontories, and coves, some of which we
+shall now explore. Behind us lies the city which we shall now leave. The
+Old Coast Road--the oldest in New England--winds from Boston to
+Plymouth, along yonder southern horizon. More history than one person
+can pleasantly relate, or one can comfortably listen to, lies packed
+along this ancient turnpike: incidents closer set than the tombs along
+the Appian Way. We will not try to hear them all. Neither will we follow
+the original road too closely, for we seek the beautiful pleasure drive
+of to-day more than the historic highway of long ago.
+
+Boston was made the capital of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1632.
+Plymouth was a capital a decade before. It is to Plymouth that we now
+set out.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+MILTON AND THE BLUE HILLS
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Milton--a town of dignity and distinction! A town of enterprise and
+character! Ever since the first water-power mill in this country; the
+first powder mill in this country; the first chocolate mill in this
+country, and thus through a whole line of "first" things--the first
+violoncello, the first pianoforte, the first artificial spring leg, and
+the first railroad to see the light of day saw it in this grand old
+town--the name of Milton has been synonymous with initiative and men and
+women of character.
+
+Few people to-day think of Milton in terms of industrial repute, but,
+rather, as a place of estates, too aristocratic to be fashionable, of
+historic houses, and of charming walks and drives and views. Many of
+the old families who have given the town its prestige still live in
+their ancestral manors, and many of the families who have moved there in
+recent years are of such sort as will heighten the fame of the famous
+town. As the stranger passes through Milton he is captivated by glimpses
+of ancient homesteads, settling behind their white Colonial fences
+topped with white Colonial urns, half hidden by their antique trees with
+an air of comfortable ease; of new houses, elegant and yet informal; of
+cottages with low roofs; of well-bred children playing on the wide,
+green lawns under the supervision of white-uniformed nurses; of old
+hedges, old walls, old trees; new roads, old drives, new gardens, and
+old gardens--everything well placed, well tended, everything presenting
+that indescribable atmosphere of well-established prosperity that scorns
+show; of breeding that neither parades nor conceals its quality.
+Yes--this is Milton; this is modern Milton. Boston society receives some
+of its most prominent contributions from this patrician source. But
+modern Milton is something more than this, as old Milton was something
+more than this.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+For Milton, from this day of its birth, and countless centuries before
+its birth as a town, has lived under the lofty domination of the Blue
+Hills, that range of diaphanous and yet intense blue, that swims forever
+against the sky, that marches forever around the horizon. The rounded
+summits of the Blue Hills, to which the eye is irresistibly attracted
+before entering the town which principally claims them, are the
+worn-down stumps of ancient mountains, and although so leveled by the
+process of the ages, they are still the highest land near the coast from
+Maine to Mexico. These eighteen or twenty skyey crests form the southern
+boundary of the so-called Boston Basin, and are the most prominent
+feature of the southern coast. From them the Massachuset tribe about the
+Bay derived its name, signifying "Near the Great Hills," which name was
+changed by the English to Massachusetts, and applied to both bay and
+colony. Although its Indian name has been taken from this lovely range,
+the loveliness remains. All the surrounding country shimmers under the
+mysterious bloom of these heights, so vast that everything else is
+dwarfed beside them, and yet so curiously airy that they seem to
+perpetually ripple against the sky. The Great Blue Hill, especially--the
+one which bears an observatory on its summit--swims above one's head. It
+seems to have a singular way of moving from point to point as one
+motors, and although one may be forced to admit that this may be due
+more to the winding roads than to the illusiveness of the hill, still
+the buoyant effect is the same.
+
+Ruskin declares somewhere, with his quaint and characteristic mixture of
+positiveness and idealism, that "inhabitants of granite countries have a
+force and healthiness of character about them that clearly distinguishes
+them from the inhabitants of less pure districts." Perhaps he was right,
+for surely here where the succeeding generations have all lived in the
+atmosphere of the marching Blue Hill, each has through its own fair
+name, done honor to the fair names which have preceded it.
+
+One of the very first to be attracted by the lofty and yet lovely appeal
+of this region was Governor Thomas Hutchinson, the last of the Royal
+Governors Massachusetts was to know. It was about the middle of the
+eighteenth century that this gentleman, of whom John Adams wrote, "He
+had been admired, revered, and almost adored," chose as the spot for his
+house the height above the Neponset River. If we follow the old country
+Heigh Waye to the top of Unquity (now Milton) Hill, we will find the
+place he chose, although the house he built has gone and another stands
+in its place. Fairly near the road, it overlooked a rolling green meadow
+(a meadow which, by the gift of John Murray Forbes, will always be kept
+open), with a flat green marsh at its feet and the wide flat twist of
+the Neponset River winding through it, for all the world like a
+decorative panel by Puvis de Chavannes. One can see a bit of the North
+Shore and Boston Harbor from here. This is the view that the Governor so
+admired, and tradition tells us that when he was forced to return to
+England he walked on foot down the hill, shaking hands with his
+neighbors, patriot and Tory alike, with tears in his eyes as he left
+behind him the garden and the trees he had planted, and the house where
+he had so happily lived. Although the view from the front of the house
+is exquisite, the view from the back holds even more intimate
+attraction. Here is the old, old garden, and although the ephemeral
+blossoms of the present springtime shine brightly forth, the box, full
+twenty feet high, speaks of another epoch. Foxgloves lean against the
+"pleached alley," and roses clamber on a wall that doubtless bore the
+weight of their first progenitors.
+
+Another governor who chose to live in Milton was Jonathan Belcher, but
+one fancies it was the grandness rather than the sweetness of the scene
+which attracted this rather spectacular person. The Belcher house still
+exists, as does the portrait of its master, in his wig and velvet coat
+and waistcoat, trimmed with richest gold lace at the neck and wrists.
+Small-clothes and gold knee and shoe buckles complete the picture of one
+who, when his mansion was planned, insisted upon an avenue fifty feet
+wide, and so nicely graded that visitors on entering from the street
+might see the gleam of his gold knee buckles as he stood on the distant
+porch. The avenue, however, was never completed, as Belcher was
+appointed governor of, and transferred to, New Jersey shortly after.
+
+Two other men of note, who, since the days of our years are but
+threescore and ten, chose that their days without number should be spent
+in the town they loved, were Wendell Phillips and Rimmer the sculptor,
+who are both buried at Milton.
+
+Not only notable personages, but notable events have been engendered
+under the shadow of these hills. The Suffolk Resolves, which were the
+prelude of the Declaration of Independence, were adopted at the Vose
+House, which still stands, square and unadorned, easy of access from the
+sidewalk, as is suitable for a home of democracy. The first piano ever
+made in this country received its conception and was brought to
+fulfillment in the Crehore house, which, although still sagging a bit,
+is by no means out of commission. And Wilde's Tavern, where was formed
+the public opinion in a day when the forming of public opinion was of
+preëminent importance, still retains, in its broad, hospitable lines,
+some shred of its ancient charm.
+
+Milton is full of history. From the Revolutionary days, when the
+cannonading at Bunker Hill shook the foundations of the houses, but not
+the nerves of the Milton ladies, down to the year 1919, when the Fourth
+Liberty Loan of $2,955,250 was subscribed from a population of 9000, all
+the various vicissitudes of peace and war have been sustained on the
+high level that one might expect from men and women nobly nurtured by
+the strength of the hills.
+
+How much of its success Milton attributes to its location--for one
+joins, indeed, a distinguished fellowship when one builds upon a hill,
+or on several hills, as Roman as well as Bostonian history
+testifies--can only be guessed by its tribute in the form of the Blue
+Hills Reservation. This State recreation park and forest reserve of
+about four thousand acres--a labyrinth of idyllic footpaths and leafy
+trails, of twisting drives and walks that open out upon superb vistas,
+is now the property of the people of Massachusetts. The granite quarry
+man--far more interested in the value of the stone that underlay the
+wooded slopes than in Ruskin's theory of its purifying effect upon the
+inhabitants--had already obtained a footing here, when, under the able
+leadership of Charles Francis Adams, the whole region was taken over by
+the State in 1894.
+
+As you pass through the Reservation--and if you are taking even the most
+cursory glimpse of Milton you must include some portion of this
+park--you will pass the open space where in the early days, when Milton
+country life was modeled upon English country life more closely than
+now, Malcolm Forbes raced upon his private track the horses he himself
+had bred. The race-track with its judges' stands is still there, but
+there are no more horse-races, although the Forbes family still holds a
+conspicuous place in all the social as well as the philanthropic
+enterprises of the countryside. You may see, too, a solitary figure
+with a scientist's stoop, or a tutor with a group of boys, making a
+first-hand study of a region which is full of interest to the geologist.
+
+Circling thus around the base of the Great Blue Hill and irresistibly
+drawn closer and closer to it as by a magnet, one is impelled to make
+the ascent to the top--an easy ascent with its destination clearly
+marked by the Rotch Meteorological Observatory erected in 1884 by the
+late A. Lawrence Rotch of Milton, who bequeathed funds for its
+maintenance. It is now connected with Harvard University.
+
+Once at the top the eye is overwhelmed by a circuit of more than a
+hundred and fifty miles! It is almost too immense at first--almost as
+barren as an empty expanse of rolling green sea. But as the eye grows
+accustomed to the stretching distances, objects both near and far begin
+to appear. And soon, if the day is clear, buildings may be identified in
+more than one hundred and twenty-five villages. We are six hundred and
+thirty-five feet above the sea, on the highest coastland from
+Agamenticus, near York, Maine, to the Rio Grande, and the panorama thus
+unrolled is truly magnificent. Facing northerly we can easily
+distinguish Cambridge, Somerville, and Malden, and far beyond the hills
+of Andover and Georgetown. A little to the east, Boston with its gilded
+dome; then the harbor with its islands, headlands, and fortifications.
+Beyond that are distinctly visible various points on the North Shore, as
+far as Eastern Point Lighthouse in Gloucester. Forty miles to the
+northeast appear the twin lighthouses on Thatcher's Island, seeming,
+from here, to be standing, not on the land, but out in the ocean. Nearer
+and more distinct is Boston Light--a sentinel at the entrance to the
+harbor, while beyond it stretches Massachusetts Bay. Turning nearly east
+the eye, passing over Chickatawbut Hill--three miles off and second in
+height of the Blue Hills--follows the beautiful curve of Nantasket
+Beach, and the pointing finger of Minot's Light. Facing nearly south,
+the long ridge of Manomet Hill in Plymouth, thirty-three miles away,
+stands clear against the sky, while twenty-six miles away, in Duxbury,
+one sees the Myles Standish Monument. Directly south rises the smoke of
+the city of Fall River; to the westerly, Woonsocket, and continuing to
+the west, Mount Wachusett in Princeton. Far to the right of Wachusett,
+nearly over the dome of the Dedham Courthouse, rounds up Watatic in
+Ashburnham, and northwest a dozen peaks of southern New Hampshire. At
+the right of Watatic and far beyond it is the Grand Monadnock in
+Jaffrey, 3170 feet above the sea and sixty-seven and a half miles away.
+On the right of Grand Monadnock is a group of nearer summits: Mount
+Kidder, exactly northwest; Spofford and Temple Mountains; then appears
+the remarkable Pack-Monadnock, near Peterboro, with its two equal
+summits. The next group to the right is in Lyndeboro. At the right of
+Lyndeboro, and nearly over the Readville railroad stations, is Joe
+English Hill, and to complete the round, nearly north-northwest are the
+summits of the Uncanoonuc Mountains, fifty-nine miles away.
+
+This, then, is the Great Blue Hill of Milton. Those who are familiar
+with the State of Massachusetts--and New England--can stand here and
+pick out a hundred distinguishing landmarks, and those who have never
+been here before may find an unparalleled opportunity to see the whole
+region at one sweep of the eye.
+
+From the point of view of topography the summit of Great Blue Hill is
+the place to reach. But for the sense of mysterious beauty, for snatches
+of pictures one will never forget, the little vistas which open on the
+upward or the downward trail, framed by hanging boughs or encircled by a
+half frame of stone and hillside--these are, perhaps, more lovely. The
+hill itself, seen from a distance, floating lightly like a vast blue
+ball against a vaster sky, is dreamily suggestive in a way which the
+actual view, superb as it is, is not. One remembers Stevenson's
+observation, that sometimes to travel hopefully is better than to
+arrive. So let us come down, for, after all, "Love is of the valley."
+Down again to the old town of Milton. We have not half begun to wander
+over it: not half begun to hear the pleasant stories it has to tell.
+When one is as old as this--for Milton was discovered by a band from
+Plymouth who came up the Neponset River in 1621--one has many tales to
+tell.
+
+Of all the towns along the South Shore there are few whose feet are so
+firmly emplanted in the economic history of the past and present as is
+Milton. That peculiar odor of sweetness which drifts to us with a turn
+of the wind, comes from a chocolate mill whose trade-mark of a
+neat-handed maid with her little tray is known all over the civilized
+world. And those mills stand upon the site of the first grist mill in
+New England to be run by water power. This was in 1634, and one likes to
+picture the sturdy colonists trailing into town, their packs upon their
+backs, like children in kindergarten games, to have their grain ground.
+Israel Stoughton was the name of the man who established this first
+mill--a name perpetuated in the near-by town of Stoughton.
+
+All ground is historic ground in Milton. That rollicking group of
+schoolboys yonder belongs to an academy, which, handsome and
+flourishing as it is to-day, was founded as long ago as 1787. That seems
+long ago, but there was a school in Milton before that: a school held in
+the first meeting-house. Nothing is left of this quaint structure but a
+small bronze bas-relief, set against a stone wall, near its original
+site. This early church and early school was a log cabin with a thatched
+roof and latticed windows, if one may believe the relief, but men of
+brains and character were taught there lessons which stood them and the
+colony in good stead. One fancies the students' roving eyes may have
+occasionally strayed down the Indian trail directly opposite the old
+site--a trail which, although now attained to the proud rank of a lane,
+Churchill's Lane, still invites one down its tangled green way along the
+gray stone wall. Yes, every step of ground has its tradition here.
+Yonder railroad track marks the spot where the very first tie in the
+country was laid, and laid for no less significant purpose than to
+facilitate the carrying of granite blocks for Bunker Hill Monument from
+their quarry to the harbor.
+
+Granite from the hills--the hills which swim forever against the sky and
+march forever above the distant horizon. Again we are drawn back to the
+irresistible magnet of those mighty monitors. Yes, wherever one goes in
+Milton, either on foot to-day or back through the chapters of three
+centuries ago, the Blue Hills dominate every event, and the Great Blue
+Hill floats above them all.
+
+"I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help,"
+chants the psalmist. Ah, well, no one can say it better than
+that--except the hills themselves, which, with gentle majesty, look down
+affectionately upon the town at their feet.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+SHIPBUILDING AT QUINCY
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+The first man-made craft which floated on the waters of what is now Fore
+River was probably a little dugout, a crude boat made by an Indian, who
+burned out the center of a pine log which he had felled by girdling with
+fire. After he had burned out as much as he could, he scraped out the
+rest with a stone tool called a "celt." The whole operation probably
+took one Indian three weeks. The Rivadavia which slid down the ways of
+the Fore River Shipbuilding Corporation in August, 1914, weighed 13,400
+tons and had engaged the labor of 2000 men for fifty months.
+
+Between these two extremes flutter all the great sisterhood of shallops,
+sloops, pinks, schooners, snows, the almost obsolete batteau and
+periagua, the gundelow with its picturesque lateen sail, and all the
+winged host that are now merely names in New England's maritime history.
+
+We may not give in this limited space an account of the various vessels
+which have sailed down the green-sea aisles the last three hundred
+years. But of the very first, "a great and strong shallop" built by the
+Plymouth settlers for fishing, we must make brief mention, and of the
+Blessing of the Bay, the first seaworthy native craft to be built and
+launched on these shores--the pioneer of all New England commerce. Built
+by Governor Winthrop, he notes of her in his journal on August 31, 1631,
+that "the bark being of thirty tons went to sea." That is all he says,
+but from that significant moment the building of ships went on
+"gallantly," as was indeed to be expected in a country whose chief
+industry was fishing and which was so admirably surrounded by natural
+bays and harbors. In 1665 we hear of the Great and General Court of
+Massachusetts--which distinctive term is still applied to the
+Massachusetts Legislature--forbidding the cutting of any trees suitable
+for masts. The broad arrow of the King was marked on all white pines,
+twenty-four inches in diameter, three feet from the ground. Big ships
+and little ships swarmed into existence, and every South Shore town made
+shipbuilding history. The ketch, a two-masted vessel carrying from
+fifteen to twenty tons, carried on most of the coasting traffic, and
+occasionally ventured on a foreign voyage. When we recall that the best
+and cheapest ships of the latter half of the seventeenth century were
+built here in the new country, we realize that shipyards, ports, docks,
+proper laws and regulations, and the invigorating progress which marks
+any thriving industry flourished bravely up and down the whole New
+England coast.
+
+It is rather inspiring to stand here on the bridge which spans the Fore
+River, and picture that first crude dugout being paddled along by the
+steady stroke of the red man, and then to look at the river to-day.
+Every traveler through Quincy is familiar with the aerial network of
+steel scaffolding criss-crossing the sky, with the roofs of shops and
+offices and glimpses of vessels visible along the water-front. But few
+travelers realize that these are merely the superficial features of a
+shipyard which under the urge of the Great War delivered to the Navy, in
+1918, eighteen completed destroyers, which was as many as all the other
+yards in the country put together delivered during this time. A shipyard
+which cut the time of building destroyers from anywhere between eighteen
+and thirty-two months to an average of six months and a half; a shipyard
+which made the world's record of one hundred and seventy-four days from
+the laying of the keel to the delivering of a destroyer.
+
+It is difficult to grasp the meaning of these figures. Difficult, even
+after one has obtained entrance into this city within a city, and seen
+with his own eyes twenty thousand men toiling like Trojans. Seen a
+riveting crew which can drive more than twenty-eight hundred rivets in
+nine hours; battleships that weigh thirty thousand tons; a plate yard
+piled with steel plates and steel bars worth two million dollars; cranes
+that can lift from five tons up to others of one hundred tons capacity;
+single buildings a thousand feet long and eighty feet high.
+
+Perhaps the enormousness of the plant is best comprehended, not when we
+mechanically repeat that it covers eighty acres and comprises eighty
+buildings, and that four full-sized steam locomotives run up and down
+its yard, but when we see how many of the intimate things of daily
+living have sprung up here as little trees spring up between huge
+stones. For the Fore River Plant is more than an industrial
+organization. It is a social center, an economic entity. It has its band
+and glee club, ball team and monthly magazine. There are refreshment
+stands, and a bathing cove; a brand-new village of four hundred and
+thirty-eight brand-new houses; dormitories which accommodate nearly a
+thousand men and possess every convenience and even luxuries. The men
+work hard here, but they are well paid for their work, as the many
+motor-cycles and automobiles waiting for them at night testify. It is a
+scene of incredible industry, but also of incredible completeness.
+
+To look down upon the village and the yard from the throbbing roof of
+the steel mill, seven hundred and seventy feet long and a hundred and
+eighty-eight wide, is a thrilling sight. Within the yard, confined on
+three sides by its high fences and buildings and on the fourth by
+Weymouth Fore River, one sees, far below, locomotives moving up and down
+on their tracks; great cranes stalking long-leggedly back and forth;
+smoke from foundry, blacksmith shop, and boiler shop; men hurrying to
+and fro. Whistles blow, and whole buildings tremble. The smoke and the
+grayness might make it a gloomy scene if it were not for the red sides
+of the immense submarines gleaming in their wide slips to the water.
+Everywhere one sees the long gray sides of freighters, destroyers,
+merchant ships, and oil tankers heaving like the mailed ribs of sea
+animals basking on the shore. Practically every single operation, from
+the most stupendous to the most delicate, necessary for the complete
+construction of these vessels, is carried on in this yard. The eighty
+acres look small when we realize the extent and variety of the work
+achieved within its limits.
+
+Yes, the solitary Indian, working with fire and celt on his dugout,
+would not recognize this once familiar haunt, nor would he know the
+purpose of these vast vessels without sail or paddle. And yet, were this
+same Indian standing on the roof with us, he would see a wide stream of
+water he knew well, and he would see, too, above the smoke of the
+furnace, shop, and boiler room, the friendly green of the trees.
+
+Perhaps there is nothing which makes us realize the magical rapidity of
+growth so much as to look from this steel city and to see the woods
+close by. For instead of being surrounded by the sordid congestion of an
+industrial center, the Fore River Shipyard is in the midst of
+practically open country.
+
+While we are speaking of rapidity we must look over toward the Victory
+Plant at Squantum, that miraculous marsh which was drained with such
+expedition that just twelve months from the day ground was broken for
+its foundation, it launched its first ship, and less than two years
+after completed its entire contract. Surely never in the history of
+shipbuilding have brain and brawn worked so brilliantly together!
+
+In this way, then, the history of the ships that have sailed the seven
+seas has been built up at Quincy--a dramatic history and one instinct
+with the beauty which is part of gliding canoe and white sails, and
+part, too, of the huge smooth-slipping monsters of a modern day, sleek
+and swift as leviathans. But all the while the building of these ships
+has been going on, there has been slowly rising within the selfsame
+radius another ship, vaster, more inspiring, calling forth initiative
+even more intense, idealism even more profound--the Ship of State.
+
+We who journey to-day over the smooth or troubled waters of national or
+international affairs are no more conscious of the infinite toil and
+labors which have gone into the intricate making of the vessel that
+carries us, than are travelers conscious of the cogs and screws, the
+engines and all the elaboration of detail which compose an ocean liner.
+Like them we sometimes grumble at meals or prices, at some discourtesy
+or incompetence, but we take it for granted that the engine is in
+commission, that the bottom is whole and the chart correct. The great
+Ship of State of this country may occasionally run into rough weather,
+but Americans believe that, in the last analysis, she is honestly built.
+And it is to Quincy that we owe a large initial part of this building.
+
+It is astonishing to enumerate the notable public men, who have been
+influential in establishing our national policy, who have come from
+Quincy. There is no town in this entire country which can equal the
+record. What other town ever produced two Presidents of the United
+States, an Ambassador to Great Britain, a Governor of the Commonwealth,
+a Mayor of Boston, two presidents of Harvard University, and judges,
+chief justices, statesmen, and orators in such quantity and of such
+quality? Truly this group of eminent men of brilliance, integrity, and
+public feeling is unique in our history. To read the biographies of
+Quincy's great men would comprise a studious winter's employment, but
+we, passing through the historic city, may hold up our fragment of a
+mirror and catch a bit of the procession.
+
+First and foremost, of course, will come President John Adams, he who,
+both before and after his term of high office, toiled terrifically in
+the public cause, being at the time of his election to Congress a member
+of ninety committees and a chairman of twenty-five! We see him as the
+portraits have taught us to see him, with strong, serious
+face,--austere, but not harsh,--velvet coat, white ruffles, and white
+curls. He stands before us as the undisputed founder of what is now
+recognized as American diplomacy. Straightforward, sound to the core,
+unswerving, veracious, exemplifying in every act the candor of the
+Puritan, so congruous with the new simple life of a nation of common
+people. I think we shall like best to study him as he stands at the door
+of the little house in which he was born, and which, with its pitch
+roof, its antique door and eaves, is still preserved, close to the
+street, for public scrutiny.
+
+Next to President John Adams comes his son, John Quincy Adams, also a
+President of the United States. Spending much of his time abroad, the
+experience of those diplomatic years is graven upon features more subtly
+refined than those of his sire. But for all his foreign residence, he
+was, like his father, a Puritan in its most exalted sense; like him
+toiled all his life in public service, dying in the harness when rising
+to address the Speaker of the House. Him, too, we see best, standing at
+the door of his birthplace, a small cottage a stone's throw from the
+other cottage, separated only by a turnstile. Fresh white curtains hang
+in the small-paned windows; the grass is neatly trimmed, and like its
+quaint companion it is now open to the public and worth the tourist's
+call. Both these venerable cottages have inner walls, one of burnt, the
+other of unburnt brick; and both are unusual in having no boards on the
+outer walls, but merely clapboards fastened directly on to the studding
+with wrought-iron nails.
+
+Still another Adams follows, Charles Francis Adams. Although a little
+boy when he first comes into public view, a little boy occupying the
+conspicuous place as child of one President and grandchild of another,
+yet he was to win renown and honor on his own account as Ambassador to
+England during the critical period of our Civil War. America remembers
+him best in this position. His firm old face with its white chin
+whiskers is a worthy portrait in the ancestral gallery.
+
+Although the political history of this country may conclude its
+reference to the Adamses with these three famous figures, yet all New
+Englanders and all readers of biography would be reluctant to turn from
+this remarkable family without mention of the sons of Charles Francis
+Adams, two of whom have written, beside valuable historical works,
+autobiographies so entertaining and so truly valuable for their
+contemporaneous portraits as to win a place of survival in our permanent
+literature.
+
+A member of the Adams family still lives in the comfortable home where
+the three first and most famous members all celebrated their golden
+weddings. This broad-fronted and hospitable house, built in 1730 by
+Leonard Vassal, a West India planter, for his summer residence, with its
+library finished in panels of solid mahogany, was confiscated when its
+Royalist owner fled at the outbreak of the Revolution, and John Adams
+acquired the property and left the pitch-roofed cottage down the street.
+The home of two Presidents, what tales it could tell of notable
+gatherings! One must read the autobiography of Charles Francis Adams and
+"The Education of Henry Adams" to appreciate the charm of the succeeding
+mistresses of the noble homestead, and to enjoy in retrospect its many
+illustrious visitors.
+
+To have produced one family like the Adamses would surely be sufficient
+distinction for any one place, but the Adams family forms merely one
+unit in Quincy's unique procession of great men.
+
+The Quincy family, for which the town was named, and which at an early
+date intermarried with the Adamses, presents an almost parallel
+distinction. The first Colonel Quincy, he who lived like an English
+squire, a trifle irascible, to be sure, but a dignified and commanding
+figure withal, had fourteen children by his first wife and three by his
+second, so the family started off with the advantage of numbers as well
+as of blood. At the Quincy mansion house were born statesmen, judges,
+and captains of war. The "Dorothy Q." of Holmes's poem first saw the
+light in it, and the Dorothy who became the bride of the dashing John
+Hancock blossomed into womanhood in it. Here were entertained times
+without number Sir Harry Vane, quaint Judge Sewall, Benjamin Franklin,
+and that couple who gleam through the annals of New England history in a
+never-fading flame of romance, Sir Harry Frankland and beautiful Agnes
+Surriage. The Quincy mansion, which was built about 1635 by William
+Coddington of Boston and occupied by him until he was exiled for his
+religious opinions, was bought by Edmund Quincy. His grandson, who bore
+his name, enlarged the house, and lived in it until his death when it
+descended to his son Edmund, the eminent jurist and father of Dorothy.
+The old-fashioned furniture, utensils and pictures, the broad hall, fine
+old stairway with carved balustrades, and foreign wall-paper supposed to
+have been hung in honor of the approaching marriage of Dorothy to John
+Hancock, are still preserved in their original place. Of the Quincy
+family, whose sedate jest it was that the estate descended from 'Siah to
+'Siah, so frequent was the name "Josiah," the best known is perhaps the
+Josiah Quincy who was Mayor of Boston for six years and president of
+Harvard for sixteen. The portrait of his long, thin face is part of
+every New England history, and his busy, serene life, "compacted of
+Roman and Puritan virtues," is still upheld to all American children as
+a model of high citizenship.
+
+But not even the long line of the Quincy family completes the list of
+the town's great men. Henry Hope, one of the most brilliant financiers
+of his generation, and founder of a European banking house second only
+to that of the Rothchilds, was a native of Quincy. John Hull--who, as
+every school-child knows, on the day of his daughter's marriage to Judge
+Sewall, placed her in one of his weighing scales, and heaped enough new
+pine-tree shillings into the other to balance, and then presented both
+to the bridegroom--held the first grant of land in the present town of
+Braintree (which originally included Quincy, Randolph, and Holbrook).
+
+From the picturesque union of John Hull's bouncing daughter Betsy and
+Judge Sewall sprang the extraordinary family of Sewalls which has given
+three chief justices to Massachusetts, and one to Canada, and has been
+distinguished in every generation for the talents and virtues of its
+members. In passing, we may note that it was this same John Hull who
+named Point Judith for his wife, little dreaming what a _bête noir_ the
+place would prove to mariners in the years to come.
+
+There is another Quincy man whom it is pleasant to recall, and that is
+Henry Flynt, a whimsical and scholarly old bachelor, who was a tutor at
+Harvard for no less than fifty-three years, the one fixed element in the
+flow of fourteen college generations. One of the most accomplished
+scholars of his day, his influence on the young men with whom he came in
+contact was stimulating to a degree, and they loved to repeat bits of
+his famous repartee. A favorite which has come down to us was on an
+occasion when Whitefield the revivalist declared in a theological
+discussion: "It is my opinion that Dr. Tillotson is now in hell for his
+heresy." To which Tutor Flynt retorted dryly: "It is my opinion that you
+will not meet him there."
+
+The procession of Quincy's great men which we have been watching winds
+its way, as human processions are apt to do, to the old graveyard. Most
+of the original settlers are buried here, although not a few were buried
+on their own land, according to the common custom. Probably this
+ancient burying ground, with its oldest headstone of 1663, has never
+been particularly attractive. The Puritans did not decorate their
+graveyards in any way. Fearing that prayers or sermons would encourage
+the "superstitions" of the Roman Catholic Church, they shunned any
+ritual over the dead or beautifying of their last resting-place.
+However, neglected as the spot was, the old stone church, whose golden
+belfry is such a familiar and pleasant landmark to all the neighboring
+countryside, still keeps its face turned steadfastly toward it. The
+congested traffic of the city square presses about its portico, but
+those who knew and loved it best lie quietly within the shadow of its
+gray walls. Under the portico lies President John Adams, and "at his
+side sleeps until the trump shall sound, Abigail, his beloved and only
+wife." In the second chamber is placed the dust of his illustrious son,
+with "His partner for fifty years, Louisa Catherine"--she of whom Henry
+Adams wrote, "her refined figure; her gentle voice and manner; her
+vague effect of not belonging there, but to Washington or Europe, like
+her furniture and writing-desk with little glass doors above and little
+eighteenth-century volumes in old binding."
+
+It has been called the "church of statesmen," this dignified building,
+and so, indeed, might Quincy itself be called the "city of statesmen."
+It would be extremely interesting to study the reasons for Quincy's
+peculiar productiveness of noble public characters. The town was settled
+(as Braintree) exclusively by people from Devonshire and Lincolnshire
+and Essex. The laws of the Massachusetts Colony forbade Irish
+immigration--probably more for religious than racial reasons. On reading
+the ancient petition for the incorporation of the town one is struck by
+the fact that practically every single name of the one hundred and fifty
+signers is English in origin, the few which were not having been
+anglicized. All of these facts point to a homogeneous stock, with the
+same language, traditions, and social customs. Obviously there is a
+connection between the governmental genius displayed by Quincy's sons
+and the singular purity of the original English stock.
+
+Little did Wampatuck, the son of Chickatawbut, realize what he was doing
+when he parted with his Braintree lands for twenty-one pounds and ten
+shillings. The Indian deed is still preserved, with the following words
+on its back: "In the 17th reign of Charles 2. Braintry Indian Deeds.
+Given 1665. Aug. 10: Take great care of it."
+
+Little did the Indian chief realize that the surrounding waters were to
+float hulks as mighty as a city; that the hills were to furnish granite
+for buildings and monuments without number; and that men were to be born
+there who would shape the greatest Ship of State the world has ever
+known. And yet, if he had known, possibly he would have accepted the
+twenty-one pounds and ten shillings just the same, and departed quietly.
+For the ships that were to be built would never have pleased him as well
+as his own canoe; the granite buildings would have stifled him; and the
+zealous Adamses and the high-minded Quincys and Sewalls and all the
+rest would have bored him horribly. Probably the only item in the whole
+history of Quincy which would have appealed to Wampatuck in the least
+would have been the floating down on a raft of the old Hollis Street
+Church of Boston, to become the Union Church of Weymouth and Braintree
+in 1810. This and the similar transportation of the Bowditch house from
+Beacon Street in Boston to Quincy a couple of years later would have
+fascinated the red man, as the recital of the feat fascinates us to-day.
+
+Those who care to learn more of Quincy will do well to read the
+autobiography of Charles Francis Adams and "The Education of Henry
+Adams." Those who care more for places than for descriptions of them may
+wander at will, finding beneath the surface of the modern city many
+landmarks of the old city which underlies it. They may see the
+scaffolding of the great shipyards latticing themselves against the sky,
+and the granite quarries against the hills. They may see the little
+cottages and the great houses made famous by those who have passed over
+their thresholds; they may linger in the old burial ground and trace out
+the epitaphs under the portico of the golden-belfried church. But after
+they have touched and handled all of these things, they will not
+understand Quincy unless they look beyond and recognize her greatest
+contribution to this country--the noble statesmen who so bravely and
+intelligently toiled to construct America's Ship of State.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE ROMANCE OF WEYMOUTH
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+The paintings of John Constable, idyllic in their quietness, dewy in
+their serenity--how many travelers, how many lovers of art, superficial
+or profound, yearly seek out these paintings in the South Kensington
+Museum or the Louvre, and stand before them wrapt in gentle ecstasy?
+
+The quality of Constable's pictures delineates in luminous softness a
+peculiarly lovely side of English rural life, but one need not travel to
+England or France to see this loveliness. Weymouth, that rambling
+stretch of towns and hamlets, of summer colony and suburb, possesses in
+certain areas bits of rural landscape as serene, as dewy, as
+idyllically tranquil as Constable at his best.
+
+Comparatively few people in New England, or out of it, know Weymouth
+well. Every one has heard of it, for it is next in age to the town of
+Plymouth itself, and every one who travels to the South Shore passes
+some section of it, for it extends lengthily--north and south, east and
+west--being the only town in Massachusetts to retain its original
+boundaries. And numbers of people are familiar with certain parts of it,
+for there are half a score of villages in the township, some of them
+summer settlements, some of them animated by an all-the-year-round life.
+But compared with the other towns along this historic route, Weymouth as
+a whole is little known and little appreciated. And yet the history of
+Weymouth is not without amusing and edifying elements, and the scenery
+of Weymouth is worthy of the détour that strangers rarely make.
+
+"Old Spain" is the romantic name for an uninteresting part of the
+township, and, conversely, Commercial Street is the uninteresting name
+for a romantic part. It is along a highway stigmatized by such a name
+that one gets the glimpses of a Constable country: glimpses of rolling
+meadows, of fertile groves, of cattle grazing in elm-shaded pastures, of
+a road winding contentedly among simple, ancient cottages, and quiet,
+thrifty farms. These are the homes which belong, and have belonged for
+generations, to people who are neither rich nor poor; cozy, quaint,
+suggesting in an odd way the thatched-roof cottages of England. Not that
+all of Weymouth's homes are of this order. The Asa Webb Cowing house,
+which terminates Commercial Street within a stone's throw of the square
+of the town of Weymouth, is one of the very finest examples of the
+Colonial architecture in this country. The exquisite tracery and carving
+over and above the front door, and the white imported marble window
+lintels spin an elaborate and marvelously fine lacework of white over
+the handsome red-brick façade. Although it is, alas, falling somewhat
+into disrepair, perfect proportion and gemlike workmanship still stamp
+the venerable mansion as one of patrician heritage. There are other
+excellent examples of architecture in Weymouth, but the Cowing house
+must always be the star, both because of its extraordinary beauty and
+conspicuous position. Yes, if you want a characteristic glimpse of
+Weymouth, you cannot do better than to begin in front of this landmark,
+and drive down Commercial Street. Here for several smiling miles there
+is nothing--no ugly building large or small, no ruthless invasion of
+modernity to mar the mood of happy simplicity. Her beauty of beach, of
+sky, of river, Weymouth shares with other South Shore towns. Her
+perfection of idyllic rusticity is hers alone.
+
+Just as Weymouth's scenery is unlike that of her neighbors, so her
+history projects itself from an entirely different angle from theirs.
+While they were conceived by zealous, God-fearing men and women honestly
+seeking to establish homes in a new country, Weymouth was inadvertently
+born through the misconduct of a set of adventurers. Not every one who
+came to America in those significant early years came impelled by lofty
+motives. There were scapegraces, bad boys, rogues, mercenaries, and
+schemers; and perhaps it is entirely logical that the winning natural
+loveliness of this place should have lured to her men who were not of
+the caliber to face more exposed, less fertile sections, and men to whom
+beauty made an especial appeal.
+
+The Indians early found Wessagusset, as they called it, an important
+rendezvous, as it was accessible by land and sea, and there were
+probably temporary camps there previous to 1620, formed by fishermen and
+traders who visited the New England coast to traffic with the natives.
+But it was not until the arrival of Thomas Weston in 1622 that
+Weymouth's history really begins. And then it begins in a topsy-turvy
+way, so unlike Puritan New England that it makes us rub our eyes,
+wondering if it is really true.
+
+This Thomas Weston, who was a merchant adventurer of London, took it
+into his head to establish a colony in the new country entirely
+different from the Plymouth Colony. He had been an agent of the
+Pilgrims in their negotiations with the Plymouth Company, and when he
+broke off the connection it was to start a settlement which should
+combine all of the advantages, with none of the disadvantages, of the
+Plymouth Colony. First of all, it was to be a trading community pure and
+simple, with its object frankly to make money. Second, it was to be
+composed of men without families and familiar with hardship. And third,
+there was no religious motive or bond. That such an unidealistic
+enterprise should not flourish on American soil is worth noting. The
+disorderly, thriftless rabble, picked up from the London streets, soon
+got into trouble with the Indians and with neighboring colonists, and
+finally, undone by the results of their own improvidence and
+misbehavior, wailed that they "wanted to go back to London," to which
+end the Plymouth settlers willingly aided them, glad to get them out of
+the country. Thus ended the first inauspicious settlement of Weymouth.
+
+The second, which was undertaken shortly after by Robert Gorges, broke
+up the following spring, leaving only a few remnants behind. Sir
+Ferdinando Gorges, who was not a Spaniard as his name suggests, but a
+picturesque Elizabethan and a kinsman of Sir Walter Raleigh, essayed
+(through his son Robert) an experimental government along practically
+the same commercial lines as had Weston, and his failure was as speedy
+and complete as Weston's had been.
+
+A third attempt, while hardly more successful, furnishes one of the
+gayest and prettiest episodes in the whole history of New England.
+Across the somber procession of earnest-faced men and women, across the
+psalm-singing and the praying, across the incredible toil of the
+pioneers at Plymouth now flashes the brightly costumed and
+pleasure-loving courtier, Thomas Morton. An agent of Gorges, Morton with
+thirty followers floated into Wessagusset to found a Royalist and
+Episcopalian settlement. This Episcopalian bias was quite enough to
+account for Bradford's disparaging description of him as a "kind of
+petie-fogie of Furnifells Inn," and explains why the early historians
+never made any fuller or more favorable record than absolutely necessary
+of these neighbors of theirs, although the churchman Samuel Maverick
+admits that Morton was a "gentleman of good qualitee."
+
+But it was for worse sins than his connection with the Established
+Church that Morton's name became synonymous with scandal throughout the
+whole Colony. In the very midst of the dun-colored atmosphere of
+Puritanism, in the very heart of the pious pioneer settlement this
+audacious scamp set up, according to Bradford, "a schoole of atheisme,
+and his men did quaff strong waters and comport themselves as if they
+had anew revived and celebrated the feasts of y^e Roman Goddess Flora,
+or the beastly practises of y^e madd Bachanalians." The charge of
+atheism in this case seems based on the fact that Morton used the Book
+of Common Prayer, but as for the rest, there is no question that this
+band of silken merry-makers imported many of the carnival customs and
+hereditary pastimes of Old England to the stern young New England; that
+they fraternized with the Indians, shared their strong waters with them,
+and taught them the use of firearms; and that Merrymount became indeed a
+scene of wildest revelry.
+
+The site of Merrymount had originally been selected by Captain Wollaston
+for a trading post. Imbued with the same mercenary motive which had
+proved fatal in the case of Weston and Gorges, Captain Wollaston, whose
+name is perpetuated in Mount Wollaston, brought with him in 1625 a gang
+of indented white servants. Finding his system of industry ill suited to
+the climate, he carried his men to Virginia, where he sold them. When he
+left, Morton took possession of the place and dubbed it "Ma-re-mount."
+And then began the pranks which shook the Colony to its foundations.
+Picture to yourself a band of sworn triflers, dedicated to the wildest
+philosophy of pleasure, teaching bears to dance, playing blind-man's
+buff, holding juggling and boxing matches, and dancing. According to
+Hawthorne, on the eve of Saint John they felled whole acres of forests
+to make bonfires, and crowned themselves with flowers and threw the
+blossoms into the flames. At harvest-time they hilariously wasted their
+scanty store of Indian corn by making an image with the sheaves, and
+wreathing it with the painted garlands of autumn foliage. They crowned
+the King of Christmas and bent the knee to the Lord of Misrule! Such
+fantastic foolery is inconceivable in a Puritan community, and the
+Maypole which was its emblem was the most inconceivable of all. This
+"flower-decked abomination," ornamented with white birch bark, banners,
+and blossoms, was the center of the tipsy jollity of Merrymount. As
+Morton explains: "A goodly pine tree of eighty foote was reared up, with
+a peare of bucks horns nayled on somewhere near to the top of it: where
+it stood as a faire sea mark for directions how to find out the way to
+mine host of Ma-re-mount." Around this famous, or infamous, pole Morton
+and his band frolicked with the Indians on May Day in 1627. As the
+indignant historian writes: "Unleashed pagans from the purlieus of the
+gross court of King James, danced about the Idoll of Merry Mount,
+joining hands with the lasses in beaver coats, and singing their ribald
+songs."
+
+It doesn't look quite so heinous to us, this Maypole dancing, as it did
+to the outraged Puritans. In fact, the story of Morton and Merrymount is
+one of the few glistening threads in the somber weaving of those early
+days. But the New England soil was not prepared at that time to support
+any such exotic, and Myles Standish was sent to disperse the frivolous
+band, and to order Morton back to England, which he did, after a
+scrimmage which Morton relates with great vivacity and doubtful veracity
+in his "New English Canaan."
+
+This "New English Canaan," by the way, had a rather singular career.
+Morton tells in it many amusing stories, and one of them was destined to
+a remarkable perpetuity in English literature. The story deals with the
+Wessagusset settlers promising to hang one of their own members who had
+been caught stealing--this hanging in order to appease the Indians.
+Morton gravely states that instead of hanging the real culprit, who was
+young and lusty, they hanged, in his place, another, old and sick. In
+his quaint diction: "You all agree that one must die, and one shall die,
+this young man's cloathes we will take off and put upon one that is old
+and impotent, a sickly person that cannot escape death, such is the
+disease on him confirmed, that die hee must. Put the young man's
+cloathes on this man, and let the sick person be hanged in the other's
+steade. Amen sayes one, and so sayes many more." This absurd notion of
+vicarious atonement, spun purely from Morton's imagination, appealed to
+Samuel Butler as worthy of further elaboration. Morton's "New English
+Canaan" appeared in 1632. About thirty years later the second part of
+the famous English satire "Hudibras" appeared, embodying Morton's idea
+in altered but recognizable form, in what was the most popular English
+book of the day. This satire, appearing when the reaction against
+Puritanism was at its height, was accepted and solemnly deposited at the
+door of the good people of Boston and Plymouth! And thus it was that
+Morton's fabricated tale of the Weymouth hanging passed into genuine
+history along with the "blue laws" of Connecticut. One cannot help
+believing that the mischievous perpetrator of the fable laughed up his
+sleeve at its result, and one cannot resist the thought that he was
+probably delighted to have the scandal attached to those righteous
+neighbors of his who had run him out of his dear Ma-re-mount.
+
+However, driven out he was: the Maypole about which the revelers had
+danced was hewed down by the stern zealots who believed in dancing about
+only one pole, and that the whipping-post. Merrymount was deserted.
+
+Certainly Weymouth, the honey spot which attracted not industrious bees,
+but only drones, was having a hard time getting settled! It was not
+until the Reverend Joseph Hull received permission from the General
+Court to settle here with twenty-one families, from Weymouth, England,
+that the town was at last shepherded into the Puritan fold.
+
+These settlers, of good English stock and with the earnest ideals of
+pioneers, soon brought the community into good repute, and its
+subsequent life was as respectable and uneventful as that of a reformed
+_roué_. In fact there is practically no more history for Weymouth. There
+are certainly no more raids upon merry-makers; no more calls from the
+cricket colony which had sung all summer on the banks of the river to
+the ant colony which had providently toiled on the shore of the bay; no
+more experimental governments; no more scandal. The men and women of the
+next five generations were a poor, hard-working race, rising early and
+toiling late. The men worked in the fields, tending the flocks, planting
+and gathering the harvest. The women worked in the houses, in the
+dairies and kitchens, at the spinning-wheel and washtub. The privations
+and loneliness, which are part of every struggling colony, were
+augmented here, where the houses did not cluster about the church and
+burial ground, but were scattered and far away. This peculiarity of
+settlement meant much in days where there was no newspaper, no system of
+public transportation, no regular post, and Europe was months removed. A
+few of the young men went with the fishing fleet to Cape Sable, or
+sailed on trading vessels to the West Indies or Spain, but it is
+doubtful if any Weymouth-born woman ever laid eyes on the mother country
+during the first hundred and fifty years.
+
+The records of the town are painfully dull. They are taken up by small
+domestic matters: the regulations for cattle; running boundary lines,
+locating highways, improving the town common, fixing fines for roving
+swine or agreeing to the division of a whale found on the shore. There
+was more or less bickering over the salary of the town clerk, who was to
+receive thirty-three pounds and fourteen shillings yearly to keep "A
+free school and teach all children and servants sent him to read and
+write and cast accounts."
+
+Added to the isolation and pettiness of town affairs, the winters seem
+to have been longer, the snows deeper, the frosts more severe in those
+days. We have records of the harbor freezing over in November, and "in
+March the winter's snow, though much reduced, still lay on a level with
+the fences, nor was it until April that the ice broke up in Fore River."
+They were difficult--those days ushered in by the Reverend Joseph Hull.
+Through long nights and cold winters and an endless round of joyless
+living, Weymouth expiated well for the sins of her youth. Even as late
+as 1767 we read of the daughter of Parson Smith, of Weymouth--now the
+wife of John Adams, of Quincy--scrubbing the floor of her own
+bed-chamber the afternoon before her son--destined to become President
+of the United States, as his father was before him--was born.
+
+But the English stock brought in by the Reverend Hull was good stock. We
+may not envy the ladies scrubbing their own floors or the men walking to
+Boston, but many of the best families of this country are proud to trace
+their origin back to Weymouth. Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont; then
+New York, Rhode Island, and Connecticut attracted men from Weymouth.
+Later the Middle West and the Far West called them. In fact for over a
+century the town hardly raised its number of population, so energetic
+was the youth it produced.
+
+As happens with lamentable frequency, when Weymouth ceased to be naughty
+she also ceased to be interesting. After poring over the dull pages of
+the town history, one is sometimes tempted to wonder if, perhaps, the
+irreverent Morton did not, for all his sins, divine a deeper meaning in
+this spot than the respectable ones who came after him. One cannot read
+the "New English Canaan" without regretting a little that this
+happy-natured fellow was so unceremoniously bustled out of the country.
+Whatever Morton's discrepancies may have been, his response to beauty
+was lively and true: whatever his morals, his prose is delightful. All
+the town records and memorial addresses of all the good folk subsequent
+contain no such tribute to Weymouth, and paint no picture so true of
+that which is still best in her, as these loving words of the erstwhile
+master of Merrymount.
+
+"And when I had more seriously considered the bewty of the place, with
+all her fair endowments, I did not think that in all the knowne world it
+could be paralel'd. For so many goodly groves of trees: dainty fine
+round rising hillocks: delicate faire large plaines: sweete crystal
+fountains, and clear running streams, that twine in fine meanders
+through the meads, making so sweet a murmuring noise to heare, as would
+even lull the senses with delight asleep, so pleasantly doe they glide
+upon the pebble stones, jetting most jocundly where they doe meet; and
+hand in hand run down to Neptune's court, to pay the yearly tribute
+which they owe to him as soveraigne Lord of all the Springs."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+ECCLESIASTICAL HINGHAM
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Should you walk along the highway from Quincy to Hingham on a Sunday
+morning you would be passed by many automobiles, for the Old Coast Road
+is now one of the great pleasure highways of New England. Many of the
+cars are moderately priced affairs, the tonneau well filled with
+children of miscellaneous ages, and enlivened by a family dog or
+two--for this is the way that the average American household spends its
+modern Sabbath holiday. Now and then a limousine, exquisite in
+workmanship within and without, driven by a chauffeur in livery and
+tenanted by a single languid occupant, rolls noiselessly past. A
+strange procession, indeed, for a road originally marked by the
+moccasined feet of Indians, and widened gradually by the toilsome
+journeyings of rough Colonial carts and coaches.
+
+It is difficult to say which feature of the steadily moving travel would
+most forcibly strike the original Puritan settlers of the town: the fact
+that even the common man--the poor man--could own such a vehicle of
+speed and ease, or the fact that America--such a short time ago a
+wilderness--could produce, not as the finest flower on its tree of
+evolution, but certainly as its most exotic, the plutocrat who lives in
+a palace with fifty servants to do his bidding, and the fine lady whose
+sole exercise of her mental and physical functions consists in allowing
+her maid to dress her. Yes, New England has changed amazingly in the
+revolutions of three centuries, and here, under the shadow of this
+square plain building--Hingham's Old Ship Church--while we pause to
+watch the Sunday pageant of 1920, we can most easily call back the
+Sabbath rites, and the ideals which created those rites, three centuries
+ago.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+It is the year of 1681. This wooden meeting-house, with the truncated
+pyramidal roof and belfry (to serve as a lookout station), has just been
+built. A stage ahead, architecturally, of the log meeting-house with
+clay-filled chinks, thatched roof, oiled-paper windows, earthen floor,
+and a stage behind the charming steeple style made popular by Sir
+Christopher Wren, and now multiplied in countless graceful examples all
+over New England, the Old Ship is entirely unconscious of the
+distinction which is awaiting it--the distinction of being the oldest
+house for public worship in the United States which still stands on its
+original site, and which is still used for its original purpose. In the
+year 1681 it is merely the new meeting-house of the little hamlet of
+Hingham. The people are very proud of their new building. The timbers
+have been hewn with the broad-axe out of solid white pine (the marks are
+still visible, particularly in those rafters of the roof open to the
+attic). The belfry is precisely in the center of the four-sided pitched
+roof. To be sure this necessitates ringing the bell from one of the
+pews, but a little later the bellringer will stand above, and through a
+pane of glass let into the ceiling he will be able to see when the
+minister enters the pulpit. The original backless benches were replaced
+by box pews with narrow seats like shelves, hung on hinges around three
+sides, but part of the original pulpit remains and a few of the box
+pews. In 1681 the interior, like the exterior, is sternly bare. No
+paint, no decorations, no colored windows, no organ, or anything which
+could even remotely suggest the color, the beauty, the formalism of the
+churches of England. The unceiled roof shows the rafters whose arched
+timbers remind one that ships' carpenters have built this house of God.
+
+This, then, is the meeting-house of 1681. What of the services conducted
+there?
+
+In the first place, they are well attended. And why not, since in 1635
+the General Court decreed that no dwelling should be placed more than
+half a mile away from the meeting-house of any new "plantation"--thus
+eliminating the excuse of too great distance? Every one is expected,
+nay, commanded, to come to church. In fact, after the tolling of the
+last bell, the houses may all be searched--each ten families is under an
+inspector--if there is any question of delinquents hiding in them. And
+so in twos and threes, often the man trudging ahead with his gun and the
+woman carrying her baby while the smaller children cling to her skirts,
+sometimes man and woman and a child or two on horseback, no matter how
+wild the storm, how swollen the streams, how deep the whirling
+snow--they all come to church: old folk and infants as well as adults
+and children. The congregation either waits for the minister and his
+wife outside the door, or stands until he has entered the pulpit. Once
+inside they are seated with the most meticulous exactness, according to
+rank, age, sex, and wealth. The small boys are separated from their
+families and kept in order by tithing-men who allow no wandering eyes or
+whispered words. The deacons are in the "fore" seats; the elderly
+people are sometimes given chairs at the end of the "pues"; and the
+slaves and Indians are in the rear. To seat one's self in the wrong
+"pue" is an offense punishable by a fine.
+
+"Here is the church, and here are the people," as the old rhyme has it.
+What then of the services? That they are interminable we know. The
+tithing-man or clerk may turn the brass-bound hourglass by the side of
+the pulpit two and three times during the sermon, and once or twice
+during the prayer. Interminable, and, also, to the modern Sunday
+observer, unendurable. How many of us of this softer age can contemplate
+without a shiver the vision of people sitting hour after hour in an
+absolutely unheated building? (The Old Ship was not heated until 1822.)
+The only relief from the chill and stiffness comes during the prayer
+when the congregation stands: kneeling, of course, would savor too
+strongly of idolatry and the Church of Rome. They stand, too, while the
+psalms and hymns are lined out, and as they sing them, very uncertainly
+and very incorrectly. This performance alone sometimes takes an hour, as
+there is no organ, nor notes, and only a few copies of the Bay Psalm
+Book, of which, by the way, a copy now would be worth many times its
+weight in gold.
+
+After the morning service there is a noon intermission, in which the
+half-frozen congregation stirs around, eats cold luncheons brought in
+baskets, and then returns to the next session. One must not for an
+instant, however, consider these noon hours as recreational. There is no
+idle talk or play. The sermon is discussed and the children forbidden to
+romp or laugh. One sometimes wonders how the little things had any
+impulse to laugh in such an abysmal atmosphere, but apparently the
+Puritan boys and girls were entirely normal and even wholesomely
+mischievous--as proved by the constantly required services of the
+tithing-man.
+
+These external trappings of the service sound depressing enough, but if
+the message received within these chilly walls is cheering, maybe we
+can forget or ignore the physical discomforts. But is the message
+cheering? Hell, damnation, eternal tortures, painful theological
+hair-splittings, harrowing self-examinations, and humiliating public
+confessions--this is what they gather on the narrow wooden benches to
+listen to hour after hour, searching their souls for sin with an almost
+frenzied eagerness. And yet, forlorn and tedious as the bleak service
+appears to us, there is no doubt that these stern-faced men and women
+wrenched an almost mystical inspiration from it; that a weird
+fascination emanated from this morbid dwelling on sin and punishment,
+appealing to the emotions quite as vividly--although through a different
+channel--as the most elaborate ceremonial. When the soul is wrought to a
+certain pitch each hardship is merely an added opportunity to prove its
+faith. It was this high pitch, attained and sustained by our Puritan
+fathers, which produced a dramatic and sometimes terrible blend of
+personality.
+
+It has become the modern fashion somewhat to belittle Puritanism. It is
+easy to emphasize its absurdities, to ridicule the almost fanatical
+fervor which goaded men to harshness and inconsistency. The fact remains
+that a tremendous selective force was needed to tear the Puritans away
+from the mother church and the mother country and fortify them in their
+struggle in a new land. It was religious zeal which furnished this
+motive power. Different implements and differently directed force are
+needed to extract the diamond from the earth, from the implements and
+force needed to polish and cut the same diamond. So different phases of
+religious development are called forth by progressive phases of
+development. It has been said about the New England conscience: "It
+fostered a condition of life and type of character doubtless never again
+possible in the world's history. Having done its work, having founded
+soundly and peopled strongly an exceptional region, the New England
+conscience had no further necessity for being. Those whom it now
+tortures with its hot pincers of doubt and self-reproach are sacrificed
+to a cause long since won."
+
+The Puritans themselves grew away from many of their excessive
+severities. But as they gained bodily strength from their conflict with
+the elements, so they gained a certain moral stamina by their
+self-imposed religious observance. And this moral stamina has marked New
+England ever since, and marked her to her glory.
+
+One cannot speak of Hingham churches--indeed, one cannot speak of
+Hingham--without admiring mention of the New North Church. This
+building, of exquisite proportions and finish, within and without, built
+by Bulfinch in 1806, is one of the most flawless examples of its type on
+the South Shore. You will appreciate the cream-colored paint, the buff
+walls, the quaint box pews of oiled wood, with handrails gleaming from
+the touch of many generations, with wooden buttons and protruding hinges
+proclaiming an ancient fashion; but the unique feature of the New North
+Church is its slave galleries. These two small galleries, between the
+roof and the choir loft, held for thirty years, in diminishing numbers,
+negroes and Indians. The last occupant was a black Lucretia, who, after
+being freed, was invited to sit downstairs with her master and mistress,
+which she did, and which she continued to do until her death, not so
+very long ago.
+
+Hingham, its Main Street--alas for the original name of "Bachelors
+Rowe"--arched by a double row of superb elms on either side, is
+incalculably rich in old houses, old traditions, old families. Even
+motoring through, too quickly as motorists must, one cannot help being
+struck by the substantial dignity of the place, by the well-kept
+prosperity of the houses, large and small, which fringe the fine old
+highway. Ever since the days when the three Misses Barker kept loyal to
+George IV, claiming the King as their liege lord fifty years after the
+Declaration of Independence, the town has preserved a Cranford-like
+charm. And why not, when the very house is still handsomely preserved,
+where the nameless nobleman, Francis Le Baron, was concealed between the
+floors, and, as we are told in Mrs. Austen's novel, very properly
+capped the climax by marrying his brave little protector, Molly Wilder?
+Why not, when the Lincoln family, ancestors of Abraham, has been
+identified with the town since its settlement? The house of
+Major-General Benjamin Lincoln, who received the sword of Cornwallis at
+Yorktown, is still occupied by his descendants, its neat fence, many
+windows, two chimneys, and its two stories and a half proclaiming it a
+dwelling of repute. Near by, descendants of Samuel Lincoln, the ancestor
+of Abraham, occupy part of another roomy ancient homestead. The
+Wampatuck Club, named after the Indian chief who granted the original
+deeds of the town, has found quarters in an extremely interesting house
+dating from 1680. In the spacious living-room are seventeen panels, on
+the walls and in the doors, painted with charming old-fashioned skill by
+John Hazlitt, the brother of the English essayist. The Reverend Daniel
+Shute house, built in 1746, is practically intact with its paneled rooms
+and wall-paper a hundred years old. Hingham's famous elms shade the
+house where Parson Ebenezer Gay lived out his long pastorate of
+sixty-nine years and nine months, and the Garrison house, built before
+1640, sheltered, in its prime, nine generations of the same family. The
+Rainbow Roof house, so called from the delicious curve in its roof, is
+one of Hingham's prettiest two-hundred-year-old cottages, and Miss Susan
+B. Willard's cottage is one of the oldest in the United States. Derby
+Academy, founded almost two centuries and a half ago by Madam Derby,
+still maintains its social and scholarly prestige through all the
+educational turmoil of the twentieth century. One likes to associate
+Hingham with Massachusetts's stanch and sturdy "war governor," for it
+was here that John Albion Andrew, who proved himself so truly one of our
+great men during the Civil War, courted Eliza Jones Hersey, and here
+that the happy years of their early married life were spent. Later,
+another governor, John D. Long, was for many years a mighty figure in
+the town.
+
+With its ancient churches and institutions, its pensive graveyards and
+lovely elms, its ancestral houses and hidden gardens, Hingham typifies
+what is quaintest and best in New England towns. Possibly the dappling
+of the elms, possibly the shadow of the Old Ship Church, is a bit deeper
+here than in the other South Shore towns. However it may seem to its
+inhabitants, to the stranger everything in Hingham is tinctured by the
+remembrance of the stern old ecclesiasticism. Even the number of
+historic forts seems a proper part of those righteous days, for when did
+religion and warfare not go hand in hand? During the trouble with King
+Philip the town had three forts, one at Fort Hill, one at the Cemetery,
+and one "on the plain about a mile from the harbor"; and the sites may
+still be identified.
+
+Not that Hingham history is exclusively religious or martial. Her little
+harbor once held seventy sail of fishing vessels, and between 1815 and
+1826, 165,000 barrels of mackerel were landed on their salty decks. For
+fifty years (between 1811 and 1860) the Rapid sailed as a packet between
+this town and Boston, making the trip on one memorable occasion in
+sixty-seven minutes. We read that in the War of 1812 she was carried up
+the Weymouth River and covered, masts and hull, with green bushes so
+that the marauding British cruisers might not find her, and as we read
+we find ourselves remembering that _camouflage_ is new only in name.
+
+How entirely fitting it seems that a town of such venerable houses and
+venerable legends should be presided over by a church which is the
+oldest of its kind in the country!
+
+Hingham changes. There is a Roman Catholic Church in the very heart of
+that one-time Puritan stronghold: the New North is Unitarian, and
+Episcopalians, Baptists, and Second Adventists have settled down
+comfortably where once they would have been run out of town. Poor old
+Puritans, how grieved and scandalized they would be to stand, as we are
+standing now, and watch the procession of passing automobilists! Would
+it seem all lost to them, we wonder, the religious ideal for which they
+struggled, or would they realize that their sowing had brought forth
+richer fruit than they could guess? It has all changed, since Puritan
+days, and yet, perhaps, in no other place in New England does the hand
+of the past lie so visibly upon the community. You cannot lift your eyes
+but they rest upon some building raised two centuries and more ago; the
+shade which ripples under your feet is cast by elms planted by that very
+hand of the past. Even your voice repeats the words which those old
+patriarchs, well versed in Biblical lore, chose for their neighborhood
+names. Accord Pond and Glad Tidings Plain might have been lifted from
+some Pilgrim's Progress, while the near-by Sea of Galilee and Jerusalem
+Road are from the Good Book itself.
+
+"Which way to Egypt?" Is this an echo from that time when the Bible was
+the corner-stone of Church and State, of home and school?
+
+"What's the best road to Jericho Beach?" Surely it is some grave-faced
+shade who calls: or is it a peal from the chimes in the Memorial Bell
+Tower--chimes reminiscent of old Hingham, in England? No, it is only the
+shouted question of the motorist, gay and prosperous, flying on his
+Sunday holiday through ancient Hingham town.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+COHASSET LEDGES AND MARSHES[1]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+A sickle-shaped shore--wild, superb! Tawny ledges tumbling out to sea,
+rearing massive heads to search, across three thousand miles of water,
+for another shore. For it is Spain and Portugal which lie directly
+yonder, and the same tumultuous sea that crashes and swirls against
+Cohasset's crags laps also on those sunnier, warmer sands.
+
+Back inland, from the bold brown coast which gives Cohasset her
+Riviera-like fame, lie marshes, liquefying into mirrors at high tide,
+melting into lush green at low tide.
+
+Between the ledges and the marshes winds Jerusalem Road, bearing a
+continual stream of sight-seers and fringed with estates hidden from the
+sight-seers; estates with terraces dashed by spindrift, with curving
+stairways hewn in sheer rock down to the water, with wind-twisted
+savins, and flowers whose bright bloom is heightened by the tang of
+salt. For too many a passing traveler Cohasset is known only as the most
+fashionable resort on the South Shore. But Cohasset's story is a longer
+one than that, and far more profound.
+
+Cohasset is founded upon a rock, and the making of that rock is so
+honestly and minutely recorded by nature that even those who take alarm
+at the word "geology" may read this record with ease. These rocky ledges
+that stare so proudly across the sea underlie, also, every inch of soil,
+and are of the same kind everywhere--granite. Granite is a rock which is
+formed under immense pressure and in the presence of confined moisture,
+needing a weight of fifteen thousand pounds upon every inch. Therefore,
+wherever granite is found we know that it has not been formed by
+deposit, like limestone and sandstone and slate and other sedimentary
+rocks, but at a prodigious depth under the solid ground, and by slow
+crystallizing of molten substances. There must have been from two to
+five miles of other rock lying upon the stuff that crystallized into
+granite. A wrinkling in the skin of the earth exposed the granite, a
+wrinkling so gradual that doubtless if generations of men had lived on
+top of the wrinkle they would have sworn it did not move. But move it
+did, and the superimposed rock must have been worn off at a rate of less
+than a hundredth part of an inch every year in order to lose two or
+three miles of it in twenty-five million years. As the granite was
+wrinkled up by the movement of the earth's crust, certain cracks opened
+and filled with lava, forming dikes. The geologist to-day can glance at
+these dikes and tell the period of their formation as casually as a
+jockey looking at a horse's mouth can tell his age. He could also tell
+of the "faulting," or slipping down, of adjacent masses of solid rock,
+which has occurred often enough to carve the characteristic Cohasset
+coast.
+
+The making of the rock bottom is a story which extends over millions of
+years: the making of the soil extends over thousands. The gigantic
+glacier which once formed all over the northern part of North America,
+and which remained upon it most of the time until about seven thousand
+years ago, ground up the rock like a huge mill and heaped its grist into
+hills and plains and meadows. The marks of it are as easy to see as
+finger prints in putty. There are scratches on the underlying rock in
+every part of the town, pointing in the southerly direction in which the
+glacier moved. The gravel and clay belts of the town have all been
+stretched out in the same direction as the scratches, and many are the
+boulders which were combed out of the moving glacier by the peaks of the
+ledges, and are now poised, like the famous Tipping Rock, just where the
+glacier left them when it melted. Few towns in America possess greater
+geological interest or a wider variety of glacial phenomena than
+Cohasset--all of which may be studied more fully with the aid of E.
+Victor Bigelow's "Narrative History of the Town of Cohasset,
+Massachusetts," and William O. Crosby's "Geology of the Boston Basin."
+
+This, then, is briefly the first part of Cohasset's ledges. The second
+part deals with human events, including many shipwrecks and disasters,
+and more than one romantic episode. Perhaps this human section is best
+begun with Captain John Smith.
+
+Captain John Smith was born too early. If ever a hero was brought into
+the world to adorn the moving-picture screen, that hero of the "iron
+collar," of piratical capture, of wedlock with an Indian princess, was
+the man. Failing of this high calling he did some serviceable work in
+discovering and describing many of the inlets on the coast of New
+England. Among these inlets Cohasset acted her part as hostess to the
+famous navigator and staged a small and vivid encounter with the
+aborigines. The date of this presentation was in 1614; the scenario may
+be found in Smith's own diary. Smith and a party of eight or more
+sailors made the trip between the ledges in a small rowboat. It is
+believed that they landed somewhere near Hominy Point. Their landing was
+not carried out without some misadventure, however, for in some way this
+party of explorers angered the Indians with whom they came in contact,
+and the result was an attack from bow and arrow. The town of Cohasset,
+in commemorating this encounter by a tablet, has inscribed upon the
+tablet Smith's own words:
+
+"We found the people on those parts very kind, but in their fury no less
+valiant: and at Quonhaset falling out there with but one of them, he
+with three others crossed the harbour in a cannow to certain rocks
+whereby we must pass, and there let flie their arrowes for our shot,
+till we were out of danger, yet one of them was slaine, and the other
+shot through the thigh."
+
+History follows fast along the ledges: history of gallant deeds and
+gallant defense during the days of the Revolution and the War of 1812;
+deeds of disaster along the coast and one especial deed of great
+engineering skill.
+
+The beauty and the tragedy of Cohasset are caught in large measure upon
+these jagged rocks. The splinters and wrecks of two and a half centuries
+have strewn the beaches, and many a corpse, far from its native land,
+has been found, wrapped in a shroud of seaweed upon the sand, and has
+been lowered by alien hands into a forever unmarked grave. Quite
+naturally the business of "wrecking"--that is, saving the pieces--came
+to be the trade of a number of Cohasset citizens, and so expert did
+Cohasset divers and seamen become that they were in demand all over the
+world. One of the most interesting salvage enterprises concerned a
+Spanish frigate, sunk off the coast of Venezuela. Many thousand dollars
+in silver coin were covered by fifty feet of water, and it was Captain
+Tower, of Cohasset, with a crew of Cohasset divers and seamen, who set
+sail for the spot in a schooner bearing the substantial name of Eliza
+Ann. The Spanish Government, having no faith in the enterprise, agreed
+to claim only two and one half per cent of what was removed. The first
+year the wreckers got fourteen thousand dollars, and the second they had
+reached seven thousand, when the Spaniards became so jealous of their
+skill that they had to flee for their lives (taking the seven thousand,
+however). The clumsy diving-bell method was the only one known at that
+time, but when, twenty years later, the Spaniards had to swallow their
+chagrin and send again for the same wrecking party to assist them on the
+same task, modern diving suits were in use and more money was
+recovered--no mean triumph for the crew of the Eliza Ann!
+
+As the wrecks along the Cohasset coast were principally caused by the
+dangerous reefs spreading in either direction from what is known as
+Minot's Ledge, the necessity of a lighthouse on that spot was early
+evident, and the erecting of the present Minot's Light is one of the
+most romantic engineering enterprises of our coast history. The original
+structure was snapped off like a pikestaff in the great storm of 1851,
+and the present one of Quincy granite is the first of its kind in
+America to be built on a ledge awash at high tide and with no adjacent
+dry land. The tremendous difficulties were finally overcome, although in
+the year 1855 the work could be pursued for only a hundred and thirty
+hours, and the following year for only a hundred and fifty-seven. To
+read of the erection of this remarkable lighthouse reminds one of the
+building of Solomon's temple. The stone was selected with the utmost
+care, and the Quincy cutters declared that such chiseling had never
+before left the hand of man. Then every single block for the lower
+portion was meticulously cut, dovetailed, and set in position on
+Government Island in Cohasset Harbor. The old base, exquisitely laid,
+where they were thus set up is still visible, as smooth as a billiard
+table, although grass-covered. In addition to the flawless cutting and
+joining of the blocks, the ledge itself was cut into a succession of
+levels suitable to bear a stone foundation--work which was possible only
+at certain times of the tide and seasons of the year. The cutting of
+each stone so that it exactly fitted its neighbor, above, below, and at
+either side, and precisely conformed to the next inner row upon the same
+level, was nothing short of a marvel. A miniature of the light--the
+building of which took two winters, and which was on the scale of an
+inch to a foot--was in the United States Government Building at the
+Chicago Exposition, and is stone for stone a counterpart of the granite
+tower in the Atlantic. Although this is an achievement which belongs in
+a sense to the whole United States, yet it must always seem, to those
+who followed it most closely, as belonging peculiarly to Cohasset. A
+famous Cohasset rigger made the model for the derrick which was used to
+raise the stones; the massive granite blocks were teamed by one whose
+proud boast it was that he had never had occasion to shift a stone
+twice; a Cohasset man captained the first vessel to carry the stone to
+the ledge, and another assisted in the selection of the stone.
+
+It is difficult to turn one's eyes away from the spectacular beauty of
+the Cohasset shore, but magnificent as these ledges are, and glittering
+with infinite romance, yet, rather curiously, it is on the limpid
+surface of the marshes that we read the most significant episodes of
+Colonial and pioneer life.
+
+One of the needs which the early settlers were quick to feel was open
+land which would serve as pasturage for their cattle. With forests
+pressing down upon them from the rear, and a barrier of granite in front
+of them, the problem of grazing-lands was important. The Hingham
+settlement at Bare Cove (Cohasset was part of Hingham originally) found
+the solution in the acres of open marshland which stretched to the east.
+Cohasset to-day may ask where so much grazing-land lay within her
+borders. By comparison with the old maps and surveying figures, we find
+that many acres, now covered with the water of Little Harbor and lying
+within the sandbar at Pleasant Beach, are counted as old grazing-lands.
+These, with the sweep of what is now the "Glades," furnished abundant
+pasturage for neighboring cattle and brought the Hingham settlers
+quickly to Cohasset meadows. Thus it happens that the first history of
+Cohasset is the history of this common pasturage--"Commons," as it was
+known in the old histories. Although Hingham was early divided up among
+the pioneers, the marshes were kept undivided for the use of the whole
+settlement. As a record of 1650 puts it: "It was ordered that any
+townsman shall have the liberty to put swine to Conohasset without yokes
+or rings, upon the town's common land."
+
+But the Massachusetts Bay Colony was hard-headed as well as pious, and
+several naïve hints creep into the early records of sharers of the
+Commons who were shrewdly eyeing the salt land of Cohasset. A real
+estate transfer of 1640 has this potential flavor: "Half the lot at
+Conehasset, if any fall by lot, and half the commons which belong to
+said lot." And again, four years later, Henry Tuttle sold to John
+Fearing "what right he had to the Division of Conihassett Meadows." The
+first land to come under the measuring chain and wooden stake of
+surveyors was about the margin of Little Harbor about the middle of the
+seventeenth century. After that the rest of the township was not long in
+being parceled out. One of the curious methods of land division was in
+the Beechwood district. The apportionment seems to have had the
+characteristics of ribbon cake. Sections of differing desirability--to
+meet the demands of justice and natural conditions--were measured out in
+long strips, a mile long and twenty-five feet wide. Many an old stone
+wall marking this early grant is still to be seen in the woods. Could
+anything but the indomitable spirit of those English settlers and the
+strong feeling for land ownership have built walls of carted stone about
+enclosures a mile long and twenty-five feet wide?
+
+Having effected a division of land in Cohasset, families soon began to
+settle away from the mother town of Hingham, and after a prolonged
+period of government at arm's length, with all its attendant
+discomforts, the long, bitter struggle resolved itself into Cohasset's
+final separation from Hingham, and its development from a precinct into
+an independent township.
+
+While the marshes to the north were the cause of Cohasset being first
+visited, settled, and made into a township, yet the marshes to the south
+hold an even more vital historical interest. These southern marshes,
+bordering Bound Brook and stretching away to Bassing Beach, were visited
+by haymakers as were those to the north. But these haymakers did not
+come from the same township, nor were they under the same local
+government. The obscure little stream which to-day lies between Scituate
+Harbor and Cohasset marks the line of two conflicting grants--the
+Plymouth Colony and the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
+
+In the early days of New England royal grants from the throne or patents
+from colonial councils in London were deemed necessary before settling
+in the wilderness. The strong, inherited respect for landed estates must
+have given such charters their value, as it is hard for us to see now
+how any one in England could have prevented the pioneers from settling
+where they pleased. The various patents and grants of the two colonies
+(indefinite as they seem to us now, as some granted "up to" a hundred
+acres to each emigrant without defining any boundaries) brought the two
+colonies face to face at Bound Brook. The result was a dispute over the
+harvesting of salt hay.
+
+All boundary streams attract to themselves a certain amount of fame--the
+Rio Grande, the Saint Lawrence, and the Rhine. But surely the little
+stream of Bound Brook, which was finally taken as the line of division
+between two colonies of such historical importance as the Plymouth and
+the Massachusetts Bay, is worth more than a superficial attention. The
+dispute lasted many years and occasioned the appointing of numerous
+commissioners from both sides. That the salt grass of Bassing Beach
+should have assumed such importance reveals again the sensitiveness to
+land values of men who had so recently left England. The settling of the
+dispute was not referred back to England, but was settled by the
+colonists themselves.
+
+The author of the "Narrative History of Cohasset" calls this an event of
+only less historical importance than that of the pact drawn up in the
+cabin of the Mayflower. He declares that the confederation of states had
+its inception there, and adds: "The appointment for this joint
+commission for the settlement of this intercolonial difficulty was the
+first step of federation that culminated in the Colonial Congress and
+then blossomed into the United States." We to-day, to whom the salt
+grass of Cohasset is little more than a fringe about the two harbors,
+may find it difficult to agree fully with such a sweeping statement, but
+certainly this spot and boundary line should always be associated with
+the respect for property which has ennobled the Anglo-Saxon race.
+
+Between the marshes, which were of such high importance in those early
+days, and the ledges which have been the cause and the scene of so many
+Cohasset adventures, twists Jerusalem Road, the brilliant beauty of
+which has been so often--but never too often--remarked. This was the
+main road from Hingham for many years, and it took full three hours of
+barbarous jolting in two-wheeled, springless ox carts to make the trip.
+Even if a man had a horse the journey was cruelly tedious, for there
+were only a few stretches where the horse could go faster than a
+walk--and the way was pock-marked with boulders and mudholes. With no
+stage-coach before 1815, and being off the highway between Plymouth and
+Boston, it is small wonder that the early Cohasset folk either walked or
+went by sea to Hingham and thence to Boston.
+
+It has been suggested that the "keeper of young cattle at Coneyhassett,"
+who drove his herd over from Hingham, was moved either by piety or
+sarcasm to give the trail its present arresting name. However, as the
+herdsman did not take this route, but the back road through Turkey
+Meadows, it is more probable that some visitors, who detected a
+resemblance between this section of the country and the Holy Land, were
+responsible for the christening of this road and also of the Sea of
+Galilee--which last has almost dropped into disuse. There does not seem
+to be any particular suggestion of the land of the Pharaohs and
+present-day Egypt, but tradition explains that as follows: Old Squire
+Perce had accumulated a store of grain in case of drought, and when the
+drought came and the men hurried to him to buy corn, he greeted them
+with "Well, boys, so you've come down to Egypt to buy corn." Another
+proof, if one were needed, of the Biblical familiarity of those days.
+
+It is hard to stop writing about Cohasset. There are so many bits of
+history tucked into every ledge and cranny of her shore. The green in
+front of the old white meeting-house--one of the prettiest and most
+perfect meeting-houses on the South Shore--has been pressed by the feet
+of men assembling for six wars. It makes Cohasset seem venerable,
+indeed, when one thinks of the march of American history. But to the
+tawny ledges, tumbling out to sea, these three hundred years are as but
+a day; for the story of the stones, like the story of the stars, is
+measured in terms of milliards. To such immemorial keepers of the coast
+the life of man is a brief tale that is soon told, and fades as swiftly
+as the fading leaf.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] For much of this chapter I am indebted to my friend Alice C. Hyde.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE SCITUATE SHORE
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Scituate is different: different from Cohasset, with its superbly bold
+coast and its fashionable folk; different from Hingham, with its air of
+settled inland dignity. Scituate has a quaintness, a casualness, the
+indescribable air of a land's-end spot. The fine houses in Scituate are
+refreshingly free from pretension; the winds that have twisted the trees
+into Rackham-like grotesques have blown away falsity and formality.
+
+Scituate life has always been along the shore. It is from the shore that
+coot-shooting used to furnish a livelihood to many a Scituate man, and
+still lures the huntsmen in the fine fall weather. It is the peculiar
+formation of the shore which has developed a small, clinker-built boat,
+and made the town famous for day fishing. It is along the shore that the
+unique and picturesque mossing industry is still carried on, and along
+the shore that the well-known colony of literary folk have settled.
+
+Scituate's history is really a fishing history, for as early as 1633 a
+fishing station was established here, and in course of time the North
+River, winding twenty miles through green meadows to the sea, was once
+the scene of more shipbuilding than any other river in New England.
+
+There is nothing more indicative of the Yankees' shrewd practicality
+than the early settlers' instant appreciation of the financial and
+economic potentialities of the fishing-trade. The Spaniard sought for
+gold in the new country, or contented himself with the fluctuating fur
+trade with its demoralizing slack seasons. But the New Englander
+promptly applied himself to the mundane pursuit of cod and mackerel.
+Everybody fished. As John Smith, in his "Description of New England,"
+says: "Young boyes and girles, salvages or any other, be they never such
+idlers, may turne, carry, and returne fish without shame or either great
+pain: he is very idle that is past twelve years of age and cannot doe so
+much: and shee is very old that cannot spin a thread to catch them."
+
+It began when Squanto the Indian showed the amazed colonists how he
+could tread the eels out of the mud with his feet and catch them with
+his hands. This was convenient, to be sure, but the colonists did not
+long content themselves with such primitive methods. They sent to
+England for cod hooks and lines; mackerel hooks and lines; herring nets
+and seines; shark hooks, bass nets, squid lines, and eel pots; and in a
+short time they had established a trade which meant more money than the
+gold mines of Guiana or Potosi. The modern financier who makes a fortune
+from the invention of a collar button or the sale of countless penny
+packages of gum is the lineal descendant of that first thrifty New
+Englander who did not scorn the humble cod because it was cheap and
+plentiful (you remember how these same cod "pestered" the ships of
+Gosnold in 1602), but set to work with the quiet initiative which has
+distinguished New Englanders ever since, first to catch, then to barter,
+and finally to sell his wares to all the world. For cheap as all fish
+was--twopence for a twelve-pound cod, salmon less than a penny a pound,
+and shad, when it was finally considered fit to eat at all, at two fish
+for a penny--yet, when all the world is ready to buy and the supply is
+inexhaustible, tremendous profits are possible. The many fast days of
+the Roman Catholic Church abroad opened an immense demand, and in a
+short time quantities of various kinds of fish (Josselyn in 1672
+enumerates over two hundred caught in New England waters) were dried and
+salted and sent to England.
+
+This constant and steadily increasing trade radically affected the whole
+economic structure and history of New England for two centuries. Ships
+and all the shipyard industries; the farm, on which fish was used not
+only as a medium of exchange, but also as a valuable fertilizer; the
+home, where the many operations of curing and salting were carried
+on--all of those were developed directly by the growth of this
+particular trade. Laws were made and continually revised regarding the
+fisheries and safeguarding their rights in every conceivable fashion;
+ship carpenters were exempt from military service, and many special
+exemptions were extended to fishermen under the general statutes.
+
+The oyster is now a dish for the epicure and the lobster for the
+millionaire. But in the old days when oysters a foot long were not
+uncommon, and lobsters sometimes grew to six feet, every one had all he
+wanted, and sometimes more than he wanted, of these delicacies. The
+stranger in New England may notice how certain customs still prevail,
+such as the Friday night fish dinner and the Sunday morning fish-cakes;
+and also that New Englanders as a whole have a rather fastidious taste
+in regard to the preparation of both salt- and fresh-water products.
+The food of any region is characteristic of that region, and to travel
+along the Old Coast Road and not partake of one of the delicious fish
+dinners, is as absurd as it would be to omit rice from a menu in China
+or roast beef from an English dinner.
+
+While the fishing trade was highly important in all the South Shore
+towns, yet it was especially so in Scituate. In 1770 more than thirty
+vessels, principally for mackerel, were fitted out in this one village,
+and these vessels not infrequently took a thousand barrels in a season.
+In winter they were used for Southern coasting, carrying lumber and fish
+and returning with grain and flour. The reason why fishing was so
+persistently and exclusively followed in this particular spot is not
+hard to seek. The sea yielded a far more profitable and ready crop than
+the land, and, besides, had a jealous way of nibbling away at the land
+wherever it could. It is estimated that it wastes away from twelve to
+fourteen inches of Fourth Cliff every year.
+
+But in spite of the sea's readily accessible crop it was natural that
+the "men of Kent" who settled the town should demand some portion of dry
+land as well. These men of Kent were not mermen, able to live in and on
+the water indefinitely, but decidedly gallant fellows, rather more
+courtly than their neighbors, and more polished than the race which
+succeeded them. Gilson, Vassal, Hatherly, Cudworth, Tilden, Hoar,
+Foster, Stedman, and Hinckley had all been accustomed to the elegancies
+of life in England as their names testify. The first land they used was
+on the cliffs, for it had already been improved by Indian planting; then
+the salt marshes, covered with a natural crop of grass, and then the
+mellow intervales near the river. When the sea was forced to the
+regretful realization that she could not monopolize the entire attention
+of her fellows, she was persuaded to yield up some very excellent
+fertilizer in the way of seaweed. But she still nags away at the cliffs
+and shore, and proclaims with every flaunting wave and ripple that it is
+the water, not the land, which makes Scituate what it is.
+
+And, after all, the sea is right. It is along the shore that one sees
+Scituate most truly. Here the characteristic industry of mossing is
+still carried on in primitive fashion. The mossers work from dories,
+gathering with long-handled rakes the seaweed from the rocks and ledges
+along the shore. They bring it in, a heavy, dark, inert mass, all sleek
+and dripping, and spread it out to dry in the sun. As it lies there,
+neatly arranged on beds of smoothest pebbles, the sun bleaches it. One
+can easily differentiate the different days' haul, for the moss which is
+just spread out is almost black and that of yesterday is a dark purple.
+It shimmers from purple into lavender; the lavender into something like
+rose; and by the time of the final washing and bleaching it lies in fine
+light white crinkles, almost like wool. It is a pretty sight, and the
+neatness and dispatch of the mossers make the odd sea-flower gardens
+attractive patches on the beach. Sometimes a family working together
+will make as much as a thousand dollars in a season gathering and
+preparing the moss. One wonders if all the people in the world could
+eat enough blancmange to consume this salty product, and is relieved to
+be reminded that the moss is also used for brewing and dyeing.
+
+It is really a pity to see Scituate only from a motor. There is real
+atmosphere to the place, which is worth breathing, but it takes more
+time to breathe in an atmosphere than merely to "take the air." Should
+you decide to ramble about the ancient town you will surely find your
+way to Scituate Point. The old stone lighthouse, over a century old, is
+no longer used, and the oil lantern, hung nightly out at the end of the
+romantic promontory, seems a return to days of long ago. You will also
+see the place where, in the stirring Revolutionary days, little Abigail
+and Rebecca Bates, with fife and drum marched up and down, close to the
+shore and yet hidden from sight, playing so furiously that their
+"martial music and other noises" scared away the enemy and saved the
+town from invasion. You will go to Second Cliff where are the summer
+homes of many literary people, and you will pass through Egypt,
+catching what glimpse you can of the stables and offices, paddocks and
+cottages of the immense estate of Dreamwold. And of course you will have
+pointed out to you the birthplace of Samuel Woodworth, whose sole claim
+to remembrance is his poem of the "Old Oaken Bucket." The well-sweep is
+still where he saw it, when, as editor of the _New York Mirror_, it
+suddenly flashed before his reminiscent vision, but the old oaken bucket
+itself has been removed to a museum.
+
+After you have done all these things, you will, if you are wise, forsake
+Scituate Harbor, which is the old section, and Scituate Beach, which is
+the newer, summer section, and find the way to the burial ground, which,
+after the one in Plymouth, is the oldest in the State. Possibly there
+will be others at the burial ground, for ancestor worshipers are not
+confined to China, and every year there springs up a new crop of
+genealogists to kneel before the moss-grown headstones and, with truly
+admirable patience, decipher names and dates, half obliterated by the
+finger of time. One does not wonder that their descendants are so eager
+to trace their connection back to those men of Kent, whose sturdy title
+rings so bravely down the centuries. To be sure, what is left to trace
+is very slight in most cases, and quite without any savor of
+personality. Too often it is merely brief and dry recital of dates and
+number of progeny, and names of the same. Few have left anything so
+quaint as the words of Walter Briggs, who settled there in 1651 and from
+whom Briggs Harbor was named. His will contains this thoughtful
+provision: "For my wife Francis, one third of my estate during her life,
+also a gentle horse or mare, and Jemmy the negur shall catch it for
+her."
+
+The good people who came later (1634) from Plymouth and Boston and took
+up their difficult colonial life under the pastorate of Mr. Lathrop,
+seem to have done their best to make "Satuit" (as it was first called,
+from the Indians, meaning "cold brook") conform as nearly as possible to
+the other pioneer settlements, even to the point of discovering witches
+here. But religion and fasting were not able to accomplish what the
+ubiquitous summer influx has, happily, also failed to effect. Scituate
+remains different.
+
+Perhaps it was those men of Kent who gave it its indestructibly romantic
+bias; perhaps it is the jealousy of the ever-encroaching sea. The gray
+geese flying over the iridescent moss gleaming upon the pebbled beaches,
+the solitary lantern on the point are all parts of that differentness.
+And those who love her best are glad that it is so.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+MARSHFIELD, THE HOME OF DANIEL WEBSTER
+
+[Illustration]
+
+    Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free!
+    Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!
+    Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,
+    Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won
+    God out of knowledge, and good out of infinite pain,
+    And sight out of blindness, and purity out of a stain.
+
+
+It was these mighty marshes--this ample sweep of grass, of sea and
+sky--this vast earthly and heavenly spaciousness that must forever stand
+to all New Englanders as a background to the powerful personality who
+chose it as his own home. Daniel Webster, when his eyes first turned to
+this infinite reach of largeness, instinctively knew it as the place
+where his splendid senses would find satisfaction, and his splendid mind
+would soar into an even loftier freedom. Webster loved Marshfield with
+an intensity that made it peculiarly his own. Lanier, in language more
+intricate and tropical, exclaimed of his "dim sweet" woods: "Ye held me
+fast in your heart, and I held you fast in mine." Webster wielded the
+vital union between his nature and that of the land not only by profound
+sentiment, but by a vigorous physical grappling with the soil.
+
+Is it that vivid natures unconsciously seek an environment
+characteristic of them? Or are they, perhaps, inevitably forced to
+create such an environment wherever they find themselves? Both facts
+seem true in this case. This wide world of marsh and sea is not only
+beautifully expressive of one who plunged himself into a rich communion
+with the earth, with her full harvests and blooded cattle, with her
+fruitful brooks and lakes; but it is still, after more than half a
+century, vibrant with the spirit of the man who dwelt there.
+
+We of another generation--and a generation before whom so many
+portentous events and figures have passed--find it hard to realize the
+tremendous magnetism and brilliancy of a man who has been so long dead,
+or properly to estimate the high historical significance of such a life.
+The human attribute which is the most immediately impelling in direct
+intercourse--personality--is the most elusive to preserve. If Webster's
+claim to remembrance rested solely upon that attribute, he would still
+be worthy of enduring fame. But his gifts flowered at a spectacular
+climax of national affairs and won thereby spectacular prominence. That
+these gifts were to lose something of their pristine repute before the
+end infuses, from a dramatic point of view, a contrasted and heightened
+luster to the period of their highest glory.
+
+Let us, casual travelers of a later and more careless day, walk now
+together over the place which is the indestructible memorial of a great
+man, and putting aside the measuring-stick of criticism--the sign of
+small natures--try to live for an hour in the atmosphere which was the
+breath of life to one who, if he failed greatly, also succeeded greatly,
+and whose noble achievement it was not only to express, but to vivify a
+love for the Union which, in its hour of supreme trial, became its
+triumphant force.
+
+Could we go back--not quite a hundred years--a little off the direct
+route to Plymouth, on a site overlooking the broad marshes of Green
+Harbor and the sea, where there now stands a boulder erected in 1914 by
+the Boston University Law School Association, we would find a
+comfortable, rambling house, distinguished among its New England
+neighbors by an easy and delightful hospitality--the kind of hospitality
+we call "Southern." There are many people in the house, on the veranda
+and lawns: a hostess of gentle mien and manners; children attractive in
+the spontaneity of those who continually and happily associate with
+their elders; several house guests (yonder is Audubon the great
+naturalist, here is an office-seeker from Boston, and that chap over
+there, so very much at home, can be no other than Peter Harvey,
+Webster's fond biographer). Callers there are, also, as is shown by the
+line of chaises and saddle horses waiting outside, and old Captain
+Thomas and his wife, from whom the place was bought, and who still
+retain their original quarters, move in and out like people who consider
+themselves part of the family. It is a heterogeneous collection, yet by
+no means an awkward one, and every one is chatting with every one else
+with great amiability. It is late afternoon: the master of the house has
+been away all day, and now his guests and his family are glancing in the
+direction from which he may be expected. For although every one is
+comfortable and properly entertained, yet the absence of the host
+creates an inexpressible emptiness; it is as if everything were
+quiescent--hardly breathing--merely waiting until he comes. Suddenly the
+atmosphere changes; it is charged with a strong vibrant quality;
+everything--all eyes, all interest--is instantly focused on the figure
+which has appeared among them. He is in fisherman's clothes--this
+newcomer--attired with a brave eye for the picturesque, in soft hat and
+flowing tie; but there are no fisherman's clothes, no, nor any other
+cloakings which can conceal the resilient dignity of his bearing, his
+impressive build, and magnificent, kingly head. Sydney Smith called
+Webster a cathedral; and surely there must have been something in those
+enormous, burning eyes, that craglike brow, that smote even the most
+superficial observer into an admiration which was almost awe.
+
+Many men--perhaps even the majority--whatever their genius in the outer
+world, in their own houses are either relegated to--or choose--the
+inconspicuous rôle of mere masculine appendages. But here we have a man
+who is superbly the host: he knows and welcomes every guest and caller;
+he personally supervises the disposal of their baggage and the selection
+of their chambers; he himself has ordered the dinner--mutton which he
+has raised, fish which he has caught--and it is being cooked by Monica,
+the Southern slave whose freedom he purchased for her. He carves at
+table, priding himself on his dispatch and nicety, and keeps an eye on
+the needs of every one at the long board. Everything, every one in the
+house is irresistibly drawn about this magnetic center which dominates
+by its innate power of personality more than by any deliberate
+intention. His children worship him; his wife idolizes him; each man and
+woman on the place regards him with admiring affection. And in such
+congenial atmosphere he expands, is genial, kindly, delightful. But
+devoted as he is to his home, his family, and his friends, and charming
+as he shows himself with them, yet it is not until we see him striding
+over the farm which he has bought that we see the Daniel Webster who is
+destined to live most graphically in the memories of those who like to
+think of great men in those intimate moments which are most personally
+characteristic of them.
+
+We must rise early in the morning if we would accompany him on his day's
+round. He himself is up at sunrise, for the sunrise is to him signal to
+new life. As he once wrote: "Among all our good people not one in a
+thousand sees the sun rise once a year. They know nothing of the
+morning. Their idea of it is that part of the day which comes along
+after a cup of coffee and a beefsteak or a piece of toast. With them
+morning is not a new issuing of light, a new bursting forth of the sun,
+a new waking up of all that has life from a sort of temporary death, to
+behold again the works of God, the heavens and the earth.... The first
+faint streak of light, the earliest purpling of the east which the lark
+springs up to greet, and the deeper and deeper coloring into orange and
+red, till at length the 'glorious sun is seen, regent of the day'--this
+they never enjoy, for they never see it."
+
+So four o'clock finds Webster up and dressed and bound for the little
+study in his garden (the only building spared by the fire which
+destroyed the house in 1878) and beginning his correspondence. If he has
+no secretary he writes himself, and by time breakfast is announced
+twenty letters, all franked and sealed, are ready to be posted.
+
+"Now," he says, smiling benignantly down the long breakfast table of
+family and friends, "my day's work is done--I have nothing to do but
+fish."
+
+Although this is, indeed, his favorite sport, and there is hardly a
+brook or lake or pond within a radius of twenty miles which does not
+bear the charmed legend of having been one of his favorite fishing
+grounds, he does not spend his days in amusement, like the typical
+country gentleman. Farming to him, the son of a yeoman, is no mere
+possession of a fine estate, but the actual participation in ploughing,
+planting, and haying. His full animal spirits find relief in such labor.
+We cannot think of any similar example of such prodigious mental and
+physical energy. Macaulay was a great parliamentary orator, but he was
+the most conventional of city men; Burke and Chatham had no strength for
+such strenuousness after their professional toil. But Webster loved to
+know and to put his hand to every detail of farming and stock-raising.
+When he first came to Marshfield the soil was thin and sandy. It was he
+who instituted scientific farming in the region, teaching the natives
+how to fertilize with kelp which was easily obtainable from the sea, and
+also with the plentiful small herring or menhaden. He taught them the
+proper care of the soil, and the rotation of crops. This passionate love
+of the earth was an integral part of the man. As the force of his mind
+drew its power, not from mere rhetorical facility, but from fundamental
+principles, so his magnificent body, like that of the fabled Antæus,
+seemed to draw perennial potency from contact with the earth. To acquire
+land--he owned nearly eighteen hundred acres at the time of his
+death--and to cultivate it to the highest possible degree of
+productiveness was his intense delight. The farm which he purchased from
+Captain Thomas grew to an estate of two or three dozen buildings,
+outhouses, tenant houses, a dairyman's cottage, fisherman's house,
+agricultural offices, and several large barns. We can imagine that he
+shows us all of these things--explaining every detail with enthusiasm
+and accuracy, occasionally digressing upon the habits of birds or fish,
+the influence of tides and currents, the changes of sky and wind. All
+natural laws are fascinating to him--inspiring his imagination and
+uplifting his spirit--and it is these things, never politics or
+business, which he discusses in his hours of freedom. He himself
+supervises the planting and harvesting and slaughtering here and on his
+other farm at Franklin--the family homestead--even when obliged to be
+absent, or even when temporarily residing in Washington and hard pressed
+with the cares of his office as Secretary of State.
+
+Those painters who include a parrot in the portrait of some fine
+frivolous lady do so to heighten their interpretation of character. We
+all betray our natures, by the creatures we instinctively gather about
+us. One might know that Jefferson at Monticello would select high-bred
+saddle horses as his companions; that Cardinal Richelieu would find no
+pet so soothing, so alluring, as a soft-stepping cat; that Charles I
+would select the long-haired spaniel. So it is entirely in the picture
+that of all the beasts brought under human yoke, that great oxen, slow,
+solemn, strong, would appeal to the man whose searching eyes were never
+at rest except when they swept a wide horizon; whose mind found its
+deepest satisfaction in noble languages, the giant monuments of
+literature and art, and whose soul best stretched its wings beside the
+limitless sea and under the limitless sky. Webster was fond of all
+animal life; he felt himself part of its free movement. Guinea hens,
+peacocks, ducks, flocks of tamed wild geese, dogs, horses--these were
+all part of the Marshfield place, but there was within the breast of the
+owner a special responsiveness to great herds of cattle, and especially
+fine oxen, the embodiment of massive power. So fond was he of these
+favorite beasts of his, that often on his arrival home he would fling
+his bag into the hall without even entering the house, and hasten to the
+barn to see that they were properly tied up for the night. As he once
+said to his little son, as they both stood by the stalls and he was
+feeding the oxen with ears of corn from an unhusked pile lying on the
+barn floor: "I would rather be here than in the Senate," adding, with
+his famous smile, "I think it is better company." So we may be sure as
+we walk in our retrospect about the farm with him--he never speaks of it
+as an "estate" but always as a farm--he will linger longest where the
+Devon oxen, the Alderneys, Herefordshire, and Ayrshire are grazing, and
+that the eyes which Carlyle likened to anthracite furnaces will glow and
+soften. Twenty years from now he will gaze out upon his oxen once again
+from the window before which he has asked to be carried, as he lies
+waiting for death. Weariness, disease, and disappointment have weakened
+the elasticity of his spirit, and as they pass--his beloved oxen,
+slowly, solemnly--what procession of the years passes with them! Years
+of full living, of generous living; of deep emotions; of glory; years of
+ambition; of bereavement; of grief. It is all to pass--these happy days
+at Marshfield; the wife he so fondly cared for; the children he so
+deeply cherished. Sycophants are to fill, in a measure, the place of
+friends, the money which now flows in so freely is to entangle and
+ensnare him; the lofty aspiration which now inspires him is to
+degenerate into a presidential ambition which will eat into his soul.
+But to-day let us, as long as we may, see him as he is in the height of
+his powers. Let us walk with him under the trees which he planted. Those
+large elms, gracefully silhouetted against the house, were placed there
+with his own hands at the birth of his son Edward and his daughter
+Julia, and he always refers to them gently as "brother" and "sister." To
+plant a tree to mark an event was one of his picturesque customs--an
+unconscious desire, perhaps, to project himself into the future. I am
+quite sure, as we accompany him, he will expatiate on the improvement in
+the soil which he has effected; that he will point out eagerly not only
+the domestic but the wild animals about the place; and that he will
+stand for a few moments on the high bluff overlooking the sea and the
+marshes and let the wind blow through his dark hair. He is carefully
+dressed--he always dresses to fit the occasion--and to-day, as he stands
+in his long boots reaching to the knee and adorned with a tassel, his
+bell-crowned beaver hat in his hand, and in his tight pantaloons and
+well-cut coat--a magnificent specimen of virile manhood--the words of
+Lanier, although written at a later date, and about marshes far more
+lush than these New England ones, beat upon our ears:
+
+[Illustration]
+
+    "Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?
+    Somehow my soul seems suddenly free
+    From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,
+    By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn."
+
+On the way back he will show us the place where three of his favorite
+horses are buried, for he does not sell the old horses who have done him
+good service, but has them buried "with the honors of war"--that is,
+standing upright, with their halters and shoes on. Above one of them he
+has placed the epitaph:
+
+    "Siste Viator!
+    Viator te major his sistit."
+
+I do not know if, as we return to the house where already a fresh group
+of visitors has arrived, he will pause by a corner of the yard set off
+by an iron fence. He has chosen this spot as the place where he shall
+lie, and here, in time, are to repose under the wide and simple vault
+of sky the wife and children whose going before is to bring such
+desolation. It is a place supremely fitting for that ample spirit which
+knew for its own the nobility of large spaces, and the grandeur of
+repose.
+
+The life of Daniel Webster is one of the most dramatic and touching of
+any of our great men. He was an orator of such solid thought and chaste
+eloquence that even now, without the advantage of the marvelously rich
+and flexible voice and the commanding presence that made each word burn
+like a fire, even without this incalculable personal interpretation, his
+speeches remain as a permanent part of our literature, and will so long
+as English oratory is read. He was a brilliant lawyer--the foremost of
+his day--and his statesmanship was of equal rank. In private life he was
+a peculiarly devoted and tender son, husband, father, and friend. That
+he should have become saddened by domestic losses and somewhat vitiated
+by flattery were, perhaps, inevitable. He was bitterly condemned--more
+bitterly by his contemporaries than by those who now study his words and
+work--for lowering his high standard in regard to slavery. It is
+impossible to refute the accusation, at the end of his life, of a
+carelessness approaching unscrupulousness in money matters. His personal
+failings, which were those of a man of exceptional vitality, have been
+heavily--too heavily--emphasized. He ate and drank and spent money
+lavishly; he had a fine library; he loved handsome plate and good
+service and good living. He was generous; he was kind. That he was
+susceptible to adulation and, after the death of his first wife, drifted
+into associations less admirable than those of his earlier years, are
+the dark threads of a woof underrunning a majestic warp. He adored his
+country with a fervor that savors of the heroic, and when he said,
+"There are no Alleghanies in my politics," he spoke the truth. The
+intense passion for the soil which animated him at Marshfield was only a
+fragment of that higher passion for his country--feeling never tainted
+by sectionalism or local prejudice. It was this profound love for the
+Union, coupled with his surpassing gift of eloquence in expressing that
+love and inspiring it in all who heard him, that distinguishes him for
+all time.
+
+There are other memorable things about Marshfield. Governor Edward
+Winslow, who was sent to England to represent the Plymouth and
+Massachusetts Bay Colonies, and whose son Josiah was the first native
+Governor of the Colony, may both be called Marshfield men. Peregrine
+White, the first white child born in this country, lies in the Winslow
+Burying Ground. One of the most singular changes on our coast occurred
+in this vicinity when in one night the "Portland Breeze" closed up the
+mouth of the South River and four miles up the beach opened up the mouth
+of the North River, making an entrance three quarters of a mile wide
+between Third and Fourth Cliff.
+
+These and many other men and events of Marshfield are properly given a
+place in the history of New England, but the special glory of this spot
+will always be that Daniel Webster chose to live, chose to die, and
+chose to be buried under the vast vault of her skyey spaces, within the
+sound of her eternal sea.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+DUXBURY HOMES
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+There are certain places whose happy fortune seems to be that they are
+always specially loved and specially sought by the children of men. From
+that memorable date in 1630 when a little group of the Plymouth
+colonists asked permission to locate across the bay at "Duxberie" until
+now, when the summer colony alone has far surpassed that of the original
+settlers, this section of the coast--with its lovely six-mile beach, its
+high bluffs, and its pleasant hills and pasture lands, upon which are
+found quite a southern flora, unique in this northern latitude--has been
+thoroughly frequented and enjoyed.
+
+There is no more graphic index to the caliber of a people than the
+houses which they build, and the first house above all others which we
+must associate with this spot is the Standish cottage, built at the foot
+of Captain's Hill by Alexander Standish, the son of Myles, partly from
+materials from his father's house, which was burned down, but whose
+cellar is still visible. This long, low, gambrel-roofed structure, with
+a broad chimney showing the date of 1666, was a long way ahead of the
+first log cabins erected by the Pilgrims--farther than most of us
+realize, accustomed as we are to glass instead of oiled paper in
+windows; to shingles, and not thatch for roofs. It is fitting that this
+ancient and charming dwelling should be associated with one of the most
+romantic, most striking, names in the Plymouth Colony. There are few
+more picturesque personalities in our early history than Myles Standish.
+Small in stature, fiery in spirit, a terror to the Indians, and a strong
+arm to the Pilgrims, there is no doubt that his determination to live in
+Duxbury--which he named for Duxborough Hall, his ancestral home in
+Lancashire--went far in obtaining for it a separate incorporation and a
+separate church. This was the first definite offshoot from the Plymouth
+Colony, and was accompanied by the usual maternal fears. While he could
+not forbid them going to Duxbury to settle, yet, when they asked for a
+separate incorporation and church, Bradford granted it most unwillingly.
+He voiced the general sentiment when he wrote that such a separation
+presaged the ruin of the church "& will provoke y^e Lord's displeasure
+against them."
+
+However, such unkind predictions in no wise bothered the sturdy little
+group who moved over to the new location, needing room for their cattle
+and their gardens, and most of all a sense of freedom from the
+restrictions of the mother colony. The son of Elder Brewster went, and
+in time the Elder himself, and so did John Alden and his wife Priscilla,
+whose courtship has been so well told by Longfellow that it needs no
+further embellishing here. On the grassy knoll where John and Priscilla
+built their home in 1631, their grandson built the cottage which now
+stands--the property of the Alden Kindred Association. John Alden seems
+to have been an attractive young fellow--it is easy to see why Priscilla
+Mullins preferred him to the swart, truculent widower--but from our
+point of view John Alden's chief claim to fame is that he was a friend
+of Myles Standish.
+
+Let us, as we pay our respects to Duxbury, pause for a moment and recall
+some of the courageous adventures, some of the brave traits and some of
+the tender ones, which make up our memory of this doughty military
+commander. In the first place, we must remember that he was never a
+member of the church of the Pilgrims: there is even a question if he
+were not--like the rest of his family in Lancashire--a Roman Catholic;
+and this immediately places him in a position of peculiar distinction.
+From the first his mission was not along ecclesiastical lines, but along
+military and civil ones. The early histories are full of his intrepid
+deeds: there was never an expedition too dangerous or too difficult to
+daunt him. He would attack with the utmost daring the hardest or the
+humblest task. He was absolutely loyal to the interest of the Colony,
+and during that first dreadful winter when he was among the very few who
+were not stricken with sickness, he tended the others day and night,
+"unceasing in his loving care." As in many audacious characters this
+sweeter side of his nature does not seem to have been fully appreciated
+by his contemporaries, and we have the letter in which Robinson, that
+"most learned, polished and modest spirit," writes to Bradford, and
+warns him to have care about Standish. He loves him right well, and is
+persuaded that God has given him to them in mercy and for much good, if
+he is used aright; but he fears that there may be wanting in him "that
+tenderness of the life of man (made after God's image) which is meet."
+This warning doubtless flattered Standish, but Robinson's later
+criticism of his methods at Weymouth hurt the little captain cruelly. He
+seems to have cherished an intense affection for the Leyden pastor,
+such as valorous natures often feel for meditative ones, and that
+Robinson died before he--Standish--could justify himself was a deep
+grief to the soldier to whom mere physical hardships were as nothing. We
+do not know a great deal about this relationship between the two men: in
+this as in so many cases the intimate stories of these men and women,
+"also their love, and their hatred, and their envy is now perished." But
+we do know that thirty years later when the gallant captain lay dying he
+wrote in his will: "I give three pounds to Mercy Robinson, whom I
+tenderly love for her grandfather's sake." Surely one feels the touching
+eloquence of this brief sentence the fitting close of a life not only
+heroic in action, but deeply sensitive in sentiment.
+
+He died on his farm in Duxbury in 1656 when he was seventy-three, and
+the Myles Standish Monument on Captain's Hill, three hundred and ten
+feet above the bay, is no more conspicuous than his knightly and tender
+life among the people he elected to serve. His two wives, and also
+Priscilla and John Alden, for whom he entertained such lively love and
+equally lively fury, all are buried here--the Captain's last home
+fittingly marked by four cannon and a sturdy boulder.
+
+Not only for Standish and Alden is Duxbury famous. The beloved William
+Brewster himself moved to this new settlement, and up to a few years ago
+the traces of the whitewood trees which gave the name of "Eagle's Nest"
+to his house could be distinguished. One son--Love--lived with the
+venerable elder, who was a widower, and his other son Jonathan owned the
+neighboring farm. In the sight of the Plymouth Colony--their first home
+in the new land--the three men often worked together, cutting trees and
+planting.
+
+Others of the original Mayflower company came too, leaving traces of
+themselves in such names as Blackfriars Brook, Billingsgate, and
+Houndsditch--names which they brought from Old England.
+
+The homes which these pioneers so laboriously and so lovingly
+wrought--what were they? How did they compare with the modern home and
+household? In Mr. Sheldon's "History of Deerfield" we find such a
+charming and vivid picture of home life in the early days--and one that
+applies with equal accuracy to Duxbury--that we cannot do better than
+copy it here:
+
+"The ample kitchen was the center of the family life, social and
+industrial. Here around the rough table, seated on rude stools or
+benches, all partook of the plain and sometimes stinted fare. A glance
+at the family gathered here after nightfall on a winter's day may prove
+of interest.
+
+"After a supper of bean porridge or hasty pudding and milk of which all
+partake in common from a great pewter basin, or wooden bowl, with spoons
+of wood, horn or pewter; after a reverent reading of the Bible, and
+fervent supplications to the Most High for prayer and guidance; after
+the watch was set on the tall mount, and the vigilant sentinel began
+pacing his lonely beat, the shutters were closed and barred, and with a
+sense of security the occupations of the long winter evening began.
+Here was a picture of industry enjoined alike by the law of the land and
+the stern necessities of the settlers. All were busy. Idleness was a
+crime. On the settle, or a low armchair, in the most sheltered nook, sat
+the revered grandam--as a term of endearment called granny--in red
+woolen gown, and white linen cap, her gray hair and wrinkled face
+reflecting the bright firelight, the long stocking growing under her
+busy needles, while she watched the youngling of the flock in the cradle
+by her side. The good wife, in linsey-woolsey short-gown and red
+petticoat steps lightly back and forth in calf pumps beside the great
+wheel, or poising gracefully on the right foot, the left hand extended
+with the roll or bat, while with a wheel finger in the other, she gives
+the wheel a few swift turns for a final twist to the long-drawn thread
+of wool or tow. The continuous buzz of the flax wheels, harmonizing with
+the spasmodic hum of the big wheel, shows that the girls are preparing a
+stock of linen against their wedding day. Less active and more fitful
+rattled the quill wheel, where the younger children are filling quills
+for the morrow's weaving.
+
+"Craftsmen are still scarce, and the yeoman must depend largely on his
+own skill and resources. The grandsire, and the goodman, his son, in
+blue woolen frocks, buckskin breeches, long stockings, and clouted
+brogans with pewter buckles, and the older boys in shirts of brown tow,
+waistcoat and breeches of butternut-colored woolen homespun, surrounded
+by piles of white hickory shavings, are whittling out with keen Barlow
+jack-knives implements for home use: ox-bows and bow-pins, axe-helves,
+rakestales, forkstales, handles for spades and billhooks, wooden
+shovels, flail staff and swingle, swingling knives, or pokes and hog
+yokes for unruly cattle and swine. The more ingenious, perhaps, are
+fashioning buckets or powdering tubs, or weaving skeps, baskets or
+snowshoes. Some, it may be, sit astride the wooden shovel, shelling corn
+on its iron-shod edge, while others are pounding it into samp or hoiminy
+in the great wooden mortar.
+
+"There are no lamps or candles, but the red light from the burning pine
+knots on the hearth glows over all, repeating, in fantastic pantomime on
+the brown walls and closed shutters, the varied activities around it.
+These are occasionally brought into higher relief by the white flashes,
+as the boys throw handfuls of hickory shavings onto the forestick, or
+punch the back log with the long iron peel, while wishing they had as
+'many shillings as sparks go up the chimney.' Then, the smoke-stained
+joists and boards of the ceiling with the twisted rings of pumpkin
+strings or crimson peppers and festoons of apple, drying on poles hung
+beneath; the men's hats, the crook-necked squashes, the skeins of thread
+and yarn hanging in bunches on the wainscot; the sheen of the pewter
+plates and basins, standing in rows on the shelves of the dresser; the
+trusty firelock with powder horn, bandolier, and bullet pouch, hanging
+on the summertree, and the bright brass warming-pan behind the bedroom
+door--all stand revealed more clearly for an instant, showing the
+provident care for the comfort and safety of the household. Dimly seen
+in the corners of the room are baskets in which are packed hands of flax
+from the barn, where, under the flaxbrake, the swingling knives and the
+coarse hackle, the shives and swingling tow have been removed by the
+men; to-morrow the more deft manipulations of the women will prepare
+these bunches of fiber for the little wheel, and granny will card the
+tow into bats, to be spun into tow yarn on the big wheel. All quaff the
+sparkling cider or foaming beer from the briskly circulating pewter mug,
+which the last out of bed in the morning must replenish from the barrel
+in the cellar."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One notices the frequent reference to beer in these old chronicles. The
+tea, over which the colonists were to take such a dramatic stand in a
+hundred years, had not yet been introduced into England, and neither had
+coffee. Forks had not yet made their appearance. In this admirable
+picture Mr. Sheldon does not mention one of the evening industries
+which was peculiarly characteristic of the Plymouth Colony. This was
+the making of clapboards, which with sassafras and beaver skins,
+constituted for many years the principal cargo sent back to England from
+the Colony. Another point--the size of the families. The mother of
+Governor William Phips had twenty-one sons and five daughters, and the
+Reverend John Sherman had six children by his first wife and twenty by
+his second. These were not uncommon figures in the early life of New
+England; and with so many numbers within itself the home life was a
+center for a very complete and variegated industrial life. Surely it is
+a long cry from these kitchen fireplaces--so large that often a horse
+had to be driven into the kitchen dragging the huge back log--these
+immense families, to the kitchenette and one-child family of to-day!
+
+This, then, was the old Duxbury: the Duxbury of long, cold winters,
+privations, and austerity. Down by the shore to-day is the new
+Duxbury--a Duxbury of automobiles, of business men's trains, of gay
+society at Powder Point, where in the winter is the well-known boys'
+school--a Duxbury of summer cottages, white and green along the shore,
+green and brown under the pines. Of these summer homes many are new: the
+Wright estate is one of the finest on the South Shore, and the pleasant,
+spacious dwelling distinguished by its handsome hedge of English privet
+formerly belonged to Fanny Davenport, the actress. Others are old
+houses, very tastefully, almost affectionately remodeled by those for
+whom the things of the past have a special lure. These remodeled
+cottages are, perhaps, the prettiest of all. Those very ancient
+landmarks, sagging into pathetic disrepair, present a sorrowful, albeit
+an artistic, silhouette against the sky. But these "new-old" cottages,
+with ruffled muslin curtains at the small-paned, antique windows, brave
+with a shining knocker on the green-painted front door, and gay with
+old-fashioned gardens to the side or in the rear--these are a delight to
+all, and an honor to both past and present.
+
+Surely the fair town of Duxbury, which so smilingly enticed the
+Pilgrims across the bay to enjoy her sunny beach and rolling pasture
+lands, must be happy to-day as she was then to feel her ground so deeply
+tilled, and still to be so daintily adorned with homes and gardens and
+with laughing life.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+KINGSTON AND ITS MANUSCRIPTS
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+On a charming eminence at two crossroads, delicately dappled by fine elm
+shade and clasped by an antique grapevine, rests the old Bradford house.
+From the main road half a mile away you will see only the slanting roof,
+half concealed by rolling pasture land, but if you will trouble to turn
+off from the main road, and if you will not be daunted by the
+unsavoriness of the immediate neighborhood, you will find it quite worth
+your while. The house presents only a casual side to the street--one
+fancies it does not take much interest in its upstart neighbors--but
+imagination makes us believe that it regards with brooding tenderness
+the lovely tidal river which winds away through the marshes to the sea.
+Interesting as the house is for its architectural features and for its
+delightful location--despite the nearness of the passing train--yet it
+is on neither of these points that its fame rests.
+
+In this house, built in 1674, and once belonging to Major John Bradford,
+the grandson of the Governor, was preserved for many years one of the
+most valuable American manuscripts in existence, and one fated to the
+most romantic adventures in the annals of Lost and Found.
+
+Bradford's "History of the Plymouth Plantation" is our sole source of
+authentic information for the period 1606-46. It is the basis for all
+historical study of the early life of the Pilgrims in this country, and
+when we look at the quiet roof of the Bradford house to-day and realize
+how narrowly the papers--for they remained in manuscript form for two
+hundred years--escaped being lost forever, our minds travel again over
+the often told story.
+
+The manuscript, penned in Governor Bradford's fine old hand, in a folio
+with a parchment back, and with some childish scribblings by little
+Mercy Bradford on the cover, passed at the Governor's death to his son,
+and at his death to his son. It reposed in the old house at which we are
+now looking until 1728, doubtless regarded as something valuable, but
+not in the least appreciated at its full and peculiar worth. When Major
+John Bradford lent it to the Reverend Thomas Prince to assist him in his
+"Chronological History of New England," he was merely doing what he had
+done many times before. In these days of burglar-proof safes and fire
+protection it makes us shiver to think of this priceless holograph
+passed from hand to hand in such a casual manner. But it seems to have
+escaped any mishap under Dr. Prince, who deposited it eventually in the
+library of the Old South Church. Here it remained for half a century,
+still in manuscript form and frequently referred to by scholars. Thomas
+Hutchinson used it in compiling his "History of Massachusetts Bay," and
+Mather used it also. At the time of the Revolution the Old South was
+looted, and this document (along with many others) disappeared
+absolutely. No trace whatever could be found of it: the most exhaustive
+search was in vain, and scholars and historians mourned for a loss that
+was irreparable. And then, after half a century, after the search had
+been entirely abandoned, it was discovered, quite by chance, by one who
+fortunately knew its value, tucked into the Library of Fulham Palace in
+London. After due rejoicing on the American side and due deliberation on
+the English side of the water, it was very properly and very politely
+returned to this country in 1897. Now it rests after its career of
+infinite hazard, in a case in the Boston State House, elaborately
+protected from fire and theft, from any accidental or premeditated harm,
+and Kingston must content itself with a copy in Pilgrim Hall at
+Plymouth.
+
+Kingston's history commences with a manuscript and continues in the same
+form. If you would know the legends, the traditions, the events which
+mark this ancient town, you will have to turn to records, diaries,
+memoranda, memorial addresses and sermons, many of them never published.
+
+It is rather odd that this serene old place, discovered only two or
+three days after the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, is so devoid
+of a printed career. As soon as the Pilgrims had explored the spot, they
+put themselves on record as having "a great liking to plant in it"
+instead of in Plymouth. But they decided against it because it lay too
+far from their fishing and was "so encompassed with woods," that they
+feared danger from the savages. It was very soon settled, however, and
+remained as the north end of Plymouth for a hundred and six years, until
+1726. Governor Bradford writes, in regard to its colonization:
+
+"Y^e people of y^e plantation begane to grow in their outward estate ...
+and as their stocks increased and y^e increase vendible, ther was no
+longer any holding them togeather, but now they must of necessitoe goe
+to their great lots: they could not otherwise keep catle; and having
+oxen grown they must have land for plowing and tillage. And no man now
+thought he could live except he had catle and a great deal of ground to
+keep them: all striving to increase their stocks. By which means they
+were scattered all over y^e bay, quickly, and y^e towne, in which they
+had lived compactly till now [1632] was left very thine, and in a short
+time almost desolate."
+
+Governor Bradford seems to deplore this moving out of Plymouth, but as a
+matter of fact he was among the first to go, and his estate on Jones
+River comprised such a goodly portion of what is now Kingston that when
+he died he was the richest man in the Colony! A boulder marks the place
+which he, with that unerring eye for a fine view which distinguished the
+early settlers, chose for his estate. From here one catches a glimpse of
+water, open fields, trees, the Myles Standish Monument to the left, the
+sound of the passing automobiles behind. The distant smokestacks would
+be unfamiliar to Governor Bradford's eye, but the fragrant Kingston air
+which permeates it all would greet him as sweetly to-day as it did
+three hundred years ago.
+
+Governor Bradford, who was Governor for thirty-seven years, was a man of
+remarkable erudition. Cotton Mather says of him: "The Dutch tongue was
+become almost as vernacular to him as the English; the French tongue he
+could also manage; the Latin and the Greek he had mastered; but the
+Hebrew he most of all studied." Therefore if the curious spelling of his
+history strikes us as unscholarly, we must remember that at that time
+there was no fixed standard for English orthography. Queen Elizabeth
+employed seven different spellings for the word "sovereign" and
+Leicester rendered his own name in eight different ways. It was by no
+means a mark of illiteracy to spell not only unlike your neighbor, but
+unlike yourself on the line previous.
+
+But it is more than quaint diction and fantastic spelling which
+fascinates us as we turn over, not only the leaves of Bradford's famous
+history, but the pile of fading records of various kinds of this once
+prosperous shipbuilding town. The records of Kingston are valuable, not
+only because they tell the tale of this particular spot, but because
+they are delightfully typical of all the South Shore towns. The
+yellowing diaries mention crude offenses, crude chastisements; give
+scraps of genealogies as broken as the families themselves are now
+broken and scattered; lament over one daughter of the Puritans who took
+the veil in a Roman Catholic convent; sternly relate, in Rabelaisian
+frankness, dark sins, punished with mediæval justice. In fact, these
+righteous early colonists seemed to find a genuine satisfaction in
+devising punishments, and in putting them into practice. We read that
+the stocks (also called "bilbaos" because they were formerly
+manufactured in Bilbao, in Spain) were first occupied by the man who had
+made them, as the court decided that his charge for the work was
+excessive! There were wooden cages in which criminals were confined and
+exposed to public view; whipping-posts; cleft sticks for profane
+tongues. Drunkenness was punished by disfranchisement; the blasphemer
+and the heretics were branded with a hot iron.
+
+Let us look at some of these old records, not all of them as ferocious
+as this, but interesting for the minutiæ which they preserve and which
+makes it possible for us to reconstruct something of that atmosphere of
+the past. It was ninety-six years after the settlement at Plymouth that
+Kingston made its first request for a separation. It was not granted for
+almost a decade, but from then on the ecclesiastical records furnish us
+with a great deal of intimate and chatty material. For instance, we
+learn in 1719 that Isaac Holmes was to have "20 shillings for sweeping,
+opening and shutting of the doors and casements of the meeting house for
+1 year," which throws some light upon sextons' salaries!
+
+The minute directions as to the placing of the pews in the meeting-house
+(1720) contain a pungent element of personality. Major John Bradford is
+"next to the pulpit stairs"; Elisha Bradford on the left "as you go in";
+Benjamin Eaton's place is "between minister's stairs and west door";
+while Peter West is ingloriously, and for what reason we know not,
+relegated to the gallery "in the front, next to the stairs, behind the
+women."
+
+It is significant to note (1728) that seats are built at each end above
+the galleries for the Indians and negroes.
+
+Fish laws, rewards for killing wild cats, bickerings with the minister,
+and brief mention of the death of many women at an early age--after
+having given birth to an incredible number of children--fill up pages
+and pages.
+
+The eye rests upon a resolution passed (1771) to "allow Benjamin Cook
+the sum of 8 shillings for a coffin, and liquor at the funeral of James
+Howland." They might not believe in prayers for the dead in those days,
+but there was evidently no reason why the living should not receive some
+cheer!
+
+How is this for the minister's salary? The Reverend Doctor Willis (1780)
+is to receive eighty pounds a year, to be paid partly in Indian corn,
+rye, pork, and beef. Ten cords of wood yearly are allowed him "until he
+have a family, then twenty cords, are to be allowed, the said wood to
+be delivered at his door."
+
+Mr. Levi Bradford agrees to make the whipping-post and stocks for nine
+shillings, if the town will find the iron (1790).
+
+The wage paid for a day's labor on the highway (1791) was as follows:
+For a day's labor by a man, 2 shillings, 8 pence; for a yoke of oxen, 2
+shillings; for a horse, 1 shilling, 6 pence; for a cart, 1 shilling, 4
+pence. One notes the prices are for an eight-hour day.
+
+However, the high cost of living began to make itself felt even then.
+How else account for the statement (1796) that Mr. Parris, the
+schoolmaster, has been allowed fifty shillings in addition to his salary
+"considering the increase in the price of provisions"?
+
+There seems to have been a great celebration on the occasion of raising
+the second meetinghouse in Kingston (1798). One old account reads:
+"Booths were erected on the field opposite, and all kinds of liquor and
+refreshment were sold freely." After the frame was up a procession was
+formed of those who were employed in the raising, consisting of
+carpenters, sailors, blacksmiths, etc., each taking some implement of
+his trade such as axes, rules, squares, tackles and ropes. They walked
+to the Great Bridge and back to the temporary building that had been
+used for worship (the Quail Trap) while the new one was being planned.
+Here they all had punch and an "hour or so of jollity."
+
+If the women's lives were conspicuously short, it was not so with the
+men. Ebenezer Cobb, who died in 1801 in the one hundred and eighth year
+of his age, had lived in no less than three centuries, having seen six
+years in the seventeenth, the whole of the eighteenth, and a year of the
+nineteenth.
+
+The minister's tax is separated from the other town taxes in 1812--thus
+even in this little village is reflected the great movement of
+separation of Church and State. In 1851 when we read of a Unitarian
+church being built we realize that the Puritan régime is over in New
+England.
+
+Thus with the assistance of the Pelegs and Hezekiahs, the Zadocks,
+Ichabods, and Zenases--names which for some absurd and irreverent reason
+suggest a picture puzzle--we manage to piece together scraps of the
+Kingston of long ago.
+
+We must confess to some relief at the inevitable conclusion that such
+study brings--namely, that the early settlers were not the unblemished
+prigs and paragons tradition has so fondly branded them. They seem to
+have been human enough--erring enough, if we take these records penned
+by themselves. However, for any such iconoclastic observation it is
+reassuring to have the judgment of so careful a historian as Charles
+Francis Adams. He says:
+
+"That the earlier generations of Massachusetts were either more
+law-abiding or more self-restrained than the later is a proposition
+which accords neither with tradition nor with the reason of things. The
+habits of those days were simpler than those of the present: they were
+also essentially grosser...."
+
+He then gives a dozen pages or so of hitherto unpublished church
+records, gathered from as many typical Massachusetts towns, which throw
+an undeniable and unflattering light on the social habits of that early
+period. As explicit and public confession before the church congregation
+was enforced, these church records contain startlingly graphic
+statements of drunkenness, blasphemy, stealing, and immorality in all
+its various phases.
+
+There are countless church records which duplicate this one of the
+ordination of a Massachusetts pastor in 1729: "6 Barrels and a half of
+Cyder, 28 gallons of wine, 2 gallons of Brandy, and 4 of rum, loaf
+sugar, lime juice and pipes," all, presumably, consumed at the time and
+on the spot of the ordination. Even the most pessimistic must admit that
+long before our prohibition era we had traveled far beyond such
+practices.
+
+The immorality seems to have been the natural reaction from morbid
+spiritual excitement induced by religious revivals. Poor Governor
+Bradford never grasped this, and we find him lamenting (1642):
+"Marvilous it may be to see and consider how some kind of wickedness did
+grow and break forth here in a land where the same was much witnessed
+against, and so narrowly looked on and severely punished when it was
+known."
+
+We hear the same plaint from Jonathan Edwards a century later.
+
+It is well to honor the Pilgrims for their many stanch and admirable
+qualities, but it is only fair to recall that the morbidity of their
+religion made them less healthy-minded than we, and that many of their
+practices, such as the well-recognized custom of "bundling," were
+indications of a people holding far lower moral standards than ours.
+
+The old sermons, diaries, biographies, and records lie on dusty shelves
+now, and few pause to read them, and in Kingston no one yet has gathered
+them into a local history. There are other records traced, not in sand,
+but on the soil that may also be read by any who pass. Some remnants of
+the trenches and terraces dug by the quota of Arcadian refugees who
+fell to Kingston's share after the pathetic flight from Nova Scotia may
+still be seen--claimed by some to be the first irrigation attempt in
+America.
+
+The old "Massachusetts Payth" which follows the road more or less
+closely beyond Kingston is traced with difficulty and uncertainty in
+Kingston itself, but there is another highway as clear to-day as it was
+three hundred years ago. And this is the lovely tidal river, named after
+the master of the Mayflower, up which used to come and go not only many
+ships of commerce, but, in the evenings after life had become less
+austere, boatloads of merry-makers from Plymouth and Duxbury to attend
+the balls given at what was originally the King's Town.
+
+It has carried much traffic in its day, that river which now winds so
+gracefully down to the sea, and which we see so well from the yard of
+the old Bradford house. Down it floated the vessels made by Kingston
+men, and out of it was dug much bog iron for the use of Washington's
+artillery.
+
+Monk's Hill--which the old records call Mont's Hill Chase, a name
+supposed to have been applied to a hunt in England--could tell a story
+too, if one had ears to hear. The highest land in Kingston, during the
+Revolution it was one of the points where a beacon fire was lighted to
+alarm the town in case of invasion by the enemy.
+
+Kingston is not without history, although its manuscripts lie long
+untouched upon library shelves, and its historic soil is tramped over by
+unheeding feet. That the famous manuscript which was its greatest
+historical contribution has been taken away from it, is no loss in the
+truest sense of the word, for this monumental work, which belongs to no
+one place, but to the country as a whole, is properly preserved at the
+State House.
+
+Kingston seems amenable to this arrangement, just as she seems entirely
+willing that Plymouth should claim the first century of her career. When
+one is sure of one's heritage and beauty, one does not clamor for
+recognition; one does not even demand a printed history. It is quality,
+not quantity, that counts, and even if nothing more is ever written in
+or about this dear old town, Kingston will have made a distinguished
+contribution to American history and literature.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+PLYMOUTH
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+One of the favorite pictures of New Englanders, and one which hangs in
+innumerable dining-rooms and halls, is by Boughton, the popular American
+artist, and is named "The Return of the Mayflower." I suppose thousands
+of New England children have gazed wonderingly at this picture, which,
+contrary to the modern canons of art, "tells a story," and many of those
+naïve minds have puzzled as to how those poor Pilgrims, who had no tea
+or coffee or milk or starch, managed to appear so well fed and so
+contented, and so marvelously neat and clean. The inexhaustible bag
+which inevitably appeared at crucial moments in the career of "Swiss
+Family Robinson" is nowhere mentioned in the early chronicles of the
+Plymouth Plantation, and the precise manner in which a small vessel of a
+hundred and eighty tons, carrying a hundred passengers, and all the
+innumerable cradles, chairs, and highboys which have since flooded the
+museums as "genuine relics" of that first voyage, could also have
+brought sufficient washboards, soap, and flatirons to have kept the
+charming costumes so immaculate is a mystery which will probably never
+be solved--especially since the number of relics appears to increase
+instead of diminish with the passage of time.
+
+However, that is a mere trifle. Mr. Boughton, in catching this touching
+and dramatic moment in the history of the Plymouth Colony, has rendered
+a graphic service to us all, and if we could stand upon the little
+plateau on which this man and maid are standing, and could look out with
+them--we should see--what should we see?
+
+We may, indeed, stand upon the little plateau--possibly it is no other
+than the base of Cole's Hill, that pathetic spot on which the dead were
+buried those first sad months, the ground above being leveled and
+planted with corn lest the Indians should count the number of the
+lost--and look out upon that selfsame harbor, but the sight which meets
+our eyes will be a very different one from that which met theirs. Let
+us, if we can, for the space of half an hour or so, imagine that we are
+standing beside this Pilgrim man and maid, on the day on which Mr.
+Boughton portrayed them.
+
+Instead of 1920 it is 1621. It is the 5th of April: the winter of
+terrifying sicknesses and loss has passed; of the hundred souls which
+left England the autumn previously more than a half have died. The
+Mayflower which brought them all over, and which has remained in the
+harbor all winter, is now, having made repairs and taking advantage of
+the more clement weather, trimming her sails for the thirty-one days'
+return voyage to England. They may return with her, if they wish, any
+or all of the sturdy little band; they may leave the small, smoky log
+cabins; the scanty fare of corn and fish; the harassing fear of the
+Indians; they may leave the privations, the cramped quarters, and return
+to civilized life--to friends and relatives, to blooming English
+hedgerows and orderly English churches. But no one--no, not a single one
+returns! They have thrown in their lot with the new country--the new
+life. Their nearest civilized neighbors are the French of Nova Scotia,
+five hundred miles to the north, and the English of Virginia five
+hundred miles to the south. But they are undaunted. And yet--who can
+doubt that as they gaze out upon the familiar sails--the last banner
+between themselves and their ancestral home, and as they see them
+sailing out and out until they sink below the verge of sea and sky, the
+tears "rise in the heart and gather to the eyes" in "thinking of the
+days that are no more."
+
+Three hundred years ago! The same harbor now as then, with the highland
+of Cape Cod dimly outlined in the gray eastern horizon; the bluffs of
+Manomet nearer on the right; opposite them, on the left, Duxbury Beach
+comes down, and ends in the promontory which holds the Gurnet Lights.
+Clarke's Island--already so named--lies as it does to-day, but save for
+these main topographical outlines the Plymouth at which we are looking
+in our imagination would be quite unrecognizable to us.
+
+There is a little row of houses--seven of them--that is all. Log cabins,
+two-roomed, of the crudest build, thatched with wildgrass, the chinks
+between the logs filled with clay, the floors made of split logs;
+lighted at night with pieces of pitch pine. Each lot measures three rods
+long and a rod and a half wide, and they run on either side of the
+single street (the first laid out in New England, and ever afterward to
+be known as Leyden Street), which, in its turn, is parallel to the Town
+Brook. There is no glass in these cabin windows: oiled paper suffices;
+the household implements are of the fewest. The most primitive modern
+camping expedition is replete with luxuries of which this colony knows
+nothing. They have no cattle of any kind, which means no milk or
+butter; they have no poultry or eggs. Twenty-six acres of cultivated
+ground--twenty-one of corn, the other five of wheat, rye, and
+barley--have been quite enough for the twenty-one men and six boys (all
+who were well enough to work) to handle, but it is not a great deal to
+feed them all. At one end of the street stands the common house, twenty
+feet square, where the church services are held; the store-house is near
+the head of the pier; and at the top of what is now Burial Hill is the
+timber fort, twenty by twenty, built the January before by Myles
+Standish. In April, 1621, this is all there is to what is now the
+prosperous town of Plymouth.
+
+And yet--not entirely. There are a few things left in the Plymouth of
+to-day which were in the Plymouth of three hundred years ago. If our man
+and maid should turn into Pilgrim Hall their eyes would fall upon some
+of the selfsame objects which were familiar sights to them in 1621.
+Those sturdy oaken chairs of Governor Carver, Elder Brewster, and
+Edward Winslow; the square, hooded wooden cradle brought over by Dr.
+Samuel Fuller; and the well-preserved reed one which rocked Peregrine
+White, and whose quaint stanchness suggests the same Dutch influence
+which characterizes the spraddling octagonal windmills--they would
+quickly recognize all of these. Some of the books, too, chiefly
+religious, some in classic tongues, William Bradford's Geneva Bible
+printed in 1592, and others bearing the mark of 1615, would be well
+known to them, although we must not take it for granted that the
+lady--or the man either--can read. Well-worn the Bibles are, however,
+and we need not think that lack of learning prevented any of the
+Pilgrims from imbibing both the letter and spirit of the Book. Those who
+could write were masters of a fine, flowing script that shames our
+modern scrawl, as is well testified by the Patent of the Plymouth
+Colony--the oldest state document in New England--as well as by the
+final will and various deeds of Peregrine White, and many others. The
+small, stiff baby shoes which encased the infant feet of Josiah
+Winslow, the son of Governor Winslow and destined to be Governor
+himself, are of a pattern familiar to our man and maid, as are the now
+tarnished swords of Carver, Brewster, and Standish. Probably they have
+puzzled, as we are still doing, over the Kufic or Arabic inscriptions on
+the last. The monster kettle and generous pewter plate brought over by
+the doughty Captain would be too well known to them to attract their
+attention, as would be the various tankards and goblets, and the
+beautiful mortar and pestle brought over by Winslow. But the two-tined
+fork they would regard with curiosity, for forks were not used, even in
+England, until 1650. The teapots, too, which look antiquated enough to
+us, would fill them with wonder, for tea was practically unknown in both
+colony and mother country until 1657. Those fragments of rude
+agricultural implements which we treasure would not interest our man and
+maid for whom they are ordinary sights, and neither would they regard
+with the same historical interest that moves us the bits of stone from
+the Scrooby Manor in England, the bricks from the old pier at Delft
+Haven in Holland, or the piece of carved pew-back from the old church at
+Scrooby. Possibly our Pilgrim maid is one of the few who can write, and
+if so, her fingers have doubtless fashioned a sampler as exquisite as
+that of Lora Standish, whose meek docility and patient workmanship are
+forever preserved in her cross-stitched words.
+
+From all around the walls of Pilgrim Hall look down fine, stern old
+portraits, real and imaginary, of the early colonists. Modern critics
+may bicker over the authenticity of the white bull on which Priscilla
+Alden is taking her wedding trip; they may quarrel over the fidelity of
+the models and paintings of the Mayflower, and antiquarians may
+diligently unearth bits of bone to substantiate their pet theories. Our
+man and maid could tell us all, but, alas, their voices are so far away
+we cannot hear them. They will never speak the words which will settle
+any of the oft-disputed points, and, unfortunately, they will leave us
+forever to argue about the truth of the famous Plymouth Rock.
+
+To present the well-worn story of Plymouth Rock from an angle calculated
+to rouse even a semblance of fresh interest is comparable to offering a
+well-fed man a piece of bread, and expecting him to be excited over it
+as a novelty. Bread is the staff of life, to be sure, but it is also
+accepted as matter of course in the average diet, and the story of
+Plymouth Rock is part and parcel of every school-book and guide-book in
+the country. The distinguished, if somewhat irreverent, visitor, who,
+after being reduced to partial paralysis by the oft-repeated tale,
+ejaculated fervently that he wished the rock had landed on the Pilgrims
+instead of the Pilgrims on the rock, voiced the first original remark
+about this historic relic which has refreshed our ears for many years.
+However, as Americans we are thoroughly imbued with the theory on which
+our advertising is based. Although it would seem that every housekeeper
+in the land had been kept fully informed for forty years of the
+advantages incident to the use of a certain soap, the manufacturers
+still persist in reciting these benefits. And why? Because new
+housekeepers come into existence with each new day. So, if there be any
+man who comes to Plymouth who does not know the story of Plymouth Rock,
+it is here set down for him, as accurately and briefly as possible.
+
+This rock--which is an oval, glacial boulder of about seven tons--was
+innocently rearing its massive, hoary head from the water one day in
+December, 1620, as it had done for several thousand years previously in
+unmolested oblivion. While engaged in this ponderous but harmless
+occupation it was sighted by a boatful of men and women--the first who
+had ever chosen to land on this particular part of the coast. The rock
+presented a moderately dry footing, and they sailed up to it, and a
+charming young woman, attired, according to our amiable painter, in the
+cleanest and freshest of aprons and the most demure of caps, set a
+daintily shod foot upon it and leaped lightly to shore. This was Mary
+Chilton, and she was promptly followed by an equally trig young
+man--John Alden. Thus commenced the founding of Plymouth Colony, and
+thus was sown the seed of innumerable pictures, poems, stories, and
+sermons.
+
+Now the Pilgrims themselves, in none of their various accounts, ever
+mention the incident of the landing described above, or the rock. In
+fact they are so entirely silent about it that historians--besides
+discrediting the pretty part about Mary Chilton and John Alden, in the
+brusque fashion characteristic of historians--have pooh-poohed the whole
+story, arguing that the rock was altogether too far away from the land
+to be a logical stepping-place, and referring to the only authentic
+record of that first landing, which merely reads: "They sounded y^e
+harbor & founde it fitt for shipping, and marched into y^e land & found
+diverse cornfeilds & little running brooks, a place fitt for situation:
+at least it was y^e best they could find." The Pilgrims, then, were
+quite oblivious of the rock, the historians are entirely skeptical
+concerning it, and the following generation so indifferent to the
+tradition which was gradually formulating, that in the course of events
+it was half-covered with a wharf, and used as a doorstep to a warehouse.
+
+This was an ignominious position for a magnificent free boulder which
+had been a part of the untrammeled sea and land for centuries, but this
+lowly occupation was infinitely less trying than the fate which was
+awaiting. At the time the wharf was suggested, the idea that the rock
+was the actual landing-place of the first colonists had gained such
+momentum that a party was formed in its defense. An aged man, Thomas
+Faunce, was produced. He was ninety-five and confined to an armchair. He
+had not been born until twenty-six years after the landing of the
+Pilgrims; his father, whom he quoted as declaring this to be the
+original rock and identical landing-place, had not even come over in the
+Mayflower, but in the Anne. However, this venerable Canute, carried to
+the water's edge in his armchair, in the presence of many witnesses,
+assured them and all posterity that this was the genuine, undeniable
+landing-place of the Pilgrims. And from that moment the belief was so
+firmly set in the American mind that no power could possibly dislodge
+it. In accordance with this suddenly acquired respect, it was decided to
+move the huge bulk to the more conspicuous location of the Town Square.
+When it was lifted from its prehistoric bed, it broke, and this was
+hailed as a propitious omen of the coming separation of the Colonies
+from the mother country. Only the upper half was dragged up to the Town
+Square--a process which took twenty yoke of oxen and was accompanied by
+wild huzzahing. There the poor, broken thing lay in the sun, at the
+bottom of the Liberty Pole on which was flying, "Liberty or Death." But
+its career as a public feature had only begun. It remained in the square
+until 1834, and then on July 4 it was decided to drag it to a still more
+conspicuous place. So with a formal procession, it was again hoisted and
+hauled and set down in front of the entrance porch of Pilgrim Hall,
+where it lay like a captive mammoth animal for curious folk to gaze at.
+Here it was granted almost half a century of undisturbed if not secluded
+slumber. But the end was not yet. In 1880 it was once more laid hold of
+and carted back to its original setting, and welded without ceremony, to
+the part from which it had been sundered. Now all of this seems quite
+enough--more than enough--of pitiless publicity, for one old rock whose
+only offense had been to be lifting its head above the water on a
+December day in 1620. But no--just as the mind of man takes a singular
+satisfaction in gazing at mummies preserved in human semblance in the
+unearthly stillness of the catacombs, so the once massive boulder--now
+carefully mended--was placed upon the neatest of concrete bases, and
+over it was reared, from the designs of Hammatt Billings, the ugliest
+granite canopy imaginable--in which canopy, to complete the grisly
+atmosphere of the catacombs, were placed certain human bones found in an
+exploration of Cole's Hill. Bleak and homeless the old rock now lies
+passively in forlorn state under its atrocious shelter, behind a strong
+iron grating, and any of a dozen glib street urchins, in syllables
+flavored with Cork, or Genoese, or Polish accents, will, for a penny,
+relate the facts substantially as I have stated them.[2]
+
+It is easy to be unsympathetic in regard to any form of fetishism which
+we do not share. And while the bare fact remains that we are not at all
+sure that the Pilgrims landed on this rock, and we are entirely sure
+that its present location and setting possess no romantic allurement,
+yet bare facts are not the whole truth, and even when correct they are
+often the superficial and not the fundamental part of the truth. Those
+hundreds--those thousands--of earnest-eyed men and women who have stood
+beside this rock with tears in their eyes, and emotions too deep for
+words in their hearts, "believing where they cannot prove," have not
+only interpreted the vital significance of the place, but, by their very
+emotion, have sanctified it.
+
+It really makes little difference whether the testimony of Thomas Faunce
+was strictly accurate or not; it really makes little difference that the
+Hammatt Billings canopy is indeed dreadful. Plymouth Rock has come to
+symbolize the corner-stone of the United States as a nation, and symbols
+are the most beautiful and the most enduring expression of any national
+or human experience.
+
+It is estimated that over one hundred thousand visitors come to Plymouth
+annually. They all go to see the Rock; most of them clamber up to the
+quaint Burial Hill and read a few of the oldest inscriptions; they
+glance at the National Monument to the forefathers, bearing the largest
+granite figure in the world, and they take a turn through Pilgrim Hall.
+But there is one place they often forget to see, and that is the harbor
+itself.
+
+We began our tour through Plymouth through the eyes of a Pilgrim man and
+maid watching the departing Mayflower. It was the Mayflower, battered
+and beaten, her sails blackened and mended, her leaks hastily caulked,
+which was the first vessel to sail into Plymouth Harbor--a harbor so
+joyfully described as being a "most hopeful place" with "innumerable
+store of fowl and excellent good ... in fashion like a sickel or fish
+hook."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+All that first dreadful winter, while the Pilgrims were struggling to
+make roofs to cover their heads, while, with weeping hearts, they buried
+their dead, and when, according to the good and indestructible instincts
+of life, which persist in spite of every calamity, they planted seed for
+the coming spring--all this while the Mayflower lay at anchor in the
+harbor. Every morning they could see her there; any hour of the day they
+could glance out at her; while they slept they were conscious of her
+presence. And just so long as she was there, just so long could they see
+a tangible connection between themselves and the life, which, although
+already strangely far away, was, nevertheless, the nearest and the
+dearest existence they had known. And then in April, the familiar
+vessel, whose outlines were as much a part of the seascape as the Gurnet
+or the bluffs of Manomet, vanished: vanished as completely as if she had
+never been. The water which parted under her departing keel flowed
+together. There was no sign on earth or sea or in the sky of that last
+link between the little group of colonists and their home land. They
+were as much alone as Enoch Arden on his desert isle. Can we imagine the
+emptiness, the illimitable loneliness of that bay? One small shallop
+down by the pier--that was the only visible connection between
+themselves and England!
+
+I do not believe that we can really appreciate their sense of complete
+severance--their sense of utter isolation. And I do not believe that we
+can appreciate the wild thrill of excitement, the sudden gush of
+freshly established connection that ran through the colony, when, seven
+months later--the following November--a ship sailed into the harbor. It
+was the Fortune bringing with her news and letters from home--word from
+that other world--and bringing also thirty-five new colonists, among
+them William Brewster's eldest son and Robert Cushman. Probably the
+greetings were so joyful, the messages so eagerly sought, the flutter of
+welcome so great that it was not until several days had passed that they
+realized that the chief word which Thomas Weston (the London merchant
+who was the head of the company which had financed the expedition) had
+sent them was one of reproof. The Mayflower had brought no profitable
+cargo back to England, he complained, an omission which was "wonderful
+and worthily distasted." While he admitted that they had labored under
+adverse circumstances, he unkindly added that a quarter of the time they
+had spent in discoursing and arguing and consulting could have
+profitably been spent in other ways. That the first official word from
+home should be one of such cruel reprimand struck the colonists--who had
+so wistfully waited for a cheering message--very hard. Half frozen, half
+starved, sick, depressed, they had been forced to struggle so
+desperately to maintain even a foothold on the ladder of existence, that
+it had not been humanly possible for them to fulfill their pledge to the
+Company. Bradford's letter back to Weston--dignified, touching--is
+sufficient vindication. When the Fortune returned she "was laden with
+good clapboards, as full as she could stowe, and two hogsheads of beaver
+and other skins," besides sassafras--a cargo valued at about five
+hundred pounds. In spite of the fact that this cargo was promptly stolen
+by a French cruiser off the English coast, it nevertheless marks the
+foundation of the fur and lumber trade in New England. Although this
+first visitor brought with her a patent of their lands (a document still
+preserved in Pilgrim Hall, with the signatures and seals of the Duke of
+Lenox, the Marquis of Hamilton, the Earl of Warwick, and Sir Ferdinando
+Gorges), yet to us, reading history in the perspective of three hundred
+years, the disagreeable impression of Weston's letter outweighs the
+satisfaction for the patent. When the Fortune sailed away it was like
+the departure of a rich, fault-finding aunt, who suddenly descends upon
+a household of poor relations, bringing presents, to be sure, but with
+such cutting disapproval on her lips that it mars the entire pleasure of
+her visit.
+
+The harbor was once more empty. I suppose that in time the Pilgrims half
+forgot, half forgave, the sting of Weston's reproof. Again they gazed
+out and waited for a sail; again England seemed very far away. So,
+doubtless, in the spring, when a shallop appeared from a fishing vessel,
+they all eagerly hurried down to greet it. But if the Fortune had been
+like a rich and disagreeable aunt, this new visitation was like an
+influx of small, unruly cousins. And such hungry cousins! Weston had
+sent seven men to stay with them until arrangements could be made for
+another settlement. New Englanders are often criticized for their lack
+of hospitality, and in this first historic case of unexpected guests the
+larder was practically bare. Crops were sown, to be sure, but not yet
+green; the provisions in the store-house were gone; it was not the
+season for wild fowl; although there were bass in the outer harbor and
+cod in the bay there was neither tackle nor nets to take them. However,
+the seven men were admitted, and given shellfish like the rest--and very
+little beside.
+
+At this point the Pilgrims looked with less favorable eyes upon
+newcomers into the harbor, and when shortly after two ships appeared
+bringing sixty more men from Weston, consternation reigned. These
+emigrants were supposed to get their own food from their own vessels and
+merely lodge on shore, but they proved a lawless set and stole so much
+green corn that it seriously reduced the next year's supply. After six
+weeks, however, these uninvited guests took themselves off to
+Wessagusset (now Weymouth) leaving their sick behind, and only the
+briefest of "thank you's."
+
+The next caller was the Plantation. She anchored only long enough to
+offer some sorely needed provisions at such extortionate prices that the
+colonists could not buy them. Another slap in the face!
+
+Obviously, none of these visitors had proved very satisfactory. It had
+been entertaining under difficulties, and if the entertainers had hoped
+for the "angels unawares," they had been decidedly disappointed.
+Therefore it is easy to believe that they took fresh courage and sincere
+delight when, in July, 1623, the Anne and the Little James arrived--no
+strangers, for they brought with them additional stores, and best of
+all, good friends and close kinsfolk from the church at Leyden. Yes, the
+Pilgrims were delighted, but, alas, tradition has it that when they
+pressed forward in glad greeting to their old acquaintances, these
+latter started back, nonplussed--aghast! Like Mr. Boughton they had
+fondly pictured an ideal rustic community, in which the happy, carefree
+colonists reveled in all the beauty of picturesque and snowy collars and
+cuffs in Arden-like freedom. Instead they saw a row of rough log cabins
+and a group of work-worn, shabby men and women, men and women whose
+faces were lined with exposure, and whose backs were bent with toil, and
+who, for their most hospitable feast, had only a bit of shellfish and
+water to offer. Many of the newcomers promptly burst into tears, and
+begged to return to England immediately. Poor Pilgrims! Rebuffed--and so
+unflatteringly--with each arriving maritime guest, who can doubt that
+there was born in them at that moment the constitutional dislike for
+unexpected company which has characterized New England ever since?
+
+However, in a comparatively short time the colonists who had been
+brought over in the Anne and the Little James--those who stayed, for
+some did return at once--adjusted themselves to the new life. Many
+married--both Myles Standish and Governor Bradford found wives among
+them; and now the Plymouth Colony may be said to have fairly started.
+
+Just as a trail which is first a mere thread leading to some
+out-of-the-way cabin becomes a path and then a road, and in due time a
+wide thoroughfare, so the way across the Atlantic from Old England to
+New became more charted--more traveled. At first there was only one boat
+and one net for fishing. In five years there was a fleet of fifty
+fishing vessels. Ten years later we have note of ten foreign vessels in
+the harbor in a single week. And to-day, if the Pilgrim man and maid
+whom we joined at the beginning of our reminiscences could gaze out over
+the harbor, they would see it as full of masts as a cornfield is of
+stalks. Every kind of boat finds its way in and out; and not only
+pleasure craft: Plymouth Harbor is second only to Boston among the
+Massachusetts ports of entry, receiving annual foreign imports valued at
+over $7,000,000. Into the harbor, where once a single shallop was the
+only visible sign of man's dominion over the water, now sail great
+vessels from Yucatan and the Philippines, bringing sisal and manila for
+the largest cordage company in the whole country--a company with an
+employees' list of two thousand names, and an annual output of
+$10,000,000. Furthermore, the flats in the harbor are planted with
+clams, which (through the utilization of shells for poultry feeding, and
+by means of canning for bouillon) yield a profit of from five hundred to
+eight hundred dollars an acre.
+
+No, our Pilgrim man and maid would not recognize, in this Plymouth of
+factories and industries, the place where once stood the row of log
+cabins, with oiled-paper windows. And yet, after all, it is not the
+prosperous town of to-day, but the rude settlement of yesterday, which
+chiefly lives in the hearts of the American people. And it lives, not
+because of its economic importance, but because of its unique
+sentimental value. As John Fiske so admirably states: "Historically
+their enterprise [that of the Pilgrims at Plymouth] is interesting not
+so much for what it achieved as for what it suggested. Of itself the
+Plymouth Colony could hardly have become a wealthy and powerful state.
+Its growth was extremely slow. After ten years its numbers were but
+three hundred. In 1643, when the exodus had come to an end and the New
+England Confederacy was formed, the population of Plymouth was but three
+thousand. In an established community, indeed, such a rate of increase
+would be rapid, but was not sufficient to raise in New England a power
+which could overcome Indians and Dutchmen and Frenchmen and assert its
+will in opposition to the Crown. It is when we view the founding of
+Plymouth in relation to what came afterward, that it assumes the
+importance which belongs to the beginning of a new era."
+
+For this reason the permanent position of Plymouth in our history is
+forever assured. Old age, which may diminish the joys of youth,
+preserves inviolate memories which nothing can destroy. The place whose
+quiet fame is made is surer of the future than the one which is on the
+brink of fabulous glory. It is impossible to overestimate the
+significance of this spot.
+
+The Old Coast Road--the oldest in New England--began here and pushed its
+tortuous way up to Boston along the route we have so lightly followed.
+Inheritors of a nation which these pioneers strove manfully,
+worshipfully, to found, need we be ashamed of deep emotion as we stand
+here, on this shore, where they landed three hundred years ago?
+
+[Illustration]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] It is hoped that by the summer of 1921 a beautiful and dignified
+portico of granite will be raised as a final and permanent memorial over
+the rock, which will be moved for the last time--lowered to as near its
+original bed as possible. This work, which has been taken in charge by
+the National Society of Colonial Dames of America will be executed by
+McKim, Mead & White. The General Society of Mayflower Descendants are
+also working for the redemption of the first Pilgrim burial place on
+Cole's Hill. The Pilgrim Society is to assume the perpetual care of both
+memorial and lot.
+
+
+THE END
+
+_The Riverside Press_
+
+CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS
+
+U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD COAST ROAD ***
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+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Old Coast Road, by Agnes Rothery</title>
+<link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" />
+<style type="text/css">
+
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+
+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Old Coast Road, by Agnes Rothery</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Old Coast Road<br />
+From Boston to Plymouth</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Agnes Rothery</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Illustrator: Louis H. Ruyl</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: June 21, 2007 [eBook #21895]<br />
+[Most recently updated: July 27, 2021]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: David Garcia, Josephine Paolucci, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD COAST ROAD ***</div>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:45%;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="[Illustration]" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="notes">Transcriber's note:<br />
+<br />
+Minor typographical errors have been corrected.<br />
+<br />
+Footnotes have been moved to the end of each chapter.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1>THE OLD COAST ROAD</h1>
+
+<h2><i>From Boston to Plymouth</i></h2>
+
+<h4>BY</h4>
+
+<h3>AGNES EDWARDS</h3>
+
+<h4>WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY</h4>
+
+<h4>LOUIS H. RUYL</h4>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/image01.jpg" width="250" height="144" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h4>BOSTON AND NEW YORK </h4>
+
+<h4>HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY</h4>
+
+<h5><i>The Riverside Press Cambridge</i></h5>
+
+<h5>1920</h5>
+
+
+<h5>COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY AGNES EDWARDS PRATT</h5>
+
+<h5>ALL RIGHTS RESERVED</h5>
+
+<p><a name="frontispiece" id="frontispiece"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 395px;">
+<img src="images/image03.jpg" width="395" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE OLD COAST ROAD</h2>
+
+<h3><i>From Boston to Plymouth</i></h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Boston: A Foreword</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_ix">ix</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>I. <span class="smcap">Dorchester Heights and the Old Coast Road</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>II. <span class="smcap">Milton and the Blue Hills</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>III. <span class="smcap">Shipbuilding at Quincy</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_35">35</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>IV. <span class="smcap">The Romance of Weymouth</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_57">57</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>V. <span class="smcap">Ecclesiastical Hingham</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>VI. <span class="smcap">Cohasset Ledges and Marshes</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_92">92</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>VII. <span class="smcap">The Scituate Shore</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_111">111</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>VIII. <span class="smcap">Marshfield, the Home of Daniel Webster</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_123">123</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>IX.<span class="smcap"> Duxbury Homes</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_142">142</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>X. <span class="smcap">Kingston and its Manuscripts</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_157">157</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>XI. <span class="smcap">Plymouth</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_175">175</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Bit of Commercial Street in Weymouth</span></td><td align='right'><i><a href="#frontispiece">Frontispiece</a></i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The State House from Park Street</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_ix">ix</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Map of the South Shore</span></td><td align='right'><i>facing</i> <a href="#facing_pg1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Dorchester Bay</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Off for Plymouth by the Old Coast Road</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_18">18</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Great Blue Hill</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Milton Estates</span></td><td align='right'><i>facing</i> <a href="#facing_pg21">20</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Fore River Shipyard</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_35">35</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Adams Houses in Quincy</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_56">56</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Weymouth Water-Front</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_57">57</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Rattling along the Old Coast Road</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_74">74</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Lincoln House in Hingham</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Old Ship Meeting-House</span></td><td align='right'><i>facing</i> <a href="#facing_pg_77">76</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Interior of the New North Church in Hingham, with its Slave Galleries</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_91">91</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Cohasset Ledges and Minot's Ledge Light</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_92">92</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Modern Cohasset</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_110">110</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Drying Sea-Moss at Scituate Harbor</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_111">111</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Fourth Cliff, Scituate</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_122">122</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Webster House</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_123">123</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Marshfield Meadows</span></td><td align='right'><i>facing</i> <a href="#facing_pg137">136</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Duxbury Cottage</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_142">142</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Bay View to Duxbury Beach</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_156">156</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Standish Monument as seen from Kingston</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_157">157</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Old Records</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_174">174</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Memorial Building for the Town of Plymouth, designed by Little and Russell, Architects</span></td><td align='right'>175</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">View from Steps of Burial Hill, Plymouth, showing the Town Square, Leyden Street, the Church of the Pilgrimage, the First Church, and, in the Distance, the Pilgrim Monument in Provincetown</span></td><td align='right'><i>facing</i> <a href="#Page_192">192</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Clark's Island, Plymouth</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_203">203</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/image09.jpg" width="350" height="302" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+<h2>BOSTON: A FOREWORD</h2>
+
+<p>To love Boston or to laugh at Boston&mdash;it all depends on whether or not
+you are a Bostonian. Perhaps the happiest attitude&mdash;and the most
+intelligent&mdash;is tinged with both amusement and affection: amusement at
+the undeviating ceremonial of baked beans on Saturday night and fish
+balls on Sunday morning; at the Boston bag (not so ubiquitous now as
+formerly); at the indefatigable consumption<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span> of lectures; at the
+Bostonese pronunciation; affection for the honorable traditions, noble
+buildings, distinguished men and women. Boston is an old city&mdash;one must
+remember that it was settled almost three centuries ago&mdash;and old cities,
+like old people, become tenacious of their idiosyncrasies, admitting
+their inconsistencies and prejudices with complacency, wisely aware that
+age has bestowed on them a special value, which is automatically
+increased with the passage of time.</p>
+
+<p>To tell the story of an old city is like cutting down through the
+various layers of a fruity layer cake. When you turn the slice over, you
+see that every piece is a cross-section. So almost every locality and
+phase of this venerable metropolis could be studied, and really should
+be studied, according to its historical strata: Colonial, Provincial,
+Revolutionary, economic, and literary. All of these periods have piled
+up their associations one upon the other, and all of them must be
+somewhat understood if one would sincerely comprehend what has aptly
+been called not a city, but a "state of mind."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is as impossible for the casual sojourner to grasp the significance
+of the multifarious historical and literary events which have transpired
+here as for a few pages to outline them. Wherever one stands in Boston
+suggests the church of San Clemente in Rome, where, you remember, there
+are three churches built one upon the other. However, those who would
+take the lovely journey from Boston to Plymouth needs must make some
+survey, no matter how superficial, of their starting-place. And perhaps
+the best spot from which to begin is the Common.</p>
+
+<p>This pleasantly rolling expanse, which was set aside as long ago as
+1640, with the decree that "there shall be no land granted either for
+houseplott or garden out of y^e open land or common field," has been
+unbrokenly maintained ever since, and as far as acreage goes (it
+approximates fifty acres) could still fulfill its original use of
+pasturing cows, a practice which was continued until 1830. It was here
+that John Hancock's cattle grazed&mdash;he who lived in such magnificence on
+the hill, and in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span> whose side yard the State House was built&mdash;and once,
+when preparations for an official banquet were halted by shortage of
+milk, tradition has it that he ordered his servants to hasten out on the
+Common and milk every cow there, regardless of ownership. Tradition also
+tells us that the little boy Ralph Waldo Emerson tended his mother's cow
+here; and finally both traditions and existing law declare that yonder
+one-story building opening upon Mount Vernon Street, and possessing an
+oddly wide door, must forever keep that door of sufficient width to let
+the cows pass through to the Common.</p>
+
+<p>Let us stand upon the steps of the State House and look out over the
+Common. To our right, near the intersection of Boylston and Tremont
+Streets, lies the half-forgotten, almost obliterated Central Burying
+Ground, the final resting-place of Gilbert Stuart, the famous American
+painter. At the left points the spire of Park Street Church, notable not
+for its age, for it is only a little over a century old, but for its
+charming beauty, and by the fact that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span> William Lloyd Garrison delivered
+his first address here, and here "America" was sung in public for the
+first time. It was the windiness of this corner which was responsible
+for Tom Appleton's suggestion (he was the brother-in-law of Longfellow)
+that a shorn lamb be tethered here.</p>
+
+<p>The graceful spire of Park Street Church serves not only as a landmark,
+but is also a most fitting terminal to a street of many associations. It
+is on Park Street that the publishing house of Houghton, Mifflin &amp; Co.
+(now Houghton Mifflin Company) has had its offices for forty years, and
+the bookstores and the antique shops tucked quaintly down a few steps
+below the level of the sidewalk have much of the flavor of a bit of
+London.</p>
+
+<p>Still standing on the State House steps, facing the Common, you are also
+facing what has been called the noblest monument in Boston and the most
+successfully placed one in America. It is Saint-Gaudens's bronze relief
+of Colonel Robert G. Shaw commanding his colored regiment, and if you
+see no other sculpture<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[Pg xiv]</a></span> in a city which has its full quota you must see
+this memorial, spirited in execution, spiritual in its conception of a
+mighty moment.</p>
+
+<p>If we had time to linger we could not do better than to follow Beacon
+Street to the left, pausing at the Athen&aelig;um, a library of such dignity
+and beauty that one instinctively, and properly, thinks of it as an
+institution rather than a mere building. To enjoy the Athen&aelig;um one must
+be a "proprietor" and own a "share," which entitles one not only to the
+use of the scholarly volumes in scholarly seclusion, but also in the
+afternoon to entrance to an alcove where tea is served for three
+pennies. Perhaps here, as well as any other place, you may see a
+characteristic assortment of what are fondly called "Boston types."
+There is the professor from Cambridge, a gentleman with a pointed beard
+and a noticeably cultivated enunciation; one from Wellesley&mdash;this, a
+lady&mdash;with that keen and paradoxically impractical expression which
+marks pure intellectuality; an alert matron, plainly, almost shabbily,
+dressed (aristocratic Boston still scorns sartorial smartness);<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[Pg xv]</a></span> a very
+well-bred young girl with bone spectacles; a student, shabby, like the
+Back Bay matron, but for another reason; a writer; a business man whose
+hobby is Washingtonia. These, all of them, you may enjoy along with your
+cup of tea for three cents, if&mdash;and here is the crux&mdash;you can only be
+admitted in the first place. And if you are admitted, do not fail to
+look out of the rear windows upon the ancient Granary Burying Ground,
+where rest the ashes of Hancock, Sewall, Faneuil, Samuel Adams, Otis,
+Revere, and many more notables. If you have a penchant for graveyards,
+this one, entered from Tremont Street, is more than worthy of further
+study.</p>
+
+<p>This is one of the many things we could enjoyably do if we had time, but
+whether we have time or not we must pay our respects to the State House
+(one does not call it the Capitol in Boston, as in other cities), the
+prominence of whose golden dome is not unsuggestive, to those who recall
+it, of Saint Botolph's beacon tower in Boston, England, for which this
+city was named. The State House is a distinctively<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi">[Pg xvi]</a></span> American building,
+and Bulfinch, the great American architect, did an excellent thing when
+he designed it. The dome was originally covered with plates of copper
+rolled by no other than that expert silversmith and robust patriot, Paul
+Revere&mdash;he whose midnight ride has been recited by so many generations
+of school-children, and whose exquisite flagons, cups, ladles, and sugar
+tongs not only compared with the best Continental work of that period,
+but have set a name and standard for American craftsmanship ever since.</p>
+
+<p>If you should walk up and down the chessboard of Beacon Hill&mdash;taking the
+knight's move occasionally across the narrow cross-streets&mdash;you could
+not help treading the very squares which were familiar to the feet of
+that generation of authors which has permanently stamped American
+literature. At 55 Beacon Street, down near the foot of the hill and
+facing the Common, still stands the handsome, swell-front, buff-brick
+house where Prescott, the historian, lived. On Mount Vernon Street<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xvii" id="Page_xvii">[Pg xvii]</a></span>
+(which runs parallel to Beacon, and which, with its dignified beauty,
+won the approval of that connoisseur of beautiful streets&mdash;Henry James)
+one can pick out successively the numbers 59, 76, 83, 84, the first and
+last being homes of Thomas Bailey Aldrich, and the other two
+distinguished by the residence of William Ellery Channing and Margaret
+Deland. Pinckney Street runs parallel with Mount Vernon, and the small,
+narrow house at number 20 was one of the homes of the Alcott family. It
+seems delightfully fitting that Louisburg Square&mdash;that very exclusive
+and very English spot which probably retains more of the quaint
+atmosphere and customs of an aristocratic past than any other single
+area in the city&mdash;should have been the home of the well-beloved William
+Dean Howells. One also likes to recall that Jenny Lind was married at
+number 20. Chestnut Street&mdash;which after a period of social obscurity is
+again coming into its own&mdash;possesses Julia Ward Howe's house at number
+13, that of Motley the historian at 16, and of Parkman at 50. In this
+hasty map we have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xviii" id="Page_xviii">[Pg xviii]</a></span> gone up and down the hill, but the cross-street,
+Charles, although not so attractive, is nevertheless as rich in literary
+associations as any in Boston. Here lived, for a short time, at 164,
+Oliver Wendell Holmes, and at 131&mdash;also for a short time&mdash;Thomas Bailey
+Aldrich. It is, however, at 148, that we should longest pause. This, for
+many rich years, was the home of James T. Fields, that delightful man of
+letters who was the friend of many men of letters; he who entertained
+Dickens and Thackeray, and practically every foreign writer of note who
+visited this country; he who encouraged Hawthorne to the completion of
+the "Scarlet Letter," and he, who, as an appreciative critic, publisher,
+and editor, probably did more to elevate, inspire, and sustain the
+general literary tone of the city than any other single person. In these
+stirring days facile American genius springs up, like brush fires, from
+coast to coast. Novels pour in from the West, the Middle West, the
+South. To superficial outsiders it may seem as if Boston might be
+hard-pressed to keep her laurels green, but Boston<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xix" id="Page_xix">[Pg xix]</a></span> herself has no
+fears. Her present may not shine with so unique a brilliance as her
+past, but her past gains in luster with each succeeding year. Nothing
+can ever take from Boston her high literary prestige.</p>
+
+<p>While we are still on Beacon Hill we can look out, not only upon the
+past, but upon the future. Those white domes and pillars gleaming like
+Greek temples across the blue Charles, are the new buildings of the
+Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and surely Greek temples were
+never lovelier, nor dedicated to more earnest pursuit of things not
+mundane. Quite as beautiful and quite as Grecian as the Technology
+buildings is the noble marble group of the School of Medicine of Harvard
+University, out by the Fenlands&mdash;that section of the city which is
+rapidly becoming a students' quarter, with its Simmons College, the New
+England Conservatory of Music, art schools, gymnasiums, private and
+technical schools of all descriptions, and its body of over 12,000
+students. Harvard is, of course, across the river in Cambridge, and
+preparatory<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xx" id="Page_xx">[Pg xx]</a></span> schools and colleges dot the suburbs in every direction,
+upholding the cultural traditions of a city which has proved itself
+peculiarly fitted to educational interests.</p>
+
+<p>All this time we have, like <i>bona-fide</i> Bostonians, stayed on Beacon
+Hill, and merely looked out at the rest of the city. And perhaps this is
+as typical a thing as we could have done. Beacon Hill was the center of
+original Boston, when the Back Bay was merely a marsh, and long after
+the marsh was filled in and streets were laid out and handsome
+residences lined them, Beacon Hill looked down scornfully at the new
+section and murmured that it was built upon the discarded hoopskirts and
+umbrellas of the true Bostonians. Even when almost every one was crowded
+off the Hill and the Back Bay became the more aristocratic section of
+the two, there were still enough of the original inhabitants left to
+scorn these upstart social pretensions. And now Beacon Hill is again
+coming back into her own: the fine old houses are being carefully,
+almost worshipfully restored, probably never again to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxi" id="Page_xxi">[Pg xxi]</a></span> lose their
+rightful place in the general life of the city.</p>
+
+<p>But if Beacon Hill was conservative in regard to the Back Bay, that
+district, in its turn, showed an equal unprogressiveness in regard to
+the Esplanade. To the stranger in Boston, delighting in that magnificent
+walk along the Charles River Embankment, with the arching spans of the
+Cambridge and Harvard bridges on one side, and the homes of wealth and
+mellow refinement on the other&mdash;a walk which for invigorating beauty
+compares with any in the cities of men&mdash;it seems incredible that when
+this promenade was laid out a few years ago, the householders along the
+water's edge absolutely refused to turn their front windows away from
+Beacon Street. Furthermore, they ignored the fact that their back yards
+and back windows presented an unbecoming face to such an incomparably
+lovely promenade, and the inevitable household rearrangement&mdash;by which
+the drawing-rooms were placed in the rear&mdash;was literally years in
+process of achievement. But such conservatism is one of Boston's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxii" id="Page_xxii">[Pg xxii]</a></span>
+idiosyncrasies, which we must accept like the wind and the flat A.</p>
+
+<p>Present-day Bostonians are proud&mdash;and properly so&mdash;of their Copley
+Square, with its Public Library, rich with the mural paintings of Puvis
+de Chavannes, with Abbey's "Quest of the Holy Grail," and Sargent's
+"Frieze of the Prophets"; with its well-loved Trinity Church and with
+much excellent sculpture by Bela Pratt. Copley Square is the cultural
+center of modern Boston. The famous Lowell lectures&mdash;established about
+seventy-five years ago as free gifts to the people&mdash;are enthusiastically
+attended by audiences as Bostonese as one could hope to congregate; and
+in all sorts of queer nests in this vicinity are Theosophical
+reading-rooms, small halls where Buddhism is studied or New Thought
+taught, and half a hundred very new or very old philosophies, religions,
+fads, fashions, reforms, and isms find shelter. It is easy to linger in
+Copley Square: indeed, hundreds and hundreds of men and
+women&mdash;principally women&mdash;come from all over the United States for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxiii" id="Page_xxiii">[Pg xxiii]</a></span>
+sole purpose of spending a few months or a season in this very place,
+enjoying the lectures, concerts, and art exhibitions which are so easily
+and freely accessible. But in this bird's-eye flight across the
+historical and geographical map of a city that tempts one to many
+pleasant delays, we must hover for a brief moment over the South and the
+North Ends.</p>
+
+<p>Skipping back, then, almost three centuries, but not traveling far as
+distance goes, the stranger in Boston cannot do better than to find his
+way from Copley Square to the Old South Church on Washington
+Street&mdash;that venerable building whose desecration by the British troops
+in 1775 the citizens found it so hard ever to forgive. It was here that
+Benjamin Franklin was baptized in 1706; here that Joseph Warren made a
+dramatic entry to the pulpit by way of the window in order to denounce
+the British soldiers; and here that momentous meetings were held in the
+heaving days before the Revolution. The Old South Church Burying Ground
+is now called the King's Chapel Burying Ground, and King's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxiv" id="Page_xxiv">[Pg xxiv]</a></span> Chapel
+itself&mdash;a quaint, dusky building, suggestive of a London chapel&mdash;is only
+a few blocks away. Across its doorsill have not only stepped the Royal
+Governors of pre-Revolutionary days, but Washington, General Gage, the
+indestructibly romantic figures of Sir Harry Frankland and Agnes
+Surriage; the funeral processions of General Warren and Charles Sumner.
+The organ, which came from England in 1756, is said to have been
+selected by Handel at the request of King George, and along the walls of
+the original King's Chapel were hung the escutcheons of the Kings of
+England and of the Royal Governors.</p>
+
+<p>The Old State House is in this vicinity and is worthy&mdash;as are, indeed,
+both the Old South Church and King's Chapel&mdash;of careful architectural
+study and enjoyment. There are portraits, pictures, relics, and rooms
+within, and without the beautifully quaint lines and truly lovely
+details of the fa&ccedil;ade infuse a perpetual charm into the atmosphere of
+the city. It was directly in front of this building that the Boston
+Massacre took place in 1770, and from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxv" id="Page_xxv">[Pg xxv]</a></span> this second-story balcony that
+the repeal of the Stamp Act was read, and ten years later the full text
+of the Declaration of Independence.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the next most interesting building in this section of old Boston
+is Faneuil Hall, the "Cradle of Liberty" whose dignified, old-fashioned
+proportions were not lost&mdash;thanks to Bulfinch&mdash;when it was enlarged. A
+gift of a public-spirited citizen, this building has served in a double
+capacity for a hundred and seventy-seven years, having public
+market-stalls below and a large hall above&mdash;a hall which is never
+rented, but used freely by the people whenever they wish to discuss
+public affairs. It would be impossible to enumerate the notable speakers
+and meetings which have rendered this hall famous, from General Gage
+down to Daniel Webster, Theodore Roosevelt, and Marshal Joffre.</p>
+
+<p>If you are fond of water sights and smells you can step from Faneuil
+Hall down to a region permeated with the flavor of salt and the sound of
+shipping, a region of both ancient<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxvi" id="Page_xxvi">[Pg xxvi]</a></span> tradition and present activity. Here
+is India Wharf, its seven-story yellow-brick building once so
+tremendously significant of Boston's shipping prosperity; Long Wharf, so
+named because when it was built it was the longest in the country, and
+bore a battery at its end; Central Wharf, with its row of venerable
+stone warehouses; T Wharf, immensely picturesque with its congestion of
+craft of all descriptions; Commercial Wharf, where full-rigged sailing
+vessels which traded with China and India and the Cape of Good Hope were
+wont to anchor a hundred years ago. All this region is crammed with the
+paraphernalia of a typical water-front: curious little shops where
+sailors' supplies are sold; airy lofts where sails are cut and stitched
+and repaired; fish stores of all descriptions; sailors' haunts, awaiting
+the pen of an American Thomas Burke. The old Custom House where
+Hawthorne unwillingly plodded through his enforced routine is here, and
+near it the new Custom House rears its tower four hundred and
+ninety-eight feet above the sidewalk, a beacon from both land and sea.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxvii" id="Page_xxvii">[Pg xxvii]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The North End of Boston has not fared as well as the South End. The sons
+of Abraham and immigrants from Italy have appropriated the streets,
+dwellings, churches, and shops of the entire region, and even Christ
+Church (the famous Old North Church) has a Chiesa Italiana on its
+grounds. There are many touches to stir the memory in this Old North
+Church. The chime of eight bells na&iuml;vely stating, "We are the first ring
+of bells cast for the British Empire in North America"; the pew with the
+inscription that is set apart for the use of the "Gentlemen of Bay of
+Honduras"&mdash;visiting merchants who contributed the spire to the church in
+1740; vaults beneath the church, forbidden now to visitors, where lie
+the bones of many Revolutionary heroes; a unique collection of
+vellum-covered books, and a few highly precious pieces of ancient
+furniture. The most conspicuous item about the church, of course, is
+that from its tower were hung the signal lanterns of Paul Revere,
+destined to shine imperishably down the ever-lengthening aisles of
+American history.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxviii" id="Page_xxviii">[Pg xxviii]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Before we press on to Bunker Hill&mdash;for that is our final destination&mdash;we
+should cast a glance at Copp's Hill Burying Ground, that hillside refuge
+where one can turn either back to the annals of the past or look out
+over the roof-tops and narrow streets to the present and the future. If
+you chose the latter, you can see easily Boston Harbor and Charlestown
+Navy Yard&mdash;that navy yard which has outstripped even its spectacular
+traditions by its stirring achievements in the Great War. "Old
+Ironsides" will lie here forever in the well-earned serenity of a secure
+old age, and it is probable that another visitor, the Kronprinzessin
+Cecilie, although lost under the name of the Mount Vernon and a coat of
+gray paint, will be long preserved in maritime memory.</p>
+
+<p>The plain shaft of Bunker Hill Monument, standing to mark the spot where
+the Americans lost a battle that was, in reality, a victory, is like a
+blank mirror, reflecting only that which one presents to it. According
+to your historical knowledge and your emotional grasp Bunker Hill
+Monument is significant.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxix" id="Page_xxix">[Pg xxix]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Skimming thus over the many-storied city, in a sort of literary
+airplane, it has been possible to point out only a few of the most
+conspicuous places and towers. The Common lies like a tiny pocket
+handkerchief of path-marked green at the foot of crowded Beacon Hill;
+the white Esplanade curves beside the blue Charles; the Back Bay is only
+a checkerboard of streets, alphabetically arranged; Copley Square is
+hardly distinguishable. The spires of the Old South Church, King's
+Chapel, the Old State House, and Faneuil Hall punctuate the South End;
+the North Church, the North End. The new Custom House Tower and Bunker
+Hill Monument seem hardly more than the minarets of a child's toy
+village.</p>
+
+<p>The writer, as a pilot over this particular city, alights and resigns,
+commending for more detailed study, and for delightful guidance, Robert
+Shackleton's "Book of Boston." Let us now leave the city and set out in
+a more leisurely fashion on our way to Plymouth.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE OLD COAST ROAD</h2>
+
+<h3><i>From Boston to Plymouth</i></h3>
+<p><a name="facing_pg1" id="facing_pg1"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 352px;">
+<img src="images/image032.jpg" width="352" height="500" alt="The South Shore of MASSACHUSETTS BAY" title="" />
+<span class="caption">The South Shore of MASSACHUSETTS BAY</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE OLD COAST ROAD</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/image033.jpg" width="350" height="161" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3>DORCHESTER HEIGHTS AND THE OLD COAST ROAD</h3>
+
+<p>The very earliest of the great roads in New England was the Old Coast
+Road, connecting Boston with Plymouth&mdash;capitals of separate colonies. Do
+we, casually accepting the fruit of three hundred years of toil on this
+continent&mdash;do we, accustomed to smooth highways and swift and easy
+transportation, realize the significance of such a road?</p>
+
+<p>A road is the symbol of the civilization which has produced it. The main
+passageway<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> from the shore of the Yellow Sea to the capital of Korea,
+although it has been pressed for centuries immemorial by myriads of
+human feet, has never been more than a bridle path. On the other hand,
+wherever the great Roman Empire stepped, it engineered mighty
+thoroughfares which are a marvel to this day. A road is the thread on
+which the beads of history are strung; the beads of peace as well as
+those of war. Thrilling as is the progress of aerial navigation, with
+its infinite possibilities of human intercourse, yet surely, when the
+entire history of man is unrolled, the moment of the conception of
+building a wide and permanent road, instead of merely using a trail,
+will rank as equally dramatic. The first stone laid by the first Roman
+(they to whom the idea of road-building was original) will be recognized
+as significant as the quiver of the wings of the first airplane.</p>
+
+<p>Let us follow the old road from Boston to Plymouth: follow it, not with
+undue exactitude, and rather too hastily, as is the modern way, but
+comfortably, as is also the modern<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> way, picking up what bits of quaint
+lore and half-forgotten history we most easily may.</p>
+
+<p>I think that as we start down this historic highway, we shall
+encounter&mdash;if our mood be the proper one in which to undertake such a
+journey&mdash;a curious procession coming down the years to meet us. We shall
+not call them ghosts, for they are not phantoms severed from earth, but,
+rather, the permanent possessors of the highway which they helped
+create.</p>
+
+<p>We shall meet the Indian first, running lightly on straight, moccasined
+feet, along the trail from which he has burned, from time to time, the
+underbrush. He does not go by land when he can go by water, but in this
+case there are both land and water to meet, for many are the streams,
+and they are unbridged as yet. With rhythmic lope, more beautiful than
+the stride of any civilized limbs, and with a sure divination of the
+best route, he chooses the trail which will ultimately be the highway of
+the vast army of pale-faces. Speed on, O solitary Indian&mdash;to vanish down
+the narrow trail of your treading as you are destined, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> time, to
+vanish forever from the vision of New England!... Behind the red runner
+plod two stern-faced Pilgrims, pushing their way up from Plymouth toward
+the newer settlement at Massachusetts Bay. They come slowly and
+laboriously on foot, their guns cocked, eyes and ears alert, wading the
+streams without complaint or comment. They keep together, for no one is
+allowed to travel over this Old Coast Road single, "nor without some
+arms, though two or three together." The path they take follows almost
+exactly the trail of the Indian, seeking the fords, avoiding the
+morasses, clinging to the uplands, and skirting the rough, wooded
+heights.... After them&mdash;almost a decade after&mdash;we see a man on
+horseback, with his wife on a pillion behind him. They carry their own
+provisions and those for the beast, now and then dismounting to lead the
+horse over difficult ground, and now and then blazing a tree to help
+them in their return journey&mdash;mute testimony to the cruder senses of the
+white man to whom woodcraft never becomes instinctive.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> The fact that
+this couple possesses a horse presages great changes in New England.
+Ferries will be established; tolls levied, bridges thrown across the
+streams which now the horses swim, or cross by having their front feet
+in one canoe ferry and their hind feet in another&mdash;the canoes being
+lashed together. As yet we see no vehicle of any kind, except an
+occasional sedan chair. (The first one of these of which we have
+knowledge was presented to Governor Winthrop as a portion of a capture
+from a Spanish galleon.) However, these are not common. In 1631 Governor
+Endicott of Salem wrote that he could not get to Boston to visit
+Governor Winthrop as he was not well enough to wade the streams. The
+next year we read of Governor Winthrop surmounting the difficulty when
+he goes to visit Governor Bradford, by being carried on the backs of
+Indians across the fords. (It took him two days to make the journey.)</p>
+
+<p>It is not strange that we see no wheeled vehicles. In 1672 there were
+only six stage-coaches in the whole of Great Britain, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> they were the
+occasion of a pamphlet protesting that they encouraged too much travel!
+At this time Boston had one private coach. Although one swallow may not
+make a summer, one stage-coach marks the beginning of a new era. The age
+of walking and horseback riding approaches its end; gates and bars
+disappear, the crooked farm lanes are gradually straightened; and in
+come a motley procession of chaises, sulkies, and two-wheeled
+carts&mdash;two-wheeled carts, not four. There are sleds and sleighs for
+winter, but the four-wheeled wagon was little used in New England until
+the turn of the century. And then they were emphatically objected to
+because of the wear and tear on the roads! In 1669 Boston enacted that
+all carts "within y^e necke of Boston shall be and goe without shod
+wheels." This provision is entirely comprehensible, when we remember
+that there was no idea of systematic road repair. No tax was imposed for
+keeping the roads in order, and at certain seasons of the year every
+able-bodied man labored on the highways, bringing his own oxen, cart,
+and tools.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But as the Old Coast Road, which was made a public highway in 1639,
+becomes a genuine turnpike&mdash;so chartered in 1803&mdash;the good old coaching
+days are ushered in with the sound of a horn, and handsome equipages
+with well-groomed, well-harnessed horses ply swiftly back and forth.
+Genial inns, with swinging pictorial signboards (for many a traveler
+cannot read), spring up along the way, and the post is installed.</p>
+
+<p>But even with fair roads and regular coaching service, New England,
+separated by her fixed topographical outlines, remains provincial. It is
+not until the coming of the railroad, in the middle of the nineteenth
+century, that the hills are overcome, and she ceases to be an
+exclusively coastwise community and becomes an integral factor in the
+economic development of the whole United States.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, then, from a thin thread of a trail barely wide enough for one
+moccasined foot to step before the other, to a broad, leveled
+thoroughfare, so wide that three or even four automobiles may ride
+abreast, and so clean<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> that at the end of an all-day's journey one's
+face is hardly dusty, does the history of the Old Coast Road unroll
+itself. We who contemplate making the trip ensconced in the upholstered
+comfort of a machine rolling on air-filled tires, will, perhaps, be less
+petulant of some strip of roughened macadam, less bewildered by the
+characteristic windings, if we recall something of the first
+back-breaking cart that&mdash;not so very long ago&mdash;crashed over the stony
+road, and toilsomely worked its way from devious lane to lane.</p>
+
+<p>Before we start down the Old Coast Road it may be enlightening to get a
+bird's-eye glimpse of it actually as we have historically, and for such
+a glimpse there is no better place than on the topmost balcony of the
+Soldier's Monument on Dorchester Heights. The trip to Dorchester
+Heights, in South Boston, is, through whatever environs one approaches
+it, far from attractive. This section of the city, endowed with
+extraordinary natural beauty and advantage of both land and water, and
+irrevocably and brilliantly graven upon the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> annals of American history,
+has been allowed to lose its ancient prestige and to sink low indeed in
+the social scale.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless it is to Dorchester Heights that we, as travelers down the
+Old Coast Road, and as skimmers over the quickly turning pages of our
+early New England history, must go, and having once arrived at that
+lovely green eminence, whitely pointed with a marble shaft of quite
+unusual excellence, we must grieve once more that this truly glorious
+spot, with its unparalleled view far down the many-islanded harbor to
+the east and far over the famous city to the west, is not more
+frequented, more enjoyed, more honored.</p>
+
+<p>If you find your way up the hill, into the monument, and up the stairs
+out to the balcony, probably you will encounter no other tourist. Only
+when you reach the top and emerge into the blue upper air you will meet
+those friendly winged visitors who frequent all spires&mdash;Saint Mark's in
+Venice or the Soldier's Monument in South Boston&mdash;the pigeons! Yes, the
+pigeons have discovered the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> charm of this lofty loveliness, and
+whenever the caretaker turns away his vigilant eye, they haste to build
+their nests on balcony or stair. They alone of Boston's residents enjoy
+to the full that of which too many Bostonians ignore the existence. Will
+you read the inscriptions first and recall the events which have raised
+this special hill to an historic eminence equal to its topographical
+one? Or will you look out first, on all sides and see the harbor, the
+city and country as it is to-day? Both surveys will be brief; perhaps we
+will begin with the latter.</p>
+
+<p>Before us, to the wide east, lies Boston Harbor, decked with islands so
+various, so fascinating in contour and legend, that more than one volume
+has been written about them and not yet an adequate one. From the point
+of view of history these islands are pulsating with life. From Castle
+Island (on the left) which was selected as far back as 1634 to be a
+bulwark of the port, and which, with its Fort Independence, was where
+many of our Civil War soldiers received their training, to the outline
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> Squantum (on the right), where in October, 1917, there lay a marsh,
+and where, ten months later, the destroyer Delphy was launched from a
+shipyard that was a miracle of modern engineering&mdash;every mile of visible
+land is instinct with war-time associations.</p>
+
+<p>But history is more than battles and forts and the paraphernalia of war;
+history is economic development as well. And from this same balcony we
+can pick out Thompson's, Rainsford, and Deer Island, set aside for huge
+corrective institutions&mdash;a graphic example of a nation's progress in its
+treatment of the wayward and the weak.</p>
+
+<p>But if history is more than wars, it is also more than institutions. If
+it is the record of man's daily life, the pleasures he works for, then
+again we are standing in an unparalleled spot to look down upon its
+present-day manifestations. From City Point with its Aquarium, from the
+Marine Park with its long pleasure pier, to Nantasket with its flawless
+beach, this is the summer playground of unnumbered hosts. Boaters,
+bathers, picnickers&mdash;all find<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> their way here, where not only the cool
+breezes sweep their city-heated cheeks, but the forever bewitching
+passage of vessels in and out, furnishes endless entertainment. They
+know well, these laughing pleasure-seekers, crowding the piers and boats
+and wharves and beaches, where to come for refreshment, and now and
+then, in the history of the harbor, a solitary individual has taken
+advantage of the romantic charm which is the unique heritage of every
+island, and has built his home and lived, at least some portion of his
+days, upon one.</p>
+
+<p>Apple Island, that most perfectly shaped little fleck of land of ten
+acres, was the home of a Mr. March, an Englishman who settled there with
+his family, and lived there happily until his death, being buried at
+last upon its western slope. The fine old elms which adorned it are gone
+now, as have the fine old associations. No one followed Mr. March's
+example, and Apple Island is now merely another excursion point.</p>
+
+<p>On Calf Island, another ten-acre fragment, one of America's popular
+actresses, Julia Arthur,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> has her home. Thus, here and there, one
+stumbles upon individuals or small communities who have chosen to live
+out in the harbor. But one cannot help wondering how such beauty spots
+have escaped being more loved and lived upon by men and women who
+recognize the romantic lure which only an island can possess.</p>
+
+<p>Of course the advantage of these positions has been utilized, if not for
+dwellings. Government buildings, warehouses, and the great sewage plant
+all find convenient foothold here. The excursionists have ferreted out
+whatever beaches and groves there may be. One need not regret that the
+harbor is not appreciated, but only that it has not been developed along
+&aelig;sthetic as well as useful lines.</p>
+
+<p>We have been looking at the east, which is the harbor view. If we look
+to the west we see the city of Boston: the white tower of the Custom
+House; the gold dome of the State House; the sheds of the great South
+Station; the blue line of the Charles River. Here is the place to come
+if one would see a living map of the city<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> and its environs. Standing
+here we realize how truly Boston is a maritime city, and standing here
+we also realize how it is that Dorchester Heights won its fame.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the winter of 1776, when the British, under Lord Howe, were
+occupying Boston, and had fortified every place which seemed important.
+By some curious oversight&mdash;which seems incredible to us as we actually
+stand upon the top of this conspicuous hill&mdash;they forgot this spot.</p>
+
+<p>When Washington saw what they had not seen&mdash;how this unique position
+commanded both the city and the harbor&mdash;he knew that his opportunity had
+come. He had no adequate cannon or siege guns, and the story of how
+Henry Knox&mdash;afterward General Knox&mdash;obtained these from Ticonderoga and
+brought them on, in the face of terrific difficulties of weather and
+terrain, is one that for bravery and brains will never fail to thrill.
+On the night of March 4, the Americans, keeping up a cannonading to
+throw the British off guard, and to cover up the sound of the moving,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
+managed to get two thousand Continental troops and four hundred carts of
+fascines and intrenching tools up on the hill. That same night, with the
+aid of the moonlight, they threw up two redoubts&mdash;performing a task,
+which, as Lord Howe exclaimed in dismay the following morning, was "more
+in one night than my whole army could have done in a month."</p>
+
+<p>The occupation of the heights was a magnificent <i>coup</i>. The moment the
+British saw what had been done, they realized that they had lost the
+fight. However, Lord Percy hurried to make an attack, but the weather
+made it impossible, and by the time the weather cleared the Americans
+were so strongly intrenched that it was futile to attack. Washington,
+although having been granted permission by Congress to attack Boston,
+wished to save the loyal city if possible. Therefore, he and Howe made
+an agreement by which Howe was to evacuate and Washington was to refrain
+from using his guns. After almost two weeks of preparation for
+departure, on March 17 the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> British fleet, as the gilded letters on the
+white marble panel tell us, in the words of Charles W. Eliot:</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+Carrying 11,000 effective men<br />
+And 1000 refugees<br />
+Dropped down to Nantasket Roads<br />
+And thenceforth<br />
+Boston was free<br />
+A strong British force<br />
+Had been expelled<br />
+From one of the United American colonies
+</p>
+
+<p>The white marble panel, with its gold letters and the other inscriptions
+on the hill, tell the whole story to whoever cares to read, only
+omitting to mention that the thousand self-condemned Boston refugees who
+sailed away with the British fleet were bound for Halifax, and that that
+was the beginning of the opprobrious term: "Go to Halifax."</p>
+
+<p>That the battle was won without bloodshed in no way minimizes the
+verdict of history that "no single event had a greater general effect on
+the course of the war than the expulsion of the British from the New
+England capital." And surely this same verdict justifies the perpetual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
+distinction of this unique and beautiful hill.</p>
+
+<p>This, then, is the story of Dorchester Heights&mdash;a story whose glory will
+wax rather than wane in the years, and centuries, to come. Let us be
+glad that out of the reek of the modern city congestion this green hill
+has been preserved and this white marble monument erected. Perhaps you
+see it now with different, more sympathetic eyes than when you first
+looked out from the balcony platform. Before us lies the water with its
+multifarious islands, bays, promontories, and coves, some of which we
+shall now explore. Behind us lies the city which we shall now leave. The
+Old Coast Road&mdash;the oldest in New England&mdash;winds from Boston to
+Plymouth, along yonder southern horizon. More history than one person
+can pleasantly relate, or one can comfortably listen to, lies packed
+along this ancient turnpike: incidents closer set than the tombs along
+the Appian Way. We will not try to hear them all. Neither will we follow
+the original road too closely, for we seek the beautiful pleasure drive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>
+of to-day more than the historic highway of long ago.</p>
+
+<p>Boston was made the capital of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1632.
+Plymouth was a capital a decade before. It is to Plymouth that we now
+set out.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/image050.jpg" width="250" height="111" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/image51.jpg" width="350" height="129" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+<h2><a name="Chapter_II" id="Chapter_II"></a>Chapter II</h2>
+
+<h3>MILTON AND THE BLUE HILLS</h3>
+
+<p>Milton&mdash;a town of dignity and distinction! A town of enterprise and
+character! Ever since the first water-power mill in this country; the
+first powder mill in this country; the first chocolate mill in this
+country, and thus through a whole line of "first" things&mdash;the first
+violoncello, the first pianoforte, the first artificial spring leg, and
+the first railroad to see the light of day saw it in this grand old
+town&mdash;the name of Milton has been synonymous with initiative and men and
+women of character.</p>
+
+<p>Few people to-day think of Milton in terms of industrial repute, but,
+rather, as a place of estates, too aristocratic to be fashionable, of
+historic houses, and of charming walks and drives<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> and views. Many of
+the old families who have given the town its prestige still live in
+their ancestral manors, and many of the families who have moved there in
+recent years are of such sort as will heighten the fame of the famous
+town. As the stranger passes through Milton he is captivated by glimpses
+of ancient homesteads, settling behind their white Colonial fences
+topped with white Colonial urns, half hidden by their antique trees with
+an air of comfortable ease; of new houses, elegant and yet informal; of
+cottages with low roofs; of well-bred children playing on the wide,
+green lawns under the supervision of white-uniformed nurses; of old
+hedges, old walls, old trees; new roads, old drives, new gardens, and
+old gardens&mdash;everything well placed, well tended, everything presenting
+that indescribable atmosphere of well-established prosperity that scorns
+show; of breeding that neither parades nor conceals its quality.
+Yes&mdash;this is Milton; this is modern Milton. Boston society receives some
+of its most prominent contributions from this patrician source. But
+modern Milton is something more than this, as old Milton was something
+more than this.</p>
+<p><a name="facing_pg21" id="facing_pg21"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 432px;">
+<img src="images/image53.jpg" width="432" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>For Milton, from this day of its birth, and countless centuries before
+its birth as a town, has lived under the lofty domination of the Blue
+Hills, that range of diaphanous and yet intense blue, that swims forever
+against the sky, that marches forever around the horizon. The rounded
+summits of the Blue Hills, to which the eye is irresistibly attracted
+before entering the town which principally claims them, are the
+worn-down stumps of ancient mountains, and although so leveled by the
+process of the ages, they are still the highest land near the coast from
+Maine to Mexico. These eighteen or twenty skyey crests form the southern
+boundary of the so-called Boston Basin, and are the most prominent
+feature of the southern coast. From them the Massachuset tribe about the
+Bay derived its name, signifying "Near the Great Hills," which name was
+changed by the English to Massachusetts, and applied to both bay and
+colony. Although its Indian name has been taken from this lovely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> range,
+the loveliness remains. All the surrounding country shimmers under the
+mysterious bloom of these heights, so vast that everything else is
+dwarfed beside them, and yet so curiously airy that they seem to
+perpetually ripple against the sky. The Great Blue Hill, especially&mdash;the
+one which bears an observatory on its summit&mdash;swims above one's head. It
+seems to have a singular way of moving from point to point as one
+motors, and although one may be forced to admit that this may be due
+more to the winding roads than to the illusiveness of the hill, still
+the buoyant effect is the same.</p>
+
+<p>Ruskin declares somewhere, with his quaint and characteristic mixture of
+positiveness and idealism, that "inhabitants of granite countries have a
+force and healthiness of character about them that clearly distinguishes
+them from the inhabitants of less pure districts." Perhaps he was right,
+for surely here where the succeeding generations have all lived in the
+atmosphere of the marching Blue Hill, each has through its own fair
+name, done honor to the fair names which have preceded it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One of the very first to be attracted by the lofty and yet lovely appeal
+of this region was Governor Thomas Hutchinson, the last of the Royal
+Governors Massachusetts was to know. It was about the middle of the
+eighteenth century that this gentleman, of whom John Adams wrote, "He
+had been admired, revered, and almost adored," chose as the spot for his
+house the height above the Neponset River. If we follow the old country
+Heigh Waye to the top of Unquity (now Milton) Hill, we will find the
+place he chose, although the house he built has gone and another stands
+in its place. Fairly near the road, it overlooked a rolling green meadow
+(a meadow which, by the gift of John Murray Forbes, will always be kept
+open), with a flat green marsh at its feet and the wide flat twist of
+the Neponset River winding through it, for all the world like a
+decorative panel by Puvis de Chavannes. One can see a bit of the North
+Shore and Boston Harbor from here. This is the view that the Governor so
+admired, and tradition tells us that when he was forced to return to
+England he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> walked on foot down the hill, shaking hands with his
+neighbors, patriot and Tory alike, with tears in his eyes as he left
+behind him the garden and the trees he had planted, and the house where
+he had so happily lived. Although the view from the front of the house
+is exquisite, the view from the back holds even more intimate
+attraction. Here is the old, old garden, and although the ephemeral
+blossoms of the present springtime shine brightly forth, the box, full
+twenty feet high, speaks of another epoch. Foxgloves lean against the
+"pleached alley," and roses clamber on a wall that doubtless bore the
+weight of their first progenitors.</p>
+
+<p>Another governor who chose to live in Milton was Jonathan Belcher, but
+one fancies it was the grandness rather than the sweetness of the scene
+which attracted this rather spectacular person. The Belcher house still
+exists, as does the portrait of its master, in his wig and velvet coat
+and waistcoat, trimmed with richest gold lace at the neck and wrists.
+Small-clothes and gold knee and shoe buckles complete the picture of one
+who, when his mansion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> was planned, insisted upon an avenue fifty feet
+wide, and so nicely graded that visitors on entering from the street
+might see the gleam of his gold knee buckles as he stood on the distant
+porch. The avenue, however, was never completed, as Belcher was
+appointed governor of, and transferred to, New Jersey shortly after.</p>
+
+<p>Two other men of note, who, since the days of our years are but
+threescore and ten, chose that their days without number should be spent
+in the town they loved, were Wendell Phillips and Rimmer the sculptor,
+who are both buried at Milton.</p>
+
+<p>Not only notable personages, but notable events have been engendered
+under the shadow of these hills. The Suffolk Resolves, which were the
+prelude of the Declaration of Independence, were adopted at the Vose
+House, which still stands, square and unadorned, easy of access from the
+sidewalk, as is suitable for a home of democracy. The first piano ever
+made in this country received its conception and was brought to
+fulfillment in the Crehore house, which, although still sagging a bit,
+is by no means out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> of commission. And Wilde's Tavern, where was formed
+the public opinion in a day when the forming of public opinion was of
+pre&euml;minent importance, still retains, in its broad, hospitable lines,
+some shred of its ancient charm.</p>
+
+<p>Milton is full of history. From the Revolutionary days, when the
+cannonading at Bunker Hill shook the foundations of the houses, but not
+the nerves of the Milton ladies, down to the year 1919, when the Fourth
+Liberty Loan of $2,955,250 was subscribed from a population of 9000, all
+the various vicissitudes of peace and war have been sustained on the
+high level that one might expect from men and women nobly nurtured by
+the strength of the hills.</p>
+
+<p>How much of its success Milton attributes to its location&mdash;for one
+joins, indeed, a distinguished fellowship when one builds upon a hill,
+or on several hills, as Roman as well as Bostonian history
+testifies&mdash;can only be guessed by its tribute in the form of the Blue
+Hills Reservation. This State recreation park and forest reserve of
+about four thousand acres&mdash;a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> labyrinth of idyllic footpaths and leafy
+trails, of twisting drives and walks that open out upon superb vistas,
+is now the property of the people of Massachusetts. The granite quarry
+man&mdash;far more interested in the value of the stone that underlay the
+wooded slopes than in Ruskin's theory of its purifying effect upon the
+inhabitants&mdash;had already obtained a footing here, when, under the able
+leadership of Charles Francis Adams, the whole region was taken over by
+the State in 1894.</p>
+
+<p>As you pass through the Reservation&mdash;and if you are taking even the most
+cursory glimpse of Milton you must include some portion of this
+park&mdash;you will pass the open space where in the early days, when Milton
+country life was modeled upon English country life more closely than
+now, Malcolm Forbes raced upon his private track the horses he himself
+had bred. The race-track with its judges' stands is still there, but
+there are no more horse-races, although the Forbes family still holds a
+conspicuous place in all the social as well as the philanthropic
+enterprises of the countryside. You may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> see, too, a solitary figure
+with a scientist's stoop, or a tutor with a group of boys, making a
+first-hand study of a region which is full of interest to the geologist.</p>
+
+<p>Circling thus around the base of the Great Blue Hill and irresistibly
+drawn closer and closer to it as by a magnet, one is impelled to make
+the ascent to the top&mdash;an easy ascent with its destination clearly
+marked by the Rotch Meteorological Observatory erected in 1884 by the
+late A. Lawrence Rotch of Milton, who bequeathed funds for its
+maintenance. It is now connected with Harvard University.</p>
+
+<p>Once at the top the eye is overwhelmed by a circuit of more than a
+hundred and fifty miles! It is almost too immense at first&mdash;almost as
+barren as an empty expanse of rolling green sea. But as the eye grows
+accustomed to the stretching distances, objects both near and far begin
+to appear. And soon, if the day is clear, buildings may be identified in
+more than one hundred and twenty-five villages. We are six hundred and
+thirty-five feet above the sea, on the highest coastland from
+Agamenticus, near<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> York, Maine, to the Rio Grande, and the panorama thus
+unrolled is truly magnificent. Facing northerly we can easily
+distinguish Cambridge, Somerville, and Malden, and far beyond the hills
+of Andover and Georgetown. A little to the east, Boston with its gilded
+dome; then the harbor with its islands, headlands, and fortifications.
+Beyond that are distinctly visible various points on the North Shore, as
+far as Eastern Point Lighthouse in Gloucester. Forty miles to the
+northeast appear the twin lighthouses on Thatcher's Island, seeming,
+from here, to be standing, not on the land, but out in the ocean. Nearer
+and more distinct is Boston Light&mdash;a sentinel at the entrance to the
+harbor, while beyond it stretches Massachusetts Bay. Turning nearly east
+the eye, passing over Chickatawbut Hill&mdash;three miles off and second in
+height of the Blue Hills&mdash;follows the beautiful curve of Nantasket
+Beach, and the pointing finger of Minot's Light. Facing nearly south,
+the long ridge of Manomet Hill in Plymouth, thirty-three miles away,
+stands clear against the sky, while twenty-six miles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> away, in Duxbury,
+one sees the Myles Standish Monument. Directly south rises the smoke of
+the city of Fall River; to the westerly, Woonsocket, and continuing to
+the west, Mount Wachusett in Princeton. Far to the right of Wachusett,
+nearly over the dome of the Dedham Courthouse, rounds up Watatic in
+Ashburnham, and northwest a dozen peaks of southern New Hampshire. At
+the right of Watatic and far beyond it is the Grand Monadnock in
+Jaffrey, 3170 feet above the sea and sixty-seven and a half miles away.
+On the right of Grand Monadnock is a group of nearer summits: Mount
+Kidder, exactly northwest; Spofford and Temple Mountains; then appears
+the remarkable Pack-Monadnock, near Peterboro, with its two equal
+summits. The next group to the right is in Lyndeboro. At the right of
+Lyndeboro, and nearly over the Readville railroad stations, is Joe
+English Hill, and to complete the round, nearly north-northwest are the
+summits of the Uncanoonuc Mountains, fifty-nine miles away.</p>
+
+<p>This, then, is the Great Blue Hill of Milton.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> Those who are familiar
+with the State of Massachusetts&mdash;and New England&mdash;can stand here and
+pick out a hundred distinguishing landmarks, and those who have never
+been here before may find an unparalleled opportunity to see the whole
+region at one sweep of the eye.</p>
+
+<p>From the point of view of topography the summit of Great Blue Hill is
+the place to reach. But for the sense of mysterious beauty, for snatches
+of pictures one will never forget, the little vistas which open on the
+upward or the downward trail, framed by hanging boughs or encircled by a
+half frame of stone and hillside&mdash;these are, perhaps, more lovely. The
+hill itself, seen from a distance, floating lightly like a vast blue
+ball against a vaster sky, is dreamily suggestive in a way which the
+actual view, superb as it is, is not. One remembers Stevenson's
+observation, that sometimes to travel hopefully is better than to
+arrive. So let us come down, for, after all, "Love is of the valley."
+Down again to the old town of Milton. We have not half begun to wander
+over it: not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> half begun to hear the pleasant stories it has to tell.
+When one is as old as this&mdash;for Milton was discovered by a band from
+Plymouth who came up the Neponset River in 1621&mdash;one has many tales to
+tell.</p>
+
+<p>Of all the towns along the South Shore there are few whose feet are so
+firmly emplanted in the economic history of the past and present as is
+Milton. That peculiar odor of sweetness which drifts to us with a turn
+of the wind, comes from a chocolate mill whose trade-mark of a
+neat-handed maid with her little tray is known all over the civilized
+world. And those mills stand upon the site of the first grist mill in
+New England to be run by water power. This was in 1634, and one likes to
+picture the sturdy colonists trailing into town, their packs upon their
+backs, like children in kindergarten games, to have their grain ground.
+Israel Stoughton was the name of the man who established this first
+mill&mdash;a name perpetuated in the near-by town of Stoughton.</p>
+
+<p>All ground is historic ground in Milton. That rollicking group of
+schoolboys yonder belongs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> to an academy, which, handsome and
+flourishing as it is to-day, was founded as long ago as 1787. That seems
+long ago, but there was a school in Milton before that: a school held in
+the first meeting-house. Nothing is left of this quaint structure but a
+small bronze bas-relief, set against a stone wall, near its original
+site. This early church and early school was a log cabin with a thatched
+roof and latticed windows, if one may believe the relief, but men of
+brains and character were taught there lessons which stood them and the
+colony in good stead. One fancies the students' roving eyes may have
+occasionally strayed down the Indian trail directly opposite the old
+site&mdash;a trail which, although now attained to the proud rank of a lane,
+Churchill's Lane, still invites one down its tangled green way along the
+gray stone wall. Yes, every step of ground has its tradition here.
+Yonder railroad track marks the spot where the very first tie in the
+country was laid, and laid for no less significant purpose than to
+facilitate the carrying of granite blocks for Bunker Hill Monument from
+their quarry to the harbor.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Granite from the hills&mdash;the hills which swim forever against the sky and
+march forever above the distant horizon. Again we are drawn back to the
+irresistible magnet of those mighty monitors. Yes, wherever one goes in
+Milton, either on foot to-day or back through the chapters of three
+centuries ago, the Blue Hills dominate every event, and the Great Blue
+Hill floats above them all.</p>
+
+<p>"I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help,"
+chants the psalmist. Ah, well, no one can say it better than
+that&mdash;except the hills themselves, which, with gentle majesty, look down
+affectionately upon the town at their feet.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/image068.jpg" width="250" height="104" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/image069.jpg" width="350" height="191" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h3>SHIPBUILDING AT QUINCY</h3>
+
+<p>The first man-made craft which floated on the waters of what is now Fore
+River was probably a little dugout, a crude boat made by an Indian, who
+burned out the center of a pine log which he had felled by girdling with
+fire. After he had burned out as much as he could, he scraped out the
+rest with a stone tool called a "celt." The whole operation probably
+took one Indian three weeks. The Rivadavia which slid down the ways of
+the Fore River Shipbuilding Corporation in August, 1914, weighed 13,400
+tons and had engaged the labor of 2000 men for fifty months.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Between these two extremes flutter all the great sisterhood of shallops,
+sloops, pinks, schooners, snows, the almost obsolete batteau and
+periagua, the gundelow with its picturesque lateen sail, and all the
+winged host that are now merely names in New England's maritime history.</p>
+
+<p>We may not give in this limited space an account of the various vessels
+which have sailed down the green-sea aisles the last three hundred
+years. But of the very first, "a great and strong shallop" built by the
+Plymouth settlers for fishing, we must make brief mention, and of the
+Blessing of the Bay, the first seaworthy native craft to be built and
+launched on these shores&mdash;the pioneer of all New England commerce. Built
+by Governor Winthrop, he notes of her in his journal on August 31, 1631,
+that "the bark being of thirty tons went to sea." That is all he says,
+but from that significant moment the building of ships went on
+"gallantly," as was indeed to be expected in a country whose chief
+industry was fishing and which was so admirably surrounded by natural<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>
+bays and harbors. In 1665 we hear of the Great and General Court of
+Massachusetts&mdash;which distinctive term is still applied to the
+Massachusetts Legislature&mdash;forbidding the cutting of any trees suitable
+for masts. The broad arrow of the King was marked on all white pines,
+twenty-four inches in diameter, three feet from the ground. Big ships
+and little ships swarmed into existence, and every South Shore town made
+shipbuilding history. The ketch, a two-masted vessel carrying from
+fifteen to twenty tons, carried on most of the coasting traffic, and
+occasionally ventured on a foreign voyage. When we recall that the best
+and cheapest ships of the latter half of the seventeenth century were
+built here in the new country, we realize that shipyards, ports, docks,
+proper laws and regulations, and the invigorating progress which marks
+any thriving industry flourished bravely up and down the whole New
+England coast.</p>
+
+<p>It is rather inspiring to stand here on the bridge which spans the Fore
+River, and picture that first crude dugout being paddled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> along by the
+steady stroke of the red man, and then to look at the river to-day.
+Every traveler through Quincy is familiar with the aerial network of
+steel scaffolding criss-crossing the sky, with the roofs of shops and
+offices and glimpses of vessels visible along the water-front. But few
+travelers realize that these are merely the superficial features of a
+shipyard which under the urge of the Great War delivered to the Navy, in
+1918, eighteen completed destroyers, which was as many as all the other
+yards in the country put together delivered during this time. A shipyard
+which cut the time of building destroyers from anywhere between eighteen
+and thirty-two months to an average of six months and a half; a shipyard
+which made the world's record of one hundred and seventy-four days from
+the laying of the keel to the delivering of a destroyer.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to grasp the meaning of these figures. Difficult, even
+after one has obtained entrance into this city within a city, and seen
+with his own eyes twenty thousand men toiling like Trojans. Seen a
+riveting crew which can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> drive more than twenty-eight hundred rivets in
+nine hours; battleships that weigh thirty thousand tons; a plate yard
+piled with steel plates and steel bars worth two million dollars; cranes
+that can lift from five tons up to others of one hundred tons capacity;
+single buildings a thousand feet long and eighty feet high.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the enormousness of the plant is best comprehended, not when we
+mechanically repeat that it covers eighty acres and comprises eighty
+buildings, and that four full-sized steam locomotives run up and down
+its yard, but when we see how many of the intimate things of daily
+living have sprung up here as little trees spring up between huge
+stones. For the Fore River Plant is more than an industrial
+organization. It is a social center, an economic entity. It has its band
+and glee club, ball team and monthly magazine. There are refreshment
+stands, and a bathing cove; a brand-new village of four hundred and
+thirty-eight brand-new houses; dormitories which accommodate nearly a
+thousand men and possess every convenience and even luxuries. The men
+work<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> hard here, but they are well paid for their work, as the many
+motor-cycles and automobiles waiting for them at night testify. It is a
+scene of incredible industry, but also of incredible completeness.</p>
+
+<p>To look down upon the village and the yard from the throbbing roof of
+the steel mill, seven hundred and seventy feet long and a hundred and
+eighty-eight wide, is a thrilling sight. Within the yard, confined on
+three sides by its high fences and buildings and on the fourth by
+Weymouth Fore River, one sees, far below, locomotives moving up and down
+on their tracks; great cranes stalking long-leggedly back and forth;
+smoke from foundry, blacksmith shop, and boiler shop; men hurrying to
+and fro. Whistles blow, and whole buildings tremble. The smoke and the
+grayness might make it a gloomy scene if it were not for the red sides
+of the immense submarines gleaming in their wide slips to the water.
+Everywhere one sees the long gray sides of freighters, destroyers,
+merchant ships, and oil tankers heaving like the mailed ribs of sea
+animals basking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> on the shore. Practically every single operation, from
+the most stupendous to the most delicate, necessary for the complete
+construction of these vessels, is carried on in this yard. The eighty
+acres look small when we realize the extent and variety of the work
+achieved within its limits.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, the solitary Indian, working with fire and celt on his dugout,
+would not recognize this once familiar haunt, nor would he know the
+purpose of these vast vessels without sail or paddle. And yet, were this
+same Indian standing on the roof with us, he would see a wide stream of
+water he knew well, and he would see, too, above the smoke of the
+furnace, shop, and boiler room, the friendly green of the trees.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps there is nothing which makes us realize the magical rapidity of
+growth so much as to look from this steel city and to see the woods
+close by. For instead of being surrounded by the sordid congestion of an
+industrial center, the Fore River Shipyard is in the midst of
+practically open country.</p>
+
+<p>While we are speaking of rapidity we must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> look over toward the Victory
+Plant at Squantum, that miraculous marsh which was drained with such
+expedition that just twelve months from the day ground was broken for
+its foundation, it launched its first ship, and less than two years
+after completed its entire contract. Surely never in the history of
+shipbuilding have brain and brawn worked so brilliantly together!</p>
+
+<p>In this way, then, the history of the ships that have sailed the seven
+seas has been built up at Quincy&mdash;a dramatic history and one instinct
+with the beauty which is part of gliding canoe and white sails, and
+part, too, of the huge smooth-slipping monsters of a modern day, sleek
+and swift as leviathans. But all the while the building of these ships
+has been going on, there has been slowly rising within the selfsame
+radius another ship, vaster, more inspiring, calling forth initiative
+even more intense, idealism even more profound&mdash;the Ship of State.</p>
+
+<p>We who journey to-day over the smooth or troubled waters of national or
+international<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> affairs are no more conscious of the infinite toil and
+labors which have gone into the intricate making of the vessel that
+carries us, than are travelers conscious of the cogs and screws, the
+engines and all the elaboration of detail which compose an ocean liner.
+Like them we sometimes grumble at meals or prices, at some discourtesy
+or incompetence, but we take it for granted that the engine is in
+commission, that the bottom is whole and the chart correct. The great
+Ship of State of this country may occasionally run into rough weather,
+but Americans believe that, in the last analysis, she is honestly built.
+And it is to Quincy that we owe a large initial part of this building.</p>
+
+<p>It is astonishing to enumerate the notable public men, who have been
+influential in establishing our national policy, who have come from
+Quincy. There is no town in this entire country which can equal the
+record. What other town ever produced two Presidents of the United
+States, an Ambassador to Great Britain, a Governor of the Commonwealth,
+a Mayor of Boston, two presidents of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> Harvard University, and judges,
+chief justices, statesmen, and orators in such quantity and of such
+quality? Truly this group of eminent men of brilliance, integrity, and
+public feeling is unique in our history. To read the biographies of
+Quincy's great men would comprise a studious winter's employment, but
+we, passing through the historic city, may hold up our fragment of a
+mirror and catch a bit of the procession.</p>
+
+<p>First and foremost, of course, will come President John Adams, he who,
+both before and after his term of high office, toiled terrifically in
+the public cause, being at the time of his election to Congress a member
+of ninety committees and a chairman of twenty-five! We see him as the
+portraits have taught us to see him, with strong, serious
+face,&mdash;austere, but not harsh,&mdash;velvet coat, white ruffles, and white
+curls. He stands before us as the undisputed founder of what is now
+recognized as American diplomacy. Straightforward, sound to the core,
+unswerving, veracious, exemplifying in every act the candor of the
+Puritan,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> so congruous with the new simple life of a nation of common
+people. I think we shall like best to study him as he stands at the door
+of the little house in which he was born, and which, with its pitch
+roof, its antique door and eaves, is still preserved, close to the
+street, for public scrutiny.</p>
+
+<p>Next to President John Adams comes his son, John Quincy Adams, also a
+President of the United States. Spending much of his time abroad, the
+experience of those diplomatic years is graven upon features more subtly
+refined than those of his sire. But for all his foreign residence, he
+was, like his father, a Puritan in its most exalted sense; like him
+toiled all his life in public service, dying in the harness when rising
+to address the Speaker of the House. Him, too, we see best, standing at
+the door of his birthplace, a small cottage a stone's throw from the
+other cottage, separated only by a turnstile. Fresh white curtains hang
+in the small-paned windows; the grass is neatly trimmed, and like its
+quaint companion it is now open to the public and worth the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> tourist's
+call. Both these venerable cottages have inner walls, one of burnt, the
+other of unburnt brick; and both are unusual in having no boards on the
+outer walls, but merely clapboards fastened directly on to the studding
+with wrought-iron nails.</p>
+
+<p>Still another Adams follows, Charles Francis Adams. Although a little
+boy when he first comes into public view, a little boy occupying the
+conspicuous place as child of one President and grandchild of another,
+yet he was to win renown and honor on his own account as Ambassador to
+England during the critical period of our Civil War. America remembers
+him best in this position. His firm old face with its white chin
+whiskers is a worthy portrait in the ancestral gallery.</p>
+
+<p>Although the political history of this country may conclude its
+reference to the Adamses with these three famous figures, yet all New
+Englanders and all readers of biography would be reluctant to turn from
+this remarkable family without mention of the sons of Charles Francis
+Adams, two of whom have written,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> beside valuable historical works,
+autobiographies so entertaining and so truly valuable for their
+contemporaneous portraits as to win a place of survival in our permanent
+literature.</p>
+
+<p>A member of the Adams family still lives in the comfortable home where
+the three first and most famous members all celebrated their golden
+weddings. This broad-fronted and hospitable house, built in 1730 by
+Leonard Vassal, a West India planter, for his summer residence, with its
+library finished in panels of solid mahogany, was confiscated when its
+Royalist owner fled at the outbreak of the Revolution, and John Adams
+acquired the property and left the pitch-roofed cottage down the street.
+The home of two Presidents, what tales it could tell of notable
+gatherings! One must read the autobiography of Charles Francis Adams and
+"The Education of Henry Adams" to appreciate the charm of the succeeding
+mistresses of the noble homestead, and to enjoy in retrospect its many
+illustrious visitors.</p>
+
+<p>To have produced one family like the Adamses would surely be sufficient
+distinction<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> for any one place, but the Adams family forms merely one
+unit in Quincy's unique procession of great men.</p>
+
+<p>The Quincy family, for which the town was named, and which at an early
+date intermarried with the Adamses, presents an almost parallel
+distinction. The first Colonel Quincy, he who lived like an English
+squire, a trifle irascible, to be sure, but a dignified and commanding
+figure withal, had fourteen children by his first wife and three by his
+second, so the family started off with the advantage of numbers as well
+as of blood. At the Quincy mansion house were born statesmen, judges,
+and captains of war. The "Dorothy Q." of Holmes's poem first saw the
+light in it, and the Dorothy who became the bride of the dashing John
+Hancock blossomed into womanhood in it. Here were entertained times
+without number Sir Harry Vane, quaint Judge Sewall, Benjamin Franklin,
+and that couple who gleam through the annals of New England history in a
+never-fading flame of romance, Sir Harry Frankland and beautiful Agnes
+Surriage. The Quincy mansion,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> which was built about 1635 by William
+Coddington of Boston and occupied by him until he was exiled for his
+religious opinions, was bought by Edmund Quincy. His grandson, who bore
+his name, enlarged the house, and lived in it until his death when it
+descended to his son Edmund, the eminent jurist and father of Dorothy.
+The old-fashioned furniture, utensils and pictures, the broad hall, fine
+old stairway with carved balustrades, and foreign wall-paper supposed to
+have been hung in honor of the approaching marriage of Dorothy to John
+Hancock, are still preserved in their original place. Of the Quincy
+family, whose sedate jest it was that the estate descended from 'Siah to
+'Siah, so frequent was the name "Josiah," the best known is perhaps the
+Josiah Quincy who was Mayor of Boston for six years and president of
+Harvard for sixteen. The portrait of his long, thin face is part of
+every New England history, and his busy, serene life, "compacted of
+Roman and Puritan virtues," is still upheld to all American children as
+a model of high citizenship.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But not even the long line of the Quincy family completes the list of
+the town's great men. Henry Hope, one of the most brilliant financiers
+of his generation, and founder of a European banking house second only
+to that of the Rothchilds, was a native of Quincy. John Hull&mdash;who, as
+every school-child knows, on the day of his daughter's marriage to Judge
+Sewall, placed her in one of his weighing scales, and heaped enough new
+pine-tree shillings into the other to balance, and then presented both
+to the bridegroom&mdash;held the first grant of land in the present town of
+Braintree (which originally included Quincy, Randolph, and Holbrook).</p>
+
+<p>From the picturesque union of John Hull's bouncing daughter Betsy and
+Judge Sewall sprang the extraordinary family of Sewalls which has given
+three chief justices to Massachusetts, and one to Canada, and has been
+distinguished in every generation for the talents and virtues of its
+members. In passing, we may note that it was this same John Hull who
+named Point Judith for his wife, little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> dreaming what a <i>b&ecirc;te noir</i> the
+place would prove to mariners in the years to come.</p>
+
+<p>There is another Quincy man whom it is pleasant to recall, and that is
+Henry Flynt, a whimsical and scholarly old bachelor, who was a tutor at
+Harvard for no less than fifty-three years, the one fixed element in the
+flow of fourteen college generations. One of the most accomplished
+scholars of his day, his influence on the young men with whom he came in
+contact was stimulating to a degree, and they loved to repeat bits of
+his famous repartee. A favorite which has come down to us was on an
+occasion when Whitefield the revivalist declared in a theological
+discussion: "It is my opinion that Dr. Tillotson is now in hell for his
+heresy." To which Tutor Flynt retorted dryly: "It is my opinion that you
+will not meet him there."</p>
+
+<p>The procession of Quincy's great men which we have been watching winds
+its way, as human processions are apt to do, to the old graveyard. Most
+of the original settlers are buried here, although not a few were buried
+on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> their own land, according to the common custom. Probably this
+ancient burying ground, with its oldest headstone of 1663, has never
+been particularly attractive. The Puritans did not decorate their
+graveyards in any way. Fearing that prayers or sermons would encourage
+the "superstitions" of the Roman Catholic Church, they shunned any
+ritual over the dead or beautifying of their last resting-place.
+However, neglected as the spot was, the old stone church, whose golden
+belfry is such a familiar and pleasant landmark to all the neighboring
+countryside, still keeps its face turned steadfastly toward it. The
+congested traffic of the city square presses about its portico, but
+those who knew and loved it best lie quietly within the shadow of its
+gray walls. Under the portico lies President John Adams, and "at his
+side sleeps until the trump shall sound, Abigail, his beloved and only
+wife." In the second chamber is placed the dust of his illustrious son,
+with "His partner for fifty years, Louisa Catherine"&mdash;she of whom Henry
+Adams wrote, "her refined figure; her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> gentle voice and manner; her
+vague effect of not belonging there, but to Washington or Europe, like
+her furniture and writing-desk with little glass doors above and little
+eighteenth-century volumes in old binding."</p>
+
+<p>It has been called the "church of statesmen," this dignified building,
+and so, indeed, might Quincy itself be called the "city of statesmen."
+It would be extremely interesting to study the reasons for Quincy's
+peculiar productiveness of noble public characters. The town was settled
+(as Braintree) exclusively by people from Devonshire and Lincolnshire
+and Essex. The laws of the Massachusetts Colony forbade Irish
+immigration&mdash;probably more for religious than racial reasons. On reading
+the ancient petition for the incorporation of the town one is struck by
+the fact that practically every single name of the one hundred and fifty
+signers is English in origin, the few which were not having been
+anglicized. All of these facts point to a homogeneous stock, with the
+same language, traditions, and social customs. Obviously there is a
+connection between the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> governmental genius displayed by Quincy's sons
+and the singular purity of the original English stock.</p>
+
+<p>Little did Wampatuck, the son of Chickatawbut, realize what he was doing
+when he parted with his Braintree lands for twenty-one pounds and ten
+shillings. The Indian deed is still preserved, with the following words
+on its back: "In the 17th reign of Charles 2. Braintry Indian Deeds.
+Given 1665. Aug. 10: Take great care of it."</p>
+
+<p>Little did the Indian chief realize that the surrounding waters were to
+float hulks as mighty as a city; that the hills were to furnish granite
+for buildings and monuments without number; and that men were to be born
+there who would shape the greatest Ship of State the world has ever
+known. And yet, if he had known, possibly he would have accepted the
+twenty-one pounds and ten shillings just the same, and departed quietly.
+For the ships that were to be built would never have pleased him as well
+as his own canoe; the granite buildings would have stifled him; and the
+zealous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> Adamses and the high-minded Quincys and Sewalls and all the
+rest would have bored him horribly. Probably the only item in the whole
+history of Quincy which would have appealed to Wampatuck in the least
+would have been the floating down on a raft of the old Hollis Street
+Church of Boston, to become the Union Church of Weymouth and Braintree
+in 1810. This and the similar transportation of the Bowditch house from
+Beacon Street in Boston to Quincy a couple of years later would have
+fascinated the red man, as the recital of the feat fascinates us to-day.</p>
+
+<p>Those who care to learn more of Quincy will do well to read the
+autobiography of Charles Francis Adams and "The Education of Henry
+Adams." Those who care more for places than for descriptions of them may
+wander at will, finding beneath the surface of the modern city many
+landmarks of the old city which underlies it. They may see the
+scaffolding of the great shipyards latticing themselves against the sky,
+and the granite quarries against the hills. They may see the little
+cottages and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> great houses made famous by those who have passed over
+their thresholds; they may linger in the old burial ground and trace out
+the epitaphs under the portico of the golden-belfried church. But after
+they have touched and handled all of these things, they will not
+understand Quincy unless they look beyond and recognize her greatest
+contribution to this country&mdash;the noble statesmen who so bravely and
+intelligently toiled to construct America's Ship of State.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/image090.jpg" width="250" height="106" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/image091.jpg" width="350" height="190" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h3>THE ROMANCE OF WEYMOUTH</h3>
+<p>The paintings of John Constable, idyllic in their quietness, dewy in
+their serenity&mdash;how many travelers, how many lovers of art, superficial
+or profound, yearly seek out these paintings in the South Kensington
+Museum or the Louvre, and stand before them wrapt in gentle ecstasy?</p>
+
+<p>The quality of Constable's pictures delineates in luminous softness a
+peculiarly lovely side of English rural life, but one need not travel to
+England or France to see this loveliness. Weymouth, that rambling
+stretch of towns and hamlets, of summer colony and suburb, possesses in
+certain areas bits of rural<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> landscape as serene, as dewy, as
+idyllically tranquil as Constable at his best.</p>
+
+<p>Comparatively few people in New England, or out of it, know Weymouth
+well. Every one has heard of it, for it is next in age to the town of
+Plymouth itself, and every one who travels to the South Shore passes
+some section of it, for it extends lengthily&mdash;north and south, east and
+west&mdash;being the only town in Massachusetts to retain its original
+boundaries. And numbers of people are familiar with certain parts of it,
+for there are half a score of villages in the township, some of them
+summer settlements, some of them animated by an all-the-year-round life.
+But compared with the other towns along this historic route, Weymouth as
+a whole is little known and little appreciated. And yet the history of
+Weymouth is not without amusing and edifying elements, and the scenery
+of Weymouth is worthy of the d&eacute;tour that strangers rarely make.</p>
+
+<p>"Old Spain" is the romantic name for an uninteresting part of the
+township, and, conversely, Commercial Street is the uninteresting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> name
+for a romantic part. It is along a highway stigmatized by such a name
+that one gets the glimpses of a Constable country: glimpses of rolling
+meadows, of fertile groves, of cattle grazing in elm-shaded pastures, of
+a road winding contentedly among simple, ancient cottages, and quiet,
+thrifty farms. These are the homes which belong, and have belonged for
+generations, to people who are neither rich nor poor; cozy, quaint,
+suggesting in an odd way the thatched-roof cottages of England. Not that
+all of Weymouth's homes are of this order. The Asa Webb Cowing house,
+which terminates Commercial Street within a stone's throw of the square
+of the town of Weymouth, is one of the very finest examples of the
+Colonial architecture in this country. The exquisite tracery and carving
+over and above the front door, and the white imported marble window
+lintels spin an elaborate and marvelously fine lacework of white over
+the handsome red-brick fa&ccedil;ade. Although it is, alas, falling somewhat
+into disrepair, perfect proportion and gemlike workmanship still stamp
+the venerable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> mansion as one of patrician heritage. There are other
+excellent examples of architecture in Weymouth, but the Cowing house
+must always be the star, both because of its extraordinary beauty and
+conspicuous position. Yes, if you want a characteristic glimpse of
+Weymouth, you cannot do better than to begin in front of this landmark,
+and drive down Commercial Street. Here for several smiling miles there
+is nothing&mdash;no ugly building large or small, no ruthless invasion of
+modernity to mar the mood of happy simplicity. Her beauty of beach, of
+sky, of river, Weymouth shares with other South Shore towns. Her
+perfection of idyllic rusticity is hers alone.</p>
+
+<p>Just as Weymouth's scenery is unlike that of her neighbors, so her
+history projects itself from an entirely different angle from theirs.
+While they were conceived by zealous, God-fearing men and women honestly
+seeking to establish homes in a new country, Weymouth was inadvertently
+born through the misconduct of a set of adventurers. Not every one who
+came to America in those significant early<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> years came impelled by lofty
+motives. There were scapegraces, bad boys, rogues, mercenaries, and
+schemers; and perhaps it is entirely logical that the winning natural
+loveliness of this place should have lured to her men who were not of
+the caliber to face more exposed, less fertile sections, and men to whom
+beauty made an especial appeal.</p>
+
+<p>The Indians early found Wessagusset, as they called it, an important
+rendezvous, as it was accessible by land and sea, and there were
+probably temporary camps there previous to 1620, formed by fishermen and
+traders who visited the New England coast to traffic with the natives.
+But it was not until the arrival of Thomas Weston in 1622 that
+Weymouth's history really begins. And then it begins in a topsy-turvy
+way, so unlike Puritan New England that it makes us rub our eyes,
+wondering if it is really true.</p>
+
+<p>This Thomas Weston, who was a merchant adventurer of London, took it
+into his head to establish a colony in the new country entirely
+different from the Plymouth Colony. He had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> been an agent of the
+Pilgrims in their negotiations with the Plymouth Company, and when he
+broke off the connection it was to start a settlement which should
+combine all of the advantages, with none of the disadvantages, of the
+Plymouth Colony. First of all, it was to be a trading community pure and
+simple, with its object frankly to make money. Second, it was to be
+composed of men without families and familiar with hardship. And third,
+there was no religious motive or bond. That such an unidealistic
+enterprise should not flourish on American soil is worth noting. The
+disorderly, thriftless rabble, picked up from the London streets, soon
+got into trouble with the Indians and with neighboring colonists, and
+finally, undone by the results of their own improvidence and
+misbehavior, wailed that they "wanted to go back to London," to which
+end the Plymouth settlers willingly aided them, glad to get them out of
+the country. Thus ended the first inauspicious settlement of Weymouth.</p>
+
+<p>The second, which was undertaken shortly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> after by Robert Gorges, broke
+up the following spring, leaving only a few remnants behind. Sir
+Ferdinando Gorges, who was not a Spaniard as his name suggests, but a
+picturesque Elizabethan and a kinsman of Sir Walter Raleigh, essayed
+(through his son Robert) an experimental government along practically
+the same commercial lines as had Weston, and his failure was as speedy
+and complete as Weston's had been.</p>
+
+<p>A third attempt, while hardly more successful, furnishes one of the
+gayest and prettiest episodes in the whole history of New England.
+Across the somber procession of earnest-faced men and women, across the
+psalm-singing and the praying, across the incredible toil of the
+pioneers at Plymouth now flashes the brightly costumed and
+pleasure-loving courtier, Thomas Morton. An agent of Gorges, Morton with
+thirty followers floated into Wessagusset to found a Royalist and
+Episcopalian settlement. This Episcopalian bias was quite enough to
+account for Bradford's disparaging description of him as a "kind of
+petie-fogie of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> Furnifells Inn," and explains why the early historians
+never made any fuller or more favorable record than absolutely necessary
+of these neighbors of theirs, although the churchman Samuel Maverick
+admits that Morton was a "gentleman of good qualitee."</p>
+
+<p>But it was for worse sins than his connection with the Established
+Church that Morton's name became synonymous with scandal throughout the
+whole Colony. In the very midst of the dun-colored atmosphere of
+Puritanism, in the very heart of the pious pioneer settlement this
+audacious scamp set up, according to Bradford, "a schoole of atheisme,
+and his men did quaff strong waters and comport themselves as if they
+had anew revived and celebrated the feasts of y^e Roman Goddess Flora,
+or the beastly practises of y^e madd Bachanalians." The charge of
+atheism in this case seems based on the fact that Morton used the Book
+of Common Prayer, but as for the rest, there is no question that this
+band of silken merry-makers imported many of the carnival customs and
+hereditary pastimes of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> Old England to the stern young New England; that
+they fraternized with the Indians, shared their strong waters with them,
+and taught them the use of firearms; and that Merrymount became indeed a
+scene of wildest revelry.</p>
+
+<p>The site of Merrymount had originally been selected by Captain Wollaston
+for a trading post. Imbued with the same mercenary motive which had
+proved fatal in the case of Weston and Gorges, Captain Wollaston, whose
+name is perpetuated in Mount Wollaston, brought with him in 1625 a gang
+of indented white servants. Finding his system of industry ill suited to
+the climate, he carried his men to Virginia, where he sold them. When he
+left, Morton took possession of the place and dubbed it "Ma-re-mount."
+And then began the pranks which shook the Colony to its foundations.
+Picture to yourself a band of sworn triflers, dedicated to the wildest
+philosophy of pleasure, teaching bears to dance, playing blind-man's
+buff, holding juggling and boxing matches, and dancing. According to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
+Hawthorne, on the eve of Saint John they felled whole acres of forests
+to make bonfires, and crowned themselves with flowers and threw the
+blossoms into the flames. At harvest-time they hilariously wasted their
+scanty store of Indian corn by making an image with the sheaves, and
+wreathing it with the painted garlands of autumn foliage. They crowned
+the King of Christmas and bent the knee to the Lord of Misrule! Such
+fantastic foolery is inconceivable in a Puritan community, and the
+Maypole which was its emblem was the most inconceivable of all. This
+"flower-decked abomination," ornamented with white birch bark, banners,
+and blossoms, was the center of the tipsy jollity of Merrymount. As
+Morton explains: "A goodly pine tree of eighty foote was reared up, with
+a peare of bucks horns nayled on somewhere near to the top of it: where
+it stood as a faire sea mark for directions how to find out the way to
+mine host of Ma-re-mount." Around this famous, or infamous, pole Morton
+and his band frolicked with the Indians on May Day in 1627. As the
+indignant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> historian writes: "Unleashed pagans from the purlieus of the
+gross court of King James, danced about the Idoll of Merry Mount,
+joining hands with the lasses in beaver coats, and singing their ribald
+songs."</p>
+
+<p>It doesn't look quite so heinous to us, this Maypole dancing, as it did
+to the outraged Puritans. In fact, the story of Morton and Merrymount is
+one of the few glistening threads in the somber weaving of those early
+days. But the New England soil was not prepared at that time to support
+any such exotic, and Myles Standish was sent to disperse the frivolous
+band, and to order Morton back to England, which he did, after a
+scrimmage which Morton relates with great vivacity and doubtful veracity
+in his "New English Canaan."</p>
+
+<p>This "New English Canaan," by the way, had a rather singular career.
+Morton tells in it many amusing stories, and one of them was destined to
+a remarkable perpetuity in English literature. The story deals with the
+Wessagusset settlers promising to hang one of their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> own members who had
+been caught stealing&mdash;this hanging in order to appease the Indians.
+Morton gravely states that instead of hanging the real culprit, who was
+young and lusty, they hanged, in his place, another, old and sick. In
+his quaint diction: "You all agree that one must die, and one shall die,
+this young man's cloathes we will take off and put upon one that is old
+and impotent, a sickly person that cannot escape death, such is the
+disease on him confirmed, that die hee must. Put the young man's
+cloathes on this man, and let the sick person be hanged in the other's
+steade. Amen sayes one, and so sayes many more." This absurd notion of
+vicarious atonement, spun purely from Morton's imagination, appealed to
+Samuel Butler as worthy of further elaboration. Morton's "New English
+Canaan" appeared in 1632. About thirty years later the second part of
+the famous English satire "Hudibras" appeared, embodying Morton's idea
+in altered but recognizable form, in what was the most popular English
+book of the day. This satire, appearing when the reaction against<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>
+Puritanism was at its height, was accepted and solemnly deposited at the
+door of the good people of Boston and Plymouth! And thus it was that
+Morton's fabricated tale of the Weymouth hanging passed into genuine
+history along with the "blue laws" of Connecticut. One cannot help
+believing that the mischievous perpetrator of the fable laughed up his
+sleeve at its result, and one cannot resist the thought that he was
+probably delighted to have the scandal attached to those righteous
+neighbors of his who had run him out of his dear Ma-re-mount.</p>
+
+<p>However, driven out he was: the Maypole about which the revelers had
+danced was hewed down by the stern zealots who believed in dancing about
+only one pole, and that the whipping-post. Merrymount was deserted.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly Weymouth, the honey spot which attracted not industrious bees,
+but only drones, was having a hard time getting settled! It was not
+until the Reverend Joseph Hull received permission from the General
+Court to settle here with twenty-one families, from Weymouth,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> England,
+that the town was at last shepherded into the Puritan fold.</p>
+
+<p>These settlers, of good English stock and with the earnest ideals of
+pioneers, soon brought the community into good repute, and its
+subsequent life was as respectable and uneventful as that of a reformed
+<i>rou&eacute;</i>. In fact there is practically no more history for Weymouth. There
+are certainly no more raids upon merry-makers; no more calls from the
+cricket colony which had sung all summer on the banks of the river to
+the ant colony which had providently toiled on the shore of the bay; no
+more experimental governments; no more scandal. The men and women of the
+next five generations were a poor, hard-working race, rising early and
+toiling late. The men worked in the fields, tending the flocks, planting
+and gathering the harvest. The women worked in the houses, in the
+dairies and kitchens, at the spinning-wheel and washtub. The privations
+and loneliness, which are part of every struggling colony, were
+augmented here, where the houses did not cluster about the church and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+burial ground, but were scattered and far away. This peculiarity of
+settlement meant much in days where there was no newspaper, no system of
+public transportation, no regular post, and Europe was months removed. A
+few of the young men went with the fishing fleet to Cape Sable, or
+sailed on trading vessels to the West Indies or Spain, but it is
+doubtful if any Weymouth-born woman ever laid eyes on the mother country
+during the first hundred and fifty years.</p>
+
+<p>The records of the town are painfully dull. They are taken up by small
+domestic matters: the regulations for cattle; running boundary lines,
+locating highways, improving the town common, fixing fines for roving
+swine or agreeing to the division of a whale found on the shore. There
+was more or less bickering over the salary of the town clerk, who was to
+receive thirty-three pounds and fourteen shillings yearly to keep "A
+free school and teach all children and servants sent him to read and
+write and cast accounts."</p>
+
+<p>Added to the isolation and pettiness of town<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> affairs, the winters seem
+to have been longer, the snows deeper, the frosts more severe in those
+days. We have records of the harbor freezing over in November, and "in
+March the winter's snow, though much reduced, still lay on a level with
+the fences, nor was it until April that the ice broke up in Fore River."
+They were difficult&mdash;those days ushered in by the Reverend Joseph Hull.
+Through long nights and cold winters and an endless round of joyless
+living, Weymouth expiated well for the sins of her youth. Even as late
+as 1767 we read of the daughter of Parson Smith, of Weymouth&mdash;now the
+wife of John Adams, of Quincy&mdash;scrubbing the floor of her own
+bed-chamber the afternoon before her son&mdash;destined to become President
+of the United States, as his father was before him&mdash;was born.</p>
+
+<p>But the English stock brought in by the Reverend Hull was good stock. We
+may not envy the ladies scrubbing their own floors or the men walking to
+Boston, but many of the best families of this country are proud to trace
+their origin back to Weymouth. Maine, New<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> Hampshire, and Vermont; then
+New York, Rhode Island, and Connecticut attracted men from Weymouth.
+Later the Middle West and the Far West called them. In fact for over a
+century the town hardly raised its number of population, so energetic
+was the youth it produced.</p>
+
+<p>As happens with lamentable frequency, when Weymouth ceased to be naughty
+she also ceased to be interesting. After poring over the dull pages of
+the town history, one is sometimes tempted to wonder if, perhaps, the
+irreverent Morton did not, for all his sins, divine a deeper meaning in
+this spot than the respectable ones who came after him. One cannot read
+the "New English Canaan" without regretting a little that this
+happy-natured fellow was so unceremoniously bustled out of the country.
+Whatever Morton's discrepancies may have been, his response to beauty
+was lively and true: whatever his morals, his prose is delightful. All
+the town records and memorial addresses of all the good folk subsequent
+contain no such tribute to Weymouth, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> paint no picture so true of
+that which is still best in her, as these loving words of the erstwhile
+master of Merrymount.</p>
+
+<p>"And when I had more seriously considered the bewty of the place, with
+all her fair endowments, I did not think that in all the knowne world it
+could be paralel'd. For so many goodly groves of trees: dainty fine
+round rising hillocks: delicate faire large plaines: sweete crystal
+fountains, and clear running streams, that twine in fine meanders
+through the meads, making so sweet a murmuring noise to heare, as would
+even lull the senses with delight asleep, so pleasantly doe they glide
+upon the pebble stones, jetting most jocundly where they doe meet; and
+hand in hand run down to Neptune's court, to pay the yearly tribute
+which they owe to him as soveraigne Lord of all the Springs."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/image108.jpg" width="250" height="91" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/image109.jpg" width="350" height="214" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3>ECCLESIASTICAL HINGHAM</h3>
+<p>Should you walk along the highway from Quincy to Hingham on a Sunday
+morning you would be passed by many automobiles, for the Old Coast Road
+is now one of the great pleasure highways of New England. Many of the
+cars are moderately priced affairs, the tonneau well filled with
+children of miscellaneous ages, and enlivened by a family dog or
+two&mdash;for this is the way that the average American household spends its
+modern Sabbath holiday. Now and then a limousine, exquisite in
+workmanship within and without, driven by a chauffeur in livery and
+tenanted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> by a single languid occupant, rolls noiselessly past. A
+strange procession, indeed, for a road originally marked by the
+moccasined feet of Indians, and widened gradually by the toilsome
+journeyings of rough Colonial carts and coaches.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to say which feature of the steadily moving travel would
+most forcibly strike the original Puritan settlers of the town: the fact
+that even the common man&mdash;the poor man&mdash;could own such a vehicle of
+speed and ease, or the fact that America&mdash;such a short time ago a
+wilderness&mdash;could produce, not as the finest flower on its tree of
+evolution, but certainly as its most exotic, the plutocrat who lives in
+a palace with fifty servants to do his bidding, and the fine lady whose
+sole exercise of her mental and physical functions consists in allowing
+her maid to dress her. Yes, New England has changed amazingly in the
+revolutions of three centuries, and here, under the shadow of this
+square plain building&mdash;Hingham's Old Ship Church&mdash;while we pause to
+watch the Sunday pageant of 1920, we can most easily call back the
+Sabbath rites, and the ideals which created those rites, three centuries
+ago.</p>
+
+<p><a name="facing_pg_77" id="facing_pg_77"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/image111.jpg" width="400" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is the year of 1681. This wooden meeting-house, with the truncated
+pyramidal roof and belfry (to serve as a lookout station), has just been
+built. A stage ahead, architecturally, of the log meeting-house with
+clay-filled chinks, thatched roof, oiled-paper windows, earthen floor,
+and a stage behind the charming steeple style made popular by Sir
+Christopher Wren, and now multiplied in countless graceful examples all
+over New England, the Old Ship is entirely unconscious of the
+distinction which is awaiting it&mdash;the distinction of being the oldest
+house for public worship in the United States which still stands on its
+original site, and which is still used for its original purpose. In the
+year 1681 it is merely the new meeting-house of the little hamlet of
+Hingham. The people are very proud of their new building. The timbers
+have been hewn with the broad-axe out of solid white pine (the marks are
+still visible, particularly in those rafters of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> roof open to the
+attic). The belfry is precisely in the center of the four-sided pitched
+roof. To be sure this necessitates ringing the bell from one of the
+pews, but a little later the bellringer will stand above, and through a
+pane of glass let into the ceiling he will be able to see when the
+minister enters the pulpit. The original backless benches were replaced
+by box pews with narrow seats like shelves, hung on hinges around three
+sides, but part of the original pulpit remains and a few of the box
+pews. In 1681 the interior, like the exterior, is sternly bare. No
+paint, no decorations, no colored windows, no organ, or anything which
+could even remotely suggest the color, the beauty, the formalism of the
+churches of England. The unceiled roof shows the rafters whose arched
+timbers remind one that ships' carpenters have built this house of God.</p>
+
+<p>This, then, is the meeting-house of 1681. What of the services conducted
+there?</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, they are well attended. And why not, since in 1635
+the General Court decreed that no dwelling should be placed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> more than
+half a mile away from the meeting-house of any new "plantation"&mdash;thus
+eliminating the excuse of too great distance? Every one is expected,
+nay, commanded, to come to church. In fact, after the tolling of the
+last bell, the houses may all be searched&mdash;each ten families is under an
+inspector&mdash;if there is any question of delinquents hiding in them. And
+so in twos and threes, often the man trudging ahead with his gun and the
+woman carrying her baby while the smaller children cling to her skirts,
+sometimes man and woman and a child or two on horseback, no matter how
+wild the storm, how swollen the streams, how deep the whirling
+snow&mdash;they all come to church: old folk and infants as well as adults
+and children. The congregation either waits for the minister and his
+wife outside the door, or stands until he has entered the pulpit. Once
+inside they are seated with the most meticulous exactness, according to
+rank, age, sex, and wealth. The small boys are separated from their
+families and kept in order by tithing-men who allow no wandering eyes or
+whispered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> words. The deacons are in the "fore" seats; the elderly
+people are sometimes given chairs at the end of the "pues"; and the
+slaves and Indians are in the rear. To seat one's self in the wrong
+"pue" is an offense punishable by a fine.</p>
+
+<p>"Here is the church, and here are the people," as the old rhyme has it.
+What then of the services? That they are interminable we know. The
+tithing-man or clerk may turn the brass-bound hourglass by the side of
+the pulpit two and three times during the sermon, and once or twice
+during the prayer. Interminable, and, also, to the modern Sunday
+observer, unendurable. How many of us of this softer age can contemplate
+without a shiver the vision of people sitting hour after hour in an
+absolutely unheated building? (The Old Ship was not heated until 1822.)
+The only relief from the chill and stiffness comes during the prayer
+when the congregation stands: kneeling, of course, would savor too
+strongly of idolatry and the Church of Rome. They stand, too, while the
+psalms and hymns are lined out, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> as they sing them, very uncertainly
+and very incorrectly. This performance alone sometimes takes an hour, as
+there is no organ, nor notes, and only a few copies of the Bay Psalm
+Book, of which, by the way, a copy now would be worth many times its
+weight in gold.</p>
+
+<p>After the morning service there is a noon intermission, in which the
+half-frozen congregation stirs around, eats cold luncheons brought in
+baskets, and then returns to the next session. One must not for an
+instant, however, consider these noon hours as recreational. There is no
+idle talk or play. The sermon is discussed and the children forbidden to
+romp or laugh. One sometimes wonders how the little things had any
+impulse to laugh in such an abysmal atmosphere, but apparently the
+Puritan boys and girls were entirely normal and even wholesomely
+mischievous&mdash;as proved by the constantly required services of the
+tithing-man.</p>
+
+<p>These external trappings of the service sound depressing enough, but if
+the message received within these chilly walls is cheering, maybe we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>
+can forget or ignore the physical discomforts. But is the message
+cheering? Hell, damnation, eternal tortures, painful theological
+hair-splittings, harrowing self-examinations, and humiliating public
+confessions&mdash;this is what they gather on the narrow wooden benches to
+listen to hour after hour, searching their souls for sin with an almost
+frenzied eagerness. And yet, forlorn and tedious as the bleak service
+appears to us, there is no doubt that these stern-faced men and women
+wrenched an almost mystical inspiration from it; that a weird
+fascination emanated from this morbid dwelling on sin and punishment,
+appealing to the emotions quite as vividly&mdash;although through a different
+channel&mdash;as the most elaborate ceremonial. When the soul is wrought to a
+certain pitch each hardship is merely an added opportunity to prove its
+faith. It was this high pitch, attained and sustained by our Puritan
+fathers, which produced a dramatic and sometimes terrible blend of
+personality.</p>
+
+<p>It has become the modern fashion somewhat to belittle Puritanism. It is
+easy to emphasize<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> its absurdities, to ridicule the almost fanatical
+fervor which goaded men to harshness and inconsistency. The fact remains
+that a tremendous selective force was needed to tear the Puritans away
+from the mother church and the mother country and fortify them in their
+struggle in a new land. It was religious zeal which furnished this
+motive power. Different implements and differently directed force are
+needed to extract the diamond from the earth, from the implements and
+force needed to polish and cut the same diamond. So different phases of
+religious development are called forth by progressive phases of
+development. It has been said about the New England conscience: "It
+fostered a condition of life and type of character doubtless never again
+possible in the world's history. Having done its work, having founded
+soundly and peopled strongly an exceptional region, the New England
+conscience had no further necessity for being. Those whom it now
+tortures with its hot pincers of doubt and self-reproach are sacrificed
+to a cause long since won."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Puritans themselves grew away from many of their excessive
+severities. But as they gained bodily strength from their conflict with
+the elements, so they gained a certain moral stamina by their
+self-imposed religious observance. And this moral stamina has marked New
+England ever since, and marked her to her glory.</p>
+
+<p>One cannot speak of Hingham churches&mdash;indeed, one cannot speak of
+Hingham&mdash;without admiring mention of the New North Church. This
+building, of exquisite proportions and finish, within and without, built
+by Bulfinch in 1806, is one of the most flawless examples of its type on
+the South Shore. You will appreciate the cream-colored paint, the buff
+walls, the quaint box pews of oiled wood, with handrails gleaming from
+the touch of many generations, with wooden buttons and protruding hinges
+proclaiming an ancient fashion; but the unique feature of the New North
+Church is its slave galleries. These two small galleries, between the
+roof and the choir loft, held for thirty years, in diminishing numbers,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>
+negroes and Indians. The last occupant was a black Lucretia, who, after
+being freed, was invited to sit downstairs with her master and mistress,
+which she did, and which she continued to do until her death, not so
+very long ago.</p>
+
+<p>Hingham, its Main Street&mdash;alas for the original name of "Bachelors
+Rowe"&mdash;arched by a double row of superb elms on either side, is
+incalculably rich in old houses, old traditions, old families. Even
+motoring through, too quickly as motorists must, one cannot help being
+struck by the substantial dignity of the place, by the well-kept
+prosperity of the houses, large and small, which fringe the fine old
+highway. Ever since the days when the three Misses Barker kept loyal to
+George IV, claiming the King as their liege lord fifty years after the
+Declaration of Independence, the town has preserved a Cranford-like
+charm. And why not, when the very house is still handsomely preserved,
+where the nameless nobleman, Francis Le Baron, was concealed between the
+floors, and, as we are told in Mrs. Austen's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> novel, very properly
+capped the climax by marrying his brave little protector, Molly Wilder?
+Why not, when the Lincoln family, ancestors of Abraham, has been
+identified with the town since its settlement? The house of
+Major-General Benjamin Lincoln, who received the sword of Cornwallis at
+Yorktown, is still occupied by his descendants, its neat fence, many
+windows, two chimneys, and its two stories and a half proclaiming it a
+dwelling of repute. Near by, descendants of Samuel Lincoln, the ancestor
+of Abraham, occupy part of another roomy ancient homestead. The
+Wampatuck Club, named after the Indian chief who granted the original
+deeds of the town, has found quarters in an extremely interesting house
+dating from 1680. In the spacious living-room are seventeen panels, on
+the walls and in the doors, painted with charming old-fashioned skill by
+John Hazlitt, the brother of the English essayist. The Reverend Daniel
+Shute house, built in 1746, is practically intact with its paneled rooms
+and wall-paper a hundred years old. Hingham's famous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> elms shade the
+house where Parson Ebenezer Gay lived out his long pastorate of
+sixty-nine years and nine months, and the Garrison house, built before
+1640, sheltered, in its prime, nine generations of the same family. The
+Rainbow Roof house, so called from the delicious curve in its roof, is
+one of Hingham's prettiest two-hundred-year-old cottages, and Miss Susan
+B. Willard's cottage is one of the oldest in the United States. Derby
+Academy, founded almost two centuries and a half ago by Madam Derby,
+still maintains its social and scholarly prestige through all the
+educational turmoil of the twentieth century. One likes to associate
+Hingham with Massachusetts's stanch and sturdy "war governor," for it
+was here that John Albion Andrew, who proved himself so truly one of our
+great men during the Civil War, courted Eliza Jones Hersey, and here
+that the happy years of their early married life were spent. Later,
+another governor, John D. Long, was for many years a mighty figure in
+the town.</p>
+
+<p>With its ancient churches and institutions,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> its pensive graveyards and
+lovely elms, its ancestral houses and hidden gardens, Hingham typifies
+what is quaintest and best in New England towns. Possibly the dappling
+of the elms, possibly the shadow of the Old Ship Church, is a bit deeper
+here than in the other South Shore towns. However it may seem to its
+inhabitants, to the stranger everything in Hingham is tinctured by the
+remembrance of the stern old ecclesiasticism. Even the number of
+historic forts seems a proper part of those righteous days, for when did
+religion and warfare not go hand in hand? During the trouble with King
+Philip the town had three forts, one at Fort Hill, one at the Cemetery,
+and one "on the plain about a mile from the harbor"; and the sites may
+still be identified.</p>
+
+<p>Not that Hingham history is exclusively religious or martial. Her little
+harbor once held seventy sail of fishing vessels, and between 1815 and
+1826, 165,000 barrels of mackerel were landed on their salty decks. For
+fifty years (between 1811 and 1860) the Rapid sailed as a packet between
+this town and Boston,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> making the trip on one memorable occasion in
+sixty-seven minutes. We read that in the War of 1812 she was carried up
+the Weymouth River and covered, masts and hull, with green bushes so
+that the marauding British cruisers might not find her, and as we read
+we find ourselves remembering that <i>camouflage</i> is new only in name.</p>
+
+<p>How entirely fitting it seems that a town of such venerable houses and
+venerable legends should be presided over by a church which is the
+oldest of its kind in the country!</p>
+
+<p>Hingham changes. There is a Roman Catholic Church in the very heart of
+that one-time Puritan stronghold: the New North is Unitarian, and
+Episcopalians, Baptists, and Second Adventists have settled down
+comfortably where once they would have been run out of town. Poor old
+Puritans, how grieved and scandalized they would be to stand, as we are
+standing now, and watch the procession of passing automobilists! Would
+it seem all lost to them, we wonder, the religious ideal for which they
+struggled, or would they realize<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> that their sowing had brought forth
+richer fruit than they could guess? It has all changed, since Puritan
+days, and yet, perhaps, in no other place in New England does the hand
+of the past lie so visibly upon the community. You cannot lift your eyes
+but they rest upon some building raised two centuries and more ago; the
+shade which ripples under your feet is cast by elms planted by that very
+hand of the past. Even your voice repeats the words which those old
+patriarchs, well versed in Biblical lore, chose for their neighborhood
+names. Accord Pond and Glad Tidings Plain might have been lifted from
+some Pilgrim's Progress, while the near-by Sea of Galilee and Jerusalem
+Road are from the Good Book itself.</p>
+
+<p>"Which way to Egypt?" Is this an echo from that time when the Bible was
+the corner-stone of Church and State, of home and school?</p>
+
+<p>"What's the best road to Jericho Beach?" Surely it is some grave-faced
+shade who calls: or is it a peal from the chimes in the Memorial<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> Bell
+Tower&mdash;chimes reminiscent of old Hingham, in England? No, it is only the
+shouted question of the motorist, gay and prosperous, flying on his
+Sunday holiday through ancient Hingham town.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/image127.jpg" width="250" height="171" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/image128.jpg" width="350" height="190" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3>COHASSET LEDGES AND MARSHES<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></h3>
+<p>A sickle-shaped shore&mdash;wild, superb! Tawny ledges tumbling out to sea,
+rearing massive heads to search, across three thousand miles of water,
+for another shore. For it is Spain and Portugal which lie directly
+yonder, and the same tumultuous sea that crashes and swirls against
+Cohasset's crags laps also on those sunnier, warmer sands.</p>
+
+<p>Back inland, from the bold brown coast which gives Cohasset her
+Riviera-like fame, lie marshes, liquefying into mirrors at high tide,
+melting into lush green at low tide.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Between the ledges and the marshes winds Jerusalem Road, bearing a
+continual stream of sight-seers and fringed with estates hidden from the
+sight-seers; estates with terraces dashed by spindrift, with curving
+stairways hewn in sheer rock down to the water, with wind-twisted
+savins, and flowers whose bright bloom is heightened by the tang of
+salt. For too many a passing traveler Cohasset is known only as the most
+fashionable resort on the South Shore. But Cohasset's story is a longer
+one than that, and far more profound.</p>
+
+<p>Cohasset is founded upon a rock, and the making of that rock is so
+honestly and minutely recorded by nature that even those who take alarm
+at the word "geology" may read this record with ease. These rocky ledges
+that stare so proudly across the sea underlie, also, every inch of soil,
+and are of the same kind everywhere&mdash;granite. Granite is a rock which is
+formed under immense pressure and in the presence of confined moisture,
+needing a weight of fifteen thousand pounds upon every inch. Therefore,
+wherever granite is found we know<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> that it has not been formed by
+deposit, like limestone and sandstone and slate and other sedimentary
+rocks, but at a prodigious depth under the solid ground, and by slow
+crystallizing of molten substances. There must have been from two to
+five miles of other rock lying upon the stuff that crystallized into
+granite. A wrinkling in the skin of the earth exposed the granite, a
+wrinkling so gradual that doubtless if generations of men had lived on
+top of the wrinkle they would have sworn it did not move. But move it
+did, and the superimposed rock must have been worn off at a rate of less
+than a hundredth part of an inch every year in order to lose two or
+three miles of it in twenty-five million years. As the granite was
+wrinkled up by the movement of the earth's crust, certain cracks opened
+and filled with lava, forming dikes. The geologist to-day can glance at
+these dikes and tell the period of their formation as casually as a
+jockey looking at a horse's mouth can tell his age. He could also tell
+of the "faulting," or slipping down, of adjacent masses of solid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> rock,
+which has occurred often enough to carve the characteristic Cohasset
+coast.</p>
+
+<p>The making of the rock bottom is a story which extends over millions of
+years: the making of the soil extends over thousands. The gigantic
+glacier which once formed all over the northern part of North America,
+and which remained upon it most of the time until about seven thousand
+years ago, ground up the rock like a huge mill and heaped its grist into
+hills and plains and meadows. The marks of it are as easy to see as
+finger prints in putty. There are scratches on the underlying rock in
+every part of the town, pointing in the southerly direction in which the
+glacier moved. The gravel and clay belts of the town have all been
+stretched out in the same direction as the scratches, and many are the
+boulders which were combed out of the moving glacier by the peaks of the
+ledges, and are now poised, like the famous Tipping Rock, just where the
+glacier left them when it melted. Few towns in America possess greater
+geological interest or a wider variety of glacial phenomena than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>
+Cohasset&mdash;all of which may be studied more fully with the aid of E.
+Victor Bigelow's "Narrative History of the Town of Cohasset,
+Massachusetts," and William O. Crosby's "Geology of the Boston Basin."</p>
+
+<p>This, then, is briefly the first part of Cohasset's ledges. The second
+part deals with human events, including many shipwrecks and disasters,
+and more than one romantic episode. Perhaps this human section is best
+begun with Captain John Smith.</p>
+
+<p>Captain John Smith was born too early. If ever a hero was brought into
+the world to adorn the moving-picture screen, that hero of the "iron
+collar," of piratical capture, of wedlock with an Indian princess, was
+the man. Failing of this high calling he did some serviceable work in
+discovering and describing many of the inlets on the coast of New
+England. Among these inlets Cohasset acted her part as hostess to the
+famous navigator and staged a small and vivid encounter with the
+aborigines. The date of this presentation was in 1614; the scenario may
+be found in Smith's own diary.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> Smith and a party of eight or more
+sailors made the trip between the ledges in a small rowboat. It is
+believed that they landed somewhere near Hominy Point. Their landing was
+not carried out without some misadventure, however, for in some way this
+party of explorers angered the Indians with whom they came in contact,
+and the result was an attack from bow and arrow. The town of Cohasset,
+in commemorating this encounter by a tablet, has inscribed upon the
+tablet Smith's own words:</p>
+
+<p>"We found the people on those parts very kind, but in their fury no less
+valiant: and at Quonhaset falling out there with but one of them, he
+with three others crossed the harbour in a cannow to certain rocks
+whereby we must pass, and there let flie their arrowes for our shot,
+till we were out of danger, yet one of them was slaine, and the other
+shot through the thigh."</p>
+
+<p>History follows fast along the ledges: history of gallant deeds and
+gallant defense during the days of the Revolution and the War of 1812;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
+deeds of disaster along the coast and one especial deed of great
+engineering skill.</p>
+
+<p>The beauty and the tragedy of Cohasset are caught in large measure upon
+these jagged rocks. The splinters and wrecks of two and a half centuries
+have strewn the beaches, and many a corpse, far from its native land,
+has been found, wrapped in a shroud of seaweed upon the sand, and has
+been lowered by alien hands into a forever unmarked grave. Quite
+naturally the business of "wrecking"&mdash;that is, saving the pieces&mdash;came
+to be the trade of a number of Cohasset citizens, and so expert did
+Cohasset divers and seamen become that they were in demand all over the
+world. One of the most interesting salvage enterprises concerned a
+Spanish frigate, sunk off the coast of Venezuela. Many thousand dollars
+in silver coin were covered by fifty feet of water, and it was Captain
+Tower, of Cohasset, with a crew of Cohasset divers and seamen, who set
+sail for the spot in a schooner bearing the substantial name of Eliza
+Ann. The Spanish Government, having no faith in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> the enterprise, agreed
+to claim only two and one half per cent of what was removed. The first
+year the wreckers got fourteen thousand dollars, and the second they had
+reached seven thousand, when the Spaniards became so jealous of their
+skill that they had to flee for their lives (taking the seven thousand,
+however). The clumsy diving-bell method was the only one known at that
+time, but when, twenty years later, the Spaniards had to swallow their
+chagrin and send again for the same wrecking party to assist them on the
+same task, modern diving suits were in use and more money was
+recovered&mdash;no mean triumph for the crew of the Eliza Ann!</p>
+
+<p>As the wrecks along the Cohasset coast were principally caused by the
+dangerous reefs spreading in either direction from what is known as
+Minot's Ledge, the necessity of a lighthouse on that spot was early
+evident, and the erecting of the present Minot's Light is one of the
+most romantic engineering enterprises of our coast history. The original
+structure was snapped off like a pikestaff in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> great storm of 1851,
+and the present one of Quincy granite is the first of its kind in
+America to be built on a ledge awash at high tide and with no adjacent
+dry land. The tremendous difficulties were finally overcome, although in
+the year 1855 the work could be pursued for only a hundred and thirty
+hours, and the following year for only a hundred and fifty-seven. To
+read of the erection of this remarkable lighthouse reminds one of the
+building of Solomon's temple. The stone was selected with the utmost
+care, and the Quincy cutters declared that such chiseling had never
+before left the hand of man. Then every single block for the lower
+portion was meticulously cut, dovetailed, and set in position on
+Government Island in Cohasset Harbor. The old base, exquisitely laid,
+where they were thus set up is still visible, as smooth as a billiard
+table, although grass-covered. In addition to the flawless cutting and
+joining of the blocks, the ledge itself was cut into a succession of
+levels suitable to bear a stone foundation&mdash;work which was possible only
+at certain times of the tide and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> seasons of the year. The cutting of
+each stone so that it exactly fitted its neighbor, above, below, and at
+either side, and precisely conformed to the next inner row upon the same
+level, was nothing short of a marvel. A miniature of the light&mdash;the
+building of which took two winters, and which was on the scale of an
+inch to a foot&mdash;was in the United States Government Building at the
+Chicago Exposition, and is stone for stone a counterpart of the granite
+tower in the Atlantic. Although this is an achievement which belongs in
+a sense to the whole United States, yet it must always seem, to those
+who followed it most closely, as belonging peculiarly to Cohasset. A
+famous Cohasset rigger made the model for the derrick which was used to
+raise the stones; the massive granite blocks were teamed by one whose
+proud boast it was that he had never had occasion to shift a stone
+twice; a Cohasset man captained the first vessel to carry the stone to
+the ledge, and another assisted in the selection of the stone.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to turn one's eyes away from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> the spectacular beauty of
+the Cohasset shore, but magnificent as these ledges are, and glittering
+with infinite romance, yet, rather curiously, it is on the limpid
+surface of the marshes that we read the most significant episodes of
+Colonial and pioneer life.</p>
+
+<p>One of the needs which the early settlers were quick to feel was open
+land which would serve as pasturage for their cattle. With forests
+pressing down upon them from the rear, and a barrier of granite in front
+of them, the problem of grazing-lands was important. The Hingham
+settlement at Bare Cove (Cohasset was part of Hingham originally) found
+the solution in the acres of open marshland which stretched to the east.
+Cohasset to-day may ask where so much grazing-land lay within her
+borders. By comparison with the old maps and surveying figures, we find
+that many acres, now covered with the water of Little Harbor and lying
+within the sandbar at Pleasant Beach, are counted as old grazing-lands.
+These, with the sweep of what is now the "Glades," furnished abundant
+pasturage for neighboring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> cattle and brought the Hingham settlers
+quickly to Cohasset meadows. Thus it happens that the first history of
+Cohasset is the history of this common pasturage&mdash;"Commons," as it was
+known in the old histories. Although Hingham was early divided up among
+the pioneers, the marshes were kept undivided for the use of the whole
+settlement. As a record of 1650 puts it: "It was ordered that any
+townsman shall have the liberty to put swine to Conohasset without yokes
+or rings, upon the town's common land."</p>
+
+<p>But the Massachusetts Bay Colony was hard-headed as well as pious, and
+several na&iuml;ve hints creep into the early records of sharers of the
+Commons who were shrewdly eyeing the salt land of Cohasset. A real
+estate transfer of 1640 has this potential flavor: "Half the lot at
+Conehasset, if any fall by lot, and half the commons which belong to
+said lot." And again, four years later, Henry Tuttle sold to John
+Fearing "what right he had to the Division of Conihassett Meadows." The
+first land to come under the measuring chain and wooden stake<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> of
+surveyors was about the margin of Little Harbor about the middle of the
+seventeenth century. After that the rest of the township was not long in
+being parceled out. One of the curious methods of land division was in
+the Beechwood district. The apportionment seems to have had the
+characteristics of ribbon cake. Sections of differing desirability&mdash;to
+meet the demands of justice and natural conditions&mdash;were measured out in
+long strips, a mile long and twenty-five feet wide. Many an old stone
+wall marking this early grant is still to be seen in the woods. Could
+anything but the indomitable spirit of those English settlers and the
+strong feeling for land ownership have built walls of carted stone about
+enclosures a mile long and twenty-five feet wide?</p>
+
+<p>Having effected a division of land in Cohasset, families soon began to
+settle away from the mother town of Hingham, and after a prolonged
+period of government at arm's length, with all its attendant
+discomforts, the long, bitter struggle resolved itself into Cohasset's
+final separation from Hingham, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> its development from a precinct into
+an independent township.</p>
+
+<p>While the marshes to the north were the cause of Cohasset being first
+visited, settled, and made into a township, yet the marshes to the south
+hold an even more vital historical interest. These southern marshes,
+bordering Bound Brook and stretching away to Bassing Beach, were visited
+by haymakers as were those to the north. But these haymakers did not
+come from the same township, nor were they under the same local
+government. The obscure little stream which to-day lies between Scituate
+Harbor and Cohasset marks the line of two conflicting grants&mdash;the
+Plymouth Colony and the Massachusetts Bay Colony.</p>
+
+<p>In the early days of New England royal grants from the throne or patents
+from colonial councils in London were deemed necessary before settling
+in the wilderness. The strong, inherited respect for landed estates must
+have given such charters their value, as it is hard for us to see now
+how any one in England could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> have prevented the pioneers from settling
+where they pleased. The various patents and grants of the two colonies
+(indefinite as they seem to us now, as some granted "up to" a hundred
+acres to each emigrant without defining any boundaries) brought the two
+colonies face to face at Bound Brook. The result was a dispute over the
+harvesting of salt hay.</p>
+
+<p>All boundary streams attract to themselves a certain amount of fame&mdash;the
+Rio Grande, the Saint Lawrence, and the Rhine. But surely the little
+stream of Bound Brook, which was finally taken as the line of division
+between two colonies of such historical importance as the Plymouth and
+the Massachusetts Bay, is worth more than a superficial attention. The
+dispute lasted many years and occasioned the appointing of numerous
+commissioners from both sides. That the salt grass of Bassing Beach
+should have assumed such importance reveals again the sensitiveness to
+land values of men who had so recently left England. The settling of the
+dispute was not referred back to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> England, but was settled by the
+colonists themselves.</p>
+
+<p>The author of the "Narrative History of Cohasset" calls this an event of
+only less historical importance than that of the pact drawn up in the
+cabin of the Mayflower. He declares that the confederation of states had
+its inception there, and adds: "The appointment for this joint
+commission for the settlement of this intercolonial difficulty was the
+first step of federation that culminated in the Colonial Congress and
+then blossomed into the United States." We to-day, to whom the salt
+grass of Cohasset is little more than a fringe about the two harbors,
+may find it difficult to agree fully with such a sweeping statement, but
+certainly this spot and boundary line should always be associated with
+the respect for property which has ennobled the Anglo-Saxon race.</p>
+
+<p>Between the marshes, which were of such high importance in those early
+days, and the ledges which have been the cause and the scene of so many
+Cohasset adventures, twists Jerusalem<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> Road, the brilliant beauty of
+which has been so often&mdash;but never too often&mdash;remarked. This was the
+main road from Hingham for many years, and it took full three hours of
+barbarous jolting in two-wheeled, springless ox carts to make the trip.
+Even if a man had a horse the journey was cruelly tedious, for there
+were only a few stretches where the horse could go faster than a
+walk&mdash;and the way was pock-marked with boulders and mudholes. With no
+stage-coach before 1815, and being off the highway between Plymouth and
+Boston, it is small wonder that the early Cohasset folk either walked or
+went by sea to Hingham and thence to Boston.</p>
+
+<p>It has been suggested that the "keeper of young cattle at Coneyhassett,"
+who drove his herd over from Hingham, was moved either by piety or
+sarcasm to give the trail its present arresting name. However, as the
+herdsman did not take this route, but the back road through Turkey
+Meadows, it is more probable that some visitors, who detected a
+resemblance between this section of the country and the Holy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> Land, were
+responsible for the christening of this road and also of the Sea of
+Galilee&mdash;which last has almost dropped into disuse. There does not seem
+to be any particular suggestion of the land of the Pharaohs and
+present-day Egypt, but tradition explains that as follows: Old Squire
+Perce had accumulated a store of grain in case of drought, and when the
+drought came and the men hurried to him to buy corn, he greeted them
+with "Well, boys, so you've come down to Egypt to buy corn." Another
+proof, if one were needed, of the Biblical familiarity of those days.</p>
+
+<p>It is hard to stop writing about Cohasset. There are so many bits of
+history tucked into every ledge and cranny of her shore. The green in
+front of the old white meeting-house&mdash;one of the prettiest and most
+perfect meeting-houses on the South Shore&mdash;has been pressed by the feet
+of men assembling for six wars. It makes Cohasset seem venerable,
+indeed, when one thinks of the march of American history. But to the
+tawny ledges, tumbling out to sea, these three hundred years are as but
+a day; for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> the story of the stones, like the story of the stars, is
+measured in terms of milliards. To such immemorial keepers of the coast
+the life of man is a brief tale that is soon told, and fades as swiftly
+as the fading leaf.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/image146.jpg" width="250" height="116" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> For much of this chapter I am indebted to my friend Alice
+C. Hyde.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/image147.jpg" width="350" height="225" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SCITUATE SHORE</h3>
+
+<p>Scituate is different: different from Cohasset, with its superbly bold
+coast and its fashionable folk; different from Hingham, with its air of
+settled inland dignity. Scituate has a quaintness, a casualness, the
+indescribable air of a land's-end spot. The fine houses in Scituate are
+refreshingly free from pretension; the winds that have twisted the trees
+into Rackham-like grotesques have blown away falsity and formality.</p>
+
+<p>Scituate life has always been along the shore. It is from the shore that
+coot-shooting used to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> furnish a livelihood to many a Scituate man, and
+still lures the huntsmen in the fine fall weather. It is the peculiar
+formation of the shore which has developed a small, clinker-built boat,
+and made the town famous for day fishing. It is along the shore that the
+unique and picturesque mossing industry is still carried on, and along
+the shore that the well-known colony of literary folk have settled.</p>
+
+<p>Scituate's history is really a fishing history, for as early as 1633 a
+fishing station was established here, and in course of time the North
+River, winding twenty miles through green meadows to the sea, was once
+the scene of more shipbuilding than any other river in New England.</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing more indicative of the Yankees' shrewd practicality
+than the early settlers' instant appreciation of the financial and
+economic potentialities of the fishing-trade. The Spaniard sought for
+gold in the new country, or contented himself with the fluctuating fur
+trade with its demoralizing slack seasons. But the New Englander
+promptly applied<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> himself to the mundane pursuit of cod and mackerel.
+Everybody fished. As John Smith, in his "Description of New England,"
+says: "Young boyes and girles, salvages or any other, be they never such
+idlers, may turne, carry, and returne fish without shame or either great
+pain: he is very idle that is past twelve years of age and cannot doe so
+much: and shee is very old that cannot spin a thread to catch them."</p>
+
+<p>It began when Squanto the Indian showed the amazed colonists how he
+could tread the eels out of the mud with his feet and catch them with
+his hands. This was convenient, to be sure, but the colonists did not
+long content themselves with such primitive methods. They sent to
+England for cod hooks and lines; mackerel hooks and lines; herring nets
+and seines; shark hooks, bass nets, squid lines, and eel pots; and in a
+short time they had established a trade which meant more money than the
+gold mines of Guiana or Potosi. The modern financier who makes a fortune
+from the invention of a collar button or the sale of countless penny<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
+packages of gum is the lineal descendant of that first thrifty New
+Englander who did not scorn the humble cod because it was cheap and
+plentiful (you remember how these same cod "pestered" the ships of
+Gosnold in 1602), but set to work with the quiet initiative which has
+distinguished New Englanders ever since, first to catch, then to barter,
+and finally to sell his wares to all the world. For cheap as all fish
+was&mdash;twopence for a twelve-pound cod, salmon less than a penny a pound,
+and shad, when it was finally considered fit to eat at all, at two fish
+for a penny&mdash;yet, when all the world is ready to buy and the supply is
+inexhaustible, tremendous profits are possible. The many fast days of
+the Roman Catholic Church abroad opened an immense demand, and in a
+short time quantities of various kinds of fish (Josselyn in 1672
+enumerates over two hundred caught in New England waters) were dried and
+salted and sent to England.</p>
+
+<p>This constant and steadily increasing trade radically affected the whole
+economic structure and history of New England for two centuries.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> Ships
+and all the shipyard industries; the farm, on which fish was used not
+only as a medium of exchange, but also as a valuable fertilizer; the
+home, where the many operations of curing and salting were carried
+on&mdash;all of those were developed directly by the growth of this
+particular trade. Laws were made and continually revised regarding the
+fisheries and safeguarding their rights in every conceivable fashion;
+ship carpenters were exempt from military service, and many special
+exemptions were extended to fishermen under the general statutes.</p>
+
+<p>The oyster is now a dish for the epicure and the lobster for the
+millionaire. But in the old days when oysters a foot long were not
+uncommon, and lobsters sometimes grew to six feet, every one had all he
+wanted, and sometimes more than he wanted, of these delicacies. The
+stranger in New England may notice how certain customs still prevail,
+such as the Friday night fish dinner and the Sunday morning fish-cakes;
+and also that New Englanders as a whole have a rather fastidious taste
+in regard to the preparation of both salt- and fresh-water<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> products.
+The food of any region is characteristic of that region, and to travel
+along the Old Coast Road and not partake of one of the delicious fish
+dinners, is as absurd as it would be to omit rice from a menu in China
+or roast beef from an English dinner.</p>
+
+<p>While the fishing trade was highly important in all the South Shore
+towns, yet it was especially so in Scituate. In 1770 more than thirty
+vessels, principally for mackerel, were fitted out in this one village,
+and these vessels not infrequently took a thousand barrels in a season.
+In winter they were used for Southern coasting, carrying lumber and fish
+and returning with grain and flour. The reason why fishing was so
+persistently and exclusively followed in this particular spot is not
+hard to seek. The sea yielded a far more profitable and ready crop than
+the land, and, besides, had a jealous way of nibbling away at the land
+wherever it could. It is estimated that it wastes away from twelve to
+fourteen inches of Fourth Cliff every year.</p>
+
+<p>But in spite of the sea's readily accessible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> crop it was natural that
+the "men of Kent" who settled the town should demand some portion of dry
+land as well. These men of Kent were not mermen, able to live in and on
+the water indefinitely, but decidedly gallant fellows, rather more
+courtly than their neighbors, and more polished than the race which
+succeeded them. Gilson, Vassal, Hatherly, Cudworth, Tilden, Hoar,
+Foster, Stedman, and Hinckley had all been accustomed to the elegancies
+of life in England as their names testify. The first land they used was
+on the cliffs, for it had already been improved by Indian planting; then
+the salt marshes, covered with a natural crop of grass, and then the
+mellow intervales near the river. When the sea was forced to the
+regretful realization that she could not monopolize the entire attention
+of her fellows, she was persuaded to yield up some very excellent
+fertilizer in the way of seaweed. But she still nags away at the cliffs
+and shore, and proclaims with every flaunting wave and ripple that it is
+the water, not the land, which makes Scituate what it is.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And, after all, the sea is right. It is along the shore that one sees
+Scituate most truly. Here the characteristic industry of mossing is
+still carried on in primitive fashion. The mossers work from dories,
+gathering with long-handled rakes the seaweed from the rocks and ledges
+along the shore. They bring it in, a heavy, dark, inert mass, all sleek
+and dripping, and spread it out to dry in the sun. As it lies there,
+neatly arranged on beds of smoothest pebbles, the sun bleaches it. One
+can easily differentiate the different days' haul, for the moss which is
+just spread out is almost black and that of yesterday is a dark purple.
+It shimmers from purple into lavender; the lavender into something like
+rose; and by the time of the final washing and bleaching it lies in fine
+light white crinkles, almost like wool. It is a pretty sight, and the
+neatness and dispatch of the mossers make the odd sea-flower gardens
+attractive patches on the beach. Sometimes a family working together
+will make as much as a thousand dollars in a season gathering and
+preparing the moss. One wonders if all the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> people in the world could
+eat enough blancmange to consume this salty product, and is relieved to
+be reminded that the moss is also used for brewing and dyeing.</p>
+
+<p>It is really a pity to see Scituate only from a motor. There is real
+atmosphere to the place, which is worth breathing, but it takes more
+time to breathe in an atmosphere than merely to "take the air." Should
+you decide to ramble about the ancient town you will surely find your
+way to Scituate Point. The old stone lighthouse, over a century old, is
+no longer used, and the oil lantern, hung nightly out at the end of the
+romantic promontory, seems a return to days of long ago. You will also
+see the place where, in the stirring Revolutionary days, little Abigail
+and Rebecca Bates, with fife and drum marched up and down, close to the
+shore and yet hidden from sight, playing so furiously that their
+"martial music and other noises" scared away the enemy and saved the
+town from invasion. You will go to Second Cliff where are the summer
+homes of many literary people, and you will pass<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> through Egypt,
+catching what glimpse you can of the stables and offices, paddocks and
+cottages of the immense estate of Dreamwold. And of course you will have
+pointed out to you the birthplace of Samuel Woodworth, whose sole claim
+to remembrance is his poem of the "Old Oaken Bucket." The well-sweep is
+still where he saw it, when, as editor of the <i>New York Mirror</i>, it
+suddenly flashed before his reminiscent vision, but the old oaken bucket
+itself has been removed to a museum.</p>
+
+<p>After you have done all these things, you will, if you are wise, forsake
+Scituate Harbor, which is the old section, and Scituate Beach, which is
+the newer, summer section, and find the way to the burial ground, which,
+after the one in Plymouth, is the oldest in the State. Possibly there
+will be others at the burial ground, for ancestor worshipers are not
+confined to China, and every year there springs up a new crop of
+genealogists to kneel before the moss-grown headstones and, with truly
+admirable patience, decipher names and dates, half obliterated by the
+finger of time. One<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> does not wonder that their descendants are so eager
+to trace their connection back to those men of Kent, whose sturdy title
+rings so bravely down the centuries. To be sure, what is left to trace
+is very slight in most cases, and quite without any savor of
+personality. Too often it is merely brief and dry recital of dates and
+number of progeny, and names of the same. Few have left anything so
+quaint as the words of Walter Briggs, who settled there in 1651 and from
+whom Briggs Harbor was named. His will contains this thoughtful
+provision: "For my wife Francis, one third of my estate during her life,
+also a gentle horse or mare, and Jemmy the negur shall catch it for
+her."</p>
+
+<p>The good people who came later (1634) from Plymouth and Boston and took
+up their difficult colonial life under the pastorate of Mr. Lathrop,
+seem to have done their best to make "Satuit" (as it was first called,
+from the Indians, meaning "cold brook") conform as nearly as possible to
+the other pioneer settlements, even to the point of discovering witches<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>
+here. But religion and fasting were not able to accomplish what the
+ubiquitous summer influx has, happily, also failed to effect. Scituate
+remains different.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was those men of Kent who gave it its indestructibly romantic
+bias; perhaps it is the jealousy of the ever-encroaching sea. The gray
+geese flying over the iridescent moss gleaming upon the pebbled beaches,
+the solitary lantern on the point are all parts of that differentness.
+And those who love her best are glad that it is so.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/image158.jpg" width="250" height="112" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/image159.jpg" width="350" height="166" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h3>MARSHFIELD, THE HOME OF DANIEL WEBSTER</h3>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God out of knowledge, and good out of infinite pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sight out of blindness, and purity out of a stain.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>It was these mighty marshes&mdash;this ample sweep of grass, of sea and
+sky&mdash;this vast earthly and heavenly spaciousness that must forever stand
+to all New Englanders as a background to the powerful personality who
+chose it as his own home. Daniel Webster, when his eyes first turned to
+this infinite reach of largeness, instinctively knew it as the place
+where his splendid senses would find satisfaction, and his splendid mind
+would soar into an even loftier freedom. Webster loved Marshfield<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> with
+an intensity that made it peculiarly his own. Lanier, in language more
+intricate and tropical, exclaimed of his "dim sweet" woods: "Ye held me
+fast in your heart, and I held you fast in mine." Webster wielded the
+vital union between his nature and that of the land not only by profound
+sentiment, but by a vigorous physical grappling with the soil.</p>
+
+<p>Is it that vivid natures unconsciously seek an environment
+characteristic of them? Or are they, perhaps, inevitably forced to
+create such an environment wherever they find themselves? Both facts
+seem true in this case. This wide world of marsh and sea is not only
+beautifully expressive of one who plunged himself into a rich communion
+with the earth, with her full harvests and blooded cattle, with her
+fruitful brooks and lakes; but it is still, after more than half a
+century, vibrant with the spirit of the man who dwelt there.</p>
+
+<p>We of another generation&mdash;and a generation before whom so many
+portentous events and figures have passed&mdash;find it hard to realize the
+tremendous magnetism and brilliancy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> of a man who has been so long dead,
+or properly to estimate the high historical significance of such a life.
+The human attribute which is the most immediately impelling in direct
+intercourse&mdash;personality&mdash;is the most elusive to preserve. If Webster's
+claim to remembrance rested solely upon that attribute, he would still
+be worthy of enduring fame. But his gifts flowered at a spectacular
+climax of national affairs and won thereby spectacular prominence. That
+these gifts were to lose something of their pristine repute before the
+end infuses, from a dramatic point of view, a contrasted and heightened
+luster to the period of their highest glory.</p>
+
+<p>Let us, casual travelers of a later and more careless day, walk now
+together over the place which is the indestructible memorial of a great
+man, and putting aside the measuring-stick of criticism&mdash;the sign of
+small natures&mdash;try to live for an hour in the atmosphere which was the
+breath of life to one who, if he failed greatly, also succeeded greatly,
+and whose noble achievement it was not only to express, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> to vivify a
+love for the Union which, in its hour of supreme trial, became its
+triumphant force.</p>
+
+<p>Could we go back&mdash;not quite a hundred years&mdash;a little off the direct
+route to Plymouth, on a site overlooking the broad marshes of Green
+Harbor and the sea, where there now stands a boulder erected in 1914 by
+the Boston University Law School Association, we would find a
+comfortable, rambling house, distinguished among its New England
+neighbors by an easy and delightful hospitality&mdash;the kind of hospitality
+we call "Southern." There are many people in the house, on the veranda
+and lawns: a hostess of gentle mien and manners; children attractive in
+the spontaneity of those who continually and happily associate with
+their elders; several house guests (yonder is Audubon the great
+naturalist, here is an office-seeker from Boston, and that chap over
+there, so very much at home, can be no other than Peter Harvey,
+Webster's fond biographer). Callers there are, also, as is shown by the
+line of chaises and saddle horses waiting outside, and old Captain
+Thomas and his wife,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> from whom the place was bought, and who still
+retain their original quarters, move in and out like people who consider
+themselves part of the family. It is a heterogeneous collection, yet by
+no means an awkward one, and every one is chatting with every one else
+with great amiability. It is late afternoon: the master of the house has
+been away all day, and now his guests and his family are glancing in the
+direction from which he may be expected. For although every one is
+comfortable and properly entertained, yet the absence of the host
+creates an inexpressible emptiness; it is as if everything were
+quiescent&mdash;hardly breathing&mdash;merely waiting until he comes. Suddenly the
+atmosphere changes; it is charged with a strong vibrant quality;
+everything&mdash;all eyes, all interest&mdash;is instantly focused on the figure
+which has appeared among them. He is in fisherman's clothes&mdash;this
+newcomer&mdash;attired with a brave eye for the picturesque, in soft hat and
+flowing tie; but there are no fisherman's clothes, no, nor any other
+cloakings which can conceal the resilient dignity of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> bearing, his
+impressive build, and magnificent, kingly head. Sydney Smith called
+Webster a cathedral; and surely there must have been something in those
+enormous, burning eyes, that craglike brow, that smote even the most
+superficial observer into an admiration which was almost awe.</p>
+
+<p>Many men&mdash;perhaps even the majority&mdash;whatever their genius in the outer
+world, in their own houses are either relegated to&mdash;or choose&mdash;the
+inconspicuous r&ocirc;le of mere masculine appendages. But here we have a man
+who is superbly the host: he knows and welcomes every guest and caller;
+he personally supervises the disposal of their baggage and the selection
+of their chambers; he himself has ordered the dinner&mdash;mutton which he
+has raised, fish which he has caught&mdash;and it is being cooked by Monica,
+the Southern slave whose freedom he purchased for her. He carves at
+table, priding himself on his dispatch and nicety, and keeps an eye on
+the needs of every one at the long board. Everything, every one in the
+house is irresistibly drawn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> about this magnetic center which dominates
+by its innate power of personality more than by any deliberate
+intention. His children worship him; his wife idolizes him; each man and
+woman on the place regards him with admiring affection. And in such
+congenial atmosphere he expands, is genial, kindly, delightful. But
+devoted as he is to his home, his family, and his friends, and charming
+as he shows himself with them, yet it is not until we see him striding
+over the farm which he has bought that we see the Daniel Webster who is
+destined to live most graphically in the memories of those who like to
+think of great men in those intimate moments which are most personally
+characteristic of them.</p>
+
+<p>We must rise early in the morning if we would accompany him on his day's
+round. He himself is up at sunrise, for the sunrise is to him signal to
+new life. As he once wrote: "Among all our good people not one in a
+thousand sees the sun rise once a year. They know nothing of the
+morning. Their idea of it is that part of the day which comes along<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>
+after a cup of coffee and a beefsteak or a piece of toast. With them
+morning is not a new issuing of light, a new bursting forth of the sun,
+a new waking up of all that has life from a sort of temporary death, to
+behold again the works of God, the heavens and the earth.... The first
+faint streak of light, the earliest purpling of the east which the lark
+springs up to greet, and the deeper and deeper coloring into orange and
+red, till at length the 'glorious sun is seen, regent of the day'&mdash;this
+they never enjoy, for they never see it."</p>
+
+<p>So four o'clock finds Webster up and dressed and bound for the little
+study in his garden (the only building spared by the fire which
+destroyed the house in 1878) and beginning his correspondence. If he has
+no secretary he writes himself, and by time breakfast is announced
+twenty letters, all franked and sealed, are ready to be posted.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," he says, smiling benignantly down the long breakfast table of
+family and friends, "my day's work is done&mdash;I have nothing to do but
+fish."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Although this is, indeed, his favorite sport, and there is hardly a
+brook or lake or pond within a radius of twenty miles which does not
+bear the charmed legend of having been one of his favorite fishing
+grounds, he does not spend his days in amusement, like the typical
+country gentleman. Farming to him, the son of a yeoman, is no mere
+possession of a fine estate, but the actual participation in ploughing,
+planting, and haying. His full animal spirits find relief in such labor.
+We cannot think of any similar example of such prodigious mental and
+physical energy. Macaulay was a great parliamentary orator, but he was
+the most conventional of city men; Burke and Chatham had no strength for
+such strenuousness after their professional toil. But Webster loved to
+know and to put his hand to every detail of farming and stock-raising.
+When he first came to Marshfield the soil was thin and sandy. It was he
+who instituted scientific farming in the region, teaching the natives
+how to fertilize with kelp which was easily obtainable from the sea, and
+also with the plentiful small<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> herring or menhaden. He taught them the
+proper care of the soil, and the rotation of crops. This passionate love
+of the earth was an integral part of the man. As the force of his mind
+drew its power, not from mere rhetorical facility, but from fundamental
+principles, so his magnificent body, like that of the fabled Ant&aelig;us,
+seemed to draw perennial potency from contact with the earth. To acquire
+land&mdash;he owned nearly eighteen hundred acres at the time of his
+death&mdash;and to cultivate it to the highest possible degree of
+productiveness was his intense delight. The farm which he purchased from
+Captain Thomas grew to an estate of two or three dozen buildings,
+outhouses, tenant houses, a dairyman's cottage, fisherman's house,
+agricultural offices, and several large barns. We can imagine that he
+shows us all of these things&mdash;explaining every detail with enthusiasm
+and accuracy, occasionally digressing upon the habits of birds or fish,
+the influence of tides and currents, the changes of sky and wind. All
+natural laws are fascinating to him&mdash;inspiring his imagination<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> and
+uplifting his spirit&mdash;and it is these things, never politics or
+business, which he discusses in his hours of freedom. He himself
+supervises the planting and harvesting and slaughtering here and on his
+other farm at Franklin&mdash;the family homestead&mdash;even when obliged to be
+absent, or even when temporarily residing in Washington and hard pressed
+with the cares of his office as Secretary of State.</p>
+
+<p>Those painters who include a parrot in the portrait of some fine
+frivolous lady do so to heighten their interpretation of character. We
+all betray our natures, by the creatures we instinctively gather about
+us. One might know that Jefferson at Monticello would select high-bred
+saddle horses as his companions; that Cardinal Richelieu would find no
+pet so soothing, so alluring, as a soft-stepping cat; that Charles I
+would select the long-haired spaniel. So it is entirely in the picture
+that of all the beasts brought under human yoke, that great oxen, slow,
+solemn, strong, would appeal to the man whose searching eyes were never
+at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> rest except when they swept a wide horizon; whose mind found its
+deepest satisfaction in noble languages, the giant monuments of
+literature and art, and whose soul best stretched its wings beside the
+limitless sea and under the limitless sky. Webster was fond of all
+animal life; he felt himself part of its free movement. Guinea hens,
+peacocks, ducks, flocks of tamed wild geese, dogs, horses&mdash;these were
+all part of the Marshfield place, but there was within the breast of the
+owner a special responsiveness to great herds of cattle, and especially
+fine oxen, the embodiment of massive power. So fond was he of these
+favorite beasts of his, that often on his arrival home he would fling
+his bag into the hall without even entering the house, and hasten to the
+barn to see that they were properly tied up for the night. As he once
+said to his little son, as they both stood by the stalls and he was
+feeding the oxen with ears of corn from an unhusked pile lying on the
+barn floor: "I would rather be here than in the Senate," adding, with
+his famous smile, "I think it is better company." So we may be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> sure as
+we walk in our retrospect about the farm with him&mdash;he never speaks of it
+as an "estate" but always as a farm&mdash;he will linger longest where the
+Devon oxen, the Alderneys, Herefordshire, and Ayrshire are grazing, and
+that the eyes which Carlyle likened to anthracite furnaces will glow and
+soften. Twenty years from now he will gaze out upon his oxen once again
+from the window before which he has asked to be carried, as he lies
+waiting for death. Weariness, disease, and disappointment have weakened
+the elasticity of his spirit, and as they pass&mdash;his beloved oxen,
+slowly, solemnly&mdash;what procession of the years passes with them! Years
+of full living, of generous living; of deep emotions; of glory; years of
+ambition; of bereavement; of grief. It is all to pass&mdash;these happy days
+at Marshfield; the wife he so fondly cared for; the children he so
+deeply cherished. Sycophants are to fill, in a measure, the place of
+friends, the money which now flows in so freely is to entangle and
+ensnare him; the lofty aspiration which now inspires him is to
+degenerate into a presidential<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> ambition which will eat into his soul.
+But to-day let us, as long as we may, see him as he is in the height of
+his powers. Let us walk with him under the trees which he planted. Those
+large elms, gracefully silhouetted against the house, were placed there
+with his own hands at the birth of his son Edward and his daughter
+Julia, and he always refers to them gently as "brother" and "sister." To
+plant a tree to mark an event was one of his picturesque customs&mdash;an
+unconscious desire, perhaps, to project himself into the future. I am
+quite sure, as we accompany him, he will expatiate on the improvement in
+the soil which he has effected; that he will point out eagerly not only
+the domestic but the wild animals about the place; and that he will
+stand for a few moments on the high bluff overlooking the sea and the
+marshes and let the wind blow through his dark hair. He is carefully
+dressed&mdash;he always dresses to fit the occasion&mdash;and to-day, as he stands
+in his long boots reaching to the knee and adorned with a tassel, his
+bell-crowned beaver hat in his hand, and in his tight pantaloons and
+well-cut coat&mdash;a magnificent specimen of virile manhood&mdash;the words of
+Lanier, although written at a later date, and about marshes far more
+lush than these New England ones, beat upon our ears:</p>
+<p><a name="facing_pg137" id="facing_pg137"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/image173.jpg" width="500" height="299" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Somehow my soul seems suddenly free<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>On the way back he will show us the place where three of his favorite
+horses are buried, for he does not sell the old horses who have done him
+good service, but has them buried "with the honors of war"&mdash;that is,
+standing upright, with their halters and shoes on. Above one of them he
+has placed the epitaph:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Siste Viator!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Viator te major his sistit."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I do not know if, as we return to the house where already a fresh group
+of visitors has arrived, he will pause by a corner of the yard set off
+by an iron fence. He has chosen this spot as the place where he shall
+lie, and here, in time,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> are to repose under the wide and simple vault
+of sky the wife and children whose going before is to bring such
+desolation. It is a place supremely fitting for that ample spirit which
+knew for its own the nobility of large spaces, and the grandeur of
+repose.</p>
+
+<p>The life of Daniel Webster is one of the most dramatic and touching of
+any of our great men. He was an orator of such solid thought and chaste
+eloquence that even now, without the advantage of the marvelously rich
+and flexible voice and the commanding presence that made each word burn
+like a fire, even without this incalculable personal interpretation, his
+speeches remain as a permanent part of our literature, and will so long
+as English oratory is read. He was a brilliant lawyer&mdash;the foremost of
+his day&mdash;and his statesmanship was of equal rank. In private life he was
+a peculiarly devoted and tender son, husband, father, and friend. That
+he should have become saddened by domestic losses and somewhat vitiated
+by flattery were, perhaps, inevitable. He was bitterly condemned&mdash;more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
+bitterly by his contemporaries than by those who now study his words and
+work&mdash;for lowering his high standard in regard to slavery. It is
+impossible to refute the accusation, at the end of his life, of a
+carelessness approaching unscrupulousness in money matters. His personal
+failings, which were those of a man of exceptional vitality, have been
+heavily&mdash;too heavily&mdash;emphasized. He ate and drank and spent money
+lavishly; he had a fine library; he loved handsome plate and good
+service and good living. He was generous; he was kind. That he was
+susceptible to adulation and, after the death of his first wife, drifted
+into associations less admirable than those of his earlier years, are
+the dark threads of a woof underrunning a majestic warp. He adored his
+country with a fervor that savors of the heroic, and when he said,
+"There are no Alleghanies in my politics," he spoke the truth. The
+intense passion for the soil which animated him at Marshfield was only a
+fragment of that higher passion for his country&mdash;feeling never tainted
+by sectionalism or local<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> prejudice. It was this profound love for the
+Union, coupled with his surpassing gift of eloquence in expressing that
+love and inspiring it in all who heard him, that distinguishes him for
+all time.</p>
+
+<p>There are other memorable things about Marshfield. Governor Edward
+Winslow, who was sent to England to represent the Plymouth and
+Massachusetts Bay Colonies, and whose son Josiah was the first native
+Governor of the Colony, may both be called Marshfield men. Peregrine
+White, the first white child born in this country, lies in the Winslow
+Burying Ground. One of the most singular changes on our coast occurred
+in this vicinity when in one night the "Portland Breeze" closed up the
+mouth of the South River and four miles up the beach opened up the mouth
+of the North River, making an entrance three quarters of a mile wide
+between Third and Fourth Cliff.</p>
+
+<p>These and many other men and events of Marshfield are properly given a
+place in the history of New England, but the special glory<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> of this spot
+will always be that Daniel Webster chose to live, chose to die, and
+chose to be buried under the vast vault of her skyey spaces, within the
+sound of her eternal sea.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/image179.jpg" width="250" height="104" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/image180.jpg" width="350" height="182" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<h3>DUXBURY HOMES</h3>
+
+<p>There are certain places whose happy fortune seems to be that they are
+always specially loved and specially sought by the children of men. From
+that memorable date in 1630 when a little group of the Plymouth
+colonists asked permission to locate across the bay at "Duxberie" until
+now, when the summer colony alone has far surpassed that of the original
+settlers, this section of the coast&mdash;with its lovely six-mile beach, its
+high bluffs, and its pleasant hills and pasture lands, upon which are
+found quite a southern flora, unique in this northern latitude&mdash;has been
+thoroughly frequented and enjoyed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There is no more graphic index to the caliber of a people than the
+houses which they build, and the first house above all others which we
+must associate with this spot is the Standish cottage, built at the foot
+of Captain's Hill by Alexander Standish, the son of Myles, partly from
+materials from his father's house, which was burned down, but whose
+cellar is still visible. This long, low, gambrel-roofed structure, with
+a broad chimney showing the date of 1666, was a long way ahead of the
+first log cabins erected by the Pilgrims&mdash;farther than most of us
+realize, accustomed as we are to glass instead of oiled paper in
+windows; to shingles, and not thatch for roofs. It is fitting that this
+ancient and charming dwelling should be associated with one of the most
+romantic, most striking, names in the Plymouth Colony. There are few
+more picturesque personalities in our early history than Myles Standish.
+Small in stature, fiery in spirit, a terror to the Indians, and a strong
+arm to the Pilgrims, there is no doubt that his determination to live in
+Duxbury&mdash;which he named for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> Duxborough Hall, his ancestral home in
+Lancashire&mdash;went far in obtaining for it a separate incorporation and a
+separate church. This was the first definite offshoot from the Plymouth
+Colony, and was accompanied by the usual maternal fears. While he could
+not forbid them going to Duxbury to settle, yet, when they asked for a
+separate incorporation and church, Bradford granted it most unwillingly.
+He voiced the general sentiment when he wrote that such a separation
+presaged the ruin of the church "&amp; will provoke y^e Lord's displeasure
+against them."</p>
+
+<p>However, such unkind predictions in no wise bothered the sturdy little
+group who moved over to the new location, needing room for their cattle
+and their gardens, and most of all a sense of freedom from the
+restrictions of the mother colony. The son of Elder Brewster went, and
+in time the Elder himself, and so did John Alden and his wife Priscilla,
+whose courtship has been so well told by Longfellow that it needs no
+further embellishing here. On the grassy knoll where John and Priscilla<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>
+built their home in 1631, their grandson built the cottage which now
+stands&mdash;the property of the Alden Kindred Association. John Alden seems
+to have been an attractive young fellow&mdash;it is easy to see why Priscilla
+Mullins preferred him to the swart, truculent widower&mdash;but from our
+point of view John Alden's chief claim to fame is that he was a friend
+of Myles Standish.</p>
+
+<p>Let us, as we pay our respects to Duxbury, pause for a moment and recall
+some of the courageous adventures, some of the brave traits and some of
+the tender ones, which make up our memory of this doughty military
+commander. In the first place, we must remember that he was never a
+member of the church of the Pilgrims: there is even a question if he
+were not&mdash;like the rest of his family in Lancashire&mdash;a Roman Catholic;
+and this immediately places him in a position of peculiar distinction.
+From the first his mission was not along ecclesiastical lines, but along
+military and civil ones. The early histories are full of his intrepid
+deeds: there was never an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> expedition too dangerous or too difficult to
+daunt him. He would attack with the utmost daring the hardest or the
+humblest task. He was absolutely loyal to the interest of the Colony,
+and during that first dreadful winter when he was among the very few who
+were not stricken with sickness, he tended the others day and night,
+"unceasing in his loving care." As in many audacious characters this
+sweeter side of his nature does not seem to have been fully appreciated
+by his contemporaries, and we have the letter in which Robinson, that
+"most learned, polished and modest spirit," writes to Bradford, and
+warns him to have care about Standish. He loves him right well, and is
+persuaded that God has given him to them in mercy and for much good, if
+he is used aright; but he fears that there may be wanting in him "that
+tenderness of the life of man (made after God's image) which is meet."
+This warning doubtless flattered Standish, but Robinson's later
+criticism of his methods at Weymouth hurt the little captain cruelly. He
+seems to have cherished an intense affection for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> the Leyden pastor,
+such as valorous natures often feel for meditative ones, and that
+Robinson died before he&mdash;Standish&mdash;could justify himself was a deep
+grief to the soldier to whom mere physical hardships were as nothing. We
+do not know a great deal about this relationship between the two men: in
+this as in so many cases the intimate stories of these men and women,
+"also their love, and their hatred, and their envy is now perished." But
+we do know that thirty years later when the gallant captain lay dying he
+wrote in his will: "I give three pounds to Mercy Robinson, whom I
+tenderly love for her grandfather's sake." Surely one feels the touching
+eloquence of this brief sentence the fitting close of a life not only
+heroic in action, but deeply sensitive in sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>He died on his farm in Duxbury in 1656 when he was seventy-three, and
+the Myles Standish Monument on Captain's Hill, three hundred and ten
+feet above the bay, is no more conspicuous than his knightly and tender
+life among the people he elected to serve. His two wives, and also
+Priscilla and John<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> Alden, for whom he entertained such lively love and
+equally lively fury, all are buried here&mdash;the Captain's last home
+fittingly marked by four cannon and a sturdy boulder.</p>
+
+<p>Not only for Standish and Alden is Duxbury famous. The beloved William
+Brewster himself moved to this new settlement, and up to a few years ago
+the traces of the whitewood trees which gave the name of "Eagle's Nest"
+to his house could be distinguished. One son&mdash;Love&mdash;lived with the
+venerable elder, who was a widower, and his other son Jonathan owned the
+neighboring farm. In the sight of the Plymouth Colony&mdash;their first home
+in the new land&mdash;the three men often worked together, cutting trees and
+planting.</p>
+
+<p>Others of the original Mayflower company came too, leaving traces of
+themselves in such names as Blackfriars Brook, Billingsgate, and
+Houndsditch&mdash;names which they brought from Old England.</p>
+
+<p>The homes which these pioneers so laboriously and so lovingly
+wrought&mdash;what were they? How did they compare with the modern<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> home and
+household? In Mr. Sheldon's "History of Deerfield" we find such a
+charming and vivid picture of home life in the early days&mdash;and one that
+applies with equal accuracy to Duxbury&mdash;that we cannot do better than
+copy it here:</p>
+
+<p>"The ample kitchen was the center of the family life, social and
+industrial. Here around the rough table, seated on rude stools or
+benches, all partook of the plain and sometimes stinted fare. A glance
+at the family gathered here after nightfall on a winter's day may prove
+of interest.</p>
+
+<p>"After a supper of bean porridge or hasty pudding and milk of which all
+partake in common from a great pewter basin, or wooden bowl, with spoons
+of wood, horn or pewter; after a reverent reading of the Bible, and
+fervent supplications to the Most High for prayer and guidance; after
+the watch was set on the tall mount, and the vigilant sentinel began
+pacing his lonely beat, the shutters were closed and barred, and with a
+sense of security the occupations of the long winter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> evening began.
+Here was a picture of industry enjoined alike by the law of the land and
+the stern necessities of the settlers. All were busy. Idleness was a
+crime. On the settle, or a low armchair, in the most sheltered nook, sat
+the revered grandam&mdash;as a term of endearment called granny&mdash;in red
+woolen gown, and white linen cap, her gray hair and wrinkled face
+reflecting the bright firelight, the long stocking growing under her
+busy needles, while she watched the youngling of the flock in the cradle
+by her side. The good wife, in linsey-woolsey short-gown and red
+petticoat steps lightly back and forth in calf pumps beside the great
+wheel, or poising gracefully on the right foot, the left hand extended
+with the roll or bat, while with a wheel finger in the other, she gives
+the wheel a few swift turns for a final twist to the long-drawn thread
+of wool or tow. The continuous buzz of the flax wheels, harmonizing with
+the spasmodic hum of the big wheel, shows that the girls are preparing a
+stock of linen against their wedding day. Less active and more fitful
+rattled the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> quill wheel, where the younger children are filling quills
+for the morrow's weaving.</p>
+
+<p>"Craftsmen are still scarce, and the yeoman must depend largely on his
+own skill and resources. The grandsire, and the goodman, his son, in
+blue woolen frocks, buckskin breeches, long stockings, and clouted
+brogans with pewter buckles, and the older boys in shirts of brown tow,
+waistcoat and breeches of butternut-colored woolen homespun, surrounded
+by piles of white hickory shavings, are whittling out with keen Barlow
+jack-knives implements for home use: ox-bows and bow-pins, axe-helves,
+rakestales, forkstales, handles for spades and billhooks, wooden
+shovels, flail staff and swingle, swingling knives, or pokes and hog
+yokes for unruly cattle and swine. The more ingenious, perhaps, are
+fashioning buckets or powdering tubs, or weaving skeps, baskets or
+snowshoes. Some, it may be, sit astride the wooden shovel, shelling corn
+on its iron-shod edge, while others are pounding it into samp or hoiminy
+in the great wooden mortar.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There are no lamps or candles, but the red light from the burning pine
+knots on the hearth glows over all, repeating, in fantastic pantomime on
+the brown walls and closed shutters, the varied activities around it.
+These are occasionally brought into higher relief by the white flashes,
+as the boys throw handfuls of hickory shavings onto the forestick, or
+punch the back log with the long iron peel, while wishing they had as
+'many shillings as sparks go up the chimney.' Then, the smoke-stained
+joists and boards of the ceiling with the twisted rings of pumpkin
+strings or crimson peppers and festoons of apple, drying on poles hung
+beneath; the men's hats, the crook-necked squashes, the skeins of thread
+and yarn hanging in bunches on the wainscot; the sheen of the pewter
+plates and basins, standing in rows on the shelves of the dresser; the
+trusty firelock with powder horn, bandolier, and bullet pouch, hanging
+on the summertree, and the bright brass warming-pan behind the bedroom
+door&mdash;all stand revealed more clearly for an instant, showing the
+provident<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> care for the comfort and safety of the household. Dimly seen
+in the corners of the room are baskets in which are packed hands of flax
+from the barn, where, under the flaxbrake, the swingling knives and the
+coarse hackle, the shives and swingling tow have been removed by the
+men; to-morrow the more deft manipulations of the women will prepare
+these bunches of fiber for the little wheel, and granny will card the
+tow into bats, to be spun into tow yarn on the big wheel. All quaff the
+sparkling cider or foaming beer from the briskly circulating pewter mug,
+which the last out of bed in the morning must replenish from the barrel
+in the cellar."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>One notices the frequent reference to beer in these old chronicles. The
+tea, over which the colonists were to take such a dramatic stand in a
+hundred years, had not yet been introduced into England, and neither had
+coffee. Forks had not yet made their appearance. In this admirable
+picture Mr. Sheldon does not mention one of the evening industries
+which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> was peculiarly characteristic of the Plymouth Colony. This was
+the making of clapboards, which with sassafras and beaver skins,
+constituted for many years the principal cargo sent back to England from
+the Colony. Another point&mdash;the size of the families. The mother of
+Governor William Phips had twenty-one sons and five daughters, and the
+Reverend John Sherman had six children by his first wife and twenty by
+his second. These were not uncommon figures in the early life of New
+England; and with so many numbers within itself the home life was a
+center for a very complete and variegated industrial life. Surely it is
+a long cry from these kitchen fireplaces&mdash;so large that often a horse
+had to be driven into the kitchen dragging the huge back log&mdash;these
+immense families, to the kitchenette and one-child family of to-day!</p>
+
+<p>This, then, was the old Duxbury: the Duxbury of long, cold winters,
+privations, and austerity. Down by the shore to-day is the new
+Duxbury&mdash;a Duxbury of automobiles, of business men's trains, of gay
+society at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> Powder Point, where in the winter is the well-known boys'
+school&mdash;a Duxbury of summer cottages, white and green along the shore,
+green and brown under the pines. Of these summer homes many are new: the
+Wright estate is one of the finest on the South Shore, and the pleasant,
+spacious dwelling distinguished by its handsome hedge of English privet
+formerly belonged to Fanny Davenport, the actress. Others are old
+houses, very tastefully, almost affectionately remodeled by those for
+whom the things of the past have a special lure. These remodeled
+cottages are, perhaps, the prettiest of all. Those very ancient
+landmarks, sagging into pathetic disrepair, present a sorrowful, albeit
+an artistic, silhouette against the sky. But these "new-old" cottages,
+with ruffled muslin curtains at the small-paned, antique windows, brave
+with a shining knocker on the green-painted front door, and gay with
+old-fashioned gardens to the side or in the rear&mdash;these are a delight to
+all, and an honor to both past and present.</p>
+
+<p>Surely the fair town of Duxbury, which so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> smilingly enticed the
+Pilgrims across the bay to enjoy her sunny beach and rolling pasture
+lands, must be happy to-day as she was then to feel her ground so deeply
+tilled, and still to be so daintily adorned with homes and gardens and
+with laughing life.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/image194.jpg" width="250" height="109" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/image195.jpg" width="350" height="168" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<h3>KINGSTON AND ITS MANUSCRIPTS</h3>
+
+<p>On a charming eminence at two crossroads, delicately dappled by fine elm
+shade and clasped by an antique grapevine, rests the old Bradford house.
+From the main road half a mile away you will see only the slanting roof,
+half concealed by rolling pasture land, but if you will trouble to turn
+off from the main road, and if you will not be daunted by the
+unsavoriness of the immediate neighborhood, you will find it quite worth
+your while. The house presents only a casual side to the street&mdash;one
+fancies it does not take much interest in its upstart neighbors&mdash;but
+imagination makes us believe that it regards with brooding tenderness
+the lovely tidal river<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> which winds away through the marshes to the sea.
+Interesting as the house is for its architectural features and for its
+delightful location&mdash;despite the nearness of the passing train&mdash;yet it
+is on neither of these points that its fame rests.</p>
+
+<p>In this house, built in 1674, and once belonging to Major John Bradford,
+the grandson of the Governor, was preserved for many years one of the
+most valuable American manuscripts in existence, and one fated to the
+most romantic adventures in the annals of Lost and Found.</p>
+
+<p>Bradford's "History of the Plymouth Plantation" is our sole source of
+authentic information for the period 1606-46. It is the basis for all
+historical study of the early life of the Pilgrims in this country, and
+when we look at the quiet roof of the Bradford house to-day and realize
+how narrowly the papers&mdash;for they remained in manuscript form for two
+hundred years&mdash;escaped being lost forever, our minds travel again over
+the often told story.</p>
+
+<p>The manuscript, penned in Governor Bradford's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> fine old hand, in a folio
+with a parchment back, and with some childish scribblings by little
+Mercy Bradford on the cover, passed at the Governor's death to his son,
+and at his death to his son. It reposed in the old house at which we are
+now looking until 1728, doubtless regarded as something valuable, but
+not in the least appreciated at its full and peculiar worth. When Major
+John Bradford lent it to the Reverend Thomas Prince to assist him in his
+"Chronological History of New England," he was merely doing what he had
+done many times before. In these days of burglar-proof safes and fire
+protection it makes us shiver to think of this priceless holograph
+passed from hand to hand in such a casual manner. But it seems to have
+escaped any mishap under Dr. Prince, who deposited it eventually in the
+library of the Old South Church. Here it remained for half a century,
+still in manuscript form and frequently referred to by scholars. Thomas
+Hutchinson used it in compiling his "History of Massachusetts Bay," and
+Mather used it also. At the time of the Revolution the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> Old South was
+looted, and this document (along with many others) disappeared
+absolutely. No trace whatever could be found of it: the most exhaustive
+search was in vain, and scholars and historians mourned for a loss that
+was irreparable. And then, after half a century, after the search had
+been entirely abandoned, it was discovered, quite by chance, by one who
+fortunately knew its value, tucked into the Library of Fulham Palace in
+London. After due rejoicing on the American side and due deliberation on
+the English side of the water, it was very properly and very politely
+returned to this country in 1897. Now it rests after its career of
+infinite hazard, in a case in the Boston State House, elaborately
+protected from fire and theft, from any accidental or premeditated harm,
+and Kingston must content itself with a copy in Pilgrim Hall at
+Plymouth.</p>
+
+<p>Kingston's history commences with a manuscript and continues in the same
+form. If you would know the legends, the traditions, the events which
+mark this ancient town, you will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> have to turn to records, diaries,
+memoranda, memorial addresses and sermons, many of them never published.</p>
+
+<p>It is rather odd that this serene old place, discovered only two or
+three days after the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, is so devoid
+of a printed career. As soon as the Pilgrims had explored the spot, they
+put themselves on record as having "a great liking to plant in it"
+instead of in Plymouth. But they decided against it because it lay too
+far from their fishing and was "so encompassed with woods," that they
+feared danger from the savages. It was very soon settled, however, and
+remained as the north end of Plymouth for a hundred and six years, until
+1726. Governor Bradford writes, in regard to its colonization:</p>
+
+<p>"Y^e people of y^e plantation begane to grow in their outward estate ...
+and as their stocks increased and y^e increase vendible, ther was no
+longer any holding them togeather, but now they must of necessitoe goe
+to their great lots: they could not otherwise keep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> catle; and having
+oxen grown they must have land for plowing and tillage. And no man now
+thought he could live except he had catle and a great deal of ground to
+keep them: all striving to increase their stocks. By which means they
+were scattered all over y^e bay, quickly, and y^e towne, in which they
+had lived compactly till now [1632] was left very thine, and in a short
+time almost desolate."</p>
+
+<p>Governor Bradford seems to deplore this moving out of Plymouth, but as a
+matter of fact he was among the first to go, and his estate on Jones
+River comprised such a goodly portion of what is now Kingston that when
+he died he was the richest man in the Colony! A boulder marks the place
+which he, with that unerring eye for a fine view which distinguished the
+early settlers, chose for his estate. From here one catches a glimpse of
+water, open fields, trees, the Myles Standish Monument to the left, the
+sound of the passing automobiles behind. The distant smokestacks would
+be unfamiliar to Governor Bradford's eye, but the fragrant Kingston air
+which permeates it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> all would greet him as sweetly to-day as it did
+three hundred years ago.</p>
+
+<p>Governor Bradford, who was Governor for thirty-seven years, was a man of
+remarkable erudition. Cotton Mather says of him: "The Dutch tongue was
+become almost as vernacular to him as the English; the French tongue he
+could also manage; the Latin and the Greek he had mastered; but the
+Hebrew he most of all studied." Therefore if the curious spelling of his
+history strikes us as unscholarly, we must remember that at that time
+there was no fixed standard for English orthography. Queen Elizabeth
+employed seven different spellings for the word "sovereign" and
+Leicester rendered his own name in eight different ways. It was by no
+means a mark of illiteracy to spell not only unlike your neighbor, but
+unlike yourself on the line previous.</p>
+
+<p>But it is more than quaint diction and fantastic spelling which
+fascinates us as we turn over, not only the leaves of Bradford's famous
+history, but the pile of fading records of various kinds of this once
+prosperous shipbuilding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> town. The records of Kingston are valuable, not
+only because they tell the tale of this particular spot, but because
+they are delightfully typical of all the South Shore towns. The
+yellowing diaries mention crude offenses, crude chastisements; give
+scraps of genealogies as broken as the families themselves are now
+broken and scattered; lament over one daughter of the Puritans who took
+the veil in a Roman Catholic convent; sternly relate, in Rabelaisian
+frankness, dark sins, punished with medi&aelig;val justice. In fact, these
+righteous early colonists seemed to find a genuine satisfaction in
+devising punishments, and in putting them into practice. We read that
+the stocks (also called "bilbaos" because they were formerly
+manufactured in Bilbao, in Spain) were first occupied by the man who had
+made them, as the court decided that his charge for the work was
+excessive! There were wooden cages in which criminals were confined and
+exposed to public view; whipping-posts; cleft sticks for profane
+tongues. Drunkenness was punished by disfranchisement; the blasphemer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>
+and the heretics were branded with a hot iron.</p>
+
+<p>Let us look at some of these old records, not all of them as ferocious
+as this, but interesting for the minuti&aelig; which they preserve and which
+makes it possible for us to reconstruct something of that atmosphere of
+the past. It was ninety-six years after the settlement at Plymouth that
+Kingston made its first request for a separation. It was not granted for
+almost a decade, but from then on the ecclesiastical records furnish us
+with a great deal of intimate and chatty material. For instance, we
+learn in 1719 that Isaac Holmes was to have "20 shillings for sweeping,
+opening and shutting of the doors and casements of the meeting house for
+1 year," which throws some light upon sextons' salaries!</p>
+
+<p>The minute directions as to the placing of the pews in the meeting-house
+(1720) contain a pungent element of personality. Major John Bradford is
+"next to the pulpit stairs"; Elisha Bradford on the left "as you go in";
+Benjamin Eaton's place is "between minister's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> stairs and west door";
+while Peter West is ingloriously, and for what reason we know not,
+relegated to the gallery "in the front, next to the stairs, behind the
+women."</p>
+
+<p>It is significant to note (1728) that seats are built at each end above
+the galleries for the Indians and negroes.</p>
+
+<p>Fish laws, rewards for killing wild cats, bickerings with the minister,
+and brief mention of the death of many women at an early age&mdash;after
+having given birth to an incredible number of children&mdash;fill up pages
+and pages.</p>
+
+<p>The eye rests upon a resolution passed (1771) to "allow Benjamin Cook
+the sum of 8 shillings for a coffin, and liquor at the funeral of James
+Howland." They might not believe in prayers for the dead in those days,
+but there was evidently no reason why the living should not receive some
+cheer!</p>
+
+<p>How is this for the minister's salary? The Reverend Doctor Willis (1780)
+is to receive eighty pounds a year, to be paid partly in Indian corn,
+rye, pork, and beef. Ten cords of wood yearly are allowed him "until he
+have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> a family, then twenty cords, are to be allowed, the said wood to
+be delivered at his door."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Levi Bradford agrees to make the whipping-post and stocks for nine
+shillings, if the town will find the iron (1790).</p>
+
+<p>The wage paid for a day's labor on the highway (1791) was as follows:
+For a day's labor by a man, 2 shillings, 8 pence; for a yoke of oxen, 2
+shillings; for a horse, 1 shilling, 6 pence; for a cart, 1 shilling, 4
+pence. One notes the prices are for an eight-hour day.</p>
+
+<p>However, the high cost of living began to make itself felt even then.
+How else account for the statement (1796) that Mr. Parris, the
+schoolmaster, has been allowed fifty shillings in addition to his salary
+"considering the increase in the price of provisions"?</p>
+
+<p>There seems to have been a great celebration on the occasion of raising
+the second meetinghouse in Kingston (1798). One old account reads:
+"Booths were erected on the field opposite, and all kinds of liquor and
+refreshment were sold freely." After the frame was up a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> procession was
+formed of those who were employed in the raising, consisting of
+carpenters, sailors, blacksmiths, etc., each taking some implement of
+his trade such as axes, rules, squares, tackles and ropes. They walked
+to the Great Bridge and back to the temporary building that had been
+used for worship (the Quail Trap) while the new one was being planned.
+Here they all had punch and an "hour or so of jollity."</p>
+
+<p>If the women's lives were conspicuously short, it was not so with the
+men. Ebenezer Cobb, who died in 1801 in the one hundred and eighth year
+of his age, had lived in no less than three centuries, having seen six
+years in the seventeenth, the whole of the eighteenth, and a year of the
+nineteenth.</p>
+
+<p>The minister's tax is separated from the other town taxes in 1812&mdash;thus
+even in this little village is reflected the great movement of
+separation of Church and State. In 1851 when we read of a Unitarian
+church being built we realize that the Puritan r&eacute;gime is over in New
+England.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Thus with the assistance of the Pelegs and Hezekiahs, the Zadocks,
+Ichabods, and Zenases&mdash;names which for some absurd and irreverent reason
+suggest a picture puzzle&mdash;we manage to piece together scraps of the
+Kingston of long ago.</p>
+
+<p>We must confess to some relief at the inevitable conclusion that such
+study brings&mdash;namely, that the early settlers were not the unblemished
+prigs and paragons tradition has so fondly branded them. They seem to
+have been human enough&mdash;erring enough, if we take these records penned
+by themselves. However, for any such iconoclastic observation it is
+reassuring to have the judgment of so careful a historian as Charles
+Francis Adams. He says:</p>
+
+<p>"That the earlier generations of Massachusetts were either more
+law-abiding or more self-restrained than the later is a proposition
+which accords neither with tradition nor with the reason of things. The
+habits of those days were simpler than those of the present: they were
+also essentially grosser...."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He then gives a dozen pages or so of hitherto unpublished church
+records, gathered from as many typical Massachusetts towns, which throw
+an undeniable and unflattering light on the social habits of that early
+period. As explicit and public confession before the church congregation
+was enforced, these church records contain startlingly graphic
+statements of drunkenness, blasphemy, stealing, and immorality in all
+its various phases.</p>
+
+<p>There are countless church records which duplicate this one of the
+ordination of a Massachusetts pastor in 1729: "6 Barrels and a half of
+Cyder, 28 gallons of wine, 2 gallons of Brandy, and 4 of rum, loaf
+sugar, lime juice and pipes," all, presumably, consumed at the time and
+on the spot of the ordination. Even the most pessimistic must admit that
+long before our prohibition era we had traveled far beyond such
+practices.</p>
+
+<p>The immorality seems to have been the natural reaction from morbid
+spiritual excitement induced by religious revivals. Poor Governor
+Bradford never grasped this, and we find<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> him lamenting (1642):
+"Marvilous it may be to see and consider how some kind of wickedness did
+grow and break forth here in a land where the same was much witnessed
+against, and so narrowly looked on and severely punished when it was
+known."</p>
+
+<p>We hear the same plaint from Jonathan Edwards a century later.</p>
+
+<p>It is well to honor the Pilgrims for their many stanch and admirable
+qualities, but it is only fair to recall that the morbidity of their
+religion made them less healthy-minded than we, and that many of their
+practices, such as the well-recognized custom of "bundling," were
+indications of a people holding far lower moral standards than ours.</p>
+
+<p>The old sermons, diaries, biographies, and records lie on dusty shelves
+now, and few pause to read them, and in Kingston no one yet has gathered
+them into a local history. There are other records traced, not in sand,
+but on the soil that may also be read by any who pass. Some remnants of
+the trenches and terraces dug by the quota of Arcadian refugees who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>
+fell to Kingston's share after the pathetic flight from Nova Scotia may
+still be seen&mdash;claimed by some to be the first irrigation attempt in
+America.</p>
+
+<p>The old "Massachusetts Payth" which follows the road more or less
+closely beyond Kingston is traced with difficulty and uncertainty in
+Kingston itself, but there is another highway as clear to-day as it was
+three hundred years ago. And this is the lovely tidal river, named after
+the master of the Mayflower, up which used to come and go not only many
+ships of commerce, but, in the evenings after life had become less
+austere, boatloads of merry-makers from Plymouth and Duxbury to attend
+the balls given at what was originally the King's Town.</p>
+
+<p>It has carried much traffic in its day, that river which now winds so
+gracefully down to the sea, and which we see so well from the yard of
+the old Bradford house. Down it floated the vessels made by Kingston
+men, and out of it was dug much bog iron for the use of Washington's
+artillery.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Monk's Hill&mdash;which the old records call Mont's Hill Chase, a name
+supposed to have been applied to a hunt in England&mdash;could tell a story
+too, if one had ears to hear. The highest land in Kingston, during the
+Revolution it was one of the points where a beacon fire was lighted to
+alarm the town in case of invasion by the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>Kingston is not without history, although its manuscripts lie long
+untouched upon library shelves, and its historic soil is tramped over by
+unheeding feet. That the famous manuscript which was its greatest
+historical contribution has been taken away from it, is no loss in the
+truest sense of the word, for this monumental work, which belongs to no
+one place, but to the country as a whole, is properly preserved at the
+State House.</p>
+
+<p>Kingston seems amenable to this arrangement, just as she seems entirely
+willing that Plymouth should claim the first century of her career. When
+one is sure of one's heritage and beauty, one does not clamor for
+recognition; one does not even demand a printed history.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> It is quality,
+not quantity, that counts, and even if nothing more is ever written in
+or about this dear old town, Kingston will have made a distinguished
+contribution to American history and literature.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/image212.jpg" width="250" height="100" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/image213.jpg" width="350" height="212" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<h3>PLYMOUTH</h3>
+
+<p>One of the favorite pictures of New Englanders, and one which hangs in
+innumerable dining-rooms and halls, is by Boughton, the popular American
+artist, and is named "The Return of the Mayflower." I suppose thousands
+of New England children have gazed wonderingly at this picture, which,
+contrary to the modern canons of art, "tells a story," and many of those
+na&iuml;ve minds have puzzled as to how those poor Pilgrims, who had no tea
+or coffee or milk or starch, managed to appear so well fed and so
+contented, and so marvelously neat and clean. The inexhaustible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> bag
+which inevitably appeared at crucial moments in the career of "Swiss
+Family Robinson" is nowhere mentioned in the early chronicles of the
+Plymouth Plantation, and the precise manner in which a small vessel of a
+hundred and eighty tons, carrying a hundred passengers, and all the
+innumerable cradles, chairs, and highboys which have since flooded the
+museums as "genuine relics" of that first voyage, could also have
+brought sufficient washboards, soap, and flatirons to have kept the
+charming costumes so immaculate is a mystery which will probably never
+be solved&mdash;especially since the number of relics appears to increase
+instead of diminish with the passage of time.</p>
+
+<p>However, that is a mere trifle. Mr. Boughton, in catching this touching
+and dramatic moment in the history of the Plymouth Colony, has rendered
+a graphic service to us all, and if we could stand upon the little
+plateau on which this man and maid are standing, and could look out with
+them&mdash;we should see&mdash;what should we see?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We may, indeed, stand upon the little plateau&mdash;possibly it is no other
+than the base of Cole's Hill, that pathetic spot on which the dead were
+buried those first sad months, the ground above being leveled and
+planted with corn lest the Indians should count the number of the
+lost&mdash;and look out upon that selfsame harbor, but the sight which meets
+our eyes will be a very different one from that which met theirs. Let
+us, if we can, for the space of half an hour or so, imagine that we are
+standing beside this Pilgrim man and maid, on the day on which Mr.
+Boughton portrayed them.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of 1920 it is 1621. It is the 5th of April: the winter of
+terrifying sicknesses and loss has passed; of the hundred souls which
+left England the autumn previously more than a half have died. The
+Mayflower which brought them all over, and which has remained in the
+harbor all winter, is now, having made repairs and taking advantage of
+the more clement weather, trimming her sails for the thirty-one days'
+return voyage to England. They may return with her, if they wish,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> any
+or all of the sturdy little band; they may leave the small, smoky log
+cabins; the scanty fare of corn and fish; the harassing fear of the
+Indians; they may leave the privations, the cramped quarters, and return
+to civilized life&mdash;to friends and relatives, to blooming English
+hedgerows and orderly English churches. But no one&mdash;no, not a single one
+returns! They have thrown in their lot with the new country&mdash;the new
+life. Their nearest civilized neighbors are the French of Nova Scotia,
+five hundred miles to the north, and the English of Virginia five
+hundred miles to the south. But they are undaunted. And yet&mdash;who can
+doubt that as they gaze out upon the familiar sails&mdash;the last banner
+between themselves and their ancestral home, and as they see them
+sailing out and out until they sink below the verge of sea and sky, the
+tears "rise in the heart and gather to the eyes" in "thinking of the
+days that are no more."</p>
+
+<p>Three hundred years ago! The same harbor now as then, with the highland
+of Cape Cod dimly outlined in the gray eastern horizon;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> the bluffs of
+Manomet nearer on the right; opposite them, on the left, Duxbury Beach
+comes down, and ends in the promontory which holds the Gurnet Lights.
+Clarke's Island&mdash;already so named&mdash;lies as it does to-day, but save for
+these main topographical outlines the Plymouth at which we are looking
+in our imagination would be quite unrecognizable to us.</p>
+
+<p>There is a little row of houses&mdash;seven of them&mdash;that is all. Log cabins,
+two-roomed, of the crudest build, thatched with wildgrass, the chinks
+between the logs filled with clay, the floors made of split logs;
+lighted at night with pieces of pitch pine. Each lot measures three rods
+long and a rod and a half wide, and they run on either side of the
+single street (the first laid out in New England, and ever afterward to
+be known as Leyden Street), which, in its turn, is parallel to the Town
+Brook. There is no glass in these cabin windows: oiled paper suffices;
+the household implements are of the fewest. The most primitive modern
+camping expedition is replete with luxuries of which this colony knows
+nothing. They have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> no cattle of any kind, which means no milk or
+butter; they have no poultry or eggs. Twenty-six acres of cultivated
+ground&mdash;twenty-one of corn, the other five of wheat, rye, and
+barley&mdash;have been quite enough for the twenty-one men and six boys (all
+who were well enough to work) to handle, but it is not a great deal to
+feed them all. At one end of the street stands the common house, twenty
+feet square, where the church services are held; the store-house is near
+the head of the pier; and at the top of what is now Burial Hill is the
+timber fort, twenty by twenty, built the January before by Myles
+Standish. In April, 1621, this is all there is to what is now the
+prosperous town of Plymouth.</p>
+
+<p>And yet&mdash;not entirely. There are a few things left in the Plymouth of
+to-day which were in the Plymouth of three hundred years ago. If our man
+and maid should turn into Pilgrim Hall their eyes would fall upon some
+of the selfsame objects which were familiar sights to them in 1621.
+Those sturdy oaken chairs of Governor Carver, Elder Brewster, and
+Edward<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> Winslow; the square, hooded wooden cradle brought over by Dr.
+Samuel Fuller; and the well-preserved reed one which rocked Peregrine
+White, and whose quaint stanchness suggests the same Dutch influence
+which characterizes the spraddling octagonal windmills&mdash;they would
+quickly recognize all of these. Some of the books, too, chiefly
+religious, some in classic tongues, William Bradford's Geneva Bible
+printed in 1592, and others bearing the mark of 1615, would be well
+known to them, although we must not take it for granted that the
+lady&mdash;or the man either&mdash;can read. Well-worn the Bibles are, however,
+and we need not think that lack of learning prevented any of the
+Pilgrims from imbibing both the letter and spirit of the Book. Those who
+could write were masters of a fine, flowing script that shames our
+modern scrawl, as is well testified by the Patent of the Plymouth
+Colony&mdash;the oldest state document in New England&mdash;as well as by the
+final will and various deeds of Peregrine White, and many others. The
+small, stiff baby shoes which encased<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> the infant feet of Josiah
+Winslow, the son of Governor Winslow and destined to be Governor
+himself, are of a pattern familiar to our man and maid, as are the now
+tarnished swords of Carver, Brewster, and Standish. Probably they have
+puzzled, as we are still doing, over the Kufic or Arabic inscriptions on
+the last. The monster kettle and generous pewter plate brought over by
+the doughty Captain would be too well known to them to attract their
+attention, as would be the various tankards and goblets, and the
+beautiful mortar and pestle brought over by Winslow. But the two-tined
+fork they would regard with curiosity, for forks were not used, even in
+England, until 1650. The teapots, too, which look antiquated enough to
+us, would fill them with wonder, for tea was practically unknown in both
+colony and mother country until 1657. Those fragments of rude
+agricultural implements which we treasure would not interest our man and
+maid for whom they are ordinary sights, and neither would they regard
+with the same historical interest that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> moves us the bits of stone from
+the Scrooby Manor in England, the bricks from the old pier at Delft
+Haven in Holland, or the piece of carved pew-back from the old church at
+Scrooby. Possibly our Pilgrim maid is one of the few who can write, and
+if so, her fingers have doubtless fashioned a sampler as exquisite as
+that of Lora Standish, whose meek docility and patient workmanship are
+forever preserved in her cross-stitched words.</p>
+
+<p>From all around the walls of Pilgrim Hall look down fine, stern old
+portraits, real and imaginary, of the early colonists. Modern critics
+may bicker over the authenticity of the white bull on which Priscilla
+Alden is taking her wedding trip; they may quarrel over the fidelity of
+the models and paintings of the Mayflower, and antiquarians may
+diligently unearth bits of bone to substantiate their pet theories. Our
+man and maid could tell us all, but, alas, their voices are so far away
+we cannot hear them. They will never speak the words which will settle
+any of the oft-disputed points, and, unfortunately, they will leave us<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>
+forever to argue about the truth of the famous Plymouth Rock.</p>
+
+<p>To present the well-worn story of Plymouth Rock from an angle calculated
+to rouse even a semblance of fresh interest is comparable to offering a
+well-fed man a piece of bread, and expecting him to be excited over it
+as a novelty. Bread is the staff of life, to be sure, but it is also
+accepted as matter of course in the average diet, and the story of
+Plymouth Rock is part and parcel of every school-book and guide-book in
+the country. The distinguished, if somewhat irreverent, visitor, who,
+after being reduced to partial paralysis by the oft-repeated tale,
+ejaculated fervently that he wished the rock had landed on the Pilgrims
+instead of the Pilgrims on the rock, voiced the first original remark
+about this historic relic which has refreshed our ears for many years.
+However, as Americans we are thoroughly imbued with the theory on which
+our advertising is based. Although it would seem that every housekeeper
+in the land had been kept fully informed for forty years of the
+advantages<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> incident to the use of a certain soap, the manufacturers
+still persist in reciting these benefits. And why? Because new
+housekeepers come into existence with each new day. So, if there be any
+man who comes to Plymouth who does not know the story of Plymouth Rock,
+it is here set down for him, as accurately and briefly as possible.</p>
+
+<p>This rock&mdash;which is an oval, glacial boulder of about seven tons&mdash;was
+innocently rearing its massive, hoary head from the water one day in
+December, 1620, as it had done for several thousand years previously in
+unmolested oblivion. While engaged in this ponderous but harmless
+occupation it was sighted by a boatful of men and women&mdash;the first who
+had ever chosen to land on this particular part of the coast. The rock
+presented a moderately dry footing, and they sailed up to it, and a
+charming young woman, attired, according to our amiable painter, in the
+cleanest and freshest of aprons and the most demure of caps, set a
+daintily shod foot upon it and leaped lightly to shore. This was Mary
+Chilton, and she was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> promptly followed by an equally trig young
+man&mdash;John Alden. Thus commenced the founding of Plymouth Colony, and
+thus was sown the seed of innumerable pictures, poems, stories, and
+sermons.</p>
+
+<p>Now the Pilgrims themselves, in none of their various accounts, ever
+mention the incident of the landing described above, or the rock. In
+fact they are so entirely silent about it that historians&mdash;besides
+discrediting the pretty part about Mary Chilton and John Alden, in the
+brusque fashion characteristic of historians&mdash;have pooh-poohed the whole
+story, arguing that the rock was altogether too far away from the land
+to be a logical stepping-place, and referring to the only authentic
+record of that first landing, which merely reads: "They sounded y^e
+harbor &amp; founde it fitt for shipping, and marched into y^e land &amp; found
+diverse cornfeilds &amp; little running brooks, a place fitt for situation:
+at least it was y^e best they could find." The Pilgrims, then, were
+quite oblivious of the rock, the historians are entirely skeptical
+concerning it, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> following generation so indifferent to the
+tradition which was gradually formulating, that in the course of events
+it was half-covered with a wharf, and used as a doorstep to a warehouse.</p>
+
+<p>This was an ignominious position for a magnificent free boulder which
+had been a part of the untrammeled sea and land for centuries, but this
+lowly occupation was infinitely less trying than the fate which was
+awaiting. At the time the wharf was suggested, the idea that the rock
+was the actual landing-place of the first colonists had gained such
+momentum that a party was formed in its defense. An aged man, Thomas
+Faunce, was produced. He was ninety-five and confined to an armchair. He
+had not been born until twenty-six years after the landing of the
+Pilgrims; his father, whom he quoted as declaring this to be the
+original rock and identical landing-place, had not even come over in the
+Mayflower, but in the Anne. However, this venerable Canute, carried to
+the water's edge in his armchair, in the presence of many witnesses,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>
+assured them and all posterity that this was the genuine, undeniable
+landing-place of the Pilgrims. And from that moment the belief was so
+firmly set in the American mind that no power could possibly dislodge
+it. In accordance with this suddenly acquired respect, it was decided to
+move the huge bulk to the more conspicuous location of the Town Square.
+When it was lifted from its prehistoric bed, it broke, and this was
+hailed as a propitious omen of the coming separation of the Colonies
+from the mother country. Only the upper half was dragged up to the Town
+Square&mdash;a process which took twenty yoke of oxen and was accompanied by
+wild huzzahing. There the poor, broken thing lay in the sun, at the
+bottom of the Liberty Pole on which was flying, "Liberty or Death." But
+its career as a public feature had only begun. It remained in the square
+until 1834, and then on July 4 it was decided to drag it to a still more
+conspicuous place. So with a formal procession, it was again hoisted and
+hauled and set down in front of the entrance porch of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> Pilgrim Hall,
+where it lay like a captive mammoth animal for curious folk to gaze at.
+Here it was granted almost half a century of undisturbed if not secluded
+slumber. But the end was not yet. In 1880 it was once more laid hold of
+and carted back to its original setting, and welded without ceremony, to
+the part from which it had been sundered. Now all of this seems quite
+enough&mdash;more than enough&mdash;of pitiless publicity, for one old rock whose
+only offense had been to be lifting its head above the water on a
+December day in 1620. But no&mdash;just as the mind of man takes a singular
+satisfaction in gazing at mummies preserved in human semblance in the
+unearthly stillness of the catacombs, so the once massive boulder&mdash;now
+carefully mended&mdash;was placed upon the neatest of concrete bases, and
+over it was reared, from the designs of Hammatt Billings, the ugliest
+granite canopy imaginable&mdash;in which canopy, to complete the grisly
+atmosphere of the catacombs, were placed certain human bones found in an
+exploration of Cole's Hill. Bleak and homeless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> the old rock now lies
+passively in forlorn state under its atrocious shelter, behind a strong
+iron grating, and any of a dozen glib street urchins, in syllables
+flavored with Cork, or Genoese, or Polish accents, will, for a penny,
+relate the facts substantially as I have stated them.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is easy to be unsympathetic in regard to any form of fetishism which
+we do not share. And while the bare fact remains that we are not at all
+sure that the Pilgrims landed on this rock, and we are entirely sure
+that its present location and setting possess no romantic allurement,
+yet bare facts are not the whole truth, and even when correct they are
+often the superficial and not the fundamental<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> part of the truth. Those
+hundreds&mdash;those thousands&mdash;of earnest-eyed men and women who have stood
+beside this rock with tears in their eyes, and emotions too deep for
+words in their hearts, "believing where they cannot prove," have not
+only interpreted the vital significance of the place, but, by their very
+emotion, have sanctified it.</p>
+
+<p>It really makes little difference whether the testimony of Thomas Faunce
+was strictly accurate or not; it really makes little difference that the
+Hammatt Billings canopy is indeed dreadful. Plymouth Rock has come to
+symbolize the corner-stone of the United States as a nation, and symbols
+are the most beautiful and the most enduring expression of any national
+or human experience.</p>
+
+<p>It is estimated that over one hundred thousand visitors come to Plymouth
+annually. They all go to see the Rock; most of them clamber up to the
+quaint Burial Hill and read a few of the oldest inscriptions; they
+glance at the National Monument to the forefathers, bearing the largest
+granite figure in the world,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> and they take a turn through Pilgrim Hall.
+But there is one place they often forget to see, and that is the harbor
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>We began our tour through Plymouth through the eyes of a Pilgrim man and
+maid watching the departing Mayflower. It was the Mayflower, battered
+and beaten, her sails blackened and mended, her leaks hastily caulked,
+which was the first vessel to sail into Plymouth Harbor&mdash;a harbor so
+joyfully described as being a "most hopeful place" with "innumerable
+store of fowl and excellent good ... in fashion like a sickel or fish
+hook."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 430px;">
+<img src="images/image231.jpg" width="430" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>All that first dreadful winter, while the Pilgrims were struggling to
+make roofs to cover their heads, while, with weeping hearts, they buried
+their dead, and when, according to the good and indestructible instincts
+of life, which persist in spite of every calamity, they planted seed for
+the coming spring&mdash;all this while the Mayflower lay at anchor in the
+harbor. Every morning they could see her there; any hour of the day they
+could glance out at her; while they slept they were conscious of her
+presence. And just so long as she was there, just so long could they see
+a tangible connection between themselves and the life, which, although
+already strangely far away, was, nevertheless, the nearest and the
+dearest existence they had known. And then in April, the familiar
+vessel, whose outlines were as much a part of the seascape as the Gurnet
+or the bluffs of Manomet, vanished: vanished as completely as if she had
+never been. The water which parted under her departing keel flowed
+together. There was no sign on earth or sea or in the sky of that last
+link between the little group of colonists and their home land. They
+were as much alone as Enoch Arden on his desert isle. Can we imagine the
+emptiness, the illimitable loneliness of that bay? One small shallop
+down by the pier&mdash;that was the only visible connection between
+themselves and England!</p>
+
+<p>I do not believe that we can really appreciate their sense of complete
+severance&mdash;their sense of utter isolation. And I do not believe that we
+can appreciate the wild thrill of excitement, the sudden gush of
+freshly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> established connection that ran through the colony, when, seven
+months later&mdash;the following November&mdash;a ship sailed into the harbor. It
+was the Fortune bringing with her news and letters from home&mdash;word from
+that other world&mdash;and bringing also thirty-five new colonists, among
+them William Brewster's eldest son and Robert Cushman. Probably the
+greetings were so joyful, the messages so eagerly sought, the flutter of
+welcome so great that it was not until several days had passed that they
+realized that the chief word which Thomas Weston (the London merchant
+who was the head of the company which had financed the expedition) had
+sent them was one of reproof. The Mayflower had brought no profitable
+cargo back to England, he complained, an omission which was "wonderful
+and worthily distasted." While he admitted that they had labored under
+adverse circumstances, he unkindly added that a quarter of the time they
+had spent in discoursing and arguing and consulting could have
+profitably been spent in other ways. That the first official<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> word from
+home should be one of such cruel reprimand struck the colonists&mdash;who had
+so wistfully waited for a cheering message&mdash;very hard. Half frozen, half
+starved, sick, depressed, they had been forced to struggle so
+desperately to maintain even a foothold on the ladder of existence, that
+it had not been humanly possible for them to fulfill their pledge to the
+Company. Bradford's letter back to Weston&mdash;dignified, touching&mdash;is
+sufficient vindication. When the Fortune returned she "was laden with
+good clapboards, as full as she could stowe, and two hogsheads of beaver
+and other skins," besides sassafras&mdash;a cargo valued at about five
+hundred pounds. In spite of the fact that this cargo was promptly stolen
+by a French cruiser off the English coast, it nevertheless marks the
+foundation of the fur and lumber trade in New England. Although this
+first visitor brought with her a patent of their lands (a document still
+preserved in Pilgrim Hall, with the signatures and seals of the Duke of
+Lenox, the Marquis of Hamilton, the Earl of Warwick, and Sir<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> Ferdinando
+Gorges), yet to us, reading history in the perspective of three hundred
+years, the disagreeable impression of Weston's letter outweighs the
+satisfaction for the patent. When the Fortune sailed away it was like
+the departure of a rich, fault-finding aunt, who suddenly descends upon
+a household of poor relations, bringing presents, to be sure, but with
+such cutting disapproval on her lips that it mars the entire pleasure of
+her visit.</p>
+
+<p>The harbor was once more empty. I suppose that in time the Pilgrims half
+forgot, half forgave, the sting of Weston's reproof. Again they gazed
+out and waited for a sail; again England seemed very far away. So,
+doubtless, in the spring, when a shallop appeared from a fishing vessel,
+they all eagerly hurried down to greet it. But if the Fortune had been
+like a rich and disagreeable aunt, this new visitation was like an
+influx of small, unruly cousins. And such hungry cousins! Weston had
+sent seven men to stay with them until arrangements could be made for
+another settlement. New Englanders are often criticized for their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> lack
+of hospitality, and in this first historic case of unexpected guests the
+larder was practically bare. Crops were sown, to be sure, but not yet
+green; the provisions in the store-house were gone; it was not the
+season for wild fowl; although there were bass in the outer harbor and
+cod in the bay there was neither tackle nor nets to take them. However,
+the seven men were admitted, and given shellfish like the rest&mdash;and very
+little beside.</p>
+
+<p>At this point the Pilgrims looked with less favorable eyes upon
+newcomers into the harbor, and when shortly after two ships appeared
+bringing sixty more men from Weston, consternation reigned. These
+emigrants were supposed to get their own food from their own vessels and
+merely lodge on shore, but they proved a lawless set and stole so much
+green corn that it seriously reduced the next year's supply. After six
+weeks, however, these uninvited guests took themselves off to
+Wessagusset (now Weymouth) leaving their sick behind, and only the
+briefest of "thank you's."</p>
+
+<p>The next caller was the Plantation. She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> anchored only long enough to
+offer some sorely needed provisions at such extortionate prices that the
+colonists could not buy them. Another slap in the face!</p>
+
+<p>Obviously, none of these visitors had proved very satisfactory. It had
+been entertaining under difficulties, and if the entertainers had hoped
+for the "angels unawares," they had been decidedly disappointed.
+Therefore it is easy to believe that they took fresh courage and sincere
+delight when, in July, 1623, the Anne and the Little James arrived&mdash;no
+strangers, for they brought with them additional stores, and best of
+all, good friends and close kinsfolk from the church at Leyden. Yes, the
+Pilgrims were delighted, but, alas, tradition has it that when they
+pressed forward in glad greeting to their old acquaintances, these
+latter started back, nonplussed&mdash;aghast! Like Mr. Boughton they had
+fondly pictured an ideal rustic community, in which the happy, carefree
+colonists reveled in all the beauty of picturesque and snowy collars and
+cuffs in Arden-like freedom. Instead they saw a row of rough<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> log cabins
+and a group of work-worn, shabby men and women, men and women whose
+faces were lined with exposure, and whose backs were bent with toil, and
+who, for their most hospitable feast, had only a bit of shellfish and
+water to offer. Many of the newcomers promptly burst into tears, and
+begged to return to England immediately. Poor Pilgrims! Rebuffed&mdash;and so
+unflatteringly&mdash;with each arriving maritime guest, who can doubt that
+there was born in them at that moment the constitutional dislike for
+unexpected company which has characterized New England ever since?</p>
+
+<p>However, in a comparatively short time the colonists who had been
+brought over in the Anne and the Little James&mdash;those who stayed, for
+some did return at once&mdash;adjusted themselves to the new life. Many
+married&mdash;both Myles Standish and Governor Bradford found wives among
+them; and now the Plymouth Colony may be said to have fairly started.</p>
+
+<p>Just as a trail which is first a mere thread<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> leading to some
+out-of-the-way cabin becomes a path and then a road, and in due time a
+wide thoroughfare, so the way across the Atlantic from Old England to
+New became more charted&mdash;more traveled. At first there was only one boat
+and one net for fishing. In five years there was a fleet of fifty
+fishing vessels. Ten years later we have note of ten foreign vessels in
+the harbor in a single week. And to-day, if the Pilgrim man and maid
+whom we joined at the beginning of our reminiscences could gaze out over
+the harbor, they would see it as full of masts as a cornfield is of
+stalks. Every kind of boat finds its way in and out; and not only
+pleasure craft: Plymouth Harbor is second only to Boston among the
+Massachusetts ports of entry, receiving annual foreign imports valued at
+over $7,000,000. Into the harbor, where once a single shallop was the
+only visible sign of man's dominion over the water, now sail great
+vessels from Yucatan and the Philippines, bringing sisal and manila for
+the largest cordage company in the whole country&mdash;a company with an
+employees' list of two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> thousand names, and an annual output of
+$10,000,000. Furthermore, the flats in the harbor are planted with
+clams, which (through the utilization of shells for poultry feeding, and
+by means of canning for bouillon) yield a profit of from five hundred to
+eight hundred dollars an acre.</p>
+
+<p>No, our Pilgrim man and maid would not recognize, in this Plymouth of
+factories and industries, the place where once stood the row of log
+cabins, with oiled-paper windows. And yet, after all, it is not the
+prosperous town of to-day, but the rude settlement of yesterday, which
+chiefly lives in the hearts of the American people. And it lives, not
+because of its economic importance, but because of its unique
+sentimental value. As John Fiske so admirably states: "Historically
+their enterprise [that of the Pilgrims at Plymouth] is interesting not
+so much for what it achieved as for what it suggested. Of itself the
+Plymouth Colony could hardly have become a wealthy and powerful state.
+Its growth was extremely slow. After ten years its numbers were but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>
+three hundred. In 1643, when the exodus had come to an end and the New
+England Confederacy was formed, the population of Plymouth was but three
+thousand. In an established community, indeed, such a rate of increase
+would be rapid, but was not sufficient to raise in New England a power
+which could overcome Indians and Dutchmen and Frenchmen and assert its
+will in opposition to the Crown. It is when we view the founding of
+Plymouth in relation to what came afterward, that it assumes the
+importance which belongs to the beginning of a new era."</p>
+
+<p>For this reason the permanent position of Plymouth in our history is
+forever assured. Old age, which may diminish the joys of youth,
+preserves inviolate memories which nothing can destroy. The place whose
+quiet fame is made is surer of the future than the one which is on the
+brink of fabulous glory. It is impossible to overestimate the
+significance of this spot.</p>
+
+<p>The Old Coast Road&mdash;the oldest in New England&mdash;began here and pushed its
+tortuous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> way up to Boston along the route we have so lightly followed.
+Inheritors of a nation which these pioneers strove manfully,
+worshipfully, to found, need we be ashamed of deep emotion as we stand
+here, on this shore, where they landed three hundred years ago?</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> It is hoped that by the summer of 1921 a beautiful and
+dignified portico of granite will be raised as a final and permanent
+memorial over the rock, which will be moved for the last time&mdash;lowered
+to as near its original bed as possible. This work, which has been taken
+in charge by the National Society of Colonial Dames of America will be
+executed by McKim, Mead &amp; White. The General Society of Mayflower
+Descendants are also working for the redemption of the first Pilgrim
+burial place on Cole's Hill. The Pilgrim Society is to assume the
+perpetual care of both memorial and lot.</p></div>
+</div>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/image243.jpg" width="250" height="83" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+<h3>THE END</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>The Riverside Press</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">U. S. A.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD COAST ROAD ***</div>
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+eBook #21895 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21895)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Old Coast Road, by Agnes Rothery,
+Illustrated by Louis H. Ruyl
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Old Coast Road
+       From Boston to Plymouth
+
+
+Author: Agnes Rothery
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 21, 2007  [eBook #21895]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD COAST ROAD***
+
+
+E-text prepared by David Garcia, Josephine Paolucci, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 21895-h.htm or 21895-h.zip:
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+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/1/8/9/21895/21895-h.zip)
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+      Minor typographical errors have been corrected.
+
+      Carats (^) designate a superscript (example: y^e, in
+      which the "e" is a superscript).
+
+      Footnotes have been moved to the end of each chapter.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD COAST ROAD
+
+From Boston to Plymouth
+
+by
+
+AGNES EDWARDS
+
+With Illustrations by Louis H. Ruyl
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company
+The Riverside Press Cambridge
+1920
+
+Copyright, 1920, by Agnes Edwards Pratt
+All Rights Reserved
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD COAST ROAD
+
+_From Boston to Plymouth_
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+BOSTON: A FOREWORD                                 ix
+
+I. DORCHESTER HEIGHTS AND THE OLD COAST
+ROAD                                                1
+
+II. MILTON AND THE BLUE HILLS                      19
+
+III. SHIPBUILDING AT QUINCY                        35
+
+IV. THE ROMANCE OF WEYMOUTH                        57
+
+V. ECCLESIASTICAL HINGHAM                          75
+
+VI. COHASSET LEDGES AND MARSHES                    92
+
+VII. THE SCITUATE SHORE                           111
+
+VIII. MARSHFIELD, THE HOME OF DANIEL WEBSTER      123
+
+IX. DUXBURY HOMES                                 142
+
+X. KINGSTON AND ITS MANUSCRIPTS                   157
+
+XI. PLYMOUTH                                      175
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+
+A BIT OF COMMERCIAL STREET IN WEYMOUTH   Frontispiece
+
+THE STATE HOUSE FROM PARK STREET                   ix
+
+MAP OF THE SOUTH SHORE                    _facing_  1
+
+DORCHESTER BAY                                      1
+
+OFF FOR PLYMOUTH BY THE OLD COAST ROAD             18
+
+GREAT BLUE HILL                                    19
+
+MILTON ESTATES                            _facing_ 20
+
+THE FORE RIVER SHIPYARD                            35
+
+THE ADAMS HOUSES IN QUINCY                         56
+
+THE WEYMOUTH WATER-FRONT                           57
+
+RATTLING ALONG THE OLD COAST ROAD                  74
+
+THE LINCOLN HOUSE IN HINGHAM                       75
+
+THE OLD SHIP MEETING-HOUSE                _facing_ 76
+
+INTERIOR OF THE NEW NORTH CHURCH IN HINGHAM,
+WITH ITS SLAVE GALLERIES                           91
+
+COHASSET LEDGES AND MINOT'S LEDGE LIGHT            92
+
+MODERN COHASSET                                   110
+
+DRYING SEA-MOSS AT SCITUATE HARBOR                111
+
+FOURTH CLIFF, SCITUATE                            122
+
+THE WEBSTER HOUSE                                 123
+
+MARSHFIELD MEADOWS                       _facing_ 136
+
+A DUXBURY COTTAGE                                 142
+
+A BAY VIEW TO DUXBURY BEACH                       156
+
+THE STANDISH MONUMENT AS SEEN FROM KINGSTON       157
+
+OLD RECORDS                                       174
+
+THE MEMORIAL BUILDING FOR THE TOWN OF
+PLYMOUTH, DESIGNED BY LITTLE AND RUSSELL,
+ARCHITECTS                                        175
+
+VIEW FROM STEPS OF BURIAL HILL, PLYMOUTH,
+SHOWING THE TOWN SQUARE, LEYDEN STREET,
+THE CHURCH OF THE PILGRIMAGE, THE FIRST
+CHURCH, AND, IN THE DISTANCE, THE PILGRIM
+MONUMENT IN PROVINCETOWN                 _facing_ 192
+
+CLARK'S ISLAND, PLYMOUTH                          203
+
+
+
+
+BOSTON: A FOREWORD
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+To love Boston or to laugh at Boston--it all depends on whether or not
+you are a Bostonian. Perhaps the happiest attitude--and the most
+intelligent--is tinged with both amusement and affection: amusement at
+the undeviating ceremonial of baked beans on Saturday night and fish
+balls on Sunday morning; at the Boston bag (not so ubiquitous now as
+formerly); at the indefatigable consumption of lectures; at the
+Bostonese pronunciation; affection for the honorable traditions, noble
+buildings, distinguished men and women. Boston is an old city--one must
+remember that it was settled almost three centuries ago--and old cities,
+like old people, become tenacious of their idiosyncrasies, admitting
+their inconsistencies and prejudices with complacency, wisely aware that
+age has bestowed on them a special value, which is automatically
+increased with the passage of time.
+
+To tell the story of an old city is like cutting down through the
+various layers of a fruity layer cake. When you turn the slice over, you
+see that every piece is a cross-section. So almost every locality and
+phase of this venerable metropolis could be studied, and really should
+be studied, according to its historical strata: Colonial, Provincial,
+Revolutionary, economic, and literary. All of these periods have piled
+up their associations one upon the other, and all of them must be
+somewhat understood if one would sincerely comprehend what has aptly
+been called not a city, but a "state of mind."
+
+It is as impossible for the casual sojourner to grasp the significance
+of the multifarious historical and literary events which have transpired
+here as for a few pages to outline them. Wherever one stands in Boston
+suggests the church of San Clemente in Rome, where, you remember, there
+are three churches built one upon the other. However, those who would
+take the lovely journey from Boston to Plymouth needs must make some
+survey, no matter how superficial, of their starting-place. And perhaps
+the best spot from which to begin is the Common.
+
+This pleasantly rolling expanse, which was set aside as long ago as
+1640, with the decree that "there shall be no land granted either for
+houseplott or garden out of y^e open land or common field," has been
+unbrokenly maintained ever since, and as far as acreage goes (it
+approximates fifty acres) could still fulfill its original use of
+pasturing cows, a practice which was continued until 1830. It was here
+that John Hancock's cattle grazed--he who lived in such magnificence on
+the hill, and in whose side yard the State House was built--and once,
+when preparations for an official banquet were halted by shortage of
+milk, tradition has it that he ordered his servants to hasten out on the
+Common and milk every cow there, regardless of ownership. Tradition also
+tells us that the little boy Ralph Waldo Emerson tended his mother's cow
+here; and finally both traditions and existing law declare that yonder
+one-story building opening upon Mount Vernon Street, and possessing an
+oddly wide door, must forever keep that door of sufficient width to let
+the cows pass through to the Common.
+
+Let us stand upon the steps of the State House and look out over the
+Common. To our right, near the intersection of Boylston and Tremont
+Streets, lies the half-forgotten, almost obliterated Central Burying
+Ground, the final resting-place of Gilbert Stuart, the famous American
+painter. At the left points the spire of Park Street Church, notable not
+for its age, for it is only a little over a century old, but for its
+charming beauty, and by the fact that William Lloyd Garrison delivered
+his first address here, and here "America" was sung in public for the
+first time. It was the windiness of this corner which was responsible
+for Tom Appleton's suggestion (he was the brother-in-law of Longfellow)
+that a shorn lamb be tethered here.
+
+The graceful spire of Park Street Church serves not only as a landmark,
+but is also a most fitting terminal to a street of many associations. It
+is on Park Street that the publishing house of Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
+(now Houghton Mifflin Company) has had its offices for forty years, and
+the bookstores and the antique shops tucked quaintly down a few steps
+below the level of the sidewalk have much of the flavor of a bit of
+London.
+
+Still standing on the State House steps, facing the Common, you are also
+facing what has been called the noblest monument in Boston and the most
+successfully placed one in America. It is Saint-Gaudens's bronze relief
+of Colonel Robert G. Shaw commanding his colored regiment, and if you
+see no other sculpture in a city which has its full quota you must see
+this memorial, spirited in execution, spiritual in its conception of a
+mighty moment.
+
+If we had time to linger we could not do better than to follow Beacon
+Street to the left, pausing at the Athenæum, a library of such dignity
+and beauty that one instinctively, and properly, thinks of it as an
+institution rather than a mere building. To enjoy the Athenæum one must
+be a "proprietor" and own a "share," which entitles one not only to the
+use of the scholarly volumes in scholarly seclusion, but also in the
+afternoon to entrance to an alcove where tea is served for three
+pennies. Perhaps here, as well as any other place, you may see a
+characteristic assortment of what are fondly called "Boston types."
+There is the professor from Cambridge, a gentleman with a pointed beard
+and a noticeably cultivated enunciation; one from Wellesley--this, a
+lady--with that keen and paradoxically impractical expression which
+marks pure intellectuality; an alert matron, plainly, almost shabbily,
+dressed (aristocratic Boston still scorns sartorial smartness); a very
+well-bred young girl with bone spectacles; a student, shabby, like the
+Back Bay matron, but for another reason; a writer; a business man whose
+hobby is Washingtonia. These, all of them, you may enjoy along with your
+cup of tea for three cents, if--and here is the crux--you can only be
+admitted in the first place. And if you are admitted, do not fail to
+look out of the rear windows upon the ancient Granary Burying Ground,
+where rest the ashes of Hancock, Sewall, Faneuil, Samuel Adams, Otis,
+Revere, and many more notables. If you have a penchant for graveyards,
+this one, entered from Tremont Street, is more than worthy of further
+study.
+
+This is one of the many things we could enjoyably do if we had time, but
+whether we have time or not we must pay our respects to the State House
+(one does not call it the Capitol in Boston, as in other cities), the
+prominence of whose golden dome is not unsuggestive, to those who recall
+it, of Saint Botolph's beacon tower in Boston, England, for which this
+city was named. The State House is a distinctively American building,
+and Bulfinch, the great American architect, did an excellent thing when
+he designed it. The dome was originally covered with plates of copper
+rolled by no other than that expert silversmith and robust patriot, Paul
+Revere--he whose midnight ride has been recited by so many generations
+of school-children, and whose exquisite flagons, cups, ladles, and sugar
+tongs not only compared with the best Continental work of that period,
+but have set a name and standard for American craftsmanship ever since.
+
+If you should walk up and down the chessboard of Beacon Hill--taking the
+knight's move occasionally across the narrow cross-streets--you could
+not help treading the very squares which were familiar to the feet of
+that generation of authors which has permanently stamped American
+literature. At 55 Beacon Street, down near the foot of the hill and
+facing the Common, still stands the handsome, swell-front, buff-brick
+house where Prescott, the historian, lived. On Mount Vernon Street
+(which runs parallel to Beacon, and which, with its dignified beauty,
+won the approval of that connoisseur of beautiful streets--Henry James)
+one can pick out successively the numbers 59, 76, 83, 84, the first and
+last being homes of Thomas Bailey Aldrich, and the other two
+distinguished by the residence of William Ellery Channing and Margaret
+Deland. Pinckney Street runs parallel with Mount Vernon, and the small,
+narrow house at number 20 was one of the homes of the Alcott family. It
+seems delightfully fitting that Louisburg Square--that very exclusive
+and very English spot which probably retains more of the quaint
+atmosphere and customs of an aristocratic past than any other single
+area in the city--should have been the home of the well-beloved William
+Dean Howells. One also likes to recall that Jenny Lind was married at
+number 20. Chestnut Street--which after a period of social obscurity is
+again coming into its own--possesses Julia Ward Howe's house at number
+13, that of Motley the historian at 16, and of Parkman at 50. In this
+hasty map we have gone up and down the hill, but the cross-street,
+Charles, although not so attractive, is nevertheless as rich in literary
+associations as any in Boston. Here lived, for a short time, at 164,
+Oliver Wendell Holmes, and at 131--also for a short time--Thomas Bailey
+Aldrich. It is, however, at 148, that we should longest pause. This, for
+many rich years, was the home of James T. Fields, that delightful man of
+letters who was the friend of many men of letters; he who entertained
+Dickens and Thackeray, and practically every foreign writer of note who
+visited this country; he who encouraged Hawthorne to the completion of
+the "Scarlet Letter," and he, who, as an appreciative critic, publisher,
+and editor, probably did more to elevate, inspire, and sustain the
+general literary tone of the city than any other single person. In these
+stirring days facile American genius springs up, like brush fires, from
+coast to coast. Novels pour in from the West, the Middle West, the
+South. To superficial outsiders it may seem as if Boston might be
+hard-pressed to keep her laurels green, but Boston herself has no
+fears. Her present may not shine with so unique a brilliance as her
+past, but her past gains in luster with each succeeding year. Nothing
+can ever take from Boston her high literary prestige.
+
+While we are still on Beacon Hill we can look out, not only upon the
+past, but upon the future. Those white domes and pillars gleaming like
+Greek temples across the blue Charles, are the new buildings of the
+Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and surely Greek temples were
+never lovelier, nor dedicated to more earnest pursuit of things not
+mundane. Quite as beautiful and quite as Grecian as the Technology
+buildings is the noble marble group of the School of Medicine of Harvard
+University, out by the Fenlands--that section of the city which is
+rapidly becoming a students' quarter, with its Simmons College, the New
+England Conservatory of Music, art schools, gymnasiums, private and
+technical schools of all descriptions, and its body of over 12,000
+students. Harvard is, of course, across the river in Cambridge, and
+preparatory schools and colleges dot the suburbs in every direction,
+upholding the cultural traditions of a city which has proved itself
+peculiarly fitted to educational interests.
+
+All this time we have, like _bona-fide_ Bostonians, stayed on Beacon
+Hill, and merely looked out at the rest of the city. And perhaps this is
+as typical a thing as we could have done. Beacon Hill was the center of
+original Boston, when the Back Bay was merely a marsh, and long after
+the marsh was filled in and streets were laid out and handsome
+residences lined them, Beacon Hill looked down scornfully at the new
+section and murmured that it was built upon the discarded hoopskirts and
+umbrellas of the true Bostonians. Even when almost every one was crowded
+off the Hill and the Back Bay became the more aristocratic section of
+the two, there were still enough of the original inhabitants left to
+scorn these upstart social pretensions. And now Beacon Hill is again
+coming back into her own: the fine old houses are being carefully,
+almost worshipfully restored, probably never again to lose their
+rightful place in the general life of the city.
+
+But if Beacon Hill was conservative in regard to the Back Bay, that
+district, in its turn, showed an equal unprogressiveness in regard to
+the Esplanade. To the stranger in Boston, delighting in that magnificent
+walk along the Charles River Embankment, with the arching spans of the
+Cambridge and Harvard bridges on one side, and the homes of wealth and
+mellow refinement on the other--a walk which for invigorating beauty
+compares with any in the cities of men--it seems incredible that when
+this promenade was laid out a few years ago, the householders along the
+water's edge absolutely refused to turn their front windows away from
+Beacon Street. Furthermore, they ignored the fact that their back yards
+and back windows presented an unbecoming face to such an incomparably
+lovely promenade, and the inevitable household rearrangement--by which
+the drawing-rooms were placed in the rear--was literally years in
+process of achievement. But such conservatism is one of Boston's
+idiosyncrasies, which we must accept like the wind and the flat A.
+
+Present-day Bostonians are proud--and properly so--of their Copley
+Square, with its Public Library, rich with the mural paintings of Puvis
+de Chavannes, with Abbey's "Quest of the Holy Grail," and Sargent's
+"Frieze of the Prophets"; with its well-loved Trinity Church and with
+much excellent sculpture by Bela Pratt. Copley Square is the cultural
+center of modern Boston. The famous Lowell lectures--established about
+seventy-five years ago as free gifts to the people--are enthusiastically
+attended by audiences as Bostonese as one could hope to congregate; and
+in all sorts of queer nests in this vicinity are Theosophical
+reading-rooms, small halls where Buddhism is studied or New Thought
+taught, and half a hundred very new or very old philosophies, religions,
+fads, fashions, reforms, and isms find shelter. It is easy to linger in
+Copley Square: indeed, hundreds and hundreds of men and
+women--principally women--come from all over the United States for the
+sole purpose of spending a few months or a season in this very place,
+enjoying the lectures, concerts, and art exhibitions which are so easily
+and freely accessible. But in this bird's-eye flight across the
+historical and geographical map of a city that tempts one to many
+pleasant delays, we must hover for a brief moment over the South and the
+North Ends.
+
+Skipping back, then, almost three centuries, but not traveling far as
+distance goes, the stranger in Boston cannot do better than to find his
+way from Copley Square to the Old South Church on Washington
+Street--that venerable building whose desecration by the British troops
+in 1775 the citizens found it so hard ever to forgive. It was here that
+Benjamin Franklin was baptized in 1706; here that Joseph Warren made a
+dramatic entry to the pulpit by way of the window in order to denounce
+the British soldiers; and here that momentous meetings were held in the
+heaving days before the Revolution. The Old South Church Burying Ground
+is now called the King's Chapel Burying Ground, and King's Chapel
+itself--a quaint, dusky building, suggestive of a London chapel--is only
+a few blocks away. Across its doorsill have not only stepped the Royal
+Governors of pre-Revolutionary days, but Washington, General Gage, the
+indestructibly romantic figures of Sir Harry Frankland and Agnes
+Surriage; the funeral processions of General Warren and Charles Sumner.
+The organ, which came from England in 1756, is said to have been
+selected by Handel at the request of King George, and along the walls of
+the original King's Chapel were hung the escutcheons of the Kings of
+England and of the Royal Governors.
+
+The Old State House is in this vicinity and is worthy--as are, indeed,
+both the Old South Church and King's Chapel--of careful architectural
+study and enjoyment. There are portraits, pictures, relics, and rooms
+within, and without the beautifully quaint lines and truly lovely
+details of the façade infuse a perpetual charm into the atmosphere of
+the city. It was directly in front of this building that the Boston
+Massacre took place in 1770, and from this second-story balcony that
+the repeal of the Stamp Act was read, and ten years later the full text
+of the Declaration of Independence.
+
+Perhaps the next most interesting building in this section of old Boston
+is Faneuil Hall, the "Cradle of Liberty" whose dignified, old-fashioned
+proportions were not lost--thanks to Bulfinch--when it was enlarged. A
+gift of a public-spirited citizen, this building has served in a double
+capacity for a hundred and seventy-seven years, having public
+market-stalls below and a large hall above--a hall which is never
+rented, but used freely by the people whenever they wish to discuss
+public affairs. It would be impossible to enumerate the notable speakers
+and meetings which have rendered this hall famous, from General Gage
+down to Daniel Webster, Theodore Roosevelt, and Marshal Joffre.
+
+If you are fond of water sights and smells you can step from Faneuil
+Hall down to a region permeated with the flavor of salt and the sound of
+shipping, a region of both ancient tradition and present activity. Here
+is India Wharf, its seven-story yellow-brick building once so
+tremendously significant of Boston's shipping prosperity; Long Wharf, so
+named because when it was built it was the longest in the country, and
+bore a battery at its end; Central Wharf, with its row of venerable
+stone warehouses; T Wharf, immensely picturesque with its congestion of
+craft of all descriptions; Commercial Wharf, where full-rigged sailing
+vessels which traded with China and India and the Cape of Good Hope were
+wont to anchor a hundred years ago. All this region is crammed with the
+paraphernalia of a typical water-front: curious little shops where
+sailors' supplies are sold; airy lofts where sails are cut and stitched
+and repaired; fish stores of all descriptions; sailors' haunts, awaiting
+the pen of an American Thomas Burke. The old Custom House where
+Hawthorne unwillingly plodded through his enforced routine is here, and
+near it the new Custom House rears its tower four hundred and
+ninety-eight feet above the sidewalk, a beacon from both land and sea.
+
+The North End of Boston has not fared as well as the South End. The sons
+of Abraham and immigrants from Italy have appropriated the streets,
+dwellings, churches, and shops of the entire region, and even Christ
+Church (the famous Old North Church) has a Chiesa Italiana on its
+grounds. There are many touches to stir the memory in this Old North
+Church. The chime of eight bells naïvely stating, "We are the first ring
+of bells cast for the British Empire in North America"; the pew with the
+inscription that is set apart for the use of the "Gentlemen of Bay of
+Honduras"--visiting merchants who contributed the spire to the church in
+1740; vaults beneath the church, forbidden now to visitors, where lie
+the bones of many Revolutionary heroes; a unique collection of
+vellum-covered books, and a few highly precious pieces of ancient
+furniture. The most conspicuous item about the church, of course, is
+that from its tower were hung the signal lanterns of Paul Revere,
+destined to shine imperishably down the ever-lengthening aisles of
+American history.
+
+Before we press on to Bunker Hill--for that is our final destination--we
+should cast a glance at Copp's Hill Burying Ground, that hillside refuge
+where one can turn either back to the annals of the past or look out
+over the roof-tops and narrow streets to the present and the future. If
+you chose the latter, you can see easily Boston Harbor and Charlestown
+Navy Yard--that navy yard which has outstripped even its spectacular
+traditions by its stirring achievements in the Great War. "Old
+Ironsides" will lie here forever in the well-earned serenity of a secure
+old age, and it is probable that another visitor, the Kronprinzessin
+Cecilie, although lost under the name of the Mount Vernon and a coat of
+gray paint, will be long preserved in maritime memory.
+
+The plain shaft of Bunker Hill Monument, standing to mark the spot where
+the Americans lost a battle that was, in reality, a victory, is like a
+blank mirror, reflecting only that which one presents to it. According
+to your historical knowledge and your emotional grasp Bunker Hill
+Monument is significant.
+
+Skimming thus over the many-storied city, in a sort of literary
+airplane, it has been possible to point out only a few of the most
+conspicuous places and towers. The Common lies like a tiny pocket
+handkerchief of path-marked green at the foot of crowded Beacon Hill;
+the white Esplanade curves beside the blue Charles; the Back Bay is only
+a checkerboard of streets, alphabetically arranged; Copley Square is
+hardly distinguishable. The spires of the Old South Church, King's
+Chapel, the Old State House, and Faneuil Hall punctuate the South End;
+the North Church, the North End. The new Custom House Tower and Bunker
+Hill Monument seem hardly more than the minarets of a child's toy
+village.
+
+The writer, as a pilot over this particular city, alights and resigns,
+commending for more detailed study, and for delightful guidance, Robert
+Shackleton's "Book of Boston." Let us now leave the city and set out in
+a more leisurely fashion on our way to Plymouth.
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD COAST ROAD
+
+_From Boston to Plymouth_
+
+[Illustration: THE SOUTH SHORE OFMASSACHUSETTS BAY]
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD COAST ROAD
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+DORCHESTER HEIGHTS AND THE OLD COAST ROAD
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+The very earliest of the great roads in New England was the Old Coast
+Road, connecting Boston with Plymouth--capitals of separate colonies. Do
+we, casually accepting the fruit of three hundred years of toil on this
+continent--do we, accustomed to smooth highways and swift and easy
+transportation, realize the significance of such a road?
+
+A road is the symbol of the civilization which has produced it. The main
+passageway from the shore of the Yellow Sea to the capital of Korea,
+although it has been pressed for centuries immemorial by myriads of
+human feet, has never been more than a bridle path. On the other hand,
+wherever the great Roman Empire stepped, it engineered mighty
+thoroughfares which are a marvel to this day. A road is the thread on
+which the beads of history are strung; the beads of peace as well as
+those of war. Thrilling as is the progress of aerial navigation, with
+its infinite possibilities of human intercourse, yet surely, when the
+entire history of man is unrolled, the moment of the conception of
+building a wide and permanent road, instead of merely using a trail,
+will rank as equally dramatic. The first stone laid by the first Roman
+(they to whom the idea of road-building was original) will be recognized
+as significant as the quiver of the wings of the first airplane.
+
+Let us follow the old road from Boston to Plymouth: follow it, not with
+undue exactitude, and rather too hastily, as is the modern way, but
+comfortably, as is also the modern way, picking up what bits of quaint
+lore and half-forgotten history we most easily may.
+
+I think that as we start down this historic highway, we shall
+encounter--if our mood be the proper one in which to undertake such a
+journey--a curious procession coming down the years to meet us. We shall
+not call them ghosts, for they are not phantoms severed from earth, but,
+rather, the permanent possessors of the highway which they helped
+create.
+
+We shall meet the Indian first, running lightly on straight, moccasined
+feet, along the trail from which he has burned, from time to time, the
+underbrush. He does not go by land when he can go by water, but in this
+case there are both land and water to meet, for many are the streams,
+and they are unbridged as yet. With rhythmic lope, more beautiful than
+the stride of any civilized limbs, and with a sure divination of the
+best route, he chooses the trail which will ultimately be the highway of
+the vast army of pale-faces. Speed on, O solitary Indian--to vanish down
+the narrow trail of your treading as you are destined, in time, to
+vanish forever from the vision of New England!... Behind the red runner
+plod two stern-faced Pilgrims, pushing their way up from Plymouth toward
+the newer settlement at Massachusetts Bay. They come slowly and
+laboriously on foot, their guns cocked, eyes and ears alert, wading the
+streams without complaint or comment. They keep together, for no one is
+allowed to travel over this Old Coast Road single, "nor without some
+arms, though two or three together." The path they take follows almost
+exactly the trail of the Indian, seeking the fords, avoiding the
+morasses, clinging to the uplands, and skirting the rough, wooded
+heights.... After them--almost a decade after--we see a man on
+horseback, with his wife on a pillion behind him. They carry their own
+provisions and those for the beast, now and then dismounting to lead the
+horse over difficult ground, and now and then blazing a tree to help
+them in their return journey--mute testimony to the cruder senses of the
+white man to whom woodcraft never becomes instinctive. The fact that
+this couple possesses a horse presages great changes in New England.
+Ferries will be established; tolls levied, bridges thrown across the
+streams which now the horses swim, or cross by having their front feet
+in one canoe ferry and their hind feet in another--the canoes being
+lashed together. As yet we see no vehicle of any kind, except an
+occasional sedan chair. (The first one of these of which we have
+knowledge was presented to Governor Winthrop as a portion of a capture
+from a Spanish galleon.) However, these are not common. In 1631 Governor
+Endicott of Salem wrote that he could not get to Boston to visit
+Governor Winthrop as he was not well enough to wade the streams. The
+next year we read of Governor Winthrop surmounting the difficulty when
+he goes to visit Governor Bradford, by being carried on the backs of
+Indians across the fords. (It took him two days to make the journey.)
+
+It is not strange that we see no wheeled vehicles. In 1672 there were
+only six stage-coaches in the whole of Great Britain, and they were the
+occasion of a pamphlet protesting that they encouraged too much travel!
+At this time Boston had one private coach. Although one swallow may not
+make a summer, one stage-coach marks the beginning of a new era. The age
+of walking and horseback riding approaches its end; gates and bars
+disappear, the crooked farm lanes are gradually straightened; and in
+come a motley procession of chaises, sulkies, and two-wheeled
+carts--two-wheeled carts, not four. There are sleds and sleighs for
+winter, but the four-wheeled wagon was little used in New England until
+the turn of the century. And then they were emphatically objected to
+because of the wear and tear on the roads! In 1669 Boston enacted that
+all carts "within y^e necke of Boston shall be and goe without shod
+wheels." This provision is entirely comprehensible, when we remember
+that there was no idea of systematic road repair. No tax was imposed for
+keeping the roads in order, and at certain seasons of the year every
+able-bodied man labored on the highways, bringing his own oxen, cart,
+and tools.
+
+But as the Old Coast Road, which was made a public highway in 1639,
+becomes a genuine turnpike--so chartered in 1803--the good old coaching
+days are ushered in with the sound of a horn, and handsome equipages
+with well-groomed, well-harnessed horses ply swiftly back and forth.
+Genial inns, with swinging pictorial signboards (for many a traveler
+cannot read), spring up along the way, and the post is installed.
+
+But even with fair roads and regular coaching service, New England,
+separated by her fixed topographical outlines, remains provincial. It is
+not until the coming of the railroad, in the middle of the nineteenth
+century, that the hills are overcome, and she ceases to be an
+exclusively coastwise community and becomes an integral factor in the
+economic development of the whole United States.
+
+Thus, then, from a thin thread of a trail barely wide enough for one
+moccasined foot to step before the other, to a broad, leveled
+thoroughfare, so wide that three or even four automobiles may ride
+abreast, and so clean that at the end of an all-day's journey one's
+face is hardly dusty, does the history of the Old Coast Road unroll
+itself. We who contemplate making the trip ensconced in the upholstered
+comfort of a machine rolling on air-filled tires, will, perhaps, be less
+petulant of some strip of roughened macadam, less bewildered by the
+characteristic windings, if we recall something of the first
+back-breaking cart that--not so very long ago--crashed over the stony
+road, and toilsomely worked its way from devious lane to lane.
+
+Before we start down the Old Coast Road it may be enlightening to get a
+bird's-eye glimpse of it actually as we have historically, and for such
+a glimpse there is no better place than on the topmost balcony of the
+Soldier's Monument on Dorchester Heights. The trip to Dorchester
+Heights, in South Boston, is, through whatever environs one approaches
+it, far from attractive. This section of the city, endowed with
+extraordinary natural beauty and advantage of both land and water, and
+irrevocably and brilliantly graven upon the annals of American history,
+has been allowed to lose its ancient prestige and to sink low indeed in
+the social scale.
+
+Nevertheless it is to Dorchester Heights that we, as travelers down the
+Old Coast Road, and as skimmers over the quickly turning pages of our
+early New England history, must go, and having once arrived at that
+lovely green eminence, whitely pointed with a marble shaft of quite
+unusual excellence, we must grieve once more that this truly glorious
+spot, with its unparalleled view far down the many-islanded harbor to
+the east and far over the famous city to the west, is not more
+frequented, more enjoyed, more honored.
+
+If you find your way up the hill, into the monument, and up the stairs
+out to the balcony, probably you will encounter no other tourist. Only
+when you reach the top and emerge into the blue upper air you will meet
+those friendly winged visitors who frequent all spires--Saint Mark's in
+Venice or the Soldier's Monument in South Boston--the pigeons! Yes, the
+pigeons have discovered the charm of this lofty loveliness, and
+whenever the caretaker turns away his vigilant eye, they haste to build
+their nests on balcony or stair. They alone of Boston's residents enjoy
+to the full that of which too many Bostonians ignore the existence. Will
+you read the inscriptions first and recall the events which have raised
+this special hill to an historic eminence equal to its topographical
+one? Or will you look out first, on all sides and see the harbor, the
+city and country as it is to-day? Both surveys will be brief; perhaps we
+will begin with the latter.
+
+Before us, to the wide east, lies Boston Harbor, decked with islands so
+various, so fascinating in contour and legend, that more than one volume
+has been written about them and not yet an adequate one. From the point
+of view of history these islands are pulsating with life. From Castle
+Island (on the left) which was selected as far back as 1634 to be a
+bulwark of the port, and which, with its Fort Independence, was where
+many of our Civil War soldiers received their training, to the outline
+of Squantum (on the right), where in October, 1917, there lay a marsh,
+and where, ten months later, the destroyer Delphy was launched from a
+shipyard that was a miracle of modern engineering--every mile of visible
+land is instinct with war-time associations.
+
+But history is more than battles and forts and the paraphernalia of war;
+history is economic development as well. And from this same balcony we
+can pick out Thompson's, Rainsford, and Deer Island, set aside for huge
+corrective institutions--a graphic example of a nation's progress in its
+treatment of the wayward and the weak.
+
+But if history is more than wars, it is also more than institutions. If
+it is the record of man's daily life, the pleasures he works for, then
+again we are standing in an unparalleled spot to look down upon its
+present-day manifestations. From City Point with its Aquarium, from the
+Marine Park with its long pleasure pier, to Nantasket with its flawless
+beach, this is the summer playground of unnumbered hosts. Boaters,
+bathers, picnickers--all find their way here, where not only the cool
+breezes sweep their city-heated cheeks, but the forever bewitching
+passage of vessels in and out, furnishes endless entertainment. They
+know well, these laughing pleasure-seekers, crowding the piers and boats
+and wharves and beaches, where to come for refreshment, and now and
+then, in the history of the harbor, a solitary individual has taken
+advantage of the romantic charm which is the unique heritage of every
+island, and has built his home and lived, at least some portion of his
+days, upon one.
+
+Apple Island, that most perfectly shaped little fleck of land of ten
+acres, was the home of a Mr. March, an Englishman who settled there with
+his family, and lived there happily until his death, being buried at
+last upon its western slope. The fine old elms which adorned it are gone
+now, as have the fine old associations. No one followed Mr. March's
+example, and Apple Island is now merely another excursion point.
+
+On Calf Island, another ten-acre fragment, one of America's popular
+actresses, Julia Arthur, has her home. Thus, here and there, one
+stumbles upon individuals or small communities who have chosen to live
+out in the harbor. But one cannot help wondering how such beauty spots
+have escaped being more loved and lived upon by men and women who
+recognize the romantic lure which only an island can possess.
+
+Of course the advantage of these positions has been utilized, if not for
+dwellings. Government buildings, warehouses, and the great sewage plant
+all find convenient foothold here. The excursionists have ferreted out
+whatever beaches and groves there may be. One need not regret that the
+harbor is not appreciated, but only that it has not been developed along
+æsthetic as well as useful lines.
+
+We have been looking at the east, which is the harbor view. If we look
+to the west we see the city of Boston: the white tower of the Custom
+House; the gold dome of the State House; the sheds of the great South
+Station; the blue line of the Charles River. Here is the place to come
+if one would see a living map of the city and its environs. Standing
+here we realize how truly Boston is a maritime city, and standing here
+we also realize how it is that Dorchester Heights won its fame.
+
+It was in the winter of 1776, when the British, under Lord Howe, were
+occupying Boston, and had fortified every place which seemed important.
+By some curious oversight--which seems incredible to us as we actually
+stand upon the top of this conspicuous hill--they forgot this spot.
+
+When Washington saw what they had not seen--how this unique position
+commanded both the city and the harbor--he knew that his opportunity had
+come. He had no adequate cannon or siege guns, and the story of how
+Henry Knox--afterward General Knox--obtained these from Ticonderoga and
+brought them on, in the face of terrific difficulties of weather and
+terrain, is one that for bravery and brains will never fail to thrill.
+On the night of March 4, the Americans, keeping up a cannonading to
+throw the British off guard, and to cover up the sound of the moving,
+managed to get two thousand Continental troops and four hundred carts of
+fascines and intrenching tools up on the hill. That same night, with the
+aid of the moonlight, they threw up two redoubts--performing a task,
+which, as Lord Howe exclaimed in dismay the following morning, was "more
+in one night than my whole army could have done in a month."
+
+The occupation of the heights was a magnificent _coup_. The moment the
+British saw what had been done, they realized that they had lost the
+fight. However, Lord Percy hurried to make an attack, but the weather
+made it impossible, and by the time the weather cleared the Americans
+were so strongly intrenched that it was futile to attack. Washington,
+although having been granted permission by Congress to attack Boston,
+wished to save the loyal city if possible. Therefore, he and Howe made
+an agreement by which Howe was to evacuate and Washington was to refrain
+from using his guns. After almost two weeks of preparation for
+departure, on March 17 the British fleet, as the gilded letters on the
+white marble panel tell us, in the words of Charles W. Eliot:
+
+          Carrying 11,000 effective men
+                And 1000 refugees
+        Dropped down to Nantasket Roads
+                  And thenceforth
+                  Boston was free
+                A strong British force
+                  Had been expelled
+    From one of the United American colonies
+
+The white marble panel, with its gold letters and the other inscriptions
+on the hill, tell the whole story to whoever cares to read, only
+omitting to mention that the thousand self-condemned Boston refugees who
+sailed away with the British fleet were bound for Halifax, and that that
+was the beginning of the opprobrious term: "Go to Halifax."
+
+That the battle was won without bloodshed in no way minimizes the
+verdict of history that "no single event had a greater general effect on
+the course of the war than the expulsion of the British from the New
+England capital." And surely this same verdict justifies the perpetual
+distinction of this unique and beautiful hill.
+
+This, then, is the story of Dorchester Heights--a story whose glory will
+wax rather than wane in the years, and centuries, to come. Let us be
+glad that out of the reek of the modern city congestion this green hill
+has been preserved and this white marble monument erected. Perhaps you
+see it now with different, more sympathetic eyes than when you first
+looked out from the balcony platform. Before us lies the water with its
+multifarious islands, bays, promontories, and coves, some of which we
+shall now explore. Behind us lies the city which we shall now leave. The
+Old Coast Road--the oldest in New England--winds from Boston to
+Plymouth, along yonder southern horizon. More history than one person
+can pleasantly relate, or one can comfortably listen to, lies packed
+along this ancient turnpike: incidents closer set than the tombs along
+the Appian Way. We will not try to hear them all. Neither will we follow
+the original road too closely, for we seek the beautiful pleasure drive
+of to-day more than the historic highway of long ago.
+
+Boston was made the capital of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1632.
+Plymouth was a capital a decade before. It is to Plymouth that we now
+set out.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+MILTON AND THE BLUE HILLS
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Milton--a town of dignity and distinction! A town of enterprise and
+character! Ever since the first water-power mill in this country; the
+first powder mill in this country; the first chocolate mill in this
+country, and thus through a whole line of "first" things--the first
+violoncello, the first pianoforte, the first artificial spring leg, and
+the first railroad to see the light of day saw it in this grand old
+town--the name of Milton has been synonymous with initiative and men and
+women of character.
+
+Few people to-day think of Milton in terms of industrial repute, but,
+rather, as a place of estates, too aristocratic to be fashionable, of
+historic houses, and of charming walks and drives and views. Many of
+the old families who have given the town its prestige still live in
+their ancestral manors, and many of the families who have moved there in
+recent years are of such sort as will heighten the fame of the famous
+town. As the stranger passes through Milton he is captivated by glimpses
+of ancient homesteads, settling behind their white Colonial fences
+topped with white Colonial urns, half hidden by their antique trees with
+an air of comfortable ease; of new houses, elegant and yet informal; of
+cottages with low roofs; of well-bred children playing on the wide,
+green lawns under the supervision of white-uniformed nurses; of old
+hedges, old walls, old trees; new roads, old drives, new gardens, and
+old gardens--everything well placed, well tended, everything presenting
+that indescribable atmosphere of well-established prosperity that scorns
+show; of breeding that neither parades nor conceals its quality.
+Yes--this is Milton; this is modern Milton. Boston society receives some
+of its most prominent contributions from this patrician source. But
+modern Milton is something more than this, as old Milton was something
+more than this.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+For Milton, from this day of its birth, and countless centuries before
+its birth as a town, has lived under the lofty domination of the Blue
+Hills, that range of diaphanous and yet intense blue, that swims forever
+against the sky, that marches forever around the horizon. The rounded
+summits of the Blue Hills, to which the eye is irresistibly attracted
+before entering the town which principally claims them, are the
+worn-down stumps of ancient mountains, and although so leveled by the
+process of the ages, they are still the highest land near the coast from
+Maine to Mexico. These eighteen or twenty skyey crests form the southern
+boundary of the so-called Boston Basin, and are the most prominent
+feature of the southern coast. From them the Massachuset tribe about the
+Bay derived its name, signifying "Near the Great Hills," which name was
+changed by the English to Massachusetts, and applied to both bay and
+colony. Although its Indian name has been taken from this lovely range,
+the loveliness remains. All the surrounding country shimmers under the
+mysterious bloom of these heights, so vast that everything else is
+dwarfed beside them, and yet so curiously airy that they seem to
+perpetually ripple against the sky. The Great Blue Hill, especially--the
+one which bears an observatory on its summit--swims above one's head. It
+seems to have a singular way of moving from point to point as one
+motors, and although one may be forced to admit that this may be due
+more to the winding roads than to the illusiveness of the hill, still
+the buoyant effect is the same.
+
+Ruskin declares somewhere, with his quaint and characteristic mixture of
+positiveness and idealism, that "inhabitants of granite countries have a
+force and healthiness of character about them that clearly distinguishes
+them from the inhabitants of less pure districts." Perhaps he was right,
+for surely here where the succeeding generations have all lived in the
+atmosphere of the marching Blue Hill, each has through its own fair
+name, done honor to the fair names which have preceded it.
+
+One of the very first to be attracted by the lofty and yet lovely appeal
+of this region was Governor Thomas Hutchinson, the last of the Royal
+Governors Massachusetts was to know. It was about the middle of the
+eighteenth century that this gentleman, of whom John Adams wrote, "He
+had been admired, revered, and almost adored," chose as the spot for his
+house the height above the Neponset River. If we follow the old country
+Heigh Waye to the top of Unquity (now Milton) Hill, we will find the
+place he chose, although the house he built has gone and another stands
+in its place. Fairly near the road, it overlooked a rolling green meadow
+(a meadow which, by the gift of John Murray Forbes, will always be kept
+open), with a flat green marsh at its feet and the wide flat twist of
+the Neponset River winding through it, for all the world like a
+decorative panel by Puvis de Chavannes. One can see a bit of the North
+Shore and Boston Harbor from here. This is the view that the Governor so
+admired, and tradition tells us that when he was forced to return to
+England he walked on foot down the hill, shaking hands with his
+neighbors, patriot and Tory alike, with tears in his eyes as he left
+behind him the garden and the trees he had planted, and the house where
+he had so happily lived. Although the view from the front of the house
+is exquisite, the view from the back holds even more intimate
+attraction. Here is the old, old garden, and although the ephemeral
+blossoms of the present springtime shine brightly forth, the box, full
+twenty feet high, speaks of another epoch. Foxgloves lean against the
+"pleached alley," and roses clamber on a wall that doubtless bore the
+weight of their first progenitors.
+
+Another governor who chose to live in Milton was Jonathan Belcher, but
+one fancies it was the grandness rather than the sweetness of the scene
+which attracted this rather spectacular person. The Belcher house still
+exists, as does the portrait of its master, in his wig and velvet coat
+and waistcoat, trimmed with richest gold lace at the neck and wrists.
+Small-clothes and gold knee and shoe buckles complete the picture of one
+who, when his mansion was planned, insisted upon an avenue fifty feet
+wide, and so nicely graded that visitors on entering from the street
+might see the gleam of his gold knee buckles as he stood on the distant
+porch. The avenue, however, was never completed, as Belcher was
+appointed governor of, and transferred to, New Jersey shortly after.
+
+Two other men of note, who, since the days of our years are but
+threescore and ten, chose that their days without number should be spent
+in the town they loved, were Wendell Phillips and Rimmer the sculptor,
+who are both buried at Milton.
+
+Not only notable personages, but notable events have been engendered
+under the shadow of these hills. The Suffolk Resolves, which were the
+prelude of the Declaration of Independence, were adopted at the Vose
+House, which still stands, square and unadorned, easy of access from the
+sidewalk, as is suitable for a home of democracy. The first piano ever
+made in this country received its conception and was brought to
+fulfillment in the Crehore house, which, although still sagging a bit,
+is by no means out of commission. And Wilde's Tavern, where was formed
+the public opinion in a day when the forming of public opinion was of
+preëminent importance, still retains, in its broad, hospitable lines,
+some shred of its ancient charm.
+
+Milton is full of history. From the Revolutionary days, when the
+cannonading at Bunker Hill shook the foundations of the houses, but not
+the nerves of the Milton ladies, down to the year 1919, when the Fourth
+Liberty Loan of $2,955,250 was subscribed from a population of 9000, all
+the various vicissitudes of peace and war have been sustained on the
+high level that one might expect from men and women nobly nurtured by
+the strength of the hills.
+
+How much of its success Milton attributes to its location--for one
+joins, indeed, a distinguished fellowship when one builds upon a hill,
+or on several hills, as Roman as well as Bostonian history
+testifies--can only be guessed by its tribute in the form of the Blue
+Hills Reservation. This State recreation park and forest reserve of
+about four thousand acres--a labyrinth of idyllic footpaths and leafy
+trails, of twisting drives and walks that open out upon superb vistas,
+is now the property of the people of Massachusetts. The granite quarry
+man--far more interested in the value of the stone that underlay the
+wooded slopes than in Ruskin's theory of its purifying effect upon the
+inhabitants--had already obtained a footing here, when, under the able
+leadership of Charles Francis Adams, the whole region was taken over by
+the State in 1894.
+
+As you pass through the Reservation--and if you are taking even the most
+cursory glimpse of Milton you must include some portion of this
+park--you will pass the open space where in the early days, when Milton
+country life was modeled upon English country life more closely than
+now, Malcolm Forbes raced upon his private track the horses he himself
+had bred. The race-track with its judges' stands is still there, but
+there are no more horse-races, although the Forbes family still holds a
+conspicuous place in all the social as well as the philanthropic
+enterprises of the countryside. You may see, too, a solitary figure
+with a scientist's stoop, or a tutor with a group of boys, making a
+first-hand study of a region which is full of interest to the geologist.
+
+Circling thus around the base of the Great Blue Hill and irresistibly
+drawn closer and closer to it as by a magnet, one is impelled to make
+the ascent to the top--an easy ascent with its destination clearly
+marked by the Rotch Meteorological Observatory erected in 1884 by the
+late A. Lawrence Rotch of Milton, who bequeathed funds for its
+maintenance. It is now connected with Harvard University.
+
+Once at the top the eye is overwhelmed by a circuit of more than a
+hundred and fifty miles! It is almost too immense at first--almost as
+barren as an empty expanse of rolling green sea. But as the eye grows
+accustomed to the stretching distances, objects both near and far begin
+to appear. And soon, if the day is clear, buildings may be identified in
+more than one hundred and twenty-five villages. We are six hundred and
+thirty-five feet above the sea, on the highest coastland from
+Agamenticus, near York, Maine, to the Rio Grande, and the panorama thus
+unrolled is truly magnificent. Facing northerly we can easily
+distinguish Cambridge, Somerville, and Malden, and far beyond the hills
+of Andover and Georgetown. A little to the east, Boston with its gilded
+dome; then the harbor with its islands, headlands, and fortifications.
+Beyond that are distinctly visible various points on the North Shore, as
+far as Eastern Point Lighthouse in Gloucester. Forty miles to the
+northeast appear the twin lighthouses on Thatcher's Island, seeming,
+from here, to be standing, not on the land, but out in the ocean. Nearer
+and more distinct is Boston Light--a sentinel at the entrance to the
+harbor, while beyond it stretches Massachusetts Bay. Turning nearly east
+the eye, passing over Chickatawbut Hill--three miles off and second in
+height of the Blue Hills--follows the beautiful curve of Nantasket
+Beach, and the pointing finger of Minot's Light. Facing nearly south,
+the long ridge of Manomet Hill in Plymouth, thirty-three miles away,
+stands clear against the sky, while twenty-six miles away, in Duxbury,
+one sees the Myles Standish Monument. Directly south rises the smoke of
+the city of Fall River; to the westerly, Woonsocket, and continuing to
+the west, Mount Wachusett in Princeton. Far to the right of Wachusett,
+nearly over the dome of the Dedham Courthouse, rounds up Watatic in
+Ashburnham, and northwest a dozen peaks of southern New Hampshire. At
+the right of Watatic and far beyond it is the Grand Monadnock in
+Jaffrey, 3170 feet above the sea and sixty-seven and a half miles away.
+On the right of Grand Monadnock is a group of nearer summits: Mount
+Kidder, exactly northwest; Spofford and Temple Mountains; then appears
+the remarkable Pack-Monadnock, near Peterboro, with its two equal
+summits. The next group to the right is in Lyndeboro. At the right of
+Lyndeboro, and nearly over the Readville railroad stations, is Joe
+English Hill, and to complete the round, nearly north-northwest are the
+summits of the Uncanoonuc Mountains, fifty-nine miles away.
+
+This, then, is the Great Blue Hill of Milton. Those who are familiar
+with the State of Massachusetts--and New England--can stand here and
+pick out a hundred distinguishing landmarks, and those who have never
+been here before may find an unparalleled opportunity to see the whole
+region at one sweep of the eye.
+
+From the point of view of topography the summit of Great Blue Hill is
+the place to reach. But for the sense of mysterious beauty, for snatches
+of pictures one will never forget, the little vistas which open on the
+upward or the downward trail, framed by hanging boughs or encircled by a
+half frame of stone and hillside--these are, perhaps, more lovely. The
+hill itself, seen from a distance, floating lightly like a vast blue
+ball against a vaster sky, is dreamily suggestive in a way which the
+actual view, superb as it is, is not. One remembers Stevenson's
+observation, that sometimes to travel hopefully is better than to
+arrive. So let us come down, for, after all, "Love is of the valley."
+Down again to the old town of Milton. We have not half begun to wander
+over it: not half begun to hear the pleasant stories it has to tell.
+When one is as old as this--for Milton was discovered by a band from
+Plymouth who came up the Neponset River in 1621--one has many tales to
+tell.
+
+Of all the towns along the South Shore there are few whose feet are so
+firmly emplanted in the economic history of the past and present as is
+Milton. That peculiar odor of sweetness which drifts to us with a turn
+of the wind, comes from a chocolate mill whose trade-mark of a
+neat-handed maid with her little tray is known all over the civilized
+world. And those mills stand upon the site of the first grist mill in
+New England to be run by water power. This was in 1634, and one likes to
+picture the sturdy colonists trailing into town, their packs upon their
+backs, like children in kindergarten games, to have their grain ground.
+Israel Stoughton was the name of the man who established this first
+mill--a name perpetuated in the near-by town of Stoughton.
+
+All ground is historic ground in Milton. That rollicking group of
+schoolboys yonder belongs to an academy, which, handsome and
+flourishing as it is to-day, was founded as long ago as 1787. That seems
+long ago, but there was a school in Milton before that: a school held in
+the first meeting-house. Nothing is left of this quaint structure but a
+small bronze bas-relief, set against a stone wall, near its original
+site. This early church and early school was a log cabin with a thatched
+roof and latticed windows, if one may believe the relief, but men of
+brains and character were taught there lessons which stood them and the
+colony in good stead. One fancies the students' roving eyes may have
+occasionally strayed down the Indian trail directly opposite the old
+site--a trail which, although now attained to the proud rank of a lane,
+Churchill's Lane, still invites one down its tangled green way along the
+gray stone wall. Yes, every step of ground has its tradition here.
+Yonder railroad track marks the spot where the very first tie in the
+country was laid, and laid for no less significant purpose than to
+facilitate the carrying of granite blocks for Bunker Hill Monument from
+their quarry to the harbor.
+
+Granite from the hills--the hills which swim forever against the sky and
+march forever above the distant horizon. Again we are drawn back to the
+irresistible magnet of those mighty monitors. Yes, wherever one goes in
+Milton, either on foot to-day or back through the chapters of three
+centuries ago, the Blue Hills dominate every event, and the Great Blue
+Hill floats above them all.
+
+"I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help,"
+chants the psalmist. Ah, well, no one can say it better than
+that--except the hills themselves, which, with gentle majesty, look down
+affectionately upon the town at their feet.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+SHIPBUILDING AT QUINCY
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+The first man-made craft which floated on the waters of what is now Fore
+River was probably a little dugout, a crude boat made by an Indian, who
+burned out the center of a pine log which he had felled by girdling with
+fire. After he had burned out as much as he could, he scraped out the
+rest with a stone tool called a "celt." The whole operation probably
+took one Indian three weeks. The Rivadavia which slid down the ways of
+the Fore River Shipbuilding Corporation in August, 1914, weighed 13,400
+tons and had engaged the labor of 2000 men for fifty months.
+
+Between these two extremes flutter all the great sisterhood of shallops,
+sloops, pinks, schooners, snows, the almost obsolete batteau and
+periagua, the gundelow with its picturesque lateen sail, and all the
+winged host that are now merely names in New England's maritime history.
+
+We may not give in this limited space an account of the various vessels
+which have sailed down the green-sea aisles the last three hundred
+years. But of the very first, "a great and strong shallop" built by the
+Plymouth settlers for fishing, we must make brief mention, and of the
+Blessing of the Bay, the first seaworthy native craft to be built and
+launched on these shores--the pioneer of all New England commerce. Built
+by Governor Winthrop, he notes of her in his journal on August 31, 1631,
+that "the bark being of thirty tons went to sea." That is all he says,
+but from that significant moment the building of ships went on
+"gallantly," as was indeed to be expected in a country whose chief
+industry was fishing and which was so admirably surrounded by natural
+bays and harbors. In 1665 we hear of the Great and General Court of
+Massachusetts--which distinctive term is still applied to the
+Massachusetts Legislature--forbidding the cutting of any trees suitable
+for masts. The broad arrow of the King was marked on all white pines,
+twenty-four inches in diameter, three feet from the ground. Big ships
+and little ships swarmed into existence, and every South Shore town made
+shipbuilding history. The ketch, a two-masted vessel carrying from
+fifteen to twenty tons, carried on most of the coasting traffic, and
+occasionally ventured on a foreign voyage. When we recall that the best
+and cheapest ships of the latter half of the seventeenth century were
+built here in the new country, we realize that shipyards, ports, docks,
+proper laws and regulations, and the invigorating progress which marks
+any thriving industry flourished bravely up and down the whole New
+England coast.
+
+It is rather inspiring to stand here on the bridge which spans the Fore
+River, and picture that first crude dugout being paddled along by the
+steady stroke of the red man, and then to look at the river to-day.
+Every traveler through Quincy is familiar with the aerial network of
+steel scaffolding criss-crossing the sky, with the roofs of shops and
+offices and glimpses of vessels visible along the water-front. But few
+travelers realize that these are merely the superficial features of a
+shipyard which under the urge of the Great War delivered to the Navy, in
+1918, eighteen completed destroyers, which was as many as all the other
+yards in the country put together delivered during this time. A shipyard
+which cut the time of building destroyers from anywhere between eighteen
+and thirty-two months to an average of six months and a half; a shipyard
+which made the world's record of one hundred and seventy-four days from
+the laying of the keel to the delivering of a destroyer.
+
+It is difficult to grasp the meaning of these figures. Difficult, even
+after one has obtained entrance into this city within a city, and seen
+with his own eyes twenty thousand men toiling like Trojans. Seen a
+riveting crew which can drive more than twenty-eight hundred rivets in
+nine hours; battleships that weigh thirty thousand tons; a plate yard
+piled with steel plates and steel bars worth two million dollars; cranes
+that can lift from five tons up to others of one hundred tons capacity;
+single buildings a thousand feet long and eighty feet high.
+
+Perhaps the enormousness of the plant is best comprehended, not when we
+mechanically repeat that it covers eighty acres and comprises eighty
+buildings, and that four full-sized steam locomotives run up and down
+its yard, but when we see how many of the intimate things of daily
+living have sprung up here as little trees spring up between huge
+stones. For the Fore River Plant is more than an industrial
+organization. It is a social center, an economic entity. It has its band
+and glee club, ball team and monthly magazine. There are refreshment
+stands, and a bathing cove; a brand-new village of four hundred and
+thirty-eight brand-new houses; dormitories which accommodate nearly a
+thousand men and possess every convenience and even luxuries. The men
+work hard here, but they are well paid for their work, as the many
+motor-cycles and automobiles waiting for them at night testify. It is a
+scene of incredible industry, but also of incredible completeness.
+
+To look down upon the village and the yard from the throbbing roof of
+the steel mill, seven hundred and seventy feet long and a hundred and
+eighty-eight wide, is a thrilling sight. Within the yard, confined on
+three sides by its high fences and buildings and on the fourth by
+Weymouth Fore River, one sees, far below, locomotives moving up and down
+on their tracks; great cranes stalking long-leggedly back and forth;
+smoke from foundry, blacksmith shop, and boiler shop; men hurrying to
+and fro. Whistles blow, and whole buildings tremble. The smoke and the
+grayness might make it a gloomy scene if it were not for the red sides
+of the immense submarines gleaming in their wide slips to the water.
+Everywhere one sees the long gray sides of freighters, destroyers,
+merchant ships, and oil tankers heaving like the mailed ribs of sea
+animals basking on the shore. Practically every single operation, from
+the most stupendous to the most delicate, necessary for the complete
+construction of these vessels, is carried on in this yard. The eighty
+acres look small when we realize the extent and variety of the work
+achieved within its limits.
+
+Yes, the solitary Indian, working with fire and celt on his dugout,
+would not recognize this once familiar haunt, nor would he know the
+purpose of these vast vessels without sail or paddle. And yet, were this
+same Indian standing on the roof with us, he would see a wide stream of
+water he knew well, and he would see, too, above the smoke of the
+furnace, shop, and boiler room, the friendly green of the trees.
+
+Perhaps there is nothing which makes us realize the magical rapidity of
+growth so much as to look from this steel city and to see the woods
+close by. For instead of being surrounded by the sordid congestion of an
+industrial center, the Fore River Shipyard is in the midst of
+practically open country.
+
+While we are speaking of rapidity we must look over toward the Victory
+Plant at Squantum, that miraculous marsh which was drained with such
+expedition that just twelve months from the day ground was broken for
+its foundation, it launched its first ship, and less than two years
+after completed its entire contract. Surely never in the history of
+shipbuilding have brain and brawn worked so brilliantly together!
+
+In this way, then, the history of the ships that have sailed the seven
+seas has been built up at Quincy--a dramatic history and one instinct
+with the beauty which is part of gliding canoe and white sails, and
+part, too, of the huge smooth-slipping monsters of a modern day, sleek
+and swift as leviathans. But all the while the building of these ships
+has been going on, there has been slowly rising within the selfsame
+radius another ship, vaster, more inspiring, calling forth initiative
+even more intense, idealism even more profound--the Ship of State.
+
+We who journey to-day over the smooth or troubled waters of national or
+international affairs are no more conscious of the infinite toil and
+labors which have gone into the intricate making of the vessel that
+carries us, than are travelers conscious of the cogs and screws, the
+engines and all the elaboration of detail which compose an ocean liner.
+Like them we sometimes grumble at meals or prices, at some discourtesy
+or incompetence, but we take it for granted that the engine is in
+commission, that the bottom is whole and the chart correct. The great
+Ship of State of this country may occasionally run into rough weather,
+but Americans believe that, in the last analysis, she is honestly built.
+And it is to Quincy that we owe a large initial part of this building.
+
+It is astonishing to enumerate the notable public men, who have been
+influential in establishing our national policy, who have come from
+Quincy. There is no town in this entire country which can equal the
+record. What other town ever produced two Presidents of the United
+States, an Ambassador to Great Britain, a Governor of the Commonwealth,
+a Mayor of Boston, two presidents of Harvard University, and judges,
+chief justices, statesmen, and orators in such quantity and of such
+quality? Truly this group of eminent men of brilliance, integrity, and
+public feeling is unique in our history. To read the biographies of
+Quincy's great men would comprise a studious winter's employment, but
+we, passing through the historic city, may hold up our fragment of a
+mirror and catch a bit of the procession.
+
+First and foremost, of course, will come President John Adams, he who,
+both before and after his term of high office, toiled terrifically in
+the public cause, being at the time of his election to Congress a member
+of ninety committees and a chairman of twenty-five! We see him as the
+portraits have taught us to see him, with strong, serious
+face,--austere, but not harsh,--velvet coat, white ruffles, and white
+curls. He stands before us as the undisputed founder of what is now
+recognized as American diplomacy. Straightforward, sound to the core,
+unswerving, veracious, exemplifying in every act the candor of the
+Puritan, so congruous with the new simple life of a nation of common
+people. I think we shall like best to study him as he stands at the door
+of the little house in which he was born, and which, with its pitch
+roof, its antique door and eaves, is still preserved, close to the
+street, for public scrutiny.
+
+Next to President John Adams comes his son, John Quincy Adams, also a
+President of the United States. Spending much of his time abroad, the
+experience of those diplomatic years is graven upon features more subtly
+refined than those of his sire. But for all his foreign residence, he
+was, like his father, a Puritan in its most exalted sense; like him
+toiled all his life in public service, dying in the harness when rising
+to address the Speaker of the House. Him, too, we see best, standing at
+the door of his birthplace, a small cottage a stone's throw from the
+other cottage, separated only by a turnstile. Fresh white curtains hang
+in the small-paned windows; the grass is neatly trimmed, and like its
+quaint companion it is now open to the public and worth the tourist's
+call. Both these venerable cottages have inner walls, one of burnt, the
+other of unburnt brick; and both are unusual in having no boards on the
+outer walls, but merely clapboards fastened directly on to the studding
+with wrought-iron nails.
+
+Still another Adams follows, Charles Francis Adams. Although a little
+boy when he first comes into public view, a little boy occupying the
+conspicuous place as child of one President and grandchild of another,
+yet he was to win renown and honor on his own account as Ambassador to
+England during the critical period of our Civil War. America remembers
+him best in this position. His firm old face with its white chin
+whiskers is a worthy portrait in the ancestral gallery.
+
+Although the political history of this country may conclude its
+reference to the Adamses with these three famous figures, yet all New
+Englanders and all readers of biography would be reluctant to turn from
+this remarkable family without mention of the sons of Charles Francis
+Adams, two of whom have written, beside valuable historical works,
+autobiographies so entertaining and so truly valuable for their
+contemporaneous portraits as to win a place of survival in our permanent
+literature.
+
+A member of the Adams family still lives in the comfortable home where
+the three first and most famous members all celebrated their golden
+weddings. This broad-fronted and hospitable house, built in 1730 by
+Leonard Vassal, a West India planter, for his summer residence, with its
+library finished in panels of solid mahogany, was confiscated when its
+Royalist owner fled at the outbreak of the Revolution, and John Adams
+acquired the property and left the pitch-roofed cottage down the street.
+The home of two Presidents, what tales it could tell of notable
+gatherings! One must read the autobiography of Charles Francis Adams and
+"The Education of Henry Adams" to appreciate the charm of the succeeding
+mistresses of the noble homestead, and to enjoy in retrospect its many
+illustrious visitors.
+
+To have produced one family like the Adamses would surely be sufficient
+distinction for any one place, but the Adams family forms merely one
+unit in Quincy's unique procession of great men.
+
+The Quincy family, for which the town was named, and which at an early
+date intermarried with the Adamses, presents an almost parallel
+distinction. The first Colonel Quincy, he who lived like an English
+squire, a trifle irascible, to be sure, but a dignified and commanding
+figure withal, had fourteen children by his first wife and three by his
+second, so the family started off with the advantage of numbers as well
+as of blood. At the Quincy mansion house were born statesmen, judges,
+and captains of war. The "Dorothy Q." of Holmes's poem first saw the
+light in it, and the Dorothy who became the bride of the dashing John
+Hancock blossomed into womanhood in it. Here were entertained times
+without number Sir Harry Vane, quaint Judge Sewall, Benjamin Franklin,
+and that couple who gleam through the annals of New England history in a
+never-fading flame of romance, Sir Harry Frankland and beautiful Agnes
+Surriage. The Quincy mansion, which was built about 1635 by William
+Coddington of Boston and occupied by him until he was exiled for his
+religious opinions, was bought by Edmund Quincy. His grandson, who bore
+his name, enlarged the house, and lived in it until his death when it
+descended to his son Edmund, the eminent jurist and father of Dorothy.
+The old-fashioned furniture, utensils and pictures, the broad hall, fine
+old stairway with carved balustrades, and foreign wall-paper supposed to
+have been hung in honor of the approaching marriage of Dorothy to John
+Hancock, are still preserved in their original place. Of the Quincy
+family, whose sedate jest it was that the estate descended from 'Siah to
+'Siah, so frequent was the name "Josiah," the best known is perhaps the
+Josiah Quincy who was Mayor of Boston for six years and president of
+Harvard for sixteen. The portrait of his long, thin face is part of
+every New England history, and his busy, serene life, "compacted of
+Roman and Puritan virtues," is still upheld to all American children as
+a model of high citizenship.
+
+But not even the long line of the Quincy family completes the list of
+the town's great men. Henry Hope, one of the most brilliant financiers
+of his generation, and founder of a European banking house second only
+to that of the Rothchilds, was a native of Quincy. John Hull--who, as
+every school-child knows, on the day of his daughter's marriage to Judge
+Sewall, placed her in one of his weighing scales, and heaped enough new
+pine-tree shillings into the other to balance, and then presented both
+to the bridegroom--held the first grant of land in the present town of
+Braintree (which originally included Quincy, Randolph, and Holbrook).
+
+From the picturesque union of John Hull's bouncing daughter Betsy and
+Judge Sewall sprang the extraordinary family of Sewalls which has given
+three chief justices to Massachusetts, and one to Canada, and has been
+distinguished in every generation for the talents and virtues of its
+members. In passing, we may note that it was this same John Hull who
+named Point Judith for his wife, little dreaming what a _bête noir_ the
+place would prove to mariners in the years to come.
+
+There is another Quincy man whom it is pleasant to recall, and that is
+Henry Flynt, a whimsical and scholarly old bachelor, who was a tutor at
+Harvard for no less than fifty-three years, the one fixed element in the
+flow of fourteen college generations. One of the most accomplished
+scholars of his day, his influence on the young men with whom he came in
+contact was stimulating to a degree, and they loved to repeat bits of
+his famous repartee. A favorite which has come down to us was on an
+occasion when Whitefield the revivalist declared in a theological
+discussion: "It is my opinion that Dr. Tillotson is now in hell for his
+heresy." To which Tutor Flynt retorted dryly: "It is my opinion that you
+will not meet him there."
+
+The procession of Quincy's great men which we have been watching winds
+its way, as human processions are apt to do, to the old graveyard. Most
+of the original settlers are buried here, although not a few were buried
+on their own land, according to the common custom. Probably this
+ancient burying ground, with its oldest headstone of 1663, has never
+been particularly attractive. The Puritans did not decorate their
+graveyards in any way. Fearing that prayers or sermons would encourage
+the "superstitions" of the Roman Catholic Church, they shunned any
+ritual over the dead or beautifying of their last resting-place.
+However, neglected as the spot was, the old stone church, whose golden
+belfry is such a familiar and pleasant landmark to all the neighboring
+countryside, still keeps its face turned steadfastly toward it. The
+congested traffic of the city square presses about its portico, but
+those who knew and loved it best lie quietly within the shadow of its
+gray walls. Under the portico lies President John Adams, and "at his
+side sleeps until the trump shall sound, Abigail, his beloved and only
+wife." In the second chamber is placed the dust of his illustrious son,
+with "His partner for fifty years, Louisa Catherine"--she of whom Henry
+Adams wrote, "her refined figure; her gentle voice and manner; her
+vague effect of not belonging there, but to Washington or Europe, like
+her furniture and writing-desk with little glass doors above and little
+eighteenth-century volumes in old binding."
+
+It has been called the "church of statesmen," this dignified building,
+and so, indeed, might Quincy itself be called the "city of statesmen."
+It would be extremely interesting to study the reasons for Quincy's
+peculiar productiveness of noble public characters. The town was settled
+(as Braintree) exclusively by people from Devonshire and Lincolnshire
+and Essex. The laws of the Massachusetts Colony forbade Irish
+immigration--probably more for religious than racial reasons. On reading
+the ancient petition for the incorporation of the town one is struck by
+the fact that practically every single name of the one hundred and fifty
+signers is English in origin, the few which were not having been
+anglicized. All of these facts point to a homogeneous stock, with the
+same language, traditions, and social customs. Obviously there is a
+connection between the governmental genius displayed by Quincy's sons
+and the singular purity of the original English stock.
+
+Little did Wampatuck, the son of Chickatawbut, realize what he was doing
+when he parted with his Braintree lands for twenty-one pounds and ten
+shillings. The Indian deed is still preserved, with the following words
+on its back: "In the 17th reign of Charles 2. Braintry Indian Deeds.
+Given 1665. Aug. 10: Take great care of it."
+
+Little did the Indian chief realize that the surrounding waters were to
+float hulks as mighty as a city; that the hills were to furnish granite
+for buildings and monuments without number; and that men were to be born
+there who would shape the greatest Ship of State the world has ever
+known. And yet, if he had known, possibly he would have accepted the
+twenty-one pounds and ten shillings just the same, and departed quietly.
+For the ships that were to be built would never have pleased him as well
+as his own canoe; the granite buildings would have stifled him; and the
+zealous Adamses and the high-minded Quincys and Sewalls and all the
+rest would have bored him horribly. Probably the only item in the whole
+history of Quincy which would have appealed to Wampatuck in the least
+would have been the floating down on a raft of the old Hollis Street
+Church of Boston, to become the Union Church of Weymouth and Braintree
+in 1810. This and the similar transportation of the Bowditch house from
+Beacon Street in Boston to Quincy a couple of years later would have
+fascinated the red man, as the recital of the feat fascinates us to-day.
+
+Those who care to learn more of Quincy will do well to read the
+autobiography of Charles Francis Adams and "The Education of Henry
+Adams." Those who care more for places than for descriptions of them may
+wander at will, finding beneath the surface of the modern city many
+landmarks of the old city which underlies it. They may see the
+scaffolding of the great shipyards latticing themselves against the sky,
+and the granite quarries against the hills. They may see the little
+cottages and the great houses made famous by those who have passed over
+their thresholds; they may linger in the old burial ground and trace out
+the epitaphs under the portico of the golden-belfried church. But after
+they have touched and handled all of these things, they will not
+understand Quincy unless they look beyond and recognize her greatest
+contribution to this country--the noble statesmen who so bravely and
+intelligently toiled to construct America's Ship of State.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE ROMANCE OF WEYMOUTH
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+The paintings of John Constable, idyllic in their quietness, dewy in
+their serenity--how many travelers, how many lovers of art, superficial
+or profound, yearly seek out these paintings in the South Kensington
+Museum or the Louvre, and stand before them wrapt in gentle ecstasy?
+
+The quality of Constable's pictures delineates in luminous softness a
+peculiarly lovely side of English rural life, but one need not travel to
+England or France to see this loveliness. Weymouth, that rambling
+stretch of towns and hamlets, of summer colony and suburb, possesses in
+certain areas bits of rural landscape as serene, as dewy, as
+idyllically tranquil as Constable at his best.
+
+Comparatively few people in New England, or out of it, know Weymouth
+well. Every one has heard of it, for it is next in age to the town of
+Plymouth itself, and every one who travels to the South Shore passes
+some section of it, for it extends lengthily--north and south, east and
+west--being the only town in Massachusetts to retain its original
+boundaries. And numbers of people are familiar with certain parts of it,
+for there are half a score of villages in the township, some of them
+summer settlements, some of them animated by an all-the-year-round life.
+But compared with the other towns along this historic route, Weymouth as
+a whole is little known and little appreciated. And yet the history of
+Weymouth is not without amusing and edifying elements, and the scenery
+of Weymouth is worthy of the détour that strangers rarely make.
+
+"Old Spain" is the romantic name for an uninteresting part of the
+township, and, conversely, Commercial Street is the uninteresting name
+for a romantic part. It is along a highway stigmatized by such a name
+that one gets the glimpses of a Constable country: glimpses of rolling
+meadows, of fertile groves, of cattle grazing in elm-shaded pastures, of
+a road winding contentedly among simple, ancient cottages, and quiet,
+thrifty farms. These are the homes which belong, and have belonged for
+generations, to people who are neither rich nor poor; cozy, quaint,
+suggesting in an odd way the thatched-roof cottages of England. Not that
+all of Weymouth's homes are of this order. The Asa Webb Cowing house,
+which terminates Commercial Street within a stone's throw of the square
+of the town of Weymouth, is one of the very finest examples of the
+Colonial architecture in this country. The exquisite tracery and carving
+over and above the front door, and the white imported marble window
+lintels spin an elaborate and marvelously fine lacework of white over
+the handsome red-brick façade. Although it is, alas, falling somewhat
+into disrepair, perfect proportion and gemlike workmanship still stamp
+the venerable mansion as one of patrician heritage. There are other
+excellent examples of architecture in Weymouth, but the Cowing house
+must always be the star, both because of its extraordinary beauty and
+conspicuous position. Yes, if you want a characteristic glimpse of
+Weymouth, you cannot do better than to begin in front of this landmark,
+and drive down Commercial Street. Here for several smiling miles there
+is nothing--no ugly building large or small, no ruthless invasion of
+modernity to mar the mood of happy simplicity. Her beauty of beach, of
+sky, of river, Weymouth shares with other South Shore towns. Her
+perfection of idyllic rusticity is hers alone.
+
+Just as Weymouth's scenery is unlike that of her neighbors, so her
+history projects itself from an entirely different angle from theirs.
+While they were conceived by zealous, God-fearing men and women honestly
+seeking to establish homes in a new country, Weymouth was inadvertently
+born through the misconduct of a set of adventurers. Not every one who
+came to America in those significant early years came impelled by lofty
+motives. There were scapegraces, bad boys, rogues, mercenaries, and
+schemers; and perhaps it is entirely logical that the winning natural
+loveliness of this place should have lured to her men who were not of
+the caliber to face more exposed, less fertile sections, and men to whom
+beauty made an especial appeal.
+
+The Indians early found Wessagusset, as they called it, an important
+rendezvous, as it was accessible by land and sea, and there were
+probably temporary camps there previous to 1620, formed by fishermen and
+traders who visited the New England coast to traffic with the natives.
+But it was not until the arrival of Thomas Weston in 1622 that
+Weymouth's history really begins. And then it begins in a topsy-turvy
+way, so unlike Puritan New England that it makes us rub our eyes,
+wondering if it is really true.
+
+This Thomas Weston, who was a merchant adventurer of London, took it
+into his head to establish a colony in the new country entirely
+different from the Plymouth Colony. He had been an agent of the
+Pilgrims in their negotiations with the Plymouth Company, and when he
+broke off the connection it was to start a settlement which should
+combine all of the advantages, with none of the disadvantages, of the
+Plymouth Colony. First of all, it was to be a trading community pure and
+simple, with its object frankly to make money. Second, it was to be
+composed of men without families and familiar with hardship. And third,
+there was no religious motive or bond. That such an unidealistic
+enterprise should not flourish on American soil is worth noting. The
+disorderly, thriftless rabble, picked up from the London streets, soon
+got into trouble with the Indians and with neighboring colonists, and
+finally, undone by the results of their own improvidence and
+misbehavior, wailed that they "wanted to go back to London," to which
+end the Plymouth settlers willingly aided them, glad to get them out of
+the country. Thus ended the first inauspicious settlement of Weymouth.
+
+The second, which was undertaken shortly after by Robert Gorges, broke
+up the following spring, leaving only a few remnants behind. Sir
+Ferdinando Gorges, who was not a Spaniard as his name suggests, but a
+picturesque Elizabethan and a kinsman of Sir Walter Raleigh, essayed
+(through his son Robert) an experimental government along practically
+the same commercial lines as had Weston, and his failure was as speedy
+and complete as Weston's had been.
+
+A third attempt, while hardly more successful, furnishes one of the
+gayest and prettiest episodes in the whole history of New England.
+Across the somber procession of earnest-faced men and women, across the
+psalm-singing and the praying, across the incredible toil of the
+pioneers at Plymouth now flashes the brightly costumed and
+pleasure-loving courtier, Thomas Morton. An agent of Gorges, Morton with
+thirty followers floated into Wessagusset to found a Royalist and
+Episcopalian settlement. This Episcopalian bias was quite enough to
+account for Bradford's disparaging description of him as a "kind of
+petie-fogie of Furnifells Inn," and explains why the early historians
+never made any fuller or more favorable record than absolutely necessary
+of these neighbors of theirs, although the churchman Samuel Maverick
+admits that Morton was a "gentleman of good qualitee."
+
+But it was for worse sins than his connection with the Established
+Church that Morton's name became synonymous with scandal throughout the
+whole Colony. In the very midst of the dun-colored atmosphere of
+Puritanism, in the very heart of the pious pioneer settlement this
+audacious scamp set up, according to Bradford, "a schoole of atheisme,
+and his men did quaff strong waters and comport themselves as if they
+had anew revived and celebrated the feasts of y^e Roman Goddess Flora,
+or the beastly practises of y^e madd Bachanalians." The charge of
+atheism in this case seems based on the fact that Morton used the Book
+of Common Prayer, but as for the rest, there is no question that this
+band of silken merry-makers imported many of the carnival customs and
+hereditary pastimes of Old England to the stern young New England; that
+they fraternized with the Indians, shared their strong waters with them,
+and taught them the use of firearms; and that Merrymount became indeed a
+scene of wildest revelry.
+
+The site of Merrymount had originally been selected by Captain Wollaston
+for a trading post. Imbued with the same mercenary motive which had
+proved fatal in the case of Weston and Gorges, Captain Wollaston, whose
+name is perpetuated in Mount Wollaston, brought with him in 1625 a gang
+of indented white servants. Finding his system of industry ill suited to
+the climate, he carried his men to Virginia, where he sold them. When he
+left, Morton took possession of the place and dubbed it "Ma-re-mount."
+And then began the pranks which shook the Colony to its foundations.
+Picture to yourself a band of sworn triflers, dedicated to the wildest
+philosophy of pleasure, teaching bears to dance, playing blind-man's
+buff, holding juggling and boxing matches, and dancing. According to
+Hawthorne, on the eve of Saint John they felled whole acres of forests
+to make bonfires, and crowned themselves with flowers and threw the
+blossoms into the flames. At harvest-time they hilariously wasted their
+scanty store of Indian corn by making an image with the sheaves, and
+wreathing it with the painted garlands of autumn foliage. They crowned
+the King of Christmas and bent the knee to the Lord of Misrule! Such
+fantastic foolery is inconceivable in a Puritan community, and the
+Maypole which was its emblem was the most inconceivable of all. This
+"flower-decked abomination," ornamented with white birch bark, banners,
+and blossoms, was the center of the tipsy jollity of Merrymount. As
+Morton explains: "A goodly pine tree of eighty foote was reared up, with
+a peare of bucks horns nayled on somewhere near to the top of it: where
+it stood as a faire sea mark for directions how to find out the way to
+mine host of Ma-re-mount." Around this famous, or infamous, pole Morton
+and his band frolicked with the Indians on May Day in 1627. As the
+indignant historian writes: "Unleashed pagans from the purlieus of the
+gross court of King James, danced about the Idoll of Merry Mount,
+joining hands with the lasses in beaver coats, and singing their ribald
+songs."
+
+It doesn't look quite so heinous to us, this Maypole dancing, as it did
+to the outraged Puritans. In fact, the story of Morton and Merrymount is
+one of the few glistening threads in the somber weaving of those early
+days. But the New England soil was not prepared at that time to support
+any such exotic, and Myles Standish was sent to disperse the frivolous
+band, and to order Morton back to England, which he did, after a
+scrimmage which Morton relates with great vivacity and doubtful veracity
+in his "New English Canaan."
+
+This "New English Canaan," by the way, had a rather singular career.
+Morton tells in it many amusing stories, and one of them was destined to
+a remarkable perpetuity in English literature. The story deals with the
+Wessagusset settlers promising to hang one of their own members who had
+been caught stealing--this hanging in order to appease the Indians.
+Morton gravely states that instead of hanging the real culprit, who was
+young and lusty, they hanged, in his place, another, old and sick. In
+his quaint diction: "You all agree that one must die, and one shall die,
+this young man's cloathes we will take off and put upon one that is old
+and impotent, a sickly person that cannot escape death, such is the
+disease on him confirmed, that die hee must. Put the young man's
+cloathes on this man, and let the sick person be hanged in the other's
+steade. Amen sayes one, and so sayes many more." This absurd notion of
+vicarious atonement, spun purely from Morton's imagination, appealed to
+Samuel Butler as worthy of further elaboration. Morton's "New English
+Canaan" appeared in 1632. About thirty years later the second part of
+the famous English satire "Hudibras" appeared, embodying Morton's idea
+in altered but recognizable form, in what was the most popular English
+book of the day. This satire, appearing when the reaction against
+Puritanism was at its height, was accepted and solemnly deposited at the
+door of the good people of Boston and Plymouth! And thus it was that
+Morton's fabricated tale of the Weymouth hanging passed into genuine
+history along with the "blue laws" of Connecticut. One cannot help
+believing that the mischievous perpetrator of the fable laughed up his
+sleeve at its result, and one cannot resist the thought that he was
+probably delighted to have the scandal attached to those righteous
+neighbors of his who had run him out of his dear Ma-re-mount.
+
+However, driven out he was: the Maypole about which the revelers had
+danced was hewed down by the stern zealots who believed in dancing about
+only one pole, and that the whipping-post. Merrymount was deserted.
+
+Certainly Weymouth, the honey spot which attracted not industrious bees,
+but only drones, was having a hard time getting settled! It was not
+until the Reverend Joseph Hull received permission from the General
+Court to settle here with twenty-one families, from Weymouth, England,
+that the town was at last shepherded into the Puritan fold.
+
+These settlers, of good English stock and with the earnest ideals of
+pioneers, soon brought the community into good repute, and its
+subsequent life was as respectable and uneventful as that of a reformed
+_roué_. In fact there is practically no more history for Weymouth. There
+are certainly no more raids upon merry-makers; no more calls from the
+cricket colony which had sung all summer on the banks of the river to
+the ant colony which had providently toiled on the shore of the bay; no
+more experimental governments; no more scandal. The men and women of the
+next five generations were a poor, hard-working race, rising early and
+toiling late. The men worked in the fields, tending the flocks, planting
+and gathering the harvest. The women worked in the houses, in the
+dairies and kitchens, at the spinning-wheel and washtub. The privations
+and loneliness, which are part of every struggling colony, were
+augmented here, where the houses did not cluster about the church and
+burial ground, but were scattered and far away. This peculiarity of
+settlement meant much in days where there was no newspaper, no system of
+public transportation, no regular post, and Europe was months removed. A
+few of the young men went with the fishing fleet to Cape Sable, or
+sailed on trading vessels to the West Indies or Spain, but it is
+doubtful if any Weymouth-born woman ever laid eyes on the mother country
+during the first hundred and fifty years.
+
+The records of the town are painfully dull. They are taken up by small
+domestic matters: the regulations for cattle; running boundary lines,
+locating highways, improving the town common, fixing fines for roving
+swine or agreeing to the division of a whale found on the shore. There
+was more or less bickering over the salary of the town clerk, who was to
+receive thirty-three pounds and fourteen shillings yearly to keep "A
+free school and teach all children and servants sent him to read and
+write and cast accounts."
+
+Added to the isolation and pettiness of town affairs, the winters seem
+to have been longer, the snows deeper, the frosts more severe in those
+days. We have records of the harbor freezing over in November, and "in
+March the winter's snow, though much reduced, still lay on a level with
+the fences, nor was it until April that the ice broke up in Fore River."
+They were difficult--those days ushered in by the Reverend Joseph Hull.
+Through long nights and cold winters and an endless round of joyless
+living, Weymouth expiated well for the sins of her youth. Even as late
+as 1767 we read of the daughter of Parson Smith, of Weymouth--now the
+wife of John Adams, of Quincy--scrubbing the floor of her own
+bed-chamber the afternoon before her son--destined to become President
+of the United States, as his father was before him--was born.
+
+But the English stock brought in by the Reverend Hull was good stock. We
+may not envy the ladies scrubbing their own floors or the men walking to
+Boston, but many of the best families of this country are proud to trace
+their origin back to Weymouth. Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont; then
+New York, Rhode Island, and Connecticut attracted men from Weymouth.
+Later the Middle West and the Far West called them. In fact for over a
+century the town hardly raised its number of population, so energetic
+was the youth it produced.
+
+As happens with lamentable frequency, when Weymouth ceased to be naughty
+she also ceased to be interesting. After poring over the dull pages of
+the town history, one is sometimes tempted to wonder if, perhaps, the
+irreverent Morton did not, for all his sins, divine a deeper meaning in
+this spot than the respectable ones who came after him. One cannot read
+the "New English Canaan" without regretting a little that this
+happy-natured fellow was so unceremoniously bustled out of the country.
+Whatever Morton's discrepancies may have been, his response to beauty
+was lively and true: whatever his morals, his prose is delightful. All
+the town records and memorial addresses of all the good folk subsequent
+contain no such tribute to Weymouth, and paint no picture so true of
+that which is still best in her, as these loving words of the erstwhile
+master of Merrymount.
+
+"And when I had more seriously considered the bewty of the place, with
+all her fair endowments, I did not think that in all the knowne world it
+could be paralel'd. For so many goodly groves of trees: dainty fine
+round rising hillocks: delicate faire large plaines: sweete crystal
+fountains, and clear running streams, that twine in fine meanders
+through the meads, making so sweet a murmuring noise to heare, as would
+even lull the senses with delight asleep, so pleasantly doe they glide
+upon the pebble stones, jetting most jocundly where they doe meet; and
+hand in hand run down to Neptune's court, to pay the yearly tribute
+which they owe to him as soveraigne Lord of all the Springs."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+ECCLESIASTICAL HINGHAM
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Should you walk along the highway from Quincy to Hingham on a Sunday
+morning you would be passed by many automobiles, for the Old Coast Road
+is now one of the great pleasure highways of New England. Many of the
+cars are moderately priced affairs, the tonneau well filled with
+children of miscellaneous ages, and enlivened by a family dog or
+two--for this is the way that the average American household spends its
+modern Sabbath holiday. Now and then a limousine, exquisite in
+workmanship within and without, driven by a chauffeur in livery and
+tenanted by a single languid occupant, rolls noiselessly past. A
+strange procession, indeed, for a road originally marked by the
+moccasined feet of Indians, and widened gradually by the toilsome
+journeyings of rough Colonial carts and coaches.
+
+It is difficult to say which feature of the steadily moving travel would
+most forcibly strike the original Puritan settlers of the town: the fact
+that even the common man--the poor man--could own such a vehicle of
+speed and ease, or the fact that America--such a short time ago a
+wilderness--could produce, not as the finest flower on its tree of
+evolution, but certainly as its most exotic, the plutocrat who lives in
+a palace with fifty servants to do his bidding, and the fine lady whose
+sole exercise of her mental and physical functions consists in allowing
+her maid to dress her. Yes, New England has changed amazingly in the
+revolutions of three centuries, and here, under the shadow of this
+square plain building--Hingham's Old Ship Church--while we pause to
+watch the Sunday pageant of 1920, we can most easily call back the
+Sabbath rites, and the ideals which created those rites, three centuries
+ago.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+It is the year of 1681. This wooden meeting-house, with the truncated
+pyramidal roof and belfry (to serve as a lookout station), has just been
+built. A stage ahead, architecturally, of the log meeting-house with
+clay-filled chinks, thatched roof, oiled-paper windows, earthen floor,
+and a stage behind the charming steeple style made popular by Sir
+Christopher Wren, and now multiplied in countless graceful examples all
+over New England, the Old Ship is entirely unconscious of the
+distinction which is awaiting it--the distinction of being the oldest
+house for public worship in the United States which still stands on its
+original site, and which is still used for its original purpose. In the
+year 1681 it is merely the new meeting-house of the little hamlet of
+Hingham. The people are very proud of their new building. The timbers
+have been hewn with the broad-axe out of solid white pine (the marks are
+still visible, particularly in those rafters of the roof open to the
+attic). The belfry is precisely in the center of the four-sided pitched
+roof. To be sure this necessitates ringing the bell from one of the
+pews, but a little later the bellringer will stand above, and through a
+pane of glass let into the ceiling he will be able to see when the
+minister enters the pulpit. The original backless benches were replaced
+by box pews with narrow seats like shelves, hung on hinges around three
+sides, but part of the original pulpit remains and a few of the box
+pews. In 1681 the interior, like the exterior, is sternly bare. No
+paint, no decorations, no colored windows, no organ, or anything which
+could even remotely suggest the color, the beauty, the formalism of the
+churches of England. The unceiled roof shows the rafters whose arched
+timbers remind one that ships' carpenters have built this house of God.
+
+This, then, is the meeting-house of 1681. What of the services conducted
+there?
+
+In the first place, they are well attended. And why not, since in 1635
+the General Court decreed that no dwelling should be placed more than
+half a mile away from the meeting-house of any new "plantation"--thus
+eliminating the excuse of too great distance? Every one is expected,
+nay, commanded, to come to church. In fact, after the tolling of the
+last bell, the houses may all be searched--each ten families is under an
+inspector--if there is any question of delinquents hiding in them. And
+so in twos and threes, often the man trudging ahead with his gun and the
+woman carrying her baby while the smaller children cling to her skirts,
+sometimes man and woman and a child or two on horseback, no matter how
+wild the storm, how swollen the streams, how deep the whirling
+snow--they all come to church: old folk and infants as well as adults
+and children. The congregation either waits for the minister and his
+wife outside the door, or stands until he has entered the pulpit. Once
+inside they are seated with the most meticulous exactness, according to
+rank, age, sex, and wealth. The small boys are separated from their
+families and kept in order by tithing-men who allow no wandering eyes or
+whispered words. The deacons are in the "fore" seats; the elderly
+people are sometimes given chairs at the end of the "pues"; and the
+slaves and Indians are in the rear. To seat one's self in the wrong
+"pue" is an offense punishable by a fine.
+
+"Here is the church, and here are the people," as the old rhyme has it.
+What then of the services? That they are interminable we know. The
+tithing-man or clerk may turn the brass-bound hourglass by the side of
+the pulpit two and three times during the sermon, and once or twice
+during the prayer. Interminable, and, also, to the modern Sunday
+observer, unendurable. How many of us of this softer age can contemplate
+without a shiver the vision of people sitting hour after hour in an
+absolutely unheated building? (The Old Ship was not heated until 1822.)
+The only relief from the chill and stiffness comes during the prayer
+when the congregation stands: kneeling, of course, would savor too
+strongly of idolatry and the Church of Rome. They stand, too, while the
+psalms and hymns are lined out, and as they sing them, very uncertainly
+and very incorrectly. This performance alone sometimes takes an hour, as
+there is no organ, nor notes, and only a few copies of the Bay Psalm
+Book, of which, by the way, a copy now would be worth many times its
+weight in gold.
+
+After the morning service there is a noon intermission, in which the
+half-frozen congregation stirs around, eats cold luncheons brought in
+baskets, and then returns to the next session. One must not for an
+instant, however, consider these noon hours as recreational. There is no
+idle talk or play. The sermon is discussed and the children forbidden to
+romp or laugh. One sometimes wonders how the little things had any
+impulse to laugh in such an abysmal atmosphere, but apparently the
+Puritan boys and girls were entirely normal and even wholesomely
+mischievous--as proved by the constantly required services of the
+tithing-man.
+
+These external trappings of the service sound depressing enough, but if
+the message received within these chilly walls is cheering, maybe we
+can forget or ignore the physical discomforts. But is the message
+cheering? Hell, damnation, eternal tortures, painful theological
+hair-splittings, harrowing self-examinations, and humiliating public
+confessions--this is what they gather on the narrow wooden benches to
+listen to hour after hour, searching their souls for sin with an almost
+frenzied eagerness. And yet, forlorn and tedious as the bleak service
+appears to us, there is no doubt that these stern-faced men and women
+wrenched an almost mystical inspiration from it; that a weird
+fascination emanated from this morbid dwelling on sin and punishment,
+appealing to the emotions quite as vividly--although through a different
+channel--as the most elaborate ceremonial. When the soul is wrought to a
+certain pitch each hardship is merely an added opportunity to prove its
+faith. It was this high pitch, attained and sustained by our Puritan
+fathers, which produced a dramatic and sometimes terrible blend of
+personality.
+
+It has become the modern fashion somewhat to belittle Puritanism. It is
+easy to emphasize its absurdities, to ridicule the almost fanatical
+fervor which goaded men to harshness and inconsistency. The fact remains
+that a tremendous selective force was needed to tear the Puritans away
+from the mother church and the mother country and fortify them in their
+struggle in a new land. It was religious zeal which furnished this
+motive power. Different implements and differently directed force are
+needed to extract the diamond from the earth, from the implements and
+force needed to polish and cut the same diamond. So different phases of
+religious development are called forth by progressive phases of
+development. It has been said about the New England conscience: "It
+fostered a condition of life and type of character doubtless never again
+possible in the world's history. Having done its work, having founded
+soundly and peopled strongly an exceptional region, the New England
+conscience had no further necessity for being. Those whom it now
+tortures with its hot pincers of doubt and self-reproach are sacrificed
+to a cause long since won."
+
+The Puritans themselves grew away from many of their excessive
+severities. But as they gained bodily strength from their conflict with
+the elements, so they gained a certain moral stamina by their
+self-imposed religious observance. And this moral stamina has marked New
+England ever since, and marked her to her glory.
+
+One cannot speak of Hingham churches--indeed, one cannot speak of
+Hingham--without admiring mention of the New North Church. This
+building, of exquisite proportions and finish, within and without, built
+by Bulfinch in 1806, is one of the most flawless examples of its type on
+the South Shore. You will appreciate the cream-colored paint, the buff
+walls, the quaint box pews of oiled wood, with handrails gleaming from
+the touch of many generations, with wooden buttons and protruding hinges
+proclaiming an ancient fashion; but the unique feature of the New North
+Church is its slave galleries. These two small galleries, between the
+roof and the choir loft, held for thirty years, in diminishing numbers,
+negroes and Indians. The last occupant was a black Lucretia, who, after
+being freed, was invited to sit downstairs with her master and mistress,
+which she did, and which she continued to do until her death, not so
+very long ago.
+
+Hingham, its Main Street--alas for the original name of "Bachelors
+Rowe"--arched by a double row of superb elms on either side, is
+incalculably rich in old houses, old traditions, old families. Even
+motoring through, too quickly as motorists must, one cannot help being
+struck by the substantial dignity of the place, by the well-kept
+prosperity of the houses, large and small, which fringe the fine old
+highway. Ever since the days when the three Misses Barker kept loyal to
+George IV, claiming the King as their liege lord fifty years after the
+Declaration of Independence, the town has preserved a Cranford-like
+charm. And why not, when the very house is still handsomely preserved,
+where the nameless nobleman, Francis Le Baron, was concealed between the
+floors, and, as we are told in Mrs. Austen's novel, very properly
+capped the climax by marrying his brave little protector, Molly Wilder?
+Why not, when the Lincoln family, ancestors of Abraham, has been
+identified with the town since its settlement? The house of
+Major-General Benjamin Lincoln, who received the sword of Cornwallis at
+Yorktown, is still occupied by his descendants, its neat fence, many
+windows, two chimneys, and its two stories and a half proclaiming it a
+dwelling of repute. Near by, descendants of Samuel Lincoln, the ancestor
+of Abraham, occupy part of another roomy ancient homestead. The
+Wampatuck Club, named after the Indian chief who granted the original
+deeds of the town, has found quarters in an extremely interesting house
+dating from 1680. In the spacious living-room are seventeen panels, on
+the walls and in the doors, painted with charming old-fashioned skill by
+John Hazlitt, the brother of the English essayist. The Reverend Daniel
+Shute house, built in 1746, is practically intact with its paneled rooms
+and wall-paper a hundred years old. Hingham's famous elms shade the
+house where Parson Ebenezer Gay lived out his long pastorate of
+sixty-nine years and nine months, and the Garrison house, built before
+1640, sheltered, in its prime, nine generations of the same family. The
+Rainbow Roof house, so called from the delicious curve in its roof, is
+one of Hingham's prettiest two-hundred-year-old cottages, and Miss Susan
+B. Willard's cottage is one of the oldest in the United States. Derby
+Academy, founded almost two centuries and a half ago by Madam Derby,
+still maintains its social and scholarly prestige through all the
+educational turmoil of the twentieth century. One likes to associate
+Hingham with Massachusetts's stanch and sturdy "war governor," for it
+was here that John Albion Andrew, who proved himself so truly one of our
+great men during the Civil War, courted Eliza Jones Hersey, and here
+that the happy years of their early married life were spent. Later,
+another governor, John D. Long, was for many years a mighty figure in
+the town.
+
+With its ancient churches and institutions, its pensive graveyards and
+lovely elms, its ancestral houses and hidden gardens, Hingham typifies
+what is quaintest and best in New England towns. Possibly the dappling
+of the elms, possibly the shadow of the Old Ship Church, is a bit deeper
+here than in the other South Shore towns. However it may seem to its
+inhabitants, to the stranger everything in Hingham is tinctured by the
+remembrance of the stern old ecclesiasticism. Even the number of
+historic forts seems a proper part of those righteous days, for when did
+religion and warfare not go hand in hand? During the trouble with King
+Philip the town had three forts, one at Fort Hill, one at the Cemetery,
+and one "on the plain about a mile from the harbor"; and the sites may
+still be identified.
+
+Not that Hingham history is exclusively religious or martial. Her little
+harbor once held seventy sail of fishing vessels, and between 1815 and
+1826, 165,000 barrels of mackerel were landed on their salty decks. For
+fifty years (between 1811 and 1860) the Rapid sailed as a packet between
+this town and Boston, making the trip on one memorable occasion in
+sixty-seven minutes. We read that in the War of 1812 she was carried up
+the Weymouth River and covered, masts and hull, with green bushes so
+that the marauding British cruisers might not find her, and as we read
+we find ourselves remembering that _camouflage_ is new only in name.
+
+How entirely fitting it seems that a town of such venerable houses and
+venerable legends should be presided over by a church which is the
+oldest of its kind in the country!
+
+Hingham changes. There is a Roman Catholic Church in the very heart of
+that one-time Puritan stronghold: the New North is Unitarian, and
+Episcopalians, Baptists, and Second Adventists have settled down
+comfortably where once they would have been run out of town. Poor old
+Puritans, how grieved and scandalized they would be to stand, as we are
+standing now, and watch the procession of passing automobilists! Would
+it seem all lost to them, we wonder, the religious ideal for which they
+struggled, or would they realize that their sowing had brought forth
+richer fruit than they could guess? It has all changed, since Puritan
+days, and yet, perhaps, in no other place in New England does the hand
+of the past lie so visibly upon the community. You cannot lift your eyes
+but they rest upon some building raised two centuries and more ago; the
+shade which ripples under your feet is cast by elms planted by that very
+hand of the past. Even your voice repeats the words which those old
+patriarchs, well versed in Biblical lore, chose for their neighborhood
+names. Accord Pond and Glad Tidings Plain might have been lifted from
+some Pilgrim's Progress, while the near-by Sea of Galilee and Jerusalem
+Road are from the Good Book itself.
+
+"Which way to Egypt?" Is this an echo from that time when the Bible was
+the corner-stone of Church and State, of home and school?
+
+"What's the best road to Jericho Beach?" Surely it is some grave-faced
+shade who calls: or is it a peal from the chimes in the Memorial Bell
+Tower--chimes reminiscent of old Hingham, in England? No, it is only the
+shouted question of the motorist, gay and prosperous, flying on his
+Sunday holiday through ancient Hingham town.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+COHASSET LEDGES AND MARSHES[1]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+A sickle-shaped shore--wild, superb! Tawny ledges tumbling out to sea,
+rearing massive heads to search, across three thousand miles of water,
+for another shore. For it is Spain and Portugal which lie directly
+yonder, and the same tumultuous sea that crashes and swirls against
+Cohasset's crags laps also on those sunnier, warmer sands.
+
+Back inland, from the bold brown coast which gives Cohasset her
+Riviera-like fame, lie marshes, liquefying into mirrors at high tide,
+melting into lush green at low tide.
+
+Between the ledges and the marshes winds Jerusalem Road, bearing a
+continual stream of sight-seers and fringed with estates hidden from the
+sight-seers; estates with terraces dashed by spindrift, with curving
+stairways hewn in sheer rock down to the water, with wind-twisted
+savins, and flowers whose bright bloom is heightened by the tang of
+salt. For too many a passing traveler Cohasset is known only as the most
+fashionable resort on the South Shore. But Cohasset's story is a longer
+one than that, and far more profound.
+
+Cohasset is founded upon a rock, and the making of that rock is so
+honestly and minutely recorded by nature that even those who take alarm
+at the word "geology" may read this record with ease. These rocky ledges
+that stare so proudly across the sea underlie, also, every inch of soil,
+and are of the same kind everywhere--granite. Granite is a rock which is
+formed under immense pressure and in the presence of confined moisture,
+needing a weight of fifteen thousand pounds upon every inch. Therefore,
+wherever granite is found we know that it has not been formed by
+deposit, like limestone and sandstone and slate and other sedimentary
+rocks, but at a prodigious depth under the solid ground, and by slow
+crystallizing of molten substances. There must have been from two to
+five miles of other rock lying upon the stuff that crystallized into
+granite. A wrinkling in the skin of the earth exposed the granite, a
+wrinkling so gradual that doubtless if generations of men had lived on
+top of the wrinkle they would have sworn it did not move. But move it
+did, and the superimposed rock must have been worn off at a rate of less
+than a hundredth part of an inch every year in order to lose two or
+three miles of it in twenty-five million years. As the granite was
+wrinkled up by the movement of the earth's crust, certain cracks opened
+and filled with lava, forming dikes. The geologist to-day can glance at
+these dikes and tell the period of their formation as casually as a
+jockey looking at a horse's mouth can tell his age. He could also tell
+of the "faulting," or slipping down, of adjacent masses of solid rock,
+which has occurred often enough to carve the characteristic Cohasset
+coast.
+
+The making of the rock bottom is a story which extends over millions of
+years: the making of the soil extends over thousands. The gigantic
+glacier which once formed all over the northern part of North America,
+and which remained upon it most of the time until about seven thousand
+years ago, ground up the rock like a huge mill and heaped its grist into
+hills and plains and meadows. The marks of it are as easy to see as
+finger prints in putty. There are scratches on the underlying rock in
+every part of the town, pointing in the southerly direction in which the
+glacier moved. The gravel and clay belts of the town have all been
+stretched out in the same direction as the scratches, and many are the
+boulders which were combed out of the moving glacier by the peaks of the
+ledges, and are now poised, like the famous Tipping Rock, just where the
+glacier left them when it melted. Few towns in America possess greater
+geological interest or a wider variety of glacial phenomena than
+Cohasset--all of which may be studied more fully with the aid of E.
+Victor Bigelow's "Narrative History of the Town of Cohasset,
+Massachusetts," and William O. Crosby's "Geology of the Boston Basin."
+
+This, then, is briefly the first part of Cohasset's ledges. The second
+part deals with human events, including many shipwrecks and disasters,
+and more than one romantic episode. Perhaps this human section is best
+begun with Captain John Smith.
+
+Captain John Smith was born too early. If ever a hero was brought into
+the world to adorn the moving-picture screen, that hero of the "iron
+collar," of piratical capture, of wedlock with an Indian princess, was
+the man. Failing of this high calling he did some serviceable work in
+discovering and describing many of the inlets on the coast of New
+England. Among these inlets Cohasset acted her part as hostess to the
+famous navigator and staged a small and vivid encounter with the
+aborigines. The date of this presentation was in 1614; the scenario may
+be found in Smith's own diary. Smith and a party of eight or more
+sailors made the trip between the ledges in a small rowboat. It is
+believed that they landed somewhere near Hominy Point. Their landing was
+not carried out without some misadventure, however, for in some way this
+party of explorers angered the Indians with whom they came in contact,
+and the result was an attack from bow and arrow. The town of Cohasset,
+in commemorating this encounter by a tablet, has inscribed upon the
+tablet Smith's own words:
+
+"We found the people on those parts very kind, but in their fury no less
+valiant: and at Quonhaset falling out there with but one of them, he
+with three others crossed the harbour in a cannow to certain rocks
+whereby we must pass, and there let flie their arrowes for our shot,
+till we were out of danger, yet one of them was slaine, and the other
+shot through the thigh."
+
+History follows fast along the ledges: history of gallant deeds and
+gallant defense during the days of the Revolution and the War of 1812;
+deeds of disaster along the coast and one especial deed of great
+engineering skill.
+
+The beauty and the tragedy of Cohasset are caught in large measure upon
+these jagged rocks. The splinters and wrecks of two and a half centuries
+have strewn the beaches, and many a corpse, far from its native land,
+has been found, wrapped in a shroud of seaweed upon the sand, and has
+been lowered by alien hands into a forever unmarked grave. Quite
+naturally the business of "wrecking"--that is, saving the pieces--came
+to be the trade of a number of Cohasset citizens, and so expert did
+Cohasset divers and seamen become that they were in demand all over the
+world. One of the most interesting salvage enterprises concerned a
+Spanish frigate, sunk off the coast of Venezuela. Many thousand dollars
+in silver coin were covered by fifty feet of water, and it was Captain
+Tower, of Cohasset, with a crew of Cohasset divers and seamen, who set
+sail for the spot in a schooner bearing the substantial name of Eliza
+Ann. The Spanish Government, having no faith in the enterprise, agreed
+to claim only two and one half per cent of what was removed. The first
+year the wreckers got fourteen thousand dollars, and the second they had
+reached seven thousand, when the Spaniards became so jealous of their
+skill that they had to flee for their lives (taking the seven thousand,
+however). The clumsy diving-bell method was the only one known at that
+time, but when, twenty years later, the Spaniards had to swallow their
+chagrin and send again for the same wrecking party to assist them on the
+same task, modern diving suits were in use and more money was
+recovered--no mean triumph for the crew of the Eliza Ann!
+
+As the wrecks along the Cohasset coast were principally caused by the
+dangerous reefs spreading in either direction from what is known as
+Minot's Ledge, the necessity of a lighthouse on that spot was early
+evident, and the erecting of the present Minot's Light is one of the
+most romantic engineering enterprises of our coast history. The original
+structure was snapped off like a pikestaff in the great storm of 1851,
+and the present one of Quincy granite is the first of its kind in
+America to be built on a ledge awash at high tide and with no adjacent
+dry land. The tremendous difficulties were finally overcome, although in
+the year 1855 the work could be pursued for only a hundred and thirty
+hours, and the following year for only a hundred and fifty-seven. To
+read of the erection of this remarkable lighthouse reminds one of the
+building of Solomon's temple. The stone was selected with the utmost
+care, and the Quincy cutters declared that such chiseling had never
+before left the hand of man. Then every single block for the lower
+portion was meticulously cut, dovetailed, and set in position on
+Government Island in Cohasset Harbor. The old base, exquisitely laid,
+where they were thus set up is still visible, as smooth as a billiard
+table, although grass-covered. In addition to the flawless cutting and
+joining of the blocks, the ledge itself was cut into a succession of
+levels suitable to bear a stone foundation--work which was possible only
+at certain times of the tide and seasons of the year. The cutting of
+each stone so that it exactly fitted its neighbor, above, below, and at
+either side, and precisely conformed to the next inner row upon the same
+level, was nothing short of a marvel. A miniature of the light--the
+building of which took two winters, and which was on the scale of an
+inch to a foot--was in the United States Government Building at the
+Chicago Exposition, and is stone for stone a counterpart of the granite
+tower in the Atlantic. Although this is an achievement which belongs in
+a sense to the whole United States, yet it must always seem, to those
+who followed it most closely, as belonging peculiarly to Cohasset. A
+famous Cohasset rigger made the model for the derrick which was used to
+raise the stones; the massive granite blocks were teamed by one whose
+proud boast it was that he had never had occasion to shift a stone
+twice; a Cohasset man captained the first vessel to carry the stone to
+the ledge, and another assisted in the selection of the stone.
+
+It is difficult to turn one's eyes away from the spectacular beauty of
+the Cohasset shore, but magnificent as these ledges are, and glittering
+with infinite romance, yet, rather curiously, it is on the limpid
+surface of the marshes that we read the most significant episodes of
+Colonial and pioneer life.
+
+One of the needs which the early settlers were quick to feel was open
+land which would serve as pasturage for their cattle. With forests
+pressing down upon them from the rear, and a barrier of granite in front
+of them, the problem of grazing-lands was important. The Hingham
+settlement at Bare Cove (Cohasset was part of Hingham originally) found
+the solution in the acres of open marshland which stretched to the east.
+Cohasset to-day may ask where so much grazing-land lay within her
+borders. By comparison with the old maps and surveying figures, we find
+that many acres, now covered with the water of Little Harbor and lying
+within the sandbar at Pleasant Beach, are counted as old grazing-lands.
+These, with the sweep of what is now the "Glades," furnished abundant
+pasturage for neighboring cattle and brought the Hingham settlers
+quickly to Cohasset meadows. Thus it happens that the first history of
+Cohasset is the history of this common pasturage--"Commons," as it was
+known in the old histories. Although Hingham was early divided up among
+the pioneers, the marshes were kept undivided for the use of the whole
+settlement. As a record of 1650 puts it: "It was ordered that any
+townsman shall have the liberty to put swine to Conohasset without yokes
+or rings, upon the town's common land."
+
+But the Massachusetts Bay Colony was hard-headed as well as pious, and
+several naïve hints creep into the early records of sharers of the
+Commons who were shrewdly eyeing the salt land of Cohasset. A real
+estate transfer of 1640 has this potential flavor: "Half the lot at
+Conehasset, if any fall by lot, and half the commons which belong to
+said lot." And again, four years later, Henry Tuttle sold to John
+Fearing "what right he had to the Division of Conihassett Meadows." The
+first land to come under the measuring chain and wooden stake of
+surveyors was about the margin of Little Harbor about the middle of the
+seventeenth century. After that the rest of the township was not long in
+being parceled out. One of the curious methods of land division was in
+the Beechwood district. The apportionment seems to have had the
+characteristics of ribbon cake. Sections of differing desirability--to
+meet the demands of justice and natural conditions--were measured out in
+long strips, a mile long and twenty-five feet wide. Many an old stone
+wall marking this early grant is still to be seen in the woods. Could
+anything but the indomitable spirit of those English settlers and the
+strong feeling for land ownership have built walls of carted stone about
+enclosures a mile long and twenty-five feet wide?
+
+Having effected a division of land in Cohasset, families soon began to
+settle away from the mother town of Hingham, and after a prolonged
+period of government at arm's length, with all its attendant
+discomforts, the long, bitter struggle resolved itself into Cohasset's
+final separation from Hingham, and its development from a precinct into
+an independent township.
+
+While the marshes to the north were the cause of Cohasset being first
+visited, settled, and made into a township, yet the marshes to the south
+hold an even more vital historical interest. These southern marshes,
+bordering Bound Brook and stretching away to Bassing Beach, were visited
+by haymakers as were those to the north. But these haymakers did not
+come from the same township, nor were they under the same local
+government. The obscure little stream which to-day lies between Scituate
+Harbor and Cohasset marks the line of two conflicting grants--the
+Plymouth Colony and the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
+
+In the early days of New England royal grants from the throne or patents
+from colonial councils in London were deemed necessary before settling
+in the wilderness. The strong, inherited respect for landed estates must
+have given such charters their value, as it is hard for us to see now
+how any one in England could have prevented the pioneers from settling
+where they pleased. The various patents and grants of the two colonies
+(indefinite as they seem to us now, as some granted "up to" a hundred
+acres to each emigrant without defining any boundaries) brought the two
+colonies face to face at Bound Brook. The result was a dispute over the
+harvesting of salt hay.
+
+All boundary streams attract to themselves a certain amount of fame--the
+Rio Grande, the Saint Lawrence, and the Rhine. But surely the little
+stream of Bound Brook, which was finally taken as the line of division
+between two colonies of such historical importance as the Plymouth and
+the Massachusetts Bay, is worth more than a superficial attention. The
+dispute lasted many years and occasioned the appointing of numerous
+commissioners from both sides. That the salt grass of Bassing Beach
+should have assumed such importance reveals again the sensitiveness to
+land values of men who had so recently left England. The settling of the
+dispute was not referred back to England, but was settled by the
+colonists themselves.
+
+The author of the "Narrative History of Cohasset" calls this an event of
+only less historical importance than that of the pact drawn up in the
+cabin of the Mayflower. He declares that the confederation of states had
+its inception there, and adds: "The appointment for this joint
+commission for the settlement of this intercolonial difficulty was the
+first step of federation that culminated in the Colonial Congress and
+then blossomed into the United States." We to-day, to whom the salt
+grass of Cohasset is little more than a fringe about the two harbors,
+may find it difficult to agree fully with such a sweeping statement, but
+certainly this spot and boundary line should always be associated with
+the respect for property which has ennobled the Anglo-Saxon race.
+
+Between the marshes, which were of such high importance in those early
+days, and the ledges which have been the cause and the scene of so many
+Cohasset adventures, twists Jerusalem Road, the brilliant beauty of
+which has been so often--but never too often--remarked. This was the
+main road from Hingham for many years, and it took full three hours of
+barbarous jolting in two-wheeled, springless ox carts to make the trip.
+Even if a man had a horse the journey was cruelly tedious, for there
+were only a few stretches where the horse could go faster than a
+walk--and the way was pock-marked with boulders and mudholes. With no
+stage-coach before 1815, and being off the highway between Plymouth and
+Boston, it is small wonder that the early Cohasset folk either walked or
+went by sea to Hingham and thence to Boston.
+
+It has been suggested that the "keeper of young cattle at Coneyhassett,"
+who drove his herd over from Hingham, was moved either by piety or
+sarcasm to give the trail its present arresting name. However, as the
+herdsman did not take this route, but the back road through Turkey
+Meadows, it is more probable that some visitors, who detected a
+resemblance between this section of the country and the Holy Land, were
+responsible for the christening of this road and also of the Sea of
+Galilee--which last has almost dropped into disuse. There does not seem
+to be any particular suggestion of the land of the Pharaohs and
+present-day Egypt, but tradition explains that as follows: Old Squire
+Perce had accumulated a store of grain in case of drought, and when the
+drought came and the men hurried to him to buy corn, he greeted them
+with "Well, boys, so you've come down to Egypt to buy corn." Another
+proof, if one were needed, of the Biblical familiarity of those days.
+
+It is hard to stop writing about Cohasset. There are so many bits of
+history tucked into every ledge and cranny of her shore. The green in
+front of the old white meeting-house--one of the prettiest and most
+perfect meeting-houses on the South Shore--has been pressed by the feet
+of men assembling for six wars. It makes Cohasset seem venerable,
+indeed, when one thinks of the march of American history. But to the
+tawny ledges, tumbling out to sea, these three hundred years are as but
+a day; for the story of the stones, like the story of the stars, is
+measured in terms of milliards. To such immemorial keepers of the coast
+the life of man is a brief tale that is soon told, and fades as swiftly
+as the fading leaf.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] For much of this chapter I am indebted to my friend Alice C. Hyde.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE SCITUATE SHORE
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Scituate is different: different from Cohasset, with its superbly bold
+coast and its fashionable folk; different from Hingham, with its air of
+settled inland dignity. Scituate has a quaintness, a casualness, the
+indescribable air of a land's-end spot. The fine houses in Scituate are
+refreshingly free from pretension; the winds that have twisted the trees
+into Rackham-like grotesques have blown away falsity and formality.
+
+Scituate life has always been along the shore. It is from the shore that
+coot-shooting used to furnish a livelihood to many a Scituate man, and
+still lures the huntsmen in the fine fall weather. It is the peculiar
+formation of the shore which has developed a small, clinker-built boat,
+and made the town famous for day fishing. It is along the shore that the
+unique and picturesque mossing industry is still carried on, and along
+the shore that the well-known colony of literary folk have settled.
+
+Scituate's history is really a fishing history, for as early as 1633 a
+fishing station was established here, and in course of time the North
+River, winding twenty miles through green meadows to the sea, was once
+the scene of more shipbuilding than any other river in New England.
+
+There is nothing more indicative of the Yankees' shrewd practicality
+than the early settlers' instant appreciation of the financial and
+economic potentialities of the fishing-trade. The Spaniard sought for
+gold in the new country, or contented himself with the fluctuating fur
+trade with its demoralizing slack seasons. But the New Englander
+promptly applied himself to the mundane pursuit of cod and mackerel.
+Everybody fished. As John Smith, in his "Description of New England,"
+says: "Young boyes and girles, salvages or any other, be they never such
+idlers, may turne, carry, and returne fish without shame or either great
+pain: he is very idle that is past twelve years of age and cannot doe so
+much: and shee is very old that cannot spin a thread to catch them."
+
+It began when Squanto the Indian showed the amazed colonists how he
+could tread the eels out of the mud with his feet and catch them with
+his hands. This was convenient, to be sure, but the colonists did not
+long content themselves with such primitive methods. They sent to
+England for cod hooks and lines; mackerel hooks and lines; herring nets
+and seines; shark hooks, bass nets, squid lines, and eel pots; and in a
+short time they had established a trade which meant more money than the
+gold mines of Guiana or Potosi. The modern financier who makes a fortune
+from the invention of a collar button or the sale of countless penny
+packages of gum is the lineal descendant of that first thrifty New
+Englander who did not scorn the humble cod because it was cheap and
+plentiful (you remember how these same cod "pestered" the ships of
+Gosnold in 1602), but set to work with the quiet initiative which has
+distinguished New Englanders ever since, first to catch, then to barter,
+and finally to sell his wares to all the world. For cheap as all fish
+was--twopence for a twelve-pound cod, salmon less than a penny a pound,
+and shad, when it was finally considered fit to eat at all, at two fish
+for a penny--yet, when all the world is ready to buy and the supply is
+inexhaustible, tremendous profits are possible. The many fast days of
+the Roman Catholic Church abroad opened an immense demand, and in a
+short time quantities of various kinds of fish (Josselyn in 1672
+enumerates over two hundred caught in New England waters) were dried and
+salted and sent to England.
+
+This constant and steadily increasing trade radically affected the whole
+economic structure and history of New England for two centuries. Ships
+and all the shipyard industries; the farm, on which fish was used not
+only as a medium of exchange, but also as a valuable fertilizer; the
+home, where the many operations of curing and salting were carried
+on--all of those were developed directly by the growth of this
+particular trade. Laws were made and continually revised regarding the
+fisheries and safeguarding their rights in every conceivable fashion;
+ship carpenters were exempt from military service, and many special
+exemptions were extended to fishermen under the general statutes.
+
+The oyster is now a dish for the epicure and the lobster for the
+millionaire. But in the old days when oysters a foot long were not
+uncommon, and lobsters sometimes grew to six feet, every one had all he
+wanted, and sometimes more than he wanted, of these delicacies. The
+stranger in New England may notice how certain customs still prevail,
+such as the Friday night fish dinner and the Sunday morning fish-cakes;
+and also that New Englanders as a whole have a rather fastidious taste
+in regard to the preparation of both salt- and fresh-water products.
+The food of any region is characteristic of that region, and to travel
+along the Old Coast Road and not partake of one of the delicious fish
+dinners, is as absurd as it would be to omit rice from a menu in China
+or roast beef from an English dinner.
+
+While the fishing trade was highly important in all the South Shore
+towns, yet it was especially so in Scituate. In 1770 more than thirty
+vessels, principally for mackerel, were fitted out in this one village,
+and these vessels not infrequently took a thousand barrels in a season.
+In winter they were used for Southern coasting, carrying lumber and fish
+and returning with grain and flour. The reason why fishing was so
+persistently and exclusively followed in this particular spot is not
+hard to seek. The sea yielded a far more profitable and ready crop than
+the land, and, besides, had a jealous way of nibbling away at the land
+wherever it could. It is estimated that it wastes away from twelve to
+fourteen inches of Fourth Cliff every year.
+
+But in spite of the sea's readily accessible crop it was natural that
+the "men of Kent" who settled the town should demand some portion of dry
+land as well. These men of Kent were not mermen, able to live in and on
+the water indefinitely, but decidedly gallant fellows, rather more
+courtly than their neighbors, and more polished than the race which
+succeeded them. Gilson, Vassal, Hatherly, Cudworth, Tilden, Hoar,
+Foster, Stedman, and Hinckley had all been accustomed to the elegancies
+of life in England as their names testify. The first land they used was
+on the cliffs, for it had already been improved by Indian planting; then
+the salt marshes, covered with a natural crop of grass, and then the
+mellow intervales near the river. When the sea was forced to the
+regretful realization that she could not monopolize the entire attention
+of her fellows, she was persuaded to yield up some very excellent
+fertilizer in the way of seaweed. But she still nags away at the cliffs
+and shore, and proclaims with every flaunting wave and ripple that it is
+the water, not the land, which makes Scituate what it is.
+
+And, after all, the sea is right. It is along the shore that one sees
+Scituate most truly. Here the characteristic industry of mossing is
+still carried on in primitive fashion. The mossers work from dories,
+gathering with long-handled rakes the seaweed from the rocks and ledges
+along the shore. They bring it in, a heavy, dark, inert mass, all sleek
+and dripping, and spread it out to dry in the sun. As it lies there,
+neatly arranged on beds of smoothest pebbles, the sun bleaches it. One
+can easily differentiate the different days' haul, for the moss which is
+just spread out is almost black and that of yesterday is a dark purple.
+It shimmers from purple into lavender; the lavender into something like
+rose; and by the time of the final washing and bleaching it lies in fine
+light white crinkles, almost like wool. It is a pretty sight, and the
+neatness and dispatch of the mossers make the odd sea-flower gardens
+attractive patches on the beach. Sometimes a family working together
+will make as much as a thousand dollars in a season gathering and
+preparing the moss. One wonders if all the people in the world could
+eat enough blancmange to consume this salty product, and is relieved to
+be reminded that the moss is also used for brewing and dyeing.
+
+It is really a pity to see Scituate only from a motor. There is real
+atmosphere to the place, which is worth breathing, but it takes more
+time to breathe in an atmosphere than merely to "take the air." Should
+you decide to ramble about the ancient town you will surely find your
+way to Scituate Point. The old stone lighthouse, over a century old, is
+no longer used, and the oil lantern, hung nightly out at the end of the
+romantic promontory, seems a return to days of long ago. You will also
+see the place where, in the stirring Revolutionary days, little Abigail
+and Rebecca Bates, with fife and drum marched up and down, close to the
+shore and yet hidden from sight, playing so furiously that their
+"martial music and other noises" scared away the enemy and saved the
+town from invasion. You will go to Second Cliff where are the summer
+homes of many literary people, and you will pass through Egypt,
+catching what glimpse you can of the stables and offices, paddocks and
+cottages of the immense estate of Dreamwold. And of course you will have
+pointed out to you the birthplace of Samuel Woodworth, whose sole claim
+to remembrance is his poem of the "Old Oaken Bucket." The well-sweep is
+still where he saw it, when, as editor of the _New York Mirror_, it
+suddenly flashed before his reminiscent vision, but the old oaken bucket
+itself has been removed to a museum.
+
+After you have done all these things, you will, if you are wise, forsake
+Scituate Harbor, which is the old section, and Scituate Beach, which is
+the newer, summer section, and find the way to the burial ground, which,
+after the one in Plymouth, is the oldest in the State. Possibly there
+will be others at the burial ground, for ancestor worshipers are not
+confined to China, and every year there springs up a new crop of
+genealogists to kneel before the moss-grown headstones and, with truly
+admirable patience, decipher names and dates, half obliterated by the
+finger of time. One does not wonder that their descendants are so eager
+to trace their connection back to those men of Kent, whose sturdy title
+rings so bravely down the centuries. To be sure, what is left to trace
+is very slight in most cases, and quite without any savor of
+personality. Too often it is merely brief and dry recital of dates and
+number of progeny, and names of the same. Few have left anything so
+quaint as the words of Walter Briggs, who settled there in 1651 and from
+whom Briggs Harbor was named. His will contains this thoughtful
+provision: "For my wife Francis, one third of my estate during her life,
+also a gentle horse or mare, and Jemmy the negur shall catch it for
+her."
+
+The good people who came later (1634) from Plymouth and Boston and took
+up their difficult colonial life under the pastorate of Mr. Lathrop,
+seem to have done their best to make "Satuit" (as it was first called,
+from the Indians, meaning "cold brook") conform as nearly as possible to
+the other pioneer settlements, even to the point of discovering witches
+here. But religion and fasting were not able to accomplish what the
+ubiquitous summer influx has, happily, also failed to effect. Scituate
+remains different.
+
+Perhaps it was those men of Kent who gave it its indestructibly romantic
+bias; perhaps it is the jealousy of the ever-encroaching sea. The gray
+geese flying over the iridescent moss gleaming upon the pebbled beaches,
+the solitary lantern on the point are all parts of that differentness.
+And those who love her best are glad that it is so.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+MARSHFIELD, THE HOME OF DANIEL WEBSTER
+
+[Illustration]
+
+    Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free!
+    Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!
+    Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,
+    Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won
+    God out of knowledge, and good out of infinite pain,
+    And sight out of blindness, and purity out of a stain.
+
+
+It was these mighty marshes--this ample sweep of grass, of sea and
+sky--this vast earthly and heavenly spaciousness that must forever stand
+to all New Englanders as a background to the powerful personality who
+chose it as his own home. Daniel Webster, when his eyes first turned to
+this infinite reach of largeness, instinctively knew it as the place
+where his splendid senses would find satisfaction, and his splendid mind
+would soar into an even loftier freedom. Webster loved Marshfield with
+an intensity that made it peculiarly his own. Lanier, in language more
+intricate and tropical, exclaimed of his "dim sweet" woods: "Ye held me
+fast in your heart, and I held you fast in mine." Webster wielded the
+vital union between his nature and that of the land not only by profound
+sentiment, but by a vigorous physical grappling with the soil.
+
+Is it that vivid natures unconsciously seek an environment
+characteristic of them? Or are they, perhaps, inevitably forced to
+create such an environment wherever they find themselves? Both facts
+seem true in this case. This wide world of marsh and sea is not only
+beautifully expressive of one who plunged himself into a rich communion
+with the earth, with her full harvests and blooded cattle, with her
+fruitful brooks and lakes; but it is still, after more than half a
+century, vibrant with the spirit of the man who dwelt there.
+
+We of another generation--and a generation before whom so many
+portentous events and figures have passed--find it hard to realize the
+tremendous magnetism and brilliancy of a man who has been so long dead,
+or properly to estimate the high historical significance of such a life.
+The human attribute which is the most immediately impelling in direct
+intercourse--personality--is the most elusive to preserve. If Webster's
+claim to remembrance rested solely upon that attribute, he would still
+be worthy of enduring fame. But his gifts flowered at a spectacular
+climax of national affairs and won thereby spectacular prominence. That
+these gifts were to lose something of their pristine repute before the
+end infuses, from a dramatic point of view, a contrasted and heightened
+luster to the period of their highest glory.
+
+Let us, casual travelers of a later and more careless day, walk now
+together over the place which is the indestructible memorial of a great
+man, and putting aside the measuring-stick of criticism--the sign of
+small natures--try to live for an hour in the atmosphere which was the
+breath of life to one who, if he failed greatly, also succeeded greatly,
+and whose noble achievement it was not only to express, but to vivify a
+love for the Union which, in its hour of supreme trial, became its
+triumphant force.
+
+Could we go back--not quite a hundred years--a little off the direct
+route to Plymouth, on a site overlooking the broad marshes of Green
+Harbor and the sea, where there now stands a boulder erected in 1914 by
+the Boston University Law School Association, we would find a
+comfortable, rambling house, distinguished among its New England
+neighbors by an easy and delightful hospitality--the kind of hospitality
+we call "Southern." There are many people in the house, on the veranda
+and lawns: a hostess of gentle mien and manners; children attractive in
+the spontaneity of those who continually and happily associate with
+their elders; several house guests (yonder is Audubon the great
+naturalist, here is an office-seeker from Boston, and that chap over
+there, so very much at home, can be no other than Peter Harvey,
+Webster's fond biographer). Callers there are, also, as is shown by the
+line of chaises and saddle horses waiting outside, and old Captain
+Thomas and his wife, from whom the place was bought, and who still
+retain their original quarters, move in and out like people who consider
+themselves part of the family. It is a heterogeneous collection, yet by
+no means an awkward one, and every one is chatting with every one else
+with great amiability. It is late afternoon: the master of the house has
+been away all day, and now his guests and his family are glancing in the
+direction from which he may be expected. For although every one is
+comfortable and properly entertained, yet the absence of the host
+creates an inexpressible emptiness; it is as if everything were
+quiescent--hardly breathing--merely waiting until he comes. Suddenly the
+atmosphere changes; it is charged with a strong vibrant quality;
+everything--all eyes, all interest--is instantly focused on the figure
+which has appeared among them. He is in fisherman's clothes--this
+newcomer--attired with a brave eye for the picturesque, in soft hat and
+flowing tie; but there are no fisherman's clothes, no, nor any other
+cloakings which can conceal the resilient dignity of his bearing, his
+impressive build, and magnificent, kingly head. Sydney Smith called
+Webster a cathedral; and surely there must have been something in those
+enormous, burning eyes, that craglike brow, that smote even the most
+superficial observer into an admiration which was almost awe.
+
+Many men--perhaps even the majority--whatever their genius in the outer
+world, in their own houses are either relegated to--or choose--the
+inconspicuous rôle of mere masculine appendages. But here we have a man
+who is superbly the host: he knows and welcomes every guest and caller;
+he personally supervises the disposal of their baggage and the selection
+of their chambers; he himself has ordered the dinner--mutton which he
+has raised, fish which he has caught--and it is being cooked by Monica,
+the Southern slave whose freedom he purchased for her. He carves at
+table, priding himself on his dispatch and nicety, and keeps an eye on
+the needs of every one at the long board. Everything, every one in the
+house is irresistibly drawn about this magnetic center which dominates
+by its innate power of personality more than by any deliberate
+intention. His children worship him; his wife idolizes him; each man and
+woman on the place regards him with admiring affection. And in such
+congenial atmosphere he expands, is genial, kindly, delightful. But
+devoted as he is to his home, his family, and his friends, and charming
+as he shows himself with them, yet it is not until we see him striding
+over the farm which he has bought that we see the Daniel Webster who is
+destined to live most graphically in the memories of those who like to
+think of great men in those intimate moments which are most personally
+characteristic of them.
+
+We must rise early in the morning if we would accompany him on his day's
+round. He himself is up at sunrise, for the sunrise is to him signal to
+new life. As he once wrote: "Among all our good people not one in a
+thousand sees the sun rise once a year. They know nothing of the
+morning. Their idea of it is that part of the day which comes along
+after a cup of coffee and a beefsteak or a piece of toast. With them
+morning is not a new issuing of light, a new bursting forth of the sun,
+a new waking up of all that has life from a sort of temporary death, to
+behold again the works of God, the heavens and the earth.... The first
+faint streak of light, the earliest purpling of the east which the lark
+springs up to greet, and the deeper and deeper coloring into orange and
+red, till at length the 'glorious sun is seen, regent of the day'--this
+they never enjoy, for they never see it."
+
+So four o'clock finds Webster up and dressed and bound for the little
+study in his garden (the only building spared by the fire which
+destroyed the house in 1878) and beginning his correspondence. If he has
+no secretary he writes himself, and by time breakfast is announced
+twenty letters, all franked and sealed, are ready to be posted.
+
+"Now," he says, smiling benignantly down the long breakfast table of
+family and friends, "my day's work is done--I have nothing to do but
+fish."
+
+Although this is, indeed, his favorite sport, and there is hardly a
+brook or lake or pond within a radius of twenty miles which does not
+bear the charmed legend of having been one of his favorite fishing
+grounds, he does not spend his days in amusement, like the typical
+country gentleman. Farming to him, the son of a yeoman, is no mere
+possession of a fine estate, but the actual participation in ploughing,
+planting, and haying. His full animal spirits find relief in such labor.
+We cannot think of any similar example of such prodigious mental and
+physical energy. Macaulay was a great parliamentary orator, but he was
+the most conventional of city men; Burke and Chatham had no strength for
+such strenuousness after their professional toil. But Webster loved to
+know and to put his hand to every detail of farming and stock-raising.
+When he first came to Marshfield the soil was thin and sandy. It was he
+who instituted scientific farming in the region, teaching the natives
+how to fertilize with kelp which was easily obtainable from the sea, and
+also with the plentiful small herring or menhaden. He taught them the
+proper care of the soil, and the rotation of crops. This passionate love
+of the earth was an integral part of the man. As the force of his mind
+drew its power, not from mere rhetorical facility, but from fundamental
+principles, so his magnificent body, like that of the fabled Antæus,
+seemed to draw perennial potency from contact with the earth. To acquire
+land--he owned nearly eighteen hundred acres at the time of his
+death--and to cultivate it to the highest possible degree of
+productiveness was his intense delight. The farm which he purchased from
+Captain Thomas grew to an estate of two or three dozen buildings,
+outhouses, tenant houses, a dairyman's cottage, fisherman's house,
+agricultural offices, and several large barns. We can imagine that he
+shows us all of these things--explaining every detail with enthusiasm
+and accuracy, occasionally digressing upon the habits of birds or fish,
+the influence of tides and currents, the changes of sky and wind. All
+natural laws are fascinating to him--inspiring his imagination and
+uplifting his spirit--and it is these things, never politics or
+business, which he discusses in his hours of freedom. He himself
+supervises the planting and harvesting and slaughtering here and on his
+other farm at Franklin--the family homestead--even when obliged to be
+absent, or even when temporarily residing in Washington and hard pressed
+with the cares of his office as Secretary of State.
+
+Those painters who include a parrot in the portrait of some fine
+frivolous lady do so to heighten their interpretation of character. We
+all betray our natures, by the creatures we instinctively gather about
+us. One might know that Jefferson at Monticello would select high-bred
+saddle horses as his companions; that Cardinal Richelieu would find no
+pet so soothing, so alluring, as a soft-stepping cat; that Charles I
+would select the long-haired spaniel. So it is entirely in the picture
+that of all the beasts brought under human yoke, that great oxen, slow,
+solemn, strong, would appeal to the man whose searching eyes were never
+at rest except when they swept a wide horizon; whose mind found its
+deepest satisfaction in noble languages, the giant monuments of
+literature and art, and whose soul best stretched its wings beside the
+limitless sea and under the limitless sky. Webster was fond of all
+animal life; he felt himself part of its free movement. Guinea hens,
+peacocks, ducks, flocks of tamed wild geese, dogs, horses--these were
+all part of the Marshfield place, but there was within the breast of the
+owner a special responsiveness to great herds of cattle, and especially
+fine oxen, the embodiment of massive power. So fond was he of these
+favorite beasts of his, that often on his arrival home he would fling
+his bag into the hall without even entering the house, and hasten to the
+barn to see that they were properly tied up for the night. As he once
+said to his little son, as they both stood by the stalls and he was
+feeding the oxen with ears of corn from an unhusked pile lying on the
+barn floor: "I would rather be here than in the Senate," adding, with
+his famous smile, "I think it is better company." So we may be sure as
+we walk in our retrospect about the farm with him--he never speaks of it
+as an "estate" but always as a farm--he will linger longest where the
+Devon oxen, the Alderneys, Herefordshire, and Ayrshire are grazing, and
+that the eyes which Carlyle likened to anthracite furnaces will glow and
+soften. Twenty years from now he will gaze out upon his oxen once again
+from the window before which he has asked to be carried, as he lies
+waiting for death. Weariness, disease, and disappointment have weakened
+the elasticity of his spirit, and as they pass--his beloved oxen,
+slowly, solemnly--what procession of the years passes with them! Years
+of full living, of generous living; of deep emotions; of glory; years of
+ambition; of bereavement; of grief. It is all to pass--these happy days
+at Marshfield; the wife he so fondly cared for; the children he so
+deeply cherished. Sycophants are to fill, in a measure, the place of
+friends, the money which now flows in so freely is to entangle and
+ensnare him; the lofty aspiration which now inspires him is to
+degenerate into a presidential ambition which will eat into his soul.
+But to-day let us, as long as we may, see him as he is in the height of
+his powers. Let us walk with him under the trees which he planted. Those
+large elms, gracefully silhouetted against the house, were placed there
+with his own hands at the birth of his son Edward and his daughter
+Julia, and he always refers to them gently as "brother" and "sister." To
+plant a tree to mark an event was one of his picturesque customs--an
+unconscious desire, perhaps, to project himself into the future. I am
+quite sure, as we accompany him, he will expatiate on the improvement in
+the soil which he has effected; that he will point out eagerly not only
+the domestic but the wild animals about the place; and that he will
+stand for a few moments on the high bluff overlooking the sea and the
+marshes and let the wind blow through his dark hair. He is carefully
+dressed--he always dresses to fit the occasion--and to-day, as he stands
+in his long boots reaching to the knee and adorned with a tassel, his
+bell-crowned beaver hat in his hand, and in his tight pantaloons and
+well-cut coat--a magnificent specimen of virile manhood--the words of
+Lanier, although written at a later date, and about marshes far more
+lush than these New England ones, beat upon our ears:
+
+[Illustration]
+
+    "Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?
+    Somehow my soul seems suddenly free
+    From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,
+    By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn."
+
+On the way back he will show us the place where three of his favorite
+horses are buried, for he does not sell the old horses who have done him
+good service, but has them buried "with the honors of war"--that is,
+standing upright, with their halters and shoes on. Above one of them he
+has placed the epitaph:
+
+    "Siste Viator!
+    Viator te major his sistit."
+
+I do not know if, as we return to the house where already a fresh group
+of visitors has arrived, he will pause by a corner of the yard set off
+by an iron fence. He has chosen this spot as the place where he shall
+lie, and here, in time, are to repose under the wide and simple vault
+of sky the wife and children whose going before is to bring such
+desolation. It is a place supremely fitting for that ample spirit which
+knew for its own the nobility of large spaces, and the grandeur of
+repose.
+
+The life of Daniel Webster is one of the most dramatic and touching of
+any of our great men. He was an orator of such solid thought and chaste
+eloquence that even now, without the advantage of the marvelously rich
+and flexible voice and the commanding presence that made each word burn
+like a fire, even without this incalculable personal interpretation, his
+speeches remain as a permanent part of our literature, and will so long
+as English oratory is read. He was a brilliant lawyer--the foremost of
+his day--and his statesmanship was of equal rank. In private life he was
+a peculiarly devoted and tender son, husband, father, and friend. That
+he should have become saddened by domestic losses and somewhat vitiated
+by flattery were, perhaps, inevitable. He was bitterly condemned--more
+bitterly by his contemporaries than by those who now study his words and
+work--for lowering his high standard in regard to slavery. It is
+impossible to refute the accusation, at the end of his life, of a
+carelessness approaching unscrupulousness in money matters. His personal
+failings, which were those of a man of exceptional vitality, have been
+heavily--too heavily--emphasized. He ate and drank and spent money
+lavishly; he had a fine library; he loved handsome plate and good
+service and good living. He was generous; he was kind. That he was
+susceptible to adulation and, after the death of his first wife, drifted
+into associations less admirable than those of his earlier years, are
+the dark threads of a woof underrunning a majestic warp. He adored his
+country with a fervor that savors of the heroic, and when he said,
+"There are no Alleghanies in my politics," he spoke the truth. The
+intense passion for the soil which animated him at Marshfield was only a
+fragment of that higher passion for his country--feeling never tainted
+by sectionalism or local prejudice. It was this profound love for the
+Union, coupled with his surpassing gift of eloquence in expressing that
+love and inspiring it in all who heard him, that distinguishes him for
+all time.
+
+There are other memorable things about Marshfield. Governor Edward
+Winslow, who was sent to England to represent the Plymouth and
+Massachusetts Bay Colonies, and whose son Josiah was the first native
+Governor of the Colony, may both be called Marshfield men. Peregrine
+White, the first white child born in this country, lies in the Winslow
+Burying Ground. One of the most singular changes on our coast occurred
+in this vicinity when in one night the "Portland Breeze" closed up the
+mouth of the South River and four miles up the beach opened up the mouth
+of the North River, making an entrance three quarters of a mile wide
+between Third and Fourth Cliff.
+
+These and many other men and events of Marshfield are properly given a
+place in the history of New England, but the special glory of this spot
+will always be that Daniel Webster chose to live, chose to die, and
+chose to be buried under the vast vault of her skyey spaces, within the
+sound of her eternal sea.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+DUXBURY HOMES
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+There are certain places whose happy fortune seems to be that they are
+always specially loved and specially sought by the children of men. From
+that memorable date in 1630 when a little group of the Plymouth
+colonists asked permission to locate across the bay at "Duxberie" until
+now, when the summer colony alone has far surpassed that of the original
+settlers, this section of the coast--with its lovely six-mile beach, its
+high bluffs, and its pleasant hills and pasture lands, upon which are
+found quite a southern flora, unique in this northern latitude--has been
+thoroughly frequented and enjoyed.
+
+There is no more graphic index to the caliber of a people than the
+houses which they build, and the first house above all others which we
+must associate with this spot is the Standish cottage, built at the foot
+of Captain's Hill by Alexander Standish, the son of Myles, partly from
+materials from his father's house, which was burned down, but whose
+cellar is still visible. This long, low, gambrel-roofed structure, with
+a broad chimney showing the date of 1666, was a long way ahead of the
+first log cabins erected by the Pilgrims--farther than most of us
+realize, accustomed as we are to glass instead of oiled paper in
+windows; to shingles, and not thatch for roofs. It is fitting that this
+ancient and charming dwelling should be associated with one of the most
+romantic, most striking, names in the Plymouth Colony. There are few
+more picturesque personalities in our early history than Myles Standish.
+Small in stature, fiery in spirit, a terror to the Indians, and a strong
+arm to the Pilgrims, there is no doubt that his determination to live in
+Duxbury--which he named for Duxborough Hall, his ancestral home in
+Lancashire--went far in obtaining for it a separate incorporation and a
+separate church. This was the first definite offshoot from the Plymouth
+Colony, and was accompanied by the usual maternal fears. While he could
+not forbid them going to Duxbury to settle, yet, when they asked for a
+separate incorporation and church, Bradford granted it most unwillingly.
+He voiced the general sentiment when he wrote that such a separation
+presaged the ruin of the church "& will provoke y^e Lord's displeasure
+against them."
+
+However, such unkind predictions in no wise bothered the sturdy little
+group who moved over to the new location, needing room for their cattle
+and their gardens, and most of all a sense of freedom from the
+restrictions of the mother colony. The son of Elder Brewster went, and
+in time the Elder himself, and so did John Alden and his wife Priscilla,
+whose courtship has been so well told by Longfellow that it needs no
+further embellishing here. On the grassy knoll where John and Priscilla
+built their home in 1631, their grandson built the cottage which now
+stands--the property of the Alden Kindred Association. John Alden seems
+to have been an attractive young fellow--it is easy to see why Priscilla
+Mullins preferred him to the swart, truculent widower--but from our
+point of view John Alden's chief claim to fame is that he was a friend
+of Myles Standish.
+
+Let us, as we pay our respects to Duxbury, pause for a moment and recall
+some of the courageous adventures, some of the brave traits and some of
+the tender ones, which make up our memory of this doughty military
+commander. In the first place, we must remember that he was never a
+member of the church of the Pilgrims: there is even a question if he
+were not--like the rest of his family in Lancashire--a Roman Catholic;
+and this immediately places him in a position of peculiar distinction.
+From the first his mission was not along ecclesiastical lines, but along
+military and civil ones. The early histories are full of his intrepid
+deeds: there was never an expedition too dangerous or too difficult to
+daunt him. He would attack with the utmost daring the hardest or the
+humblest task. He was absolutely loyal to the interest of the Colony,
+and during that first dreadful winter when he was among the very few who
+were not stricken with sickness, he tended the others day and night,
+"unceasing in his loving care." As in many audacious characters this
+sweeter side of his nature does not seem to have been fully appreciated
+by his contemporaries, and we have the letter in which Robinson, that
+"most learned, polished and modest spirit," writes to Bradford, and
+warns him to have care about Standish. He loves him right well, and is
+persuaded that God has given him to them in mercy and for much good, if
+he is used aright; but he fears that there may be wanting in him "that
+tenderness of the life of man (made after God's image) which is meet."
+This warning doubtless flattered Standish, but Robinson's later
+criticism of his methods at Weymouth hurt the little captain cruelly. He
+seems to have cherished an intense affection for the Leyden pastor,
+such as valorous natures often feel for meditative ones, and that
+Robinson died before he--Standish--could justify himself was a deep
+grief to the soldier to whom mere physical hardships were as nothing. We
+do not know a great deal about this relationship between the two men: in
+this as in so many cases the intimate stories of these men and women,
+"also their love, and their hatred, and their envy is now perished." But
+we do know that thirty years later when the gallant captain lay dying he
+wrote in his will: "I give three pounds to Mercy Robinson, whom I
+tenderly love for her grandfather's sake." Surely one feels the touching
+eloquence of this brief sentence the fitting close of a life not only
+heroic in action, but deeply sensitive in sentiment.
+
+He died on his farm in Duxbury in 1656 when he was seventy-three, and
+the Myles Standish Monument on Captain's Hill, three hundred and ten
+feet above the bay, is no more conspicuous than his knightly and tender
+life among the people he elected to serve. His two wives, and also
+Priscilla and John Alden, for whom he entertained such lively love and
+equally lively fury, all are buried here--the Captain's last home
+fittingly marked by four cannon and a sturdy boulder.
+
+Not only for Standish and Alden is Duxbury famous. The beloved William
+Brewster himself moved to this new settlement, and up to a few years ago
+the traces of the whitewood trees which gave the name of "Eagle's Nest"
+to his house could be distinguished. One son--Love--lived with the
+venerable elder, who was a widower, and his other son Jonathan owned the
+neighboring farm. In the sight of the Plymouth Colony--their first home
+in the new land--the three men often worked together, cutting trees and
+planting.
+
+Others of the original Mayflower company came too, leaving traces of
+themselves in such names as Blackfriars Brook, Billingsgate, and
+Houndsditch--names which they brought from Old England.
+
+The homes which these pioneers so laboriously and so lovingly
+wrought--what were they? How did they compare with the modern home and
+household? In Mr. Sheldon's "History of Deerfield" we find such a
+charming and vivid picture of home life in the early days--and one that
+applies with equal accuracy to Duxbury--that we cannot do better than
+copy it here:
+
+"The ample kitchen was the center of the family life, social and
+industrial. Here around the rough table, seated on rude stools or
+benches, all partook of the plain and sometimes stinted fare. A glance
+at the family gathered here after nightfall on a winter's day may prove
+of interest.
+
+"After a supper of bean porridge or hasty pudding and milk of which all
+partake in common from a great pewter basin, or wooden bowl, with spoons
+of wood, horn or pewter; after a reverent reading of the Bible, and
+fervent supplications to the Most High for prayer and guidance; after
+the watch was set on the tall mount, and the vigilant sentinel began
+pacing his lonely beat, the shutters were closed and barred, and with a
+sense of security the occupations of the long winter evening began.
+Here was a picture of industry enjoined alike by the law of the land and
+the stern necessities of the settlers. All were busy. Idleness was a
+crime. On the settle, or a low armchair, in the most sheltered nook, sat
+the revered grandam--as a term of endearment called granny--in red
+woolen gown, and white linen cap, her gray hair and wrinkled face
+reflecting the bright firelight, the long stocking growing under her
+busy needles, while she watched the youngling of the flock in the cradle
+by her side. The good wife, in linsey-woolsey short-gown and red
+petticoat steps lightly back and forth in calf pumps beside the great
+wheel, or poising gracefully on the right foot, the left hand extended
+with the roll or bat, while with a wheel finger in the other, she gives
+the wheel a few swift turns for a final twist to the long-drawn thread
+of wool or tow. The continuous buzz of the flax wheels, harmonizing with
+the spasmodic hum of the big wheel, shows that the girls are preparing a
+stock of linen against their wedding day. Less active and more fitful
+rattled the quill wheel, where the younger children are filling quills
+for the morrow's weaving.
+
+"Craftsmen are still scarce, and the yeoman must depend largely on his
+own skill and resources. The grandsire, and the goodman, his son, in
+blue woolen frocks, buckskin breeches, long stockings, and clouted
+brogans with pewter buckles, and the older boys in shirts of brown tow,
+waistcoat and breeches of butternut-colored woolen homespun, surrounded
+by piles of white hickory shavings, are whittling out with keen Barlow
+jack-knives implements for home use: ox-bows and bow-pins, axe-helves,
+rakestales, forkstales, handles for spades and billhooks, wooden
+shovels, flail staff and swingle, swingling knives, or pokes and hog
+yokes for unruly cattle and swine. The more ingenious, perhaps, are
+fashioning buckets or powdering tubs, or weaving skeps, baskets or
+snowshoes. Some, it may be, sit astride the wooden shovel, shelling corn
+on its iron-shod edge, while others are pounding it into samp or hoiminy
+in the great wooden mortar.
+
+"There are no lamps or candles, but the red light from the burning pine
+knots on the hearth glows over all, repeating, in fantastic pantomime on
+the brown walls and closed shutters, the varied activities around it.
+These are occasionally brought into higher relief by the white flashes,
+as the boys throw handfuls of hickory shavings onto the forestick, or
+punch the back log with the long iron peel, while wishing they had as
+'many shillings as sparks go up the chimney.' Then, the smoke-stained
+joists and boards of the ceiling with the twisted rings of pumpkin
+strings or crimson peppers and festoons of apple, drying on poles hung
+beneath; the men's hats, the crook-necked squashes, the skeins of thread
+and yarn hanging in bunches on the wainscot; the sheen of the pewter
+plates and basins, standing in rows on the shelves of the dresser; the
+trusty firelock with powder horn, bandolier, and bullet pouch, hanging
+on the summertree, and the bright brass warming-pan behind the bedroom
+door--all stand revealed more clearly for an instant, showing the
+provident care for the comfort and safety of the household. Dimly seen
+in the corners of the room are baskets in which are packed hands of flax
+from the barn, where, under the flaxbrake, the swingling knives and the
+coarse hackle, the shives and swingling tow have been removed by the
+men; to-morrow the more deft manipulations of the women will prepare
+these bunches of fiber for the little wheel, and granny will card the
+tow into bats, to be spun into tow yarn on the big wheel. All quaff the
+sparkling cider or foaming beer from the briskly circulating pewter mug,
+which the last out of bed in the morning must replenish from the barrel
+in the cellar."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One notices the frequent reference to beer in these old chronicles. The
+tea, over which the colonists were to take such a dramatic stand in a
+hundred years, had not yet been introduced into England, and neither had
+coffee. Forks had not yet made their appearance. In this admirable
+picture Mr. Sheldon does not mention one of the evening industries
+which was peculiarly characteristic of the Plymouth Colony. This was
+the making of clapboards, which with sassafras and beaver skins,
+constituted for many years the principal cargo sent back to England from
+the Colony. Another point--the size of the families. The mother of
+Governor William Phips had twenty-one sons and five daughters, and the
+Reverend John Sherman had six children by his first wife and twenty by
+his second. These were not uncommon figures in the early life of New
+England; and with so many numbers within itself the home life was a
+center for a very complete and variegated industrial life. Surely it is
+a long cry from these kitchen fireplaces--so large that often a horse
+had to be driven into the kitchen dragging the huge back log--these
+immense families, to the kitchenette and one-child family of to-day!
+
+This, then, was the old Duxbury: the Duxbury of long, cold winters,
+privations, and austerity. Down by the shore to-day is the new
+Duxbury--a Duxbury of automobiles, of business men's trains, of gay
+society at Powder Point, where in the winter is the well-known boys'
+school--a Duxbury of summer cottages, white and green along the shore,
+green and brown under the pines. Of these summer homes many are new: the
+Wright estate is one of the finest on the South Shore, and the pleasant,
+spacious dwelling distinguished by its handsome hedge of English privet
+formerly belonged to Fanny Davenport, the actress. Others are old
+houses, very tastefully, almost affectionately remodeled by those for
+whom the things of the past have a special lure. These remodeled
+cottages are, perhaps, the prettiest of all. Those very ancient
+landmarks, sagging into pathetic disrepair, present a sorrowful, albeit
+an artistic, silhouette against the sky. But these "new-old" cottages,
+with ruffled muslin curtains at the small-paned, antique windows, brave
+with a shining knocker on the green-painted front door, and gay with
+old-fashioned gardens to the side or in the rear--these are a delight to
+all, and an honor to both past and present.
+
+Surely the fair town of Duxbury, which so smilingly enticed the
+Pilgrims across the bay to enjoy her sunny beach and rolling pasture
+lands, must be happy to-day as she was then to feel her ground so deeply
+tilled, and still to be so daintily adorned with homes and gardens and
+with laughing life.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+KINGSTON AND ITS MANUSCRIPTS
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+On a charming eminence at two crossroads, delicately dappled by fine elm
+shade and clasped by an antique grapevine, rests the old Bradford house.
+From the main road half a mile away you will see only the slanting roof,
+half concealed by rolling pasture land, but if you will trouble to turn
+off from the main road, and if you will not be daunted by the
+unsavoriness of the immediate neighborhood, you will find it quite worth
+your while. The house presents only a casual side to the street--one
+fancies it does not take much interest in its upstart neighbors--but
+imagination makes us believe that it regards with brooding tenderness
+the lovely tidal river which winds away through the marshes to the sea.
+Interesting as the house is for its architectural features and for its
+delightful location--despite the nearness of the passing train--yet it
+is on neither of these points that its fame rests.
+
+In this house, built in 1674, and once belonging to Major John Bradford,
+the grandson of the Governor, was preserved for many years one of the
+most valuable American manuscripts in existence, and one fated to the
+most romantic adventures in the annals of Lost and Found.
+
+Bradford's "History of the Plymouth Plantation" is our sole source of
+authentic information for the period 1606-46. It is the basis for all
+historical study of the early life of the Pilgrims in this country, and
+when we look at the quiet roof of the Bradford house to-day and realize
+how narrowly the papers--for they remained in manuscript form for two
+hundred years--escaped being lost forever, our minds travel again over
+the often told story.
+
+The manuscript, penned in Governor Bradford's fine old hand, in a folio
+with a parchment back, and with some childish scribblings by little
+Mercy Bradford on the cover, passed at the Governor's death to his son,
+and at his death to his son. It reposed in the old house at which we are
+now looking until 1728, doubtless regarded as something valuable, but
+not in the least appreciated at its full and peculiar worth. When Major
+John Bradford lent it to the Reverend Thomas Prince to assist him in his
+"Chronological History of New England," he was merely doing what he had
+done many times before. In these days of burglar-proof safes and fire
+protection it makes us shiver to think of this priceless holograph
+passed from hand to hand in such a casual manner. But it seems to have
+escaped any mishap under Dr. Prince, who deposited it eventually in the
+library of the Old South Church. Here it remained for half a century,
+still in manuscript form and frequently referred to by scholars. Thomas
+Hutchinson used it in compiling his "History of Massachusetts Bay," and
+Mather used it also. At the time of the Revolution the Old South was
+looted, and this document (along with many others) disappeared
+absolutely. No trace whatever could be found of it: the most exhaustive
+search was in vain, and scholars and historians mourned for a loss that
+was irreparable. And then, after half a century, after the search had
+been entirely abandoned, it was discovered, quite by chance, by one who
+fortunately knew its value, tucked into the Library of Fulham Palace in
+London. After due rejoicing on the American side and due deliberation on
+the English side of the water, it was very properly and very politely
+returned to this country in 1897. Now it rests after its career of
+infinite hazard, in a case in the Boston State House, elaborately
+protected from fire and theft, from any accidental or premeditated harm,
+and Kingston must content itself with a copy in Pilgrim Hall at
+Plymouth.
+
+Kingston's history commences with a manuscript and continues in the same
+form. If you would know the legends, the traditions, the events which
+mark this ancient town, you will have to turn to records, diaries,
+memoranda, memorial addresses and sermons, many of them never published.
+
+It is rather odd that this serene old place, discovered only two or
+three days after the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, is so devoid
+of a printed career. As soon as the Pilgrims had explored the spot, they
+put themselves on record as having "a great liking to plant in it"
+instead of in Plymouth. But they decided against it because it lay too
+far from their fishing and was "so encompassed with woods," that they
+feared danger from the savages. It was very soon settled, however, and
+remained as the north end of Plymouth for a hundred and six years, until
+1726. Governor Bradford writes, in regard to its colonization:
+
+"Y^e people of y^e plantation begane to grow in their outward estate ...
+and as their stocks increased and y^e increase vendible, ther was no
+longer any holding them togeather, but now they must of necessitoe goe
+to their great lots: they could not otherwise keep catle; and having
+oxen grown they must have land for plowing and tillage. And no man now
+thought he could live except he had catle and a great deal of ground to
+keep them: all striving to increase their stocks. By which means they
+were scattered all over y^e bay, quickly, and y^e towne, in which they
+had lived compactly till now [1632] was left very thine, and in a short
+time almost desolate."
+
+Governor Bradford seems to deplore this moving out of Plymouth, but as a
+matter of fact he was among the first to go, and his estate on Jones
+River comprised such a goodly portion of what is now Kingston that when
+he died he was the richest man in the Colony! A boulder marks the place
+which he, with that unerring eye for a fine view which distinguished the
+early settlers, chose for his estate. From here one catches a glimpse of
+water, open fields, trees, the Myles Standish Monument to the left, the
+sound of the passing automobiles behind. The distant smokestacks would
+be unfamiliar to Governor Bradford's eye, but the fragrant Kingston air
+which permeates it all would greet him as sweetly to-day as it did
+three hundred years ago.
+
+Governor Bradford, who was Governor for thirty-seven years, was a man of
+remarkable erudition. Cotton Mather says of him: "The Dutch tongue was
+become almost as vernacular to him as the English; the French tongue he
+could also manage; the Latin and the Greek he had mastered; but the
+Hebrew he most of all studied." Therefore if the curious spelling of his
+history strikes us as unscholarly, we must remember that at that time
+there was no fixed standard for English orthography. Queen Elizabeth
+employed seven different spellings for the word "sovereign" and
+Leicester rendered his own name in eight different ways. It was by no
+means a mark of illiteracy to spell not only unlike your neighbor, but
+unlike yourself on the line previous.
+
+But it is more than quaint diction and fantastic spelling which
+fascinates us as we turn over, not only the leaves of Bradford's famous
+history, but the pile of fading records of various kinds of this once
+prosperous shipbuilding town. The records of Kingston are valuable, not
+only because they tell the tale of this particular spot, but because
+they are delightfully typical of all the South Shore towns. The
+yellowing diaries mention crude offenses, crude chastisements; give
+scraps of genealogies as broken as the families themselves are now
+broken and scattered; lament over one daughter of the Puritans who took
+the veil in a Roman Catholic convent; sternly relate, in Rabelaisian
+frankness, dark sins, punished with mediæval justice. In fact, these
+righteous early colonists seemed to find a genuine satisfaction in
+devising punishments, and in putting them into practice. We read that
+the stocks (also called "bilbaos" because they were formerly
+manufactured in Bilbao, in Spain) were first occupied by the man who had
+made them, as the court decided that his charge for the work was
+excessive! There were wooden cages in which criminals were confined and
+exposed to public view; whipping-posts; cleft sticks for profane
+tongues. Drunkenness was punished by disfranchisement; the blasphemer
+and the heretics were branded with a hot iron.
+
+Let us look at some of these old records, not all of them as ferocious
+as this, but interesting for the minutiæ which they preserve and which
+makes it possible for us to reconstruct something of that atmosphere of
+the past. It was ninety-six years after the settlement at Plymouth that
+Kingston made its first request for a separation. It was not granted for
+almost a decade, but from then on the ecclesiastical records furnish us
+with a great deal of intimate and chatty material. For instance, we
+learn in 1719 that Isaac Holmes was to have "20 shillings for sweeping,
+opening and shutting of the doors and casements of the meeting house for
+1 year," which throws some light upon sextons' salaries!
+
+The minute directions as to the placing of the pews in the meeting-house
+(1720) contain a pungent element of personality. Major John Bradford is
+"next to the pulpit stairs"; Elisha Bradford on the left "as you go in";
+Benjamin Eaton's place is "between minister's stairs and west door";
+while Peter West is ingloriously, and for what reason we know not,
+relegated to the gallery "in the front, next to the stairs, behind the
+women."
+
+It is significant to note (1728) that seats are built at each end above
+the galleries for the Indians and negroes.
+
+Fish laws, rewards for killing wild cats, bickerings with the minister,
+and brief mention of the death of many women at an early age--after
+having given birth to an incredible number of children--fill up pages
+and pages.
+
+The eye rests upon a resolution passed (1771) to "allow Benjamin Cook
+the sum of 8 shillings for a coffin, and liquor at the funeral of James
+Howland." They might not believe in prayers for the dead in those days,
+but there was evidently no reason why the living should not receive some
+cheer!
+
+How is this for the minister's salary? The Reverend Doctor Willis (1780)
+is to receive eighty pounds a year, to be paid partly in Indian corn,
+rye, pork, and beef. Ten cords of wood yearly are allowed him "until he
+have a family, then twenty cords, are to be allowed, the said wood to
+be delivered at his door."
+
+Mr. Levi Bradford agrees to make the whipping-post and stocks for nine
+shillings, if the town will find the iron (1790).
+
+The wage paid for a day's labor on the highway (1791) was as follows:
+For a day's labor by a man, 2 shillings, 8 pence; for a yoke of oxen, 2
+shillings; for a horse, 1 shilling, 6 pence; for a cart, 1 shilling, 4
+pence. One notes the prices are for an eight-hour day.
+
+However, the high cost of living began to make itself felt even then.
+How else account for the statement (1796) that Mr. Parris, the
+schoolmaster, has been allowed fifty shillings in addition to his salary
+"considering the increase in the price of provisions"?
+
+There seems to have been a great celebration on the occasion of raising
+the second meetinghouse in Kingston (1798). One old account reads:
+"Booths were erected on the field opposite, and all kinds of liquor and
+refreshment were sold freely." After the frame was up a procession was
+formed of those who were employed in the raising, consisting of
+carpenters, sailors, blacksmiths, etc., each taking some implement of
+his trade such as axes, rules, squares, tackles and ropes. They walked
+to the Great Bridge and back to the temporary building that had been
+used for worship (the Quail Trap) while the new one was being planned.
+Here they all had punch and an "hour or so of jollity."
+
+If the women's lives were conspicuously short, it was not so with the
+men. Ebenezer Cobb, who died in 1801 in the one hundred and eighth year
+of his age, had lived in no less than three centuries, having seen six
+years in the seventeenth, the whole of the eighteenth, and a year of the
+nineteenth.
+
+The minister's tax is separated from the other town taxes in 1812--thus
+even in this little village is reflected the great movement of
+separation of Church and State. In 1851 when we read of a Unitarian
+church being built we realize that the Puritan régime is over in New
+England.
+
+Thus with the assistance of the Pelegs and Hezekiahs, the Zadocks,
+Ichabods, and Zenases--names which for some absurd and irreverent reason
+suggest a picture puzzle--we manage to piece together scraps of the
+Kingston of long ago.
+
+We must confess to some relief at the inevitable conclusion that such
+study brings--namely, that the early settlers were not the unblemished
+prigs and paragons tradition has so fondly branded them. They seem to
+have been human enough--erring enough, if we take these records penned
+by themselves. However, for any such iconoclastic observation it is
+reassuring to have the judgment of so careful a historian as Charles
+Francis Adams. He says:
+
+"That the earlier generations of Massachusetts were either more
+law-abiding or more self-restrained than the later is a proposition
+which accords neither with tradition nor with the reason of things. The
+habits of those days were simpler than those of the present: they were
+also essentially grosser...."
+
+He then gives a dozen pages or so of hitherto unpublished church
+records, gathered from as many typical Massachusetts towns, which throw
+an undeniable and unflattering light on the social habits of that early
+period. As explicit and public confession before the church congregation
+was enforced, these church records contain startlingly graphic
+statements of drunkenness, blasphemy, stealing, and immorality in all
+its various phases.
+
+There are countless church records which duplicate this one of the
+ordination of a Massachusetts pastor in 1729: "6 Barrels and a half of
+Cyder, 28 gallons of wine, 2 gallons of Brandy, and 4 of rum, loaf
+sugar, lime juice and pipes," all, presumably, consumed at the time and
+on the spot of the ordination. Even the most pessimistic must admit that
+long before our prohibition era we had traveled far beyond such
+practices.
+
+The immorality seems to have been the natural reaction from morbid
+spiritual excitement induced by religious revivals. Poor Governor
+Bradford never grasped this, and we find him lamenting (1642):
+"Marvilous it may be to see and consider how some kind of wickedness did
+grow and break forth here in a land where the same was much witnessed
+against, and so narrowly looked on and severely punished when it was
+known."
+
+We hear the same plaint from Jonathan Edwards a century later.
+
+It is well to honor the Pilgrims for their many stanch and admirable
+qualities, but it is only fair to recall that the morbidity of their
+religion made them less healthy-minded than we, and that many of their
+practices, such as the well-recognized custom of "bundling," were
+indications of a people holding far lower moral standards than ours.
+
+The old sermons, diaries, biographies, and records lie on dusty shelves
+now, and few pause to read them, and in Kingston no one yet has gathered
+them into a local history. There are other records traced, not in sand,
+but on the soil that may also be read by any who pass. Some remnants of
+the trenches and terraces dug by the quota of Arcadian refugees who
+fell to Kingston's share after the pathetic flight from Nova Scotia may
+still be seen--claimed by some to be the first irrigation attempt in
+America.
+
+The old "Massachusetts Payth" which follows the road more or less
+closely beyond Kingston is traced with difficulty and uncertainty in
+Kingston itself, but there is another highway as clear to-day as it was
+three hundred years ago. And this is the lovely tidal river, named after
+the master of the Mayflower, up which used to come and go not only many
+ships of commerce, but, in the evenings after life had become less
+austere, boatloads of merry-makers from Plymouth and Duxbury to attend
+the balls given at what was originally the King's Town.
+
+It has carried much traffic in its day, that river which now winds so
+gracefully down to the sea, and which we see so well from the yard of
+the old Bradford house. Down it floated the vessels made by Kingston
+men, and out of it was dug much bog iron for the use of Washington's
+artillery.
+
+Monk's Hill--which the old records call Mont's Hill Chase, a name
+supposed to have been applied to a hunt in England--could tell a story
+too, if one had ears to hear. The highest land in Kingston, during the
+Revolution it was one of the points where a beacon fire was lighted to
+alarm the town in case of invasion by the enemy.
+
+Kingston is not without history, although its manuscripts lie long
+untouched upon library shelves, and its historic soil is tramped over by
+unheeding feet. That the famous manuscript which was its greatest
+historical contribution has been taken away from it, is no loss in the
+truest sense of the word, for this monumental work, which belongs to no
+one place, but to the country as a whole, is properly preserved at the
+State House.
+
+Kingston seems amenable to this arrangement, just as she seems entirely
+willing that Plymouth should claim the first century of her career. When
+one is sure of one's heritage and beauty, one does not clamor for
+recognition; one does not even demand a printed history. It is quality,
+not quantity, that counts, and even if nothing more is ever written in
+or about this dear old town, Kingston will have made a distinguished
+contribution to American history and literature.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+PLYMOUTH
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+One of the favorite pictures of New Englanders, and one which hangs in
+innumerable dining-rooms and halls, is by Boughton, the popular American
+artist, and is named "The Return of the Mayflower." I suppose thousands
+of New England children have gazed wonderingly at this picture, which,
+contrary to the modern canons of art, "tells a story," and many of those
+naïve minds have puzzled as to how those poor Pilgrims, who had no tea
+or coffee or milk or starch, managed to appear so well fed and so
+contented, and so marvelously neat and clean. The inexhaustible bag
+which inevitably appeared at crucial moments in the career of "Swiss
+Family Robinson" is nowhere mentioned in the early chronicles of the
+Plymouth Plantation, and the precise manner in which a small vessel of a
+hundred and eighty tons, carrying a hundred passengers, and all the
+innumerable cradles, chairs, and highboys which have since flooded the
+museums as "genuine relics" of that first voyage, could also have
+brought sufficient washboards, soap, and flatirons to have kept the
+charming costumes so immaculate is a mystery which will probably never
+be solved--especially since the number of relics appears to increase
+instead of diminish with the passage of time.
+
+However, that is a mere trifle. Mr. Boughton, in catching this touching
+and dramatic moment in the history of the Plymouth Colony, has rendered
+a graphic service to us all, and if we could stand upon the little
+plateau on which this man and maid are standing, and could look out with
+them--we should see--what should we see?
+
+We may, indeed, stand upon the little plateau--possibly it is no other
+than the base of Cole's Hill, that pathetic spot on which the dead were
+buried those first sad months, the ground above being leveled and
+planted with corn lest the Indians should count the number of the
+lost--and look out upon that selfsame harbor, but the sight which meets
+our eyes will be a very different one from that which met theirs. Let
+us, if we can, for the space of half an hour or so, imagine that we are
+standing beside this Pilgrim man and maid, on the day on which Mr.
+Boughton portrayed them.
+
+Instead of 1920 it is 1621. It is the 5th of April: the winter of
+terrifying sicknesses and loss has passed; of the hundred souls which
+left England the autumn previously more than a half have died. The
+Mayflower which brought them all over, and which has remained in the
+harbor all winter, is now, having made repairs and taking advantage of
+the more clement weather, trimming her sails for the thirty-one days'
+return voyage to England. They may return with her, if they wish, any
+or all of the sturdy little band; they may leave the small, smoky log
+cabins; the scanty fare of corn and fish; the harassing fear of the
+Indians; they may leave the privations, the cramped quarters, and return
+to civilized life--to friends and relatives, to blooming English
+hedgerows and orderly English churches. But no one--no, not a single one
+returns! They have thrown in their lot with the new country--the new
+life. Their nearest civilized neighbors are the French of Nova Scotia,
+five hundred miles to the north, and the English of Virginia five
+hundred miles to the south. But they are undaunted. And yet--who can
+doubt that as they gaze out upon the familiar sails--the last banner
+between themselves and their ancestral home, and as they see them
+sailing out and out until they sink below the verge of sea and sky, the
+tears "rise in the heart and gather to the eyes" in "thinking of the
+days that are no more."
+
+Three hundred years ago! The same harbor now as then, with the highland
+of Cape Cod dimly outlined in the gray eastern horizon; the bluffs of
+Manomet nearer on the right; opposite them, on the left, Duxbury Beach
+comes down, and ends in the promontory which holds the Gurnet Lights.
+Clarke's Island--already so named--lies as it does to-day, but save for
+these main topographical outlines the Plymouth at which we are looking
+in our imagination would be quite unrecognizable to us.
+
+There is a little row of houses--seven of them--that is all. Log cabins,
+two-roomed, of the crudest build, thatched with wildgrass, the chinks
+between the logs filled with clay, the floors made of split logs;
+lighted at night with pieces of pitch pine. Each lot measures three rods
+long and a rod and a half wide, and they run on either side of the
+single street (the first laid out in New England, and ever afterward to
+be known as Leyden Street), which, in its turn, is parallel to the Town
+Brook. There is no glass in these cabin windows: oiled paper suffices;
+the household implements are of the fewest. The most primitive modern
+camping expedition is replete with luxuries of which this colony knows
+nothing. They have no cattle of any kind, which means no milk or
+butter; they have no poultry or eggs. Twenty-six acres of cultivated
+ground--twenty-one of corn, the other five of wheat, rye, and
+barley--have been quite enough for the twenty-one men and six boys (all
+who were well enough to work) to handle, but it is not a great deal to
+feed them all. At one end of the street stands the common house, twenty
+feet square, where the church services are held; the store-house is near
+the head of the pier; and at the top of what is now Burial Hill is the
+timber fort, twenty by twenty, built the January before by Myles
+Standish. In April, 1621, this is all there is to what is now the
+prosperous town of Plymouth.
+
+And yet--not entirely. There are a few things left in the Plymouth of
+to-day which were in the Plymouth of three hundred years ago. If our man
+and maid should turn into Pilgrim Hall their eyes would fall upon some
+of the selfsame objects which were familiar sights to them in 1621.
+Those sturdy oaken chairs of Governor Carver, Elder Brewster, and
+Edward Winslow; the square, hooded wooden cradle brought over by Dr.
+Samuel Fuller; and the well-preserved reed one which rocked Peregrine
+White, and whose quaint stanchness suggests the same Dutch influence
+which characterizes the spraddling octagonal windmills--they would
+quickly recognize all of these. Some of the books, too, chiefly
+religious, some in classic tongues, William Bradford's Geneva Bible
+printed in 1592, and others bearing the mark of 1615, would be well
+known to them, although we must not take it for granted that the
+lady--or the man either--can read. Well-worn the Bibles are, however,
+and we need not think that lack of learning prevented any of the
+Pilgrims from imbibing both the letter and spirit of the Book. Those who
+could write were masters of a fine, flowing script that shames our
+modern scrawl, as is well testified by the Patent of the Plymouth
+Colony--the oldest state document in New England--as well as by the
+final will and various deeds of Peregrine White, and many others. The
+small, stiff baby shoes which encased the infant feet of Josiah
+Winslow, the son of Governor Winslow and destined to be Governor
+himself, are of a pattern familiar to our man and maid, as are the now
+tarnished swords of Carver, Brewster, and Standish. Probably they have
+puzzled, as we are still doing, over the Kufic or Arabic inscriptions on
+the last. The monster kettle and generous pewter plate brought over by
+the doughty Captain would be too well known to them to attract their
+attention, as would be the various tankards and goblets, and the
+beautiful mortar and pestle brought over by Winslow. But the two-tined
+fork they would regard with curiosity, for forks were not used, even in
+England, until 1650. The teapots, too, which look antiquated enough to
+us, would fill them with wonder, for tea was practically unknown in both
+colony and mother country until 1657. Those fragments of rude
+agricultural implements which we treasure would not interest our man and
+maid for whom they are ordinary sights, and neither would they regard
+with the same historical interest that moves us the bits of stone from
+the Scrooby Manor in England, the bricks from the old pier at Delft
+Haven in Holland, or the piece of carved pew-back from the old church at
+Scrooby. Possibly our Pilgrim maid is one of the few who can write, and
+if so, her fingers have doubtless fashioned a sampler as exquisite as
+that of Lora Standish, whose meek docility and patient workmanship are
+forever preserved in her cross-stitched words.
+
+From all around the walls of Pilgrim Hall look down fine, stern old
+portraits, real and imaginary, of the early colonists. Modern critics
+may bicker over the authenticity of the white bull on which Priscilla
+Alden is taking her wedding trip; they may quarrel over the fidelity of
+the models and paintings of the Mayflower, and antiquarians may
+diligently unearth bits of bone to substantiate their pet theories. Our
+man and maid could tell us all, but, alas, their voices are so far away
+we cannot hear them. They will never speak the words which will settle
+any of the oft-disputed points, and, unfortunately, they will leave us
+forever to argue about the truth of the famous Plymouth Rock.
+
+To present the well-worn story of Plymouth Rock from an angle calculated
+to rouse even a semblance of fresh interest is comparable to offering a
+well-fed man a piece of bread, and expecting him to be excited over it
+as a novelty. Bread is the staff of life, to be sure, but it is also
+accepted as matter of course in the average diet, and the story of
+Plymouth Rock is part and parcel of every school-book and guide-book in
+the country. The distinguished, if somewhat irreverent, visitor, who,
+after being reduced to partial paralysis by the oft-repeated tale,
+ejaculated fervently that he wished the rock had landed on the Pilgrims
+instead of the Pilgrims on the rock, voiced the first original remark
+about this historic relic which has refreshed our ears for many years.
+However, as Americans we are thoroughly imbued with the theory on which
+our advertising is based. Although it would seem that every housekeeper
+in the land had been kept fully informed for forty years of the
+advantages incident to the use of a certain soap, the manufacturers
+still persist in reciting these benefits. And why? Because new
+housekeepers come into existence with each new day. So, if there be any
+man who comes to Plymouth who does not know the story of Plymouth Rock,
+it is here set down for him, as accurately and briefly as possible.
+
+This rock--which is an oval, glacial boulder of about seven tons--was
+innocently rearing its massive, hoary head from the water one day in
+December, 1620, as it had done for several thousand years previously in
+unmolested oblivion. While engaged in this ponderous but harmless
+occupation it was sighted by a boatful of men and women--the first who
+had ever chosen to land on this particular part of the coast. The rock
+presented a moderately dry footing, and they sailed up to it, and a
+charming young woman, attired, according to our amiable painter, in the
+cleanest and freshest of aprons and the most demure of caps, set a
+daintily shod foot upon it and leaped lightly to shore. This was Mary
+Chilton, and she was promptly followed by an equally trig young
+man--John Alden. Thus commenced the founding of Plymouth Colony, and
+thus was sown the seed of innumerable pictures, poems, stories, and
+sermons.
+
+Now the Pilgrims themselves, in none of their various accounts, ever
+mention the incident of the landing described above, or the rock. In
+fact they are so entirely silent about it that historians--besides
+discrediting the pretty part about Mary Chilton and John Alden, in the
+brusque fashion characteristic of historians--have pooh-poohed the whole
+story, arguing that the rock was altogether too far away from the land
+to be a logical stepping-place, and referring to the only authentic
+record of that first landing, which merely reads: "They sounded y^e
+harbor & founde it fitt for shipping, and marched into y^e land & found
+diverse cornfeilds & little running brooks, a place fitt for situation:
+at least it was y^e best they could find." The Pilgrims, then, were
+quite oblivious of the rock, the historians are entirely skeptical
+concerning it, and the following generation so indifferent to the
+tradition which was gradually formulating, that in the course of events
+it was half-covered with a wharf, and used as a doorstep to a warehouse.
+
+This was an ignominious position for a magnificent free boulder which
+had been a part of the untrammeled sea and land for centuries, but this
+lowly occupation was infinitely less trying than the fate which was
+awaiting. At the time the wharf was suggested, the idea that the rock
+was the actual landing-place of the first colonists had gained such
+momentum that a party was formed in its defense. An aged man, Thomas
+Faunce, was produced. He was ninety-five and confined to an armchair. He
+had not been born until twenty-six years after the landing of the
+Pilgrims; his father, whom he quoted as declaring this to be the
+original rock and identical landing-place, had not even come over in the
+Mayflower, but in the Anne. However, this venerable Canute, carried to
+the water's edge in his armchair, in the presence of many witnesses,
+assured them and all posterity that this was the genuine, undeniable
+landing-place of the Pilgrims. And from that moment the belief was so
+firmly set in the American mind that no power could possibly dislodge
+it. In accordance with this suddenly acquired respect, it was decided to
+move the huge bulk to the more conspicuous location of the Town Square.
+When it was lifted from its prehistoric bed, it broke, and this was
+hailed as a propitious omen of the coming separation of the Colonies
+from the mother country. Only the upper half was dragged up to the Town
+Square--a process which took twenty yoke of oxen and was accompanied by
+wild huzzahing. There the poor, broken thing lay in the sun, at the
+bottom of the Liberty Pole on which was flying, "Liberty or Death." But
+its career as a public feature had only begun. It remained in the square
+until 1834, and then on July 4 it was decided to drag it to a still more
+conspicuous place. So with a formal procession, it was again hoisted and
+hauled and set down in front of the entrance porch of Pilgrim Hall,
+where it lay like a captive mammoth animal for curious folk to gaze at.
+Here it was granted almost half a century of undisturbed if not secluded
+slumber. But the end was not yet. In 1880 it was once more laid hold of
+and carted back to its original setting, and welded without ceremony, to
+the part from which it had been sundered. Now all of this seems quite
+enough--more than enough--of pitiless publicity, for one old rock whose
+only offense had been to be lifting its head above the water on a
+December day in 1620. But no--just as the mind of man takes a singular
+satisfaction in gazing at mummies preserved in human semblance in the
+unearthly stillness of the catacombs, so the once massive boulder--now
+carefully mended--was placed upon the neatest of concrete bases, and
+over it was reared, from the designs of Hammatt Billings, the ugliest
+granite canopy imaginable--in which canopy, to complete the grisly
+atmosphere of the catacombs, were placed certain human bones found in an
+exploration of Cole's Hill. Bleak and homeless the old rock now lies
+passively in forlorn state under its atrocious shelter, behind a strong
+iron grating, and any of a dozen glib street urchins, in syllables
+flavored with Cork, or Genoese, or Polish accents, will, for a penny,
+relate the facts substantially as I have stated them.[2]
+
+It is easy to be unsympathetic in regard to any form of fetishism which
+we do not share. And while the bare fact remains that we are not at all
+sure that the Pilgrims landed on this rock, and we are entirely sure
+that its present location and setting possess no romantic allurement,
+yet bare facts are not the whole truth, and even when correct they are
+often the superficial and not the fundamental part of the truth. Those
+hundreds--those thousands--of earnest-eyed men and women who have stood
+beside this rock with tears in their eyes, and emotions too deep for
+words in their hearts, "believing where they cannot prove," have not
+only interpreted the vital significance of the place, but, by their very
+emotion, have sanctified it.
+
+It really makes little difference whether the testimony of Thomas Faunce
+was strictly accurate or not; it really makes little difference that the
+Hammatt Billings canopy is indeed dreadful. Plymouth Rock has come to
+symbolize the corner-stone of the United States as a nation, and symbols
+are the most beautiful and the most enduring expression of any national
+or human experience.
+
+It is estimated that over one hundred thousand visitors come to Plymouth
+annually. They all go to see the Rock; most of them clamber up to the
+quaint Burial Hill and read a few of the oldest inscriptions; they
+glance at the National Monument to the forefathers, bearing the largest
+granite figure in the world, and they take a turn through Pilgrim Hall.
+But there is one place they often forget to see, and that is the harbor
+itself.
+
+We began our tour through Plymouth through the eyes of a Pilgrim man and
+maid watching the departing Mayflower. It was the Mayflower, battered
+and beaten, her sails blackened and mended, her leaks hastily caulked,
+which was the first vessel to sail into Plymouth Harbor--a harbor so
+joyfully described as being a "most hopeful place" with "innumerable
+store of fowl and excellent good ... in fashion like a sickel or fish
+hook."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+All that first dreadful winter, while the Pilgrims were struggling to
+make roofs to cover their heads, while, with weeping hearts, they buried
+their dead, and when, according to the good and indestructible instincts
+of life, which persist in spite of every calamity, they planted seed for
+the coming spring--all this while the Mayflower lay at anchor in the
+harbor. Every morning they could see her there; any hour of the day they
+could glance out at her; while they slept they were conscious of her
+presence. And just so long as she was there, just so long could they see
+a tangible connection between themselves and the life, which, although
+already strangely far away, was, nevertheless, the nearest and the
+dearest existence they had known. And then in April, the familiar
+vessel, whose outlines were as much a part of the seascape as the Gurnet
+or the bluffs of Manomet, vanished: vanished as completely as if she had
+never been. The water which parted under her departing keel flowed
+together. There was no sign on earth or sea or in the sky of that last
+link between the little group of colonists and their home land. They
+were as much alone as Enoch Arden on his desert isle. Can we imagine the
+emptiness, the illimitable loneliness of that bay? One small shallop
+down by the pier--that was the only visible connection between
+themselves and England!
+
+I do not believe that we can really appreciate their sense of complete
+severance--their sense of utter isolation. And I do not believe that we
+can appreciate the wild thrill of excitement, the sudden gush of
+freshly established connection that ran through the colony, when, seven
+months later--the following November--a ship sailed into the harbor. It
+was the Fortune bringing with her news and letters from home--word from
+that other world--and bringing also thirty-five new colonists, among
+them William Brewster's eldest son and Robert Cushman. Probably the
+greetings were so joyful, the messages so eagerly sought, the flutter of
+welcome so great that it was not until several days had passed that they
+realized that the chief word which Thomas Weston (the London merchant
+who was the head of the company which had financed the expedition) had
+sent them was one of reproof. The Mayflower had brought no profitable
+cargo back to England, he complained, an omission which was "wonderful
+and worthily distasted." While he admitted that they had labored under
+adverse circumstances, he unkindly added that a quarter of the time they
+had spent in discoursing and arguing and consulting could have
+profitably been spent in other ways. That the first official word from
+home should be one of such cruel reprimand struck the colonists--who had
+so wistfully waited for a cheering message--very hard. Half frozen, half
+starved, sick, depressed, they had been forced to struggle so
+desperately to maintain even a foothold on the ladder of existence, that
+it had not been humanly possible for them to fulfill their pledge to the
+Company. Bradford's letter back to Weston--dignified, touching--is
+sufficient vindication. When the Fortune returned she "was laden with
+good clapboards, as full as she could stowe, and two hogsheads of beaver
+and other skins," besides sassafras--a cargo valued at about five
+hundred pounds. In spite of the fact that this cargo was promptly stolen
+by a French cruiser off the English coast, it nevertheless marks the
+foundation of the fur and lumber trade in New England. Although this
+first visitor brought with her a patent of their lands (a document still
+preserved in Pilgrim Hall, with the signatures and seals of the Duke of
+Lenox, the Marquis of Hamilton, the Earl of Warwick, and Sir Ferdinando
+Gorges), yet to us, reading history in the perspective of three hundred
+years, the disagreeable impression of Weston's letter outweighs the
+satisfaction for the patent. When the Fortune sailed away it was like
+the departure of a rich, fault-finding aunt, who suddenly descends upon
+a household of poor relations, bringing presents, to be sure, but with
+such cutting disapproval on her lips that it mars the entire pleasure of
+her visit.
+
+The harbor was once more empty. I suppose that in time the Pilgrims half
+forgot, half forgave, the sting of Weston's reproof. Again they gazed
+out and waited for a sail; again England seemed very far away. So,
+doubtless, in the spring, when a shallop appeared from a fishing vessel,
+they all eagerly hurried down to greet it. But if the Fortune had been
+like a rich and disagreeable aunt, this new visitation was like an
+influx of small, unruly cousins. And such hungry cousins! Weston had
+sent seven men to stay with them until arrangements could be made for
+another settlement. New Englanders are often criticized for their lack
+of hospitality, and in this first historic case of unexpected guests the
+larder was practically bare. Crops were sown, to be sure, but not yet
+green; the provisions in the store-house were gone; it was not the
+season for wild fowl; although there were bass in the outer harbor and
+cod in the bay there was neither tackle nor nets to take them. However,
+the seven men were admitted, and given shellfish like the rest--and very
+little beside.
+
+At this point the Pilgrims looked with less favorable eyes upon
+newcomers into the harbor, and when shortly after two ships appeared
+bringing sixty more men from Weston, consternation reigned. These
+emigrants were supposed to get their own food from their own vessels and
+merely lodge on shore, but they proved a lawless set and stole so much
+green corn that it seriously reduced the next year's supply. After six
+weeks, however, these uninvited guests took themselves off to
+Wessagusset (now Weymouth) leaving their sick behind, and only the
+briefest of "thank you's."
+
+The next caller was the Plantation. She anchored only long enough to
+offer some sorely needed provisions at such extortionate prices that the
+colonists could not buy them. Another slap in the face!
+
+Obviously, none of these visitors had proved very satisfactory. It had
+been entertaining under difficulties, and if the entertainers had hoped
+for the "angels unawares," they had been decidedly disappointed.
+Therefore it is easy to believe that they took fresh courage and sincere
+delight when, in July, 1623, the Anne and the Little James arrived--no
+strangers, for they brought with them additional stores, and best of
+all, good friends and close kinsfolk from the church at Leyden. Yes, the
+Pilgrims were delighted, but, alas, tradition has it that when they
+pressed forward in glad greeting to their old acquaintances, these
+latter started back, nonplussed--aghast! Like Mr. Boughton they had
+fondly pictured an ideal rustic community, in which the happy, carefree
+colonists reveled in all the beauty of picturesque and snowy collars and
+cuffs in Arden-like freedom. Instead they saw a row of rough log cabins
+and a group of work-worn, shabby men and women, men and women whose
+faces were lined with exposure, and whose backs were bent with toil, and
+who, for their most hospitable feast, had only a bit of shellfish and
+water to offer. Many of the newcomers promptly burst into tears, and
+begged to return to England immediately. Poor Pilgrims! Rebuffed--and so
+unflatteringly--with each arriving maritime guest, who can doubt that
+there was born in them at that moment the constitutional dislike for
+unexpected company which has characterized New England ever since?
+
+However, in a comparatively short time the colonists who had been
+brought over in the Anne and the Little James--those who stayed, for
+some did return at once--adjusted themselves to the new life. Many
+married--both Myles Standish and Governor Bradford found wives among
+them; and now the Plymouth Colony may be said to have fairly started.
+
+Just as a trail which is first a mere thread leading to some
+out-of-the-way cabin becomes a path and then a road, and in due time a
+wide thoroughfare, so the way across the Atlantic from Old England to
+New became more charted--more traveled. At first there was only one boat
+and one net for fishing. In five years there was a fleet of fifty
+fishing vessels. Ten years later we have note of ten foreign vessels in
+the harbor in a single week. And to-day, if the Pilgrim man and maid
+whom we joined at the beginning of our reminiscences could gaze out over
+the harbor, they would see it as full of masts as a cornfield is of
+stalks. Every kind of boat finds its way in and out; and not only
+pleasure craft: Plymouth Harbor is second only to Boston among the
+Massachusetts ports of entry, receiving annual foreign imports valued at
+over $7,000,000. Into the harbor, where once a single shallop was the
+only visible sign of man's dominion over the water, now sail great
+vessels from Yucatan and the Philippines, bringing sisal and manila for
+the largest cordage company in the whole country--a company with an
+employees' list of two thousand names, and an annual output of
+$10,000,000. Furthermore, the flats in the harbor are planted with
+clams, which (through the utilization of shells for poultry feeding, and
+by means of canning for bouillon) yield a profit of from five hundred to
+eight hundred dollars an acre.
+
+No, our Pilgrim man and maid would not recognize, in this Plymouth of
+factories and industries, the place where once stood the row of log
+cabins, with oiled-paper windows. And yet, after all, it is not the
+prosperous town of to-day, but the rude settlement of yesterday, which
+chiefly lives in the hearts of the American people. And it lives, not
+because of its economic importance, but because of its unique
+sentimental value. As John Fiske so admirably states: "Historically
+their enterprise [that of the Pilgrims at Plymouth] is interesting not
+so much for what it achieved as for what it suggested. Of itself the
+Plymouth Colony could hardly have become a wealthy and powerful state.
+Its growth was extremely slow. After ten years its numbers were but
+three hundred. In 1643, when the exodus had come to an end and the New
+England Confederacy was formed, the population of Plymouth was but three
+thousand. In an established community, indeed, such a rate of increase
+would be rapid, but was not sufficient to raise in New England a power
+which could overcome Indians and Dutchmen and Frenchmen and assert its
+will in opposition to the Crown. It is when we view the founding of
+Plymouth in relation to what came afterward, that it assumes the
+importance which belongs to the beginning of a new era."
+
+For this reason the permanent position of Plymouth in our history is
+forever assured. Old age, which may diminish the joys of youth,
+preserves inviolate memories which nothing can destroy. The place whose
+quiet fame is made is surer of the future than the one which is on the
+brink of fabulous glory. It is impossible to overestimate the
+significance of this spot.
+
+The Old Coast Road--the oldest in New England--began here and pushed its
+tortuous way up to Boston along the route we have so lightly followed.
+Inheritors of a nation which these pioneers strove manfully,
+worshipfully, to found, need we be ashamed of deep emotion as we stand
+here, on this shore, where they landed three hundred years ago?
+
+[Illustration]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] It is hoped that by the summer of 1921 a beautiful and dignified
+portico of granite will be raised as a final and permanent memorial over
+the rock, which will be moved for the last time--lowered to as near its
+original bed as possible. This work, which has been taken in charge by
+the National Society of Colonial Dames of America will be executed by
+McKim, Mead & White. The General Society of Mayflower Descendants are
+also working for the redemption of the first Pilgrim burial place on
+Cole's Hill. The Pilgrim Society is to assume the perpetual care of both
+memorial and lot.
+
+
+THE END
+
+_The Riverside Press_
+
+CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS
+
+U. S. A.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD COAST ROAD***
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Old Coast Road, by Agnes Rothery,
+Illustrated by Louis H. Ruyl
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Old Coast Road
+       From Boston to Plymouth
+
+
+Author: Agnes Rothery
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 21, 2007  [eBook #21895]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD COAST ROAD***
+
+
+E-text prepared by David Garcia, Josephine Paolucci, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 21895-h.htm or 21895-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/1/8/9/21895/21895-h/21895-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/1/8/9/21895/21895-h.zip)
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+      Minor typographical errors have been corrected.
+
+      Carats (^) designate a superscript (example: y^e, in
+      which the "e" is a superscript).
+
+      Footnotes have been moved to the end of each chapter.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD COAST ROAD
+
+From Boston to Plymouth
+
+by
+
+AGNES EDWARDS
+
+With Illustrations by Louis H. Ruyl
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company
+The Riverside Press Cambridge
+1920
+
+Copyright, 1920, by Agnes Edwards Pratt
+All Rights Reserved
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD COAST ROAD
+
+_From Boston to Plymouth_
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+BOSTON: A FOREWORD                                 ix
+
+I. DORCHESTER HEIGHTS AND THE OLD COAST
+ROAD                                                1
+
+II. MILTON AND THE BLUE HILLS                      19
+
+III. SHIPBUILDING AT QUINCY                        35
+
+IV. THE ROMANCE OF WEYMOUTH                        57
+
+V. ECCLESIASTICAL HINGHAM                          75
+
+VI. COHASSET LEDGES AND MARSHES                    92
+
+VII. THE SCITUATE SHORE                           111
+
+VIII. MARSHFIELD, THE HOME OF DANIEL WEBSTER      123
+
+IX. DUXBURY HOMES                                 142
+
+X. KINGSTON AND ITS MANUSCRIPTS                   157
+
+XI. PLYMOUTH                                      175
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+
+A BIT OF COMMERCIAL STREET IN WEYMOUTH   Frontispiece
+
+THE STATE HOUSE FROM PARK STREET                   ix
+
+MAP OF THE SOUTH SHORE                    _facing_  1
+
+DORCHESTER BAY                                      1
+
+OFF FOR PLYMOUTH BY THE OLD COAST ROAD             18
+
+GREAT BLUE HILL                                    19
+
+MILTON ESTATES                            _facing_ 20
+
+THE FORE RIVER SHIPYARD                            35
+
+THE ADAMS HOUSES IN QUINCY                         56
+
+THE WEYMOUTH WATER-FRONT                           57
+
+RATTLING ALONG THE OLD COAST ROAD                  74
+
+THE LINCOLN HOUSE IN HINGHAM                       75
+
+THE OLD SHIP MEETING-HOUSE                _facing_ 76
+
+INTERIOR OF THE NEW NORTH CHURCH IN HINGHAM,
+WITH ITS SLAVE GALLERIES                           91
+
+COHASSET LEDGES AND MINOT'S LEDGE LIGHT            92
+
+MODERN COHASSET                                   110
+
+DRYING SEA-MOSS AT SCITUATE HARBOR                111
+
+FOURTH CLIFF, SCITUATE                            122
+
+THE WEBSTER HOUSE                                 123
+
+MARSHFIELD MEADOWS                       _facing_ 136
+
+A DUXBURY COTTAGE                                 142
+
+A BAY VIEW TO DUXBURY BEACH                       156
+
+THE STANDISH MONUMENT AS SEEN FROM KINGSTON       157
+
+OLD RECORDS                                       174
+
+THE MEMORIAL BUILDING FOR THE TOWN OF
+PLYMOUTH, DESIGNED BY LITTLE AND RUSSELL,
+ARCHITECTS                                        175
+
+VIEW FROM STEPS OF BURIAL HILL, PLYMOUTH,
+SHOWING THE TOWN SQUARE, LEYDEN STREET,
+THE CHURCH OF THE PILGRIMAGE, THE FIRST
+CHURCH, AND, IN THE DISTANCE, THE PILGRIM
+MONUMENT IN PROVINCETOWN                 _facing_ 192
+
+CLARK'S ISLAND, PLYMOUTH                          203
+
+
+
+
+BOSTON: A FOREWORD
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+To love Boston or to laugh at Boston--it all depends on whether or not
+you are a Bostonian. Perhaps the happiest attitude--and the most
+intelligent--is tinged with both amusement and affection: amusement at
+the undeviating ceremonial of baked beans on Saturday night and fish
+balls on Sunday morning; at the Boston bag (not so ubiquitous now as
+formerly); at the indefatigable consumption of lectures; at the
+Bostonese pronunciation; affection for the honorable traditions, noble
+buildings, distinguished men and women. Boston is an old city--one must
+remember that it was settled almost three centuries ago--and old cities,
+like old people, become tenacious of their idiosyncrasies, admitting
+their inconsistencies and prejudices with complacency, wisely aware that
+age has bestowed on them a special value, which is automatically
+increased with the passage of time.
+
+To tell the story of an old city is like cutting down through the
+various layers of a fruity layer cake. When you turn the slice over, you
+see that every piece is a cross-section. So almost every locality and
+phase of this venerable metropolis could be studied, and really should
+be studied, according to its historical strata: Colonial, Provincial,
+Revolutionary, economic, and literary. All of these periods have piled
+up their associations one upon the other, and all of them must be
+somewhat understood if one would sincerely comprehend what has aptly
+been called not a city, but a "state of mind."
+
+It is as impossible for the casual sojourner to grasp the significance
+of the multifarious historical and literary events which have transpired
+here as for a few pages to outline them. Wherever one stands in Boston
+suggests the church of San Clemente in Rome, where, you remember, there
+are three churches built one upon the other. However, those who would
+take the lovely journey from Boston to Plymouth needs must make some
+survey, no matter how superficial, of their starting-place. And perhaps
+the best spot from which to begin is the Common.
+
+This pleasantly rolling expanse, which was set aside as long ago as
+1640, with the decree that "there shall be no land granted either for
+houseplott or garden out of y^e open land or common field," has been
+unbrokenly maintained ever since, and as far as acreage goes (it
+approximates fifty acres) could still fulfill its original use of
+pasturing cows, a practice which was continued until 1830. It was here
+that John Hancock's cattle grazed--he who lived in such magnificence on
+the hill, and in whose side yard the State House was built--and once,
+when preparations for an official banquet were halted by shortage of
+milk, tradition has it that he ordered his servants to hasten out on the
+Common and milk every cow there, regardless of ownership. Tradition also
+tells us that the little boy Ralph Waldo Emerson tended his mother's cow
+here; and finally both traditions and existing law declare that yonder
+one-story building opening upon Mount Vernon Street, and possessing an
+oddly wide door, must forever keep that door of sufficient width to let
+the cows pass through to the Common.
+
+Let us stand upon the steps of the State House and look out over the
+Common. To our right, near the intersection of Boylston and Tremont
+Streets, lies the half-forgotten, almost obliterated Central Burying
+Ground, the final resting-place of Gilbert Stuart, the famous American
+painter. At the left points the spire of Park Street Church, notable not
+for its age, for it is only a little over a century old, but for its
+charming beauty, and by the fact that William Lloyd Garrison delivered
+his first address here, and here "America" was sung in public for the
+first time. It was the windiness of this corner which was responsible
+for Tom Appleton's suggestion (he was the brother-in-law of Longfellow)
+that a shorn lamb be tethered here.
+
+The graceful spire of Park Street Church serves not only as a landmark,
+but is also a most fitting terminal to a street of many associations. It
+is on Park Street that the publishing house of Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
+(now Houghton Mifflin Company) has had its offices for forty years, and
+the bookstores and the antique shops tucked quaintly down a few steps
+below the level of the sidewalk have much of the flavor of a bit of
+London.
+
+Still standing on the State House steps, facing the Common, you are also
+facing what has been called the noblest monument in Boston and the most
+successfully placed one in America. It is Saint-Gaudens's bronze relief
+of Colonel Robert G. Shaw commanding his colored regiment, and if you
+see no other sculpture in a city which has its full quota you must see
+this memorial, spirited in execution, spiritual in its conception of a
+mighty moment.
+
+If we had time to linger we could not do better than to follow Beacon
+Street to the left, pausing at the Athenaeum, a library of such dignity
+and beauty that one instinctively, and properly, thinks of it as an
+institution rather than a mere building. To enjoy the Athenaeum one must
+be a "proprietor" and own a "share," which entitles one not only to the
+use of the scholarly volumes in scholarly seclusion, but also in the
+afternoon to entrance to an alcove where tea is served for three
+pennies. Perhaps here, as well as any other place, you may see a
+characteristic assortment of what are fondly called "Boston types."
+There is the professor from Cambridge, a gentleman with a pointed beard
+and a noticeably cultivated enunciation; one from Wellesley--this, a
+lady--with that keen and paradoxically impractical expression which
+marks pure intellectuality; an alert matron, plainly, almost shabbily,
+dressed (aristocratic Boston still scorns sartorial smartness); a very
+well-bred young girl with bone spectacles; a student, shabby, like the
+Back Bay matron, but for another reason; a writer; a business man whose
+hobby is Washingtonia. These, all of them, you may enjoy along with your
+cup of tea for three cents, if--and here is the crux--you can only be
+admitted in the first place. And if you are admitted, do not fail to
+look out of the rear windows upon the ancient Granary Burying Ground,
+where rest the ashes of Hancock, Sewall, Faneuil, Samuel Adams, Otis,
+Revere, and many more notables. If you have a penchant for graveyards,
+this one, entered from Tremont Street, is more than worthy of further
+study.
+
+This is one of the many things we could enjoyably do if we had time, but
+whether we have time or not we must pay our respects to the State House
+(one does not call it the Capitol in Boston, as in other cities), the
+prominence of whose golden dome is not unsuggestive, to those who recall
+it, of Saint Botolph's beacon tower in Boston, England, for which this
+city was named. The State House is a distinctively American building,
+and Bulfinch, the great American architect, did an excellent thing when
+he designed it. The dome was originally covered with plates of copper
+rolled by no other than that expert silversmith and robust patriot, Paul
+Revere--he whose midnight ride has been recited by so many generations
+of school-children, and whose exquisite flagons, cups, ladles, and sugar
+tongs not only compared with the best Continental work of that period,
+but have set a name and standard for American craftsmanship ever since.
+
+If you should walk up and down the chessboard of Beacon Hill--taking the
+knight's move occasionally across the narrow cross-streets--you could
+not help treading the very squares which were familiar to the feet of
+that generation of authors which has permanently stamped American
+literature. At 55 Beacon Street, down near the foot of the hill and
+facing the Common, still stands the handsome, swell-front, buff-brick
+house where Prescott, the historian, lived. On Mount Vernon Street
+(which runs parallel to Beacon, and which, with its dignified beauty,
+won the approval of that connoisseur of beautiful streets--Henry James)
+one can pick out successively the numbers 59, 76, 83, 84, the first and
+last being homes of Thomas Bailey Aldrich, and the other two
+distinguished by the residence of William Ellery Channing and Margaret
+Deland. Pinckney Street runs parallel with Mount Vernon, and the small,
+narrow house at number 20 was one of the homes of the Alcott family. It
+seems delightfully fitting that Louisburg Square--that very exclusive
+and very English spot which probably retains more of the quaint
+atmosphere and customs of an aristocratic past than any other single
+area in the city--should have been the home of the well-beloved William
+Dean Howells. One also likes to recall that Jenny Lind was married at
+number 20. Chestnut Street--which after a period of social obscurity is
+again coming into its own--possesses Julia Ward Howe's house at number
+13, that of Motley the historian at 16, and of Parkman at 50. In this
+hasty map we have gone up and down the hill, but the cross-street,
+Charles, although not so attractive, is nevertheless as rich in literary
+associations as any in Boston. Here lived, for a short time, at 164,
+Oliver Wendell Holmes, and at 131--also for a short time--Thomas Bailey
+Aldrich. It is, however, at 148, that we should longest pause. This, for
+many rich years, was the home of James T. Fields, that delightful man of
+letters who was the friend of many men of letters; he who entertained
+Dickens and Thackeray, and practically every foreign writer of note who
+visited this country; he who encouraged Hawthorne to the completion of
+the "Scarlet Letter," and he, who, as an appreciative critic, publisher,
+and editor, probably did more to elevate, inspire, and sustain the
+general literary tone of the city than any other single person. In these
+stirring days facile American genius springs up, like brush fires, from
+coast to coast. Novels pour in from the West, the Middle West, the
+South. To superficial outsiders it may seem as if Boston might be
+hard-pressed to keep her laurels green, but Boston herself has no
+fears. Her present may not shine with so unique a brilliance as her
+past, but her past gains in luster with each succeeding year. Nothing
+can ever take from Boston her high literary prestige.
+
+While we are still on Beacon Hill we can look out, not only upon the
+past, but upon the future. Those white domes and pillars gleaming like
+Greek temples across the blue Charles, are the new buildings of the
+Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and surely Greek temples were
+never lovelier, nor dedicated to more earnest pursuit of things not
+mundane. Quite as beautiful and quite as Grecian as the Technology
+buildings is the noble marble group of the School of Medicine of Harvard
+University, out by the Fenlands--that section of the city which is
+rapidly becoming a students' quarter, with its Simmons College, the New
+England Conservatory of Music, art schools, gymnasiums, private and
+technical schools of all descriptions, and its body of over 12,000
+students. Harvard is, of course, across the river in Cambridge, and
+preparatory schools and colleges dot the suburbs in every direction,
+upholding the cultural traditions of a city which has proved itself
+peculiarly fitted to educational interests.
+
+All this time we have, like _bona-fide_ Bostonians, stayed on Beacon
+Hill, and merely looked out at the rest of the city. And perhaps this is
+as typical a thing as we could have done. Beacon Hill was the center of
+original Boston, when the Back Bay was merely a marsh, and long after
+the marsh was filled in and streets were laid out and handsome
+residences lined them, Beacon Hill looked down scornfully at the new
+section and murmured that it was built upon the discarded hoopskirts and
+umbrellas of the true Bostonians. Even when almost every one was crowded
+off the Hill and the Back Bay became the more aristocratic section of
+the two, there were still enough of the original inhabitants left to
+scorn these upstart social pretensions. And now Beacon Hill is again
+coming back into her own: the fine old houses are being carefully,
+almost worshipfully restored, probably never again to lose their
+rightful place in the general life of the city.
+
+But if Beacon Hill was conservative in regard to the Back Bay, that
+district, in its turn, showed an equal unprogressiveness in regard to
+the Esplanade. To the stranger in Boston, delighting in that magnificent
+walk along the Charles River Embankment, with the arching spans of the
+Cambridge and Harvard bridges on one side, and the homes of wealth and
+mellow refinement on the other--a walk which for invigorating beauty
+compares with any in the cities of men--it seems incredible that when
+this promenade was laid out a few years ago, the householders along the
+water's edge absolutely refused to turn their front windows away from
+Beacon Street. Furthermore, they ignored the fact that their back yards
+and back windows presented an unbecoming face to such an incomparably
+lovely promenade, and the inevitable household rearrangement--by which
+the drawing-rooms were placed in the rear--was literally years in
+process of achievement. But such conservatism is one of Boston's
+idiosyncrasies, which we must accept like the wind and the flat A.
+
+Present-day Bostonians are proud--and properly so--of their Copley
+Square, with its Public Library, rich with the mural paintings of Puvis
+de Chavannes, with Abbey's "Quest of the Holy Grail," and Sargent's
+"Frieze of the Prophets"; with its well-loved Trinity Church and with
+much excellent sculpture by Bela Pratt. Copley Square is the cultural
+center of modern Boston. The famous Lowell lectures--established about
+seventy-five years ago as free gifts to the people--are enthusiastically
+attended by audiences as Bostonese as one could hope to congregate; and
+in all sorts of queer nests in this vicinity are Theosophical
+reading-rooms, small halls where Buddhism is studied or New Thought
+taught, and half a hundred very new or very old philosophies, religions,
+fads, fashions, reforms, and isms find shelter. It is easy to linger in
+Copley Square: indeed, hundreds and hundreds of men and
+women--principally women--come from all over the United States for the
+sole purpose of spending a few months or a season in this very place,
+enjoying the lectures, concerts, and art exhibitions which are so easily
+and freely accessible. But in this bird's-eye flight across the
+historical and geographical map of a city that tempts one to many
+pleasant delays, we must hover for a brief moment over the South and the
+North Ends.
+
+Skipping back, then, almost three centuries, but not traveling far as
+distance goes, the stranger in Boston cannot do better than to find his
+way from Copley Square to the Old South Church on Washington
+Street--that venerable building whose desecration by the British troops
+in 1775 the citizens found it so hard ever to forgive. It was here that
+Benjamin Franklin was baptized in 1706; here that Joseph Warren made a
+dramatic entry to the pulpit by way of the window in order to denounce
+the British soldiers; and here that momentous meetings were held in the
+heaving days before the Revolution. The Old South Church Burying Ground
+is now called the King's Chapel Burying Ground, and King's Chapel
+itself--a quaint, dusky building, suggestive of a London chapel--is only
+a few blocks away. Across its doorsill have not only stepped the Royal
+Governors of pre-Revolutionary days, but Washington, General Gage, the
+indestructibly romantic figures of Sir Harry Frankland and Agnes
+Surriage; the funeral processions of General Warren and Charles Sumner.
+The organ, which came from England in 1756, is said to have been
+selected by Handel at the request of King George, and along the walls of
+the original King's Chapel were hung the escutcheons of the Kings of
+England and of the Royal Governors.
+
+The Old State House is in this vicinity and is worthy--as are, indeed,
+both the Old South Church and King's Chapel--of careful architectural
+study and enjoyment. There are portraits, pictures, relics, and rooms
+within, and without the beautifully quaint lines and truly lovely
+details of the facade infuse a perpetual charm into the atmosphere of
+the city. It was directly in front of this building that the Boston
+Massacre took place in 1770, and from this second-story balcony that
+the repeal of the Stamp Act was read, and ten years later the full text
+of the Declaration of Independence.
+
+Perhaps the next most interesting building in this section of old Boston
+is Faneuil Hall, the "Cradle of Liberty" whose dignified, old-fashioned
+proportions were not lost--thanks to Bulfinch--when it was enlarged. A
+gift of a public-spirited citizen, this building has served in a double
+capacity for a hundred and seventy-seven years, having public
+market-stalls below and a large hall above--a hall which is never
+rented, but used freely by the people whenever they wish to discuss
+public affairs. It would be impossible to enumerate the notable speakers
+and meetings which have rendered this hall famous, from General Gage
+down to Daniel Webster, Theodore Roosevelt, and Marshal Joffre.
+
+If you are fond of water sights and smells you can step from Faneuil
+Hall down to a region permeated with the flavor of salt and the sound of
+shipping, a region of both ancient tradition and present activity. Here
+is India Wharf, its seven-story yellow-brick building once so
+tremendously significant of Boston's shipping prosperity; Long Wharf, so
+named because when it was built it was the longest in the country, and
+bore a battery at its end; Central Wharf, with its row of venerable
+stone warehouses; T Wharf, immensely picturesque with its congestion of
+craft of all descriptions; Commercial Wharf, where full-rigged sailing
+vessels which traded with China and India and the Cape of Good Hope were
+wont to anchor a hundred years ago. All this region is crammed with the
+paraphernalia of a typical water-front: curious little shops where
+sailors' supplies are sold; airy lofts where sails are cut and stitched
+and repaired; fish stores of all descriptions; sailors' haunts, awaiting
+the pen of an American Thomas Burke. The old Custom House where
+Hawthorne unwillingly plodded through his enforced routine is here, and
+near it the new Custom House rears its tower four hundred and
+ninety-eight feet above the sidewalk, a beacon from both land and sea.
+
+The North End of Boston has not fared as well as the South End. The sons
+of Abraham and immigrants from Italy have appropriated the streets,
+dwellings, churches, and shops of the entire region, and even Christ
+Church (the famous Old North Church) has a Chiesa Italiana on its
+grounds. There are many touches to stir the memory in this Old North
+Church. The chime of eight bells naively stating, "We are the first ring
+of bells cast for the British Empire in North America"; the pew with the
+inscription that is set apart for the use of the "Gentlemen of Bay of
+Honduras"--visiting merchants who contributed the spire to the church in
+1740; vaults beneath the church, forbidden now to visitors, where lie
+the bones of many Revolutionary heroes; a unique collection of
+vellum-covered books, and a few highly precious pieces of ancient
+furniture. The most conspicuous item about the church, of course, is
+that from its tower were hung the signal lanterns of Paul Revere,
+destined to shine imperishably down the ever-lengthening aisles of
+American history.
+
+Before we press on to Bunker Hill--for that is our final destination--we
+should cast a glance at Copp's Hill Burying Ground, that hillside refuge
+where one can turn either back to the annals of the past or look out
+over the roof-tops and narrow streets to the present and the future. If
+you chose the latter, you can see easily Boston Harbor and Charlestown
+Navy Yard--that navy yard which has outstripped even its spectacular
+traditions by its stirring achievements in the Great War. "Old
+Ironsides" will lie here forever in the well-earned serenity of a secure
+old age, and it is probable that another visitor, the Kronprinzessin
+Cecilie, although lost under the name of the Mount Vernon and a coat of
+gray paint, will be long preserved in maritime memory.
+
+The plain shaft of Bunker Hill Monument, standing to mark the spot where
+the Americans lost a battle that was, in reality, a victory, is like a
+blank mirror, reflecting only that which one presents to it. According
+to your historical knowledge and your emotional grasp Bunker Hill
+Monument is significant.
+
+Skimming thus over the many-storied city, in a sort of literary
+airplane, it has been possible to point out only a few of the most
+conspicuous places and towers. The Common lies like a tiny pocket
+handkerchief of path-marked green at the foot of crowded Beacon Hill;
+the white Esplanade curves beside the blue Charles; the Back Bay is only
+a checkerboard of streets, alphabetically arranged; Copley Square is
+hardly distinguishable. The spires of the Old South Church, King's
+Chapel, the Old State House, and Faneuil Hall punctuate the South End;
+the North Church, the North End. The new Custom House Tower and Bunker
+Hill Monument seem hardly more than the minarets of a child's toy
+village.
+
+The writer, as a pilot over this particular city, alights and resigns,
+commending for more detailed study, and for delightful guidance, Robert
+Shackleton's "Book of Boston." Let us now leave the city and set out in
+a more leisurely fashion on our way to Plymouth.
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD COAST ROAD
+
+_From Boston to Plymouth_
+
+[Illustration: THE SOUTH SHORE OFMASSACHUSETTS BAY]
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD COAST ROAD
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+DORCHESTER HEIGHTS AND THE OLD COAST ROAD
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+The very earliest of the great roads in New England was the Old Coast
+Road, connecting Boston with Plymouth--capitals of separate colonies. Do
+we, casually accepting the fruit of three hundred years of toil on this
+continent--do we, accustomed to smooth highways and swift and easy
+transportation, realize the significance of such a road?
+
+A road is the symbol of the civilization which has produced it. The main
+passageway from the shore of the Yellow Sea to the capital of Korea,
+although it has been pressed for centuries immemorial by myriads of
+human feet, has never been more than a bridle path. On the other hand,
+wherever the great Roman Empire stepped, it engineered mighty
+thoroughfares which are a marvel to this day. A road is the thread on
+which the beads of history are strung; the beads of peace as well as
+those of war. Thrilling as is the progress of aerial navigation, with
+its infinite possibilities of human intercourse, yet surely, when the
+entire history of man is unrolled, the moment of the conception of
+building a wide and permanent road, instead of merely using a trail,
+will rank as equally dramatic. The first stone laid by the first Roman
+(they to whom the idea of road-building was original) will be recognized
+as significant as the quiver of the wings of the first airplane.
+
+Let us follow the old road from Boston to Plymouth: follow it, not with
+undue exactitude, and rather too hastily, as is the modern way, but
+comfortably, as is also the modern way, picking up what bits of quaint
+lore and half-forgotten history we most easily may.
+
+I think that as we start down this historic highway, we shall
+encounter--if our mood be the proper one in which to undertake such a
+journey--a curious procession coming down the years to meet us. We shall
+not call them ghosts, for they are not phantoms severed from earth, but,
+rather, the permanent possessors of the highway which they helped
+create.
+
+We shall meet the Indian first, running lightly on straight, moccasined
+feet, along the trail from which he has burned, from time to time, the
+underbrush. He does not go by land when he can go by water, but in this
+case there are both land and water to meet, for many are the streams,
+and they are unbridged as yet. With rhythmic lope, more beautiful than
+the stride of any civilized limbs, and with a sure divination of the
+best route, he chooses the trail which will ultimately be the highway of
+the vast army of pale-faces. Speed on, O solitary Indian--to vanish down
+the narrow trail of your treading as you are destined, in time, to
+vanish forever from the vision of New England!... Behind the red runner
+plod two stern-faced Pilgrims, pushing their way up from Plymouth toward
+the newer settlement at Massachusetts Bay. They come slowly and
+laboriously on foot, their guns cocked, eyes and ears alert, wading the
+streams without complaint or comment. They keep together, for no one is
+allowed to travel over this Old Coast Road single, "nor without some
+arms, though two or three together." The path they take follows almost
+exactly the trail of the Indian, seeking the fords, avoiding the
+morasses, clinging to the uplands, and skirting the rough, wooded
+heights.... After them--almost a decade after--we see a man on
+horseback, with his wife on a pillion behind him. They carry their own
+provisions and those for the beast, now and then dismounting to lead the
+horse over difficult ground, and now and then blazing a tree to help
+them in their return journey--mute testimony to the cruder senses of the
+white man to whom woodcraft never becomes instinctive. The fact that
+this couple possesses a horse presages great changes in New England.
+Ferries will be established; tolls levied, bridges thrown across the
+streams which now the horses swim, or cross by having their front feet
+in one canoe ferry and their hind feet in another--the canoes being
+lashed together. As yet we see no vehicle of any kind, except an
+occasional sedan chair. (The first one of these of which we have
+knowledge was presented to Governor Winthrop as a portion of a capture
+from a Spanish galleon.) However, these are not common. In 1631 Governor
+Endicott of Salem wrote that he could not get to Boston to visit
+Governor Winthrop as he was not well enough to wade the streams. The
+next year we read of Governor Winthrop surmounting the difficulty when
+he goes to visit Governor Bradford, by being carried on the backs of
+Indians across the fords. (It took him two days to make the journey.)
+
+It is not strange that we see no wheeled vehicles. In 1672 there were
+only six stage-coaches in the whole of Great Britain, and they were the
+occasion of a pamphlet protesting that they encouraged too much travel!
+At this time Boston had one private coach. Although one swallow may not
+make a summer, one stage-coach marks the beginning of a new era. The age
+of walking and horseback riding approaches its end; gates and bars
+disappear, the crooked farm lanes are gradually straightened; and in
+come a motley procession of chaises, sulkies, and two-wheeled
+carts--two-wheeled carts, not four. There are sleds and sleighs for
+winter, but the four-wheeled wagon was little used in New England until
+the turn of the century. And then they were emphatically objected to
+because of the wear and tear on the roads! In 1669 Boston enacted that
+all carts "within y^e necke of Boston shall be and goe without shod
+wheels." This provision is entirely comprehensible, when we remember
+that there was no idea of systematic road repair. No tax was imposed for
+keeping the roads in order, and at certain seasons of the year every
+able-bodied man labored on the highways, bringing his own oxen, cart,
+and tools.
+
+But as the Old Coast Road, which was made a public highway in 1639,
+becomes a genuine turnpike--so chartered in 1803--the good old coaching
+days are ushered in with the sound of a horn, and handsome equipages
+with well-groomed, well-harnessed horses ply swiftly back and forth.
+Genial inns, with swinging pictorial signboards (for many a traveler
+cannot read), spring up along the way, and the post is installed.
+
+But even with fair roads and regular coaching service, New England,
+separated by her fixed topographical outlines, remains provincial. It is
+not until the coming of the railroad, in the middle of the nineteenth
+century, that the hills are overcome, and she ceases to be an
+exclusively coastwise community and becomes an integral factor in the
+economic development of the whole United States.
+
+Thus, then, from a thin thread of a trail barely wide enough for one
+moccasined foot to step before the other, to a broad, leveled
+thoroughfare, so wide that three or even four automobiles may ride
+abreast, and so clean that at the end of an all-day's journey one's
+face is hardly dusty, does the history of the Old Coast Road unroll
+itself. We who contemplate making the trip ensconced in the upholstered
+comfort of a machine rolling on air-filled tires, will, perhaps, be less
+petulant of some strip of roughened macadam, less bewildered by the
+characteristic windings, if we recall something of the first
+back-breaking cart that--not so very long ago--crashed over the stony
+road, and toilsomely worked its way from devious lane to lane.
+
+Before we start down the Old Coast Road it may be enlightening to get a
+bird's-eye glimpse of it actually as we have historically, and for such
+a glimpse there is no better place than on the topmost balcony of the
+Soldier's Monument on Dorchester Heights. The trip to Dorchester
+Heights, in South Boston, is, through whatever environs one approaches
+it, far from attractive. This section of the city, endowed with
+extraordinary natural beauty and advantage of both land and water, and
+irrevocably and brilliantly graven upon the annals of American history,
+has been allowed to lose its ancient prestige and to sink low indeed in
+the social scale.
+
+Nevertheless it is to Dorchester Heights that we, as travelers down the
+Old Coast Road, and as skimmers over the quickly turning pages of our
+early New England history, must go, and having once arrived at that
+lovely green eminence, whitely pointed with a marble shaft of quite
+unusual excellence, we must grieve once more that this truly glorious
+spot, with its unparalleled view far down the many-islanded harbor to
+the east and far over the famous city to the west, is not more
+frequented, more enjoyed, more honored.
+
+If you find your way up the hill, into the monument, and up the stairs
+out to the balcony, probably you will encounter no other tourist. Only
+when you reach the top and emerge into the blue upper air you will meet
+those friendly winged visitors who frequent all spires--Saint Mark's in
+Venice or the Soldier's Monument in South Boston--the pigeons! Yes, the
+pigeons have discovered the charm of this lofty loveliness, and
+whenever the caretaker turns away his vigilant eye, they haste to build
+their nests on balcony or stair. They alone of Boston's residents enjoy
+to the full that of which too many Bostonians ignore the existence. Will
+you read the inscriptions first and recall the events which have raised
+this special hill to an historic eminence equal to its topographical
+one? Or will you look out first, on all sides and see the harbor, the
+city and country as it is to-day? Both surveys will be brief; perhaps we
+will begin with the latter.
+
+Before us, to the wide east, lies Boston Harbor, decked with islands so
+various, so fascinating in contour and legend, that more than one volume
+has been written about them and not yet an adequate one. From the point
+of view of history these islands are pulsating with life. From Castle
+Island (on the left) which was selected as far back as 1634 to be a
+bulwark of the port, and which, with its Fort Independence, was where
+many of our Civil War soldiers received their training, to the outline
+of Squantum (on the right), where in October, 1917, there lay a marsh,
+and where, ten months later, the destroyer Delphy was launched from a
+shipyard that was a miracle of modern engineering--every mile of visible
+land is instinct with war-time associations.
+
+But history is more than battles and forts and the paraphernalia of war;
+history is economic development as well. And from this same balcony we
+can pick out Thompson's, Rainsford, and Deer Island, set aside for huge
+corrective institutions--a graphic example of a nation's progress in its
+treatment of the wayward and the weak.
+
+But if history is more than wars, it is also more than institutions. If
+it is the record of man's daily life, the pleasures he works for, then
+again we are standing in an unparalleled spot to look down upon its
+present-day manifestations. From City Point with its Aquarium, from the
+Marine Park with its long pleasure pier, to Nantasket with its flawless
+beach, this is the summer playground of unnumbered hosts. Boaters,
+bathers, picnickers--all find their way here, where not only the cool
+breezes sweep their city-heated cheeks, but the forever bewitching
+passage of vessels in and out, furnishes endless entertainment. They
+know well, these laughing pleasure-seekers, crowding the piers and boats
+and wharves and beaches, where to come for refreshment, and now and
+then, in the history of the harbor, a solitary individual has taken
+advantage of the romantic charm which is the unique heritage of every
+island, and has built his home and lived, at least some portion of his
+days, upon one.
+
+Apple Island, that most perfectly shaped little fleck of land of ten
+acres, was the home of a Mr. March, an Englishman who settled there with
+his family, and lived there happily until his death, being buried at
+last upon its western slope. The fine old elms which adorned it are gone
+now, as have the fine old associations. No one followed Mr. March's
+example, and Apple Island is now merely another excursion point.
+
+On Calf Island, another ten-acre fragment, one of America's popular
+actresses, Julia Arthur, has her home. Thus, here and there, one
+stumbles upon individuals or small communities who have chosen to live
+out in the harbor. But one cannot help wondering how such beauty spots
+have escaped being more loved and lived upon by men and women who
+recognize the romantic lure which only an island can possess.
+
+Of course the advantage of these positions has been utilized, if not for
+dwellings. Government buildings, warehouses, and the great sewage plant
+all find convenient foothold here. The excursionists have ferreted out
+whatever beaches and groves there may be. One need not regret that the
+harbor is not appreciated, but only that it has not been developed along
+aesthetic as well as useful lines.
+
+We have been looking at the east, which is the harbor view. If we look
+to the west we see the city of Boston: the white tower of the Custom
+House; the gold dome of the State House; the sheds of the great South
+Station; the blue line of the Charles River. Here is the place to come
+if one would see a living map of the city and its environs. Standing
+here we realize how truly Boston is a maritime city, and standing here
+we also realize how it is that Dorchester Heights won its fame.
+
+It was in the winter of 1776, when the British, under Lord Howe, were
+occupying Boston, and had fortified every place which seemed important.
+By some curious oversight--which seems incredible to us as we actually
+stand upon the top of this conspicuous hill--they forgot this spot.
+
+When Washington saw what they had not seen--how this unique position
+commanded both the city and the harbor--he knew that his opportunity had
+come. He had no adequate cannon or siege guns, and the story of how
+Henry Knox--afterward General Knox--obtained these from Ticonderoga and
+brought them on, in the face of terrific difficulties of weather and
+terrain, is one that for bravery and brains will never fail to thrill.
+On the night of March 4, the Americans, keeping up a cannonading to
+throw the British off guard, and to cover up the sound of the moving,
+managed to get two thousand Continental troops and four hundred carts of
+fascines and intrenching tools up on the hill. That same night, with the
+aid of the moonlight, they threw up two redoubts--performing a task,
+which, as Lord Howe exclaimed in dismay the following morning, was "more
+in one night than my whole army could have done in a month."
+
+The occupation of the heights was a magnificent _coup_. The moment the
+British saw what had been done, they realized that they had lost the
+fight. However, Lord Percy hurried to make an attack, but the weather
+made it impossible, and by the time the weather cleared the Americans
+were so strongly intrenched that it was futile to attack. Washington,
+although having been granted permission by Congress to attack Boston,
+wished to save the loyal city if possible. Therefore, he and Howe made
+an agreement by which Howe was to evacuate and Washington was to refrain
+from using his guns. After almost two weeks of preparation for
+departure, on March 17 the British fleet, as the gilded letters on the
+white marble panel tell us, in the words of Charles W. Eliot:
+
+          Carrying 11,000 effective men
+                And 1000 refugees
+        Dropped down to Nantasket Roads
+                  And thenceforth
+                  Boston was free
+                A strong British force
+                  Had been expelled
+    From one of the United American colonies
+
+The white marble panel, with its gold letters and the other inscriptions
+on the hill, tell the whole story to whoever cares to read, only
+omitting to mention that the thousand self-condemned Boston refugees who
+sailed away with the British fleet were bound for Halifax, and that that
+was the beginning of the opprobrious term: "Go to Halifax."
+
+That the battle was won without bloodshed in no way minimizes the
+verdict of history that "no single event had a greater general effect on
+the course of the war than the expulsion of the British from the New
+England capital." And surely this same verdict justifies the perpetual
+distinction of this unique and beautiful hill.
+
+This, then, is the story of Dorchester Heights--a story whose glory will
+wax rather than wane in the years, and centuries, to come. Let us be
+glad that out of the reek of the modern city congestion this green hill
+has been preserved and this white marble monument erected. Perhaps you
+see it now with different, more sympathetic eyes than when you first
+looked out from the balcony platform. Before us lies the water with its
+multifarious islands, bays, promontories, and coves, some of which we
+shall now explore. Behind us lies the city which we shall now leave. The
+Old Coast Road--the oldest in New England--winds from Boston to
+Plymouth, along yonder southern horizon. More history than one person
+can pleasantly relate, or one can comfortably listen to, lies packed
+along this ancient turnpike: incidents closer set than the tombs along
+the Appian Way. We will not try to hear them all. Neither will we follow
+the original road too closely, for we seek the beautiful pleasure drive
+of to-day more than the historic highway of long ago.
+
+Boston was made the capital of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1632.
+Plymouth was a capital a decade before. It is to Plymouth that we now
+set out.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+MILTON AND THE BLUE HILLS
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Milton--a town of dignity and distinction! A town of enterprise and
+character! Ever since the first water-power mill in this country; the
+first powder mill in this country; the first chocolate mill in this
+country, and thus through a whole line of "first" things--the first
+violoncello, the first pianoforte, the first artificial spring leg, and
+the first railroad to see the light of day saw it in this grand old
+town--the name of Milton has been synonymous with initiative and men and
+women of character.
+
+Few people to-day think of Milton in terms of industrial repute, but,
+rather, as a place of estates, too aristocratic to be fashionable, of
+historic houses, and of charming walks and drives and views. Many of
+the old families who have given the town its prestige still live in
+their ancestral manors, and many of the families who have moved there in
+recent years are of such sort as will heighten the fame of the famous
+town. As the stranger passes through Milton he is captivated by glimpses
+of ancient homesteads, settling behind their white Colonial fences
+topped with white Colonial urns, half hidden by their antique trees with
+an air of comfortable ease; of new houses, elegant and yet informal; of
+cottages with low roofs; of well-bred children playing on the wide,
+green lawns under the supervision of white-uniformed nurses; of old
+hedges, old walls, old trees; new roads, old drives, new gardens, and
+old gardens--everything well placed, well tended, everything presenting
+that indescribable atmosphere of well-established prosperity that scorns
+show; of breeding that neither parades nor conceals its quality.
+Yes--this is Milton; this is modern Milton. Boston society receives some
+of its most prominent contributions from this patrician source. But
+modern Milton is something more than this, as old Milton was something
+more than this.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+For Milton, from this day of its birth, and countless centuries before
+its birth as a town, has lived under the lofty domination of the Blue
+Hills, that range of diaphanous and yet intense blue, that swims forever
+against the sky, that marches forever around the horizon. The rounded
+summits of the Blue Hills, to which the eye is irresistibly attracted
+before entering the town which principally claims them, are the
+worn-down stumps of ancient mountains, and although so leveled by the
+process of the ages, they are still the highest land near the coast from
+Maine to Mexico. These eighteen or twenty skyey crests form the southern
+boundary of the so-called Boston Basin, and are the most prominent
+feature of the southern coast. From them the Massachuset tribe about the
+Bay derived its name, signifying "Near the Great Hills," which name was
+changed by the English to Massachusetts, and applied to both bay and
+colony. Although its Indian name has been taken from this lovely range,
+the loveliness remains. All the surrounding country shimmers under the
+mysterious bloom of these heights, so vast that everything else is
+dwarfed beside them, and yet so curiously airy that they seem to
+perpetually ripple against the sky. The Great Blue Hill, especially--the
+one which bears an observatory on its summit--swims above one's head. It
+seems to have a singular way of moving from point to point as one
+motors, and although one may be forced to admit that this may be due
+more to the winding roads than to the illusiveness of the hill, still
+the buoyant effect is the same.
+
+Ruskin declares somewhere, with his quaint and characteristic mixture of
+positiveness and idealism, that "inhabitants of granite countries have a
+force and healthiness of character about them that clearly distinguishes
+them from the inhabitants of less pure districts." Perhaps he was right,
+for surely here where the succeeding generations have all lived in the
+atmosphere of the marching Blue Hill, each has through its own fair
+name, done honor to the fair names which have preceded it.
+
+One of the very first to be attracted by the lofty and yet lovely appeal
+of this region was Governor Thomas Hutchinson, the last of the Royal
+Governors Massachusetts was to know. It was about the middle of the
+eighteenth century that this gentleman, of whom John Adams wrote, "He
+had been admired, revered, and almost adored," chose as the spot for his
+house the height above the Neponset River. If we follow the old country
+Heigh Waye to the top of Unquity (now Milton) Hill, we will find the
+place he chose, although the house he built has gone and another stands
+in its place. Fairly near the road, it overlooked a rolling green meadow
+(a meadow which, by the gift of John Murray Forbes, will always be kept
+open), with a flat green marsh at its feet and the wide flat twist of
+the Neponset River winding through it, for all the world like a
+decorative panel by Puvis de Chavannes. One can see a bit of the North
+Shore and Boston Harbor from here. This is the view that the Governor so
+admired, and tradition tells us that when he was forced to return to
+England he walked on foot down the hill, shaking hands with his
+neighbors, patriot and Tory alike, with tears in his eyes as he left
+behind him the garden and the trees he had planted, and the house where
+he had so happily lived. Although the view from the front of the house
+is exquisite, the view from the back holds even more intimate
+attraction. Here is the old, old garden, and although the ephemeral
+blossoms of the present springtime shine brightly forth, the box, full
+twenty feet high, speaks of another epoch. Foxgloves lean against the
+"pleached alley," and roses clamber on a wall that doubtless bore the
+weight of their first progenitors.
+
+Another governor who chose to live in Milton was Jonathan Belcher, but
+one fancies it was the grandness rather than the sweetness of the scene
+which attracted this rather spectacular person. The Belcher house still
+exists, as does the portrait of its master, in his wig and velvet coat
+and waistcoat, trimmed with richest gold lace at the neck and wrists.
+Small-clothes and gold knee and shoe buckles complete the picture of one
+who, when his mansion was planned, insisted upon an avenue fifty feet
+wide, and so nicely graded that visitors on entering from the street
+might see the gleam of his gold knee buckles as he stood on the distant
+porch. The avenue, however, was never completed, as Belcher was
+appointed governor of, and transferred to, New Jersey shortly after.
+
+Two other men of note, who, since the days of our years are but
+threescore and ten, chose that their days without number should be spent
+in the town they loved, were Wendell Phillips and Rimmer the sculptor,
+who are both buried at Milton.
+
+Not only notable personages, but notable events have been engendered
+under the shadow of these hills. The Suffolk Resolves, which were the
+prelude of the Declaration of Independence, were adopted at the Vose
+House, which still stands, square and unadorned, easy of access from the
+sidewalk, as is suitable for a home of democracy. The first piano ever
+made in this country received its conception and was brought to
+fulfillment in the Crehore house, which, although still sagging a bit,
+is by no means out of commission. And Wilde's Tavern, where was formed
+the public opinion in a day when the forming of public opinion was of
+preeminent importance, still retains, in its broad, hospitable lines,
+some shred of its ancient charm.
+
+Milton is full of history. From the Revolutionary days, when the
+cannonading at Bunker Hill shook the foundations of the houses, but not
+the nerves of the Milton ladies, down to the year 1919, when the Fourth
+Liberty Loan of $2,955,250 was subscribed from a population of 9000, all
+the various vicissitudes of peace and war have been sustained on the
+high level that one might expect from men and women nobly nurtured by
+the strength of the hills.
+
+How much of its success Milton attributes to its location--for one
+joins, indeed, a distinguished fellowship when one builds upon a hill,
+or on several hills, as Roman as well as Bostonian history
+testifies--can only be guessed by its tribute in the form of the Blue
+Hills Reservation. This State recreation park and forest reserve of
+about four thousand acres--a labyrinth of idyllic footpaths and leafy
+trails, of twisting drives and walks that open out upon superb vistas,
+is now the property of the people of Massachusetts. The granite quarry
+man--far more interested in the value of the stone that underlay the
+wooded slopes than in Ruskin's theory of its purifying effect upon the
+inhabitants--had already obtained a footing here, when, under the able
+leadership of Charles Francis Adams, the whole region was taken over by
+the State in 1894.
+
+As you pass through the Reservation--and if you are taking even the most
+cursory glimpse of Milton you must include some portion of this
+park--you will pass the open space where in the early days, when Milton
+country life was modeled upon English country life more closely than
+now, Malcolm Forbes raced upon his private track the horses he himself
+had bred. The race-track with its judges' stands is still there, but
+there are no more horse-races, although the Forbes family still holds a
+conspicuous place in all the social as well as the philanthropic
+enterprises of the countryside. You may see, too, a solitary figure
+with a scientist's stoop, or a tutor with a group of boys, making a
+first-hand study of a region which is full of interest to the geologist.
+
+Circling thus around the base of the Great Blue Hill and irresistibly
+drawn closer and closer to it as by a magnet, one is impelled to make
+the ascent to the top--an easy ascent with its destination clearly
+marked by the Rotch Meteorological Observatory erected in 1884 by the
+late A. Lawrence Rotch of Milton, who bequeathed funds for its
+maintenance. It is now connected with Harvard University.
+
+Once at the top the eye is overwhelmed by a circuit of more than a
+hundred and fifty miles! It is almost too immense at first--almost as
+barren as an empty expanse of rolling green sea. But as the eye grows
+accustomed to the stretching distances, objects both near and far begin
+to appear. And soon, if the day is clear, buildings may be identified in
+more than one hundred and twenty-five villages. We are six hundred and
+thirty-five feet above the sea, on the highest coastland from
+Agamenticus, near York, Maine, to the Rio Grande, and the panorama thus
+unrolled is truly magnificent. Facing northerly we can easily
+distinguish Cambridge, Somerville, and Malden, and far beyond the hills
+of Andover and Georgetown. A little to the east, Boston with its gilded
+dome; then the harbor with its islands, headlands, and fortifications.
+Beyond that are distinctly visible various points on the North Shore, as
+far as Eastern Point Lighthouse in Gloucester. Forty miles to the
+northeast appear the twin lighthouses on Thatcher's Island, seeming,
+from here, to be standing, not on the land, but out in the ocean. Nearer
+and more distinct is Boston Light--a sentinel at the entrance to the
+harbor, while beyond it stretches Massachusetts Bay. Turning nearly east
+the eye, passing over Chickatawbut Hill--three miles off and second in
+height of the Blue Hills--follows the beautiful curve of Nantasket
+Beach, and the pointing finger of Minot's Light. Facing nearly south,
+the long ridge of Manomet Hill in Plymouth, thirty-three miles away,
+stands clear against the sky, while twenty-six miles away, in Duxbury,
+one sees the Myles Standish Monument. Directly south rises the smoke of
+the city of Fall River; to the westerly, Woonsocket, and continuing to
+the west, Mount Wachusett in Princeton. Far to the right of Wachusett,
+nearly over the dome of the Dedham Courthouse, rounds up Watatic in
+Ashburnham, and northwest a dozen peaks of southern New Hampshire. At
+the right of Watatic and far beyond it is the Grand Monadnock in
+Jaffrey, 3170 feet above the sea and sixty-seven and a half miles away.
+On the right of Grand Monadnock is a group of nearer summits: Mount
+Kidder, exactly northwest; Spofford and Temple Mountains; then appears
+the remarkable Pack-Monadnock, near Peterboro, with its two equal
+summits. The next group to the right is in Lyndeboro. At the right of
+Lyndeboro, and nearly over the Readville railroad stations, is Joe
+English Hill, and to complete the round, nearly north-northwest are the
+summits of the Uncanoonuc Mountains, fifty-nine miles away.
+
+This, then, is the Great Blue Hill of Milton. Those who are familiar
+with the State of Massachusetts--and New England--can stand here and
+pick out a hundred distinguishing landmarks, and those who have never
+been here before may find an unparalleled opportunity to see the whole
+region at one sweep of the eye.
+
+From the point of view of topography the summit of Great Blue Hill is
+the place to reach. But for the sense of mysterious beauty, for snatches
+of pictures one will never forget, the little vistas which open on the
+upward or the downward trail, framed by hanging boughs or encircled by a
+half frame of stone and hillside--these are, perhaps, more lovely. The
+hill itself, seen from a distance, floating lightly like a vast blue
+ball against a vaster sky, is dreamily suggestive in a way which the
+actual view, superb as it is, is not. One remembers Stevenson's
+observation, that sometimes to travel hopefully is better than to
+arrive. So let us come down, for, after all, "Love is of the valley."
+Down again to the old town of Milton. We have not half begun to wander
+over it: not half begun to hear the pleasant stories it has to tell.
+When one is as old as this--for Milton was discovered by a band from
+Plymouth who came up the Neponset River in 1621--one has many tales to
+tell.
+
+Of all the towns along the South Shore there are few whose feet are so
+firmly emplanted in the economic history of the past and present as is
+Milton. That peculiar odor of sweetness which drifts to us with a turn
+of the wind, comes from a chocolate mill whose trade-mark of a
+neat-handed maid with her little tray is known all over the civilized
+world. And those mills stand upon the site of the first grist mill in
+New England to be run by water power. This was in 1634, and one likes to
+picture the sturdy colonists trailing into town, their packs upon their
+backs, like children in kindergarten games, to have their grain ground.
+Israel Stoughton was the name of the man who established this first
+mill--a name perpetuated in the near-by town of Stoughton.
+
+All ground is historic ground in Milton. That rollicking group of
+schoolboys yonder belongs to an academy, which, handsome and
+flourishing as it is to-day, was founded as long ago as 1787. That seems
+long ago, but there was a school in Milton before that: a school held in
+the first meeting-house. Nothing is left of this quaint structure but a
+small bronze bas-relief, set against a stone wall, near its original
+site. This early church and early school was a log cabin with a thatched
+roof and latticed windows, if one may believe the relief, but men of
+brains and character were taught there lessons which stood them and the
+colony in good stead. One fancies the students' roving eyes may have
+occasionally strayed down the Indian trail directly opposite the old
+site--a trail which, although now attained to the proud rank of a lane,
+Churchill's Lane, still invites one down its tangled green way along the
+gray stone wall. Yes, every step of ground has its tradition here.
+Yonder railroad track marks the spot where the very first tie in the
+country was laid, and laid for no less significant purpose than to
+facilitate the carrying of granite blocks for Bunker Hill Monument from
+their quarry to the harbor.
+
+Granite from the hills--the hills which swim forever against the sky and
+march forever above the distant horizon. Again we are drawn back to the
+irresistible magnet of those mighty monitors. Yes, wherever one goes in
+Milton, either on foot to-day or back through the chapters of three
+centuries ago, the Blue Hills dominate every event, and the Great Blue
+Hill floats above them all.
+
+"I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help,"
+chants the psalmist. Ah, well, no one can say it better than
+that--except the hills themselves, which, with gentle majesty, look down
+affectionately upon the town at their feet.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+SHIPBUILDING AT QUINCY
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+The first man-made craft which floated on the waters of what is now Fore
+River was probably a little dugout, a crude boat made by an Indian, who
+burned out the center of a pine log which he had felled by girdling with
+fire. After he had burned out as much as he could, he scraped out the
+rest with a stone tool called a "celt." The whole operation probably
+took one Indian three weeks. The Rivadavia which slid down the ways of
+the Fore River Shipbuilding Corporation in August, 1914, weighed 13,400
+tons and had engaged the labor of 2000 men for fifty months.
+
+Between these two extremes flutter all the great sisterhood of shallops,
+sloops, pinks, schooners, snows, the almost obsolete batteau and
+periagua, the gundelow with its picturesque lateen sail, and all the
+winged host that are now merely names in New England's maritime history.
+
+We may not give in this limited space an account of the various vessels
+which have sailed down the green-sea aisles the last three hundred
+years. But of the very first, "a great and strong shallop" built by the
+Plymouth settlers for fishing, we must make brief mention, and of the
+Blessing of the Bay, the first seaworthy native craft to be built and
+launched on these shores--the pioneer of all New England commerce. Built
+by Governor Winthrop, he notes of her in his journal on August 31, 1631,
+that "the bark being of thirty tons went to sea." That is all he says,
+but from that significant moment the building of ships went on
+"gallantly," as was indeed to be expected in a country whose chief
+industry was fishing and which was so admirably surrounded by natural
+bays and harbors. In 1665 we hear of the Great and General Court of
+Massachusetts--which distinctive term is still applied to the
+Massachusetts Legislature--forbidding the cutting of any trees suitable
+for masts. The broad arrow of the King was marked on all white pines,
+twenty-four inches in diameter, three feet from the ground. Big ships
+and little ships swarmed into existence, and every South Shore town made
+shipbuilding history. The ketch, a two-masted vessel carrying from
+fifteen to twenty tons, carried on most of the coasting traffic, and
+occasionally ventured on a foreign voyage. When we recall that the best
+and cheapest ships of the latter half of the seventeenth century were
+built here in the new country, we realize that shipyards, ports, docks,
+proper laws and regulations, and the invigorating progress which marks
+any thriving industry flourished bravely up and down the whole New
+England coast.
+
+It is rather inspiring to stand here on the bridge which spans the Fore
+River, and picture that first crude dugout being paddled along by the
+steady stroke of the red man, and then to look at the river to-day.
+Every traveler through Quincy is familiar with the aerial network of
+steel scaffolding criss-crossing the sky, with the roofs of shops and
+offices and glimpses of vessels visible along the water-front. But few
+travelers realize that these are merely the superficial features of a
+shipyard which under the urge of the Great War delivered to the Navy, in
+1918, eighteen completed destroyers, which was as many as all the other
+yards in the country put together delivered during this time. A shipyard
+which cut the time of building destroyers from anywhere between eighteen
+and thirty-two months to an average of six months and a half; a shipyard
+which made the world's record of one hundred and seventy-four days from
+the laying of the keel to the delivering of a destroyer.
+
+It is difficult to grasp the meaning of these figures. Difficult, even
+after one has obtained entrance into this city within a city, and seen
+with his own eyes twenty thousand men toiling like Trojans. Seen a
+riveting crew which can drive more than twenty-eight hundred rivets in
+nine hours; battleships that weigh thirty thousand tons; a plate yard
+piled with steel plates and steel bars worth two million dollars; cranes
+that can lift from five tons up to others of one hundred tons capacity;
+single buildings a thousand feet long and eighty feet high.
+
+Perhaps the enormousness of the plant is best comprehended, not when we
+mechanically repeat that it covers eighty acres and comprises eighty
+buildings, and that four full-sized steam locomotives run up and down
+its yard, but when we see how many of the intimate things of daily
+living have sprung up here as little trees spring up between huge
+stones. For the Fore River Plant is more than an industrial
+organization. It is a social center, an economic entity. It has its band
+and glee club, ball team and monthly magazine. There are refreshment
+stands, and a bathing cove; a brand-new village of four hundred and
+thirty-eight brand-new houses; dormitories which accommodate nearly a
+thousand men and possess every convenience and even luxuries. The men
+work hard here, but they are well paid for their work, as the many
+motor-cycles and automobiles waiting for them at night testify. It is a
+scene of incredible industry, but also of incredible completeness.
+
+To look down upon the village and the yard from the throbbing roof of
+the steel mill, seven hundred and seventy feet long and a hundred and
+eighty-eight wide, is a thrilling sight. Within the yard, confined on
+three sides by its high fences and buildings and on the fourth by
+Weymouth Fore River, one sees, far below, locomotives moving up and down
+on their tracks; great cranes stalking long-leggedly back and forth;
+smoke from foundry, blacksmith shop, and boiler shop; men hurrying to
+and fro. Whistles blow, and whole buildings tremble. The smoke and the
+grayness might make it a gloomy scene if it were not for the red sides
+of the immense submarines gleaming in their wide slips to the water.
+Everywhere one sees the long gray sides of freighters, destroyers,
+merchant ships, and oil tankers heaving like the mailed ribs of sea
+animals basking on the shore. Practically every single operation, from
+the most stupendous to the most delicate, necessary for the complete
+construction of these vessels, is carried on in this yard. The eighty
+acres look small when we realize the extent and variety of the work
+achieved within its limits.
+
+Yes, the solitary Indian, working with fire and celt on his dugout,
+would not recognize this once familiar haunt, nor would he know the
+purpose of these vast vessels without sail or paddle. And yet, were this
+same Indian standing on the roof with us, he would see a wide stream of
+water he knew well, and he would see, too, above the smoke of the
+furnace, shop, and boiler room, the friendly green of the trees.
+
+Perhaps there is nothing which makes us realize the magical rapidity of
+growth so much as to look from this steel city and to see the woods
+close by. For instead of being surrounded by the sordid congestion of an
+industrial center, the Fore River Shipyard is in the midst of
+practically open country.
+
+While we are speaking of rapidity we must look over toward the Victory
+Plant at Squantum, that miraculous marsh which was drained with such
+expedition that just twelve months from the day ground was broken for
+its foundation, it launched its first ship, and less than two years
+after completed its entire contract. Surely never in the history of
+shipbuilding have brain and brawn worked so brilliantly together!
+
+In this way, then, the history of the ships that have sailed the seven
+seas has been built up at Quincy--a dramatic history and one instinct
+with the beauty which is part of gliding canoe and white sails, and
+part, too, of the huge smooth-slipping monsters of a modern day, sleek
+and swift as leviathans. But all the while the building of these ships
+has been going on, there has been slowly rising within the selfsame
+radius another ship, vaster, more inspiring, calling forth initiative
+even more intense, idealism even more profound--the Ship of State.
+
+We who journey to-day over the smooth or troubled waters of national or
+international affairs are no more conscious of the infinite toil and
+labors which have gone into the intricate making of the vessel that
+carries us, than are travelers conscious of the cogs and screws, the
+engines and all the elaboration of detail which compose an ocean liner.
+Like them we sometimes grumble at meals or prices, at some discourtesy
+or incompetence, but we take it for granted that the engine is in
+commission, that the bottom is whole and the chart correct. The great
+Ship of State of this country may occasionally run into rough weather,
+but Americans believe that, in the last analysis, she is honestly built.
+And it is to Quincy that we owe a large initial part of this building.
+
+It is astonishing to enumerate the notable public men, who have been
+influential in establishing our national policy, who have come from
+Quincy. There is no town in this entire country which can equal the
+record. What other town ever produced two Presidents of the United
+States, an Ambassador to Great Britain, a Governor of the Commonwealth,
+a Mayor of Boston, two presidents of Harvard University, and judges,
+chief justices, statesmen, and orators in such quantity and of such
+quality? Truly this group of eminent men of brilliance, integrity, and
+public feeling is unique in our history. To read the biographies of
+Quincy's great men would comprise a studious winter's employment, but
+we, passing through the historic city, may hold up our fragment of a
+mirror and catch a bit of the procession.
+
+First and foremost, of course, will come President John Adams, he who,
+both before and after his term of high office, toiled terrifically in
+the public cause, being at the time of his election to Congress a member
+of ninety committees and a chairman of twenty-five! We see him as the
+portraits have taught us to see him, with strong, serious
+face,--austere, but not harsh,--velvet coat, white ruffles, and white
+curls. He stands before us as the undisputed founder of what is now
+recognized as American diplomacy. Straightforward, sound to the core,
+unswerving, veracious, exemplifying in every act the candor of the
+Puritan, so congruous with the new simple life of a nation of common
+people. I think we shall like best to study him as he stands at the door
+of the little house in which he was born, and which, with its pitch
+roof, its antique door and eaves, is still preserved, close to the
+street, for public scrutiny.
+
+Next to President John Adams comes his son, John Quincy Adams, also a
+President of the United States. Spending much of his time abroad, the
+experience of those diplomatic years is graven upon features more subtly
+refined than those of his sire. But for all his foreign residence, he
+was, like his father, a Puritan in its most exalted sense; like him
+toiled all his life in public service, dying in the harness when rising
+to address the Speaker of the House. Him, too, we see best, standing at
+the door of his birthplace, a small cottage a stone's throw from the
+other cottage, separated only by a turnstile. Fresh white curtains hang
+in the small-paned windows; the grass is neatly trimmed, and like its
+quaint companion it is now open to the public and worth the tourist's
+call. Both these venerable cottages have inner walls, one of burnt, the
+other of unburnt brick; and both are unusual in having no boards on the
+outer walls, but merely clapboards fastened directly on to the studding
+with wrought-iron nails.
+
+Still another Adams follows, Charles Francis Adams. Although a little
+boy when he first comes into public view, a little boy occupying the
+conspicuous place as child of one President and grandchild of another,
+yet he was to win renown and honor on his own account as Ambassador to
+England during the critical period of our Civil War. America remembers
+him best in this position. His firm old face with its white chin
+whiskers is a worthy portrait in the ancestral gallery.
+
+Although the political history of this country may conclude its
+reference to the Adamses with these three famous figures, yet all New
+Englanders and all readers of biography would be reluctant to turn from
+this remarkable family without mention of the sons of Charles Francis
+Adams, two of whom have written, beside valuable historical works,
+autobiographies so entertaining and so truly valuable for their
+contemporaneous portraits as to win a place of survival in our permanent
+literature.
+
+A member of the Adams family still lives in the comfortable home where
+the three first and most famous members all celebrated their golden
+weddings. This broad-fronted and hospitable house, built in 1730 by
+Leonard Vassal, a West India planter, for his summer residence, with its
+library finished in panels of solid mahogany, was confiscated when its
+Royalist owner fled at the outbreak of the Revolution, and John Adams
+acquired the property and left the pitch-roofed cottage down the street.
+The home of two Presidents, what tales it could tell of notable
+gatherings! One must read the autobiography of Charles Francis Adams and
+"The Education of Henry Adams" to appreciate the charm of the succeeding
+mistresses of the noble homestead, and to enjoy in retrospect its many
+illustrious visitors.
+
+To have produced one family like the Adamses would surely be sufficient
+distinction for any one place, but the Adams family forms merely one
+unit in Quincy's unique procession of great men.
+
+The Quincy family, for which the town was named, and which at an early
+date intermarried with the Adamses, presents an almost parallel
+distinction. The first Colonel Quincy, he who lived like an English
+squire, a trifle irascible, to be sure, but a dignified and commanding
+figure withal, had fourteen children by his first wife and three by his
+second, so the family started off with the advantage of numbers as well
+as of blood. At the Quincy mansion house were born statesmen, judges,
+and captains of war. The "Dorothy Q." of Holmes's poem first saw the
+light in it, and the Dorothy who became the bride of the dashing John
+Hancock blossomed into womanhood in it. Here were entertained times
+without number Sir Harry Vane, quaint Judge Sewall, Benjamin Franklin,
+and that couple who gleam through the annals of New England history in a
+never-fading flame of romance, Sir Harry Frankland and beautiful Agnes
+Surriage. The Quincy mansion, which was built about 1635 by William
+Coddington of Boston and occupied by him until he was exiled for his
+religious opinions, was bought by Edmund Quincy. His grandson, who bore
+his name, enlarged the house, and lived in it until his death when it
+descended to his son Edmund, the eminent jurist and father of Dorothy.
+The old-fashioned furniture, utensils and pictures, the broad hall, fine
+old stairway with carved balustrades, and foreign wall-paper supposed to
+have been hung in honor of the approaching marriage of Dorothy to John
+Hancock, are still preserved in their original place. Of the Quincy
+family, whose sedate jest it was that the estate descended from 'Siah to
+'Siah, so frequent was the name "Josiah," the best known is perhaps the
+Josiah Quincy who was Mayor of Boston for six years and president of
+Harvard for sixteen. The portrait of his long, thin face is part of
+every New England history, and his busy, serene life, "compacted of
+Roman and Puritan virtues," is still upheld to all American children as
+a model of high citizenship.
+
+But not even the long line of the Quincy family completes the list of
+the town's great men. Henry Hope, one of the most brilliant financiers
+of his generation, and founder of a European banking house second only
+to that of the Rothchilds, was a native of Quincy. John Hull--who, as
+every school-child knows, on the day of his daughter's marriage to Judge
+Sewall, placed her in one of his weighing scales, and heaped enough new
+pine-tree shillings into the other to balance, and then presented both
+to the bridegroom--held the first grant of land in the present town of
+Braintree (which originally included Quincy, Randolph, and Holbrook).
+
+From the picturesque union of John Hull's bouncing daughter Betsy and
+Judge Sewall sprang the extraordinary family of Sewalls which has given
+three chief justices to Massachusetts, and one to Canada, and has been
+distinguished in every generation for the talents and virtues of its
+members. In passing, we may note that it was this same John Hull who
+named Point Judith for his wife, little dreaming what a _bete noir_ the
+place would prove to mariners in the years to come.
+
+There is another Quincy man whom it is pleasant to recall, and that is
+Henry Flynt, a whimsical and scholarly old bachelor, who was a tutor at
+Harvard for no less than fifty-three years, the one fixed element in the
+flow of fourteen college generations. One of the most accomplished
+scholars of his day, his influence on the young men with whom he came in
+contact was stimulating to a degree, and they loved to repeat bits of
+his famous repartee. A favorite which has come down to us was on an
+occasion when Whitefield the revivalist declared in a theological
+discussion: "It is my opinion that Dr. Tillotson is now in hell for his
+heresy." To which Tutor Flynt retorted dryly: "It is my opinion that you
+will not meet him there."
+
+The procession of Quincy's great men which we have been watching winds
+its way, as human processions are apt to do, to the old graveyard. Most
+of the original settlers are buried here, although not a few were buried
+on their own land, according to the common custom. Probably this
+ancient burying ground, with its oldest headstone of 1663, has never
+been particularly attractive. The Puritans did not decorate their
+graveyards in any way. Fearing that prayers or sermons would encourage
+the "superstitions" of the Roman Catholic Church, they shunned any
+ritual over the dead or beautifying of their last resting-place.
+However, neglected as the spot was, the old stone church, whose golden
+belfry is such a familiar and pleasant landmark to all the neighboring
+countryside, still keeps its face turned steadfastly toward it. The
+congested traffic of the city square presses about its portico, but
+those who knew and loved it best lie quietly within the shadow of its
+gray walls. Under the portico lies President John Adams, and "at his
+side sleeps until the trump shall sound, Abigail, his beloved and only
+wife." In the second chamber is placed the dust of his illustrious son,
+with "His partner for fifty years, Louisa Catherine"--she of whom Henry
+Adams wrote, "her refined figure; her gentle voice and manner; her
+vague effect of not belonging there, but to Washington or Europe, like
+her furniture and writing-desk with little glass doors above and little
+eighteenth-century volumes in old binding."
+
+It has been called the "church of statesmen," this dignified building,
+and so, indeed, might Quincy itself be called the "city of statesmen."
+It would be extremely interesting to study the reasons for Quincy's
+peculiar productiveness of noble public characters. The town was settled
+(as Braintree) exclusively by people from Devonshire and Lincolnshire
+and Essex. The laws of the Massachusetts Colony forbade Irish
+immigration--probably more for religious than racial reasons. On reading
+the ancient petition for the incorporation of the town one is struck by
+the fact that practically every single name of the one hundred and fifty
+signers is English in origin, the few which were not having been
+anglicized. All of these facts point to a homogeneous stock, with the
+same language, traditions, and social customs. Obviously there is a
+connection between the governmental genius displayed by Quincy's sons
+and the singular purity of the original English stock.
+
+Little did Wampatuck, the son of Chickatawbut, realize what he was doing
+when he parted with his Braintree lands for twenty-one pounds and ten
+shillings. The Indian deed is still preserved, with the following words
+on its back: "In the 17th reign of Charles 2. Braintry Indian Deeds.
+Given 1665. Aug. 10: Take great care of it."
+
+Little did the Indian chief realize that the surrounding waters were to
+float hulks as mighty as a city; that the hills were to furnish granite
+for buildings and monuments without number; and that men were to be born
+there who would shape the greatest Ship of State the world has ever
+known. And yet, if he had known, possibly he would have accepted the
+twenty-one pounds and ten shillings just the same, and departed quietly.
+For the ships that were to be built would never have pleased him as well
+as his own canoe; the granite buildings would have stifled him; and the
+zealous Adamses and the high-minded Quincys and Sewalls and all the
+rest would have bored him horribly. Probably the only item in the whole
+history of Quincy which would have appealed to Wampatuck in the least
+would have been the floating down on a raft of the old Hollis Street
+Church of Boston, to become the Union Church of Weymouth and Braintree
+in 1810. This and the similar transportation of the Bowditch house from
+Beacon Street in Boston to Quincy a couple of years later would have
+fascinated the red man, as the recital of the feat fascinates us to-day.
+
+Those who care to learn more of Quincy will do well to read the
+autobiography of Charles Francis Adams and "The Education of Henry
+Adams." Those who care more for places than for descriptions of them may
+wander at will, finding beneath the surface of the modern city many
+landmarks of the old city which underlies it. They may see the
+scaffolding of the great shipyards latticing themselves against the sky,
+and the granite quarries against the hills. They may see the little
+cottages and the great houses made famous by those who have passed over
+their thresholds; they may linger in the old burial ground and trace out
+the epitaphs under the portico of the golden-belfried church. But after
+they have touched and handled all of these things, they will not
+understand Quincy unless they look beyond and recognize her greatest
+contribution to this country--the noble statesmen who so bravely and
+intelligently toiled to construct America's Ship of State.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE ROMANCE OF WEYMOUTH
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+The paintings of John Constable, idyllic in their quietness, dewy in
+their serenity--how many travelers, how many lovers of art, superficial
+or profound, yearly seek out these paintings in the South Kensington
+Museum or the Louvre, and stand before them wrapt in gentle ecstasy?
+
+The quality of Constable's pictures delineates in luminous softness a
+peculiarly lovely side of English rural life, but one need not travel to
+England or France to see this loveliness. Weymouth, that rambling
+stretch of towns and hamlets, of summer colony and suburb, possesses in
+certain areas bits of rural landscape as serene, as dewy, as
+idyllically tranquil as Constable at his best.
+
+Comparatively few people in New England, or out of it, know Weymouth
+well. Every one has heard of it, for it is next in age to the town of
+Plymouth itself, and every one who travels to the South Shore passes
+some section of it, for it extends lengthily--north and south, east and
+west--being the only town in Massachusetts to retain its original
+boundaries. And numbers of people are familiar with certain parts of it,
+for there are half a score of villages in the township, some of them
+summer settlements, some of them animated by an all-the-year-round life.
+But compared with the other towns along this historic route, Weymouth as
+a whole is little known and little appreciated. And yet the history of
+Weymouth is not without amusing and edifying elements, and the scenery
+of Weymouth is worthy of the detour that strangers rarely make.
+
+"Old Spain" is the romantic name for an uninteresting part of the
+township, and, conversely, Commercial Street is the uninteresting name
+for a romantic part. It is along a highway stigmatized by such a name
+that one gets the glimpses of a Constable country: glimpses of rolling
+meadows, of fertile groves, of cattle grazing in elm-shaded pastures, of
+a road winding contentedly among simple, ancient cottages, and quiet,
+thrifty farms. These are the homes which belong, and have belonged for
+generations, to people who are neither rich nor poor; cozy, quaint,
+suggesting in an odd way the thatched-roof cottages of England. Not that
+all of Weymouth's homes are of this order. The Asa Webb Cowing house,
+which terminates Commercial Street within a stone's throw of the square
+of the town of Weymouth, is one of the very finest examples of the
+Colonial architecture in this country. The exquisite tracery and carving
+over and above the front door, and the white imported marble window
+lintels spin an elaborate and marvelously fine lacework of white over
+the handsome red-brick facade. Although it is, alas, falling somewhat
+into disrepair, perfect proportion and gemlike workmanship still stamp
+the venerable mansion as one of patrician heritage. There are other
+excellent examples of architecture in Weymouth, but the Cowing house
+must always be the star, both because of its extraordinary beauty and
+conspicuous position. Yes, if you want a characteristic glimpse of
+Weymouth, you cannot do better than to begin in front of this landmark,
+and drive down Commercial Street. Here for several smiling miles there
+is nothing--no ugly building large or small, no ruthless invasion of
+modernity to mar the mood of happy simplicity. Her beauty of beach, of
+sky, of river, Weymouth shares with other South Shore towns. Her
+perfection of idyllic rusticity is hers alone.
+
+Just as Weymouth's scenery is unlike that of her neighbors, so her
+history projects itself from an entirely different angle from theirs.
+While they were conceived by zealous, God-fearing men and women honestly
+seeking to establish homes in a new country, Weymouth was inadvertently
+born through the misconduct of a set of adventurers. Not every one who
+came to America in those significant early years came impelled by lofty
+motives. There were scapegraces, bad boys, rogues, mercenaries, and
+schemers; and perhaps it is entirely logical that the winning natural
+loveliness of this place should have lured to her men who were not of
+the caliber to face more exposed, less fertile sections, and men to whom
+beauty made an especial appeal.
+
+The Indians early found Wessagusset, as they called it, an important
+rendezvous, as it was accessible by land and sea, and there were
+probably temporary camps there previous to 1620, formed by fishermen and
+traders who visited the New England coast to traffic with the natives.
+But it was not until the arrival of Thomas Weston in 1622 that
+Weymouth's history really begins. And then it begins in a topsy-turvy
+way, so unlike Puritan New England that it makes us rub our eyes,
+wondering if it is really true.
+
+This Thomas Weston, who was a merchant adventurer of London, took it
+into his head to establish a colony in the new country entirely
+different from the Plymouth Colony. He had been an agent of the
+Pilgrims in their negotiations with the Plymouth Company, and when he
+broke off the connection it was to start a settlement which should
+combine all of the advantages, with none of the disadvantages, of the
+Plymouth Colony. First of all, it was to be a trading community pure and
+simple, with its object frankly to make money. Second, it was to be
+composed of men without families and familiar with hardship. And third,
+there was no religious motive or bond. That such an unidealistic
+enterprise should not flourish on American soil is worth noting. The
+disorderly, thriftless rabble, picked up from the London streets, soon
+got into trouble with the Indians and with neighboring colonists, and
+finally, undone by the results of their own improvidence and
+misbehavior, wailed that they "wanted to go back to London," to which
+end the Plymouth settlers willingly aided them, glad to get them out of
+the country. Thus ended the first inauspicious settlement of Weymouth.
+
+The second, which was undertaken shortly after by Robert Gorges, broke
+up the following spring, leaving only a few remnants behind. Sir
+Ferdinando Gorges, who was not a Spaniard as his name suggests, but a
+picturesque Elizabethan and a kinsman of Sir Walter Raleigh, essayed
+(through his son Robert) an experimental government along practically
+the same commercial lines as had Weston, and his failure was as speedy
+and complete as Weston's had been.
+
+A third attempt, while hardly more successful, furnishes one of the
+gayest and prettiest episodes in the whole history of New England.
+Across the somber procession of earnest-faced men and women, across the
+psalm-singing and the praying, across the incredible toil of the
+pioneers at Plymouth now flashes the brightly costumed and
+pleasure-loving courtier, Thomas Morton. An agent of Gorges, Morton with
+thirty followers floated into Wessagusset to found a Royalist and
+Episcopalian settlement. This Episcopalian bias was quite enough to
+account for Bradford's disparaging description of him as a "kind of
+petie-fogie of Furnifells Inn," and explains why the early historians
+never made any fuller or more favorable record than absolutely necessary
+of these neighbors of theirs, although the churchman Samuel Maverick
+admits that Morton was a "gentleman of good qualitee."
+
+But it was for worse sins than his connection with the Established
+Church that Morton's name became synonymous with scandal throughout the
+whole Colony. In the very midst of the dun-colored atmosphere of
+Puritanism, in the very heart of the pious pioneer settlement this
+audacious scamp set up, according to Bradford, "a schoole of atheisme,
+and his men did quaff strong waters and comport themselves as if they
+had anew revived and celebrated the feasts of y^e Roman Goddess Flora,
+or the beastly practises of y^e madd Bachanalians." The charge of
+atheism in this case seems based on the fact that Morton used the Book
+of Common Prayer, but as for the rest, there is no question that this
+band of silken merry-makers imported many of the carnival customs and
+hereditary pastimes of Old England to the stern young New England; that
+they fraternized with the Indians, shared their strong waters with them,
+and taught them the use of firearms; and that Merrymount became indeed a
+scene of wildest revelry.
+
+The site of Merrymount had originally been selected by Captain Wollaston
+for a trading post. Imbued with the same mercenary motive which had
+proved fatal in the case of Weston and Gorges, Captain Wollaston, whose
+name is perpetuated in Mount Wollaston, brought with him in 1625 a gang
+of indented white servants. Finding his system of industry ill suited to
+the climate, he carried his men to Virginia, where he sold them. When he
+left, Morton took possession of the place and dubbed it "Ma-re-mount."
+And then began the pranks which shook the Colony to its foundations.
+Picture to yourself a band of sworn triflers, dedicated to the wildest
+philosophy of pleasure, teaching bears to dance, playing blind-man's
+buff, holding juggling and boxing matches, and dancing. According to
+Hawthorne, on the eve of Saint John they felled whole acres of forests
+to make bonfires, and crowned themselves with flowers and threw the
+blossoms into the flames. At harvest-time they hilariously wasted their
+scanty store of Indian corn by making an image with the sheaves, and
+wreathing it with the painted garlands of autumn foliage. They crowned
+the King of Christmas and bent the knee to the Lord of Misrule! Such
+fantastic foolery is inconceivable in a Puritan community, and the
+Maypole which was its emblem was the most inconceivable of all. This
+"flower-decked abomination," ornamented with white birch bark, banners,
+and blossoms, was the center of the tipsy jollity of Merrymount. As
+Morton explains: "A goodly pine tree of eighty foote was reared up, with
+a peare of bucks horns nayled on somewhere near to the top of it: where
+it stood as a faire sea mark for directions how to find out the way to
+mine host of Ma-re-mount." Around this famous, or infamous, pole Morton
+and his band frolicked with the Indians on May Day in 1627. As the
+indignant historian writes: "Unleashed pagans from the purlieus of the
+gross court of King James, danced about the Idoll of Merry Mount,
+joining hands with the lasses in beaver coats, and singing their ribald
+songs."
+
+It doesn't look quite so heinous to us, this Maypole dancing, as it did
+to the outraged Puritans. In fact, the story of Morton and Merrymount is
+one of the few glistening threads in the somber weaving of those early
+days. But the New England soil was not prepared at that time to support
+any such exotic, and Myles Standish was sent to disperse the frivolous
+band, and to order Morton back to England, which he did, after a
+scrimmage which Morton relates with great vivacity and doubtful veracity
+in his "New English Canaan."
+
+This "New English Canaan," by the way, had a rather singular career.
+Morton tells in it many amusing stories, and one of them was destined to
+a remarkable perpetuity in English literature. The story deals with the
+Wessagusset settlers promising to hang one of their own members who had
+been caught stealing--this hanging in order to appease the Indians.
+Morton gravely states that instead of hanging the real culprit, who was
+young and lusty, they hanged, in his place, another, old and sick. In
+his quaint diction: "You all agree that one must die, and one shall die,
+this young man's cloathes we will take off and put upon one that is old
+and impotent, a sickly person that cannot escape death, such is the
+disease on him confirmed, that die hee must. Put the young man's
+cloathes on this man, and let the sick person be hanged in the other's
+steade. Amen sayes one, and so sayes many more." This absurd notion of
+vicarious atonement, spun purely from Morton's imagination, appealed to
+Samuel Butler as worthy of further elaboration. Morton's "New English
+Canaan" appeared in 1632. About thirty years later the second part of
+the famous English satire "Hudibras" appeared, embodying Morton's idea
+in altered but recognizable form, in what was the most popular English
+book of the day. This satire, appearing when the reaction against
+Puritanism was at its height, was accepted and solemnly deposited at the
+door of the good people of Boston and Plymouth! And thus it was that
+Morton's fabricated tale of the Weymouth hanging passed into genuine
+history along with the "blue laws" of Connecticut. One cannot help
+believing that the mischievous perpetrator of the fable laughed up his
+sleeve at its result, and one cannot resist the thought that he was
+probably delighted to have the scandal attached to those righteous
+neighbors of his who had run him out of his dear Ma-re-mount.
+
+However, driven out he was: the Maypole about which the revelers had
+danced was hewed down by the stern zealots who believed in dancing about
+only one pole, and that the whipping-post. Merrymount was deserted.
+
+Certainly Weymouth, the honey spot which attracted not industrious bees,
+but only drones, was having a hard time getting settled! It was not
+until the Reverend Joseph Hull received permission from the General
+Court to settle here with twenty-one families, from Weymouth, England,
+that the town was at last shepherded into the Puritan fold.
+
+These settlers, of good English stock and with the earnest ideals of
+pioneers, soon brought the community into good repute, and its
+subsequent life was as respectable and uneventful as that of a reformed
+_roue_. In fact there is practically no more history for Weymouth. There
+are certainly no more raids upon merry-makers; no more calls from the
+cricket colony which had sung all summer on the banks of the river to
+the ant colony which had providently toiled on the shore of the bay; no
+more experimental governments; no more scandal. The men and women of the
+next five generations were a poor, hard-working race, rising early and
+toiling late. The men worked in the fields, tending the flocks, planting
+and gathering the harvest. The women worked in the houses, in the
+dairies and kitchens, at the spinning-wheel and washtub. The privations
+and loneliness, which are part of every struggling colony, were
+augmented here, where the houses did not cluster about the church and
+burial ground, but were scattered and far away. This peculiarity of
+settlement meant much in days where there was no newspaper, no system of
+public transportation, no regular post, and Europe was months removed. A
+few of the young men went with the fishing fleet to Cape Sable, or
+sailed on trading vessels to the West Indies or Spain, but it is
+doubtful if any Weymouth-born woman ever laid eyes on the mother country
+during the first hundred and fifty years.
+
+The records of the town are painfully dull. They are taken up by small
+domestic matters: the regulations for cattle; running boundary lines,
+locating highways, improving the town common, fixing fines for roving
+swine or agreeing to the division of a whale found on the shore. There
+was more or less bickering over the salary of the town clerk, who was to
+receive thirty-three pounds and fourteen shillings yearly to keep "A
+free school and teach all children and servants sent him to read and
+write and cast accounts."
+
+Added to the isolation and pettiness of town affairs, the winters seem
+to have been longer, the snows deeper, the frosts more severe in those
+days. We have records of the harbor freezing over in November, and "in
+March the winter's snow, though much reduced, still lay on a level with
+the fences, nor was it until April that the ice broke up in Fore River."
+They were difficult--those days ushered in by the Reverend Joseph Hull.
+Through long nights and cold winters and an endless round of joyless
+living, Weymouth expiated well for the sins of her youth. Even as late
+as 1767 we read of the daughter of Parson Smith, of Weymouth--now the
+wife of John Adams, of Quincy--scrubbing the floor of her own
+bed-chamber the afternoon before her son--destined to become President
+of the United States, as his father was before him--was born.
+
+But the English stock brought in by the Reverend Hull was good stock. We
+may not envy the ladies scrubbing their own floors or the men walking to
+Boston, but many of the best families of this country are proud to trace
+their origin back to Weymouth. Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont; then
+New York, Rhode Island, and Connecticut attracted men from Weymouth.
+Later the Middle West and the Far West called them. In fact for over a
+century the town hardly raised its number of population, so energetic
+was the youth it produced.
+
+As happens with lamentable frequency, when Weymouth ceased to be naughty
+she also ceased to be interesting. After poring over the dull pages of
+the town history, one is sometimes tempted to wonder if, perhaps, the
+irreverent Morton did not, for all his sins, divine a deeper meaning in
+this spot than the respectable ones who came after him. One cannot read
+the "New English Canaan" without regretting a little that this
+happy-natured fellow was so unceremoniously bustled out of the country.
+Whatever Morton's discrepancies may have been, his response to beauty
+was lively and true: whatever his morals, his prose is delightful. All
+the town records and memorial addresses of all the good folk subsequent
+contain no such tribute to Weymouth, and paint no picture so true of
+that which is still best in her, as these loving words of the erstwhile
+master of Merrymount.
+
+"And when I had more seriously considered the bewty of the place, with
+all her fair endowments, I did not think that in all the knowne world it
+could be paralel'd. For so many goodly groves of trees: dainty fine
+round rising hillocks: delicate faire large plaines: sweete crystal
+fountains, and clear running streams, that twine in fine meanders
+through the meads, making so sweet a murmuring noise to heare, as would
+even lull the senses with delight asleep, so pleasantly doe they glide
+upon the pebble stones, jetting most jocundly where they doe meet; and
+hand in hand run down to Neptune's court, to pay the yearly tribute
+which they owe to him as soveraigne Lord of all the Springs."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+ECCLESIASTICAL HINGHAM
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Should you walk along the highway from Quincy to Hingham on a Sunday
+morning you would be passed by many automobiles, for the Old Coast Road
+is now one of the great pleasure highways of New England. Many of the
+cars are moderately priced affairs, the tonneau well filled with
+children of miscellaneous ages, and enlivened by a family dog or
+two--for this is the way that the average American household spends its
+modern Sabbath holiday. Now and then a limousine, exquisite in
+workmanship within and without, driven by a chauffeur in livery and
+tenanted by a single languid occupant, rolls noiselessly past. A
+strange procession, indeed, for a road originally marked by the
+moccasined feet of Indians, and widened gradually by the toilsome
+journeyings of rough Colonial carts and coaches.
+
+It is difficult to say which feature of the steadily moving travel would
+most forcibly strike the original Puritan settlers of the town: the fact
+that even the common man--the poor man--could own such a vehicle of
+speed and ease, or the fact that America--such a short time ago a
+wilderness--could produce, not as the finest flower on its tree of
+evolution, but certainly as its most exotic, the plutocrat who lives in
+a palace with fifty servants to do his bidding, and the fine lady whose
+sole exercise of her mental and physical functions consists in allowing
+her maid to dress her. Yes, New England has changed amazingly in the
+revolutions of three centuries, and here, under the shadow of this
+square plain building--Hingham's Old Ship Church--while we pause to
+watch the Sunday pageant of 1920, we can most easily call back the
+Sabbath rites, and the ideals which created those rites, three centuries
+ago.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+It is the year of 1681. This wooden meeting-house, with the truncated
+pyramidal roof and belfry (to serve as a lookout station), has just been
+built. A stage ahead, architecturally, of the log meeting-house with
+clay-filled chinks, thatched roof, oiled-paper windows, earthen floor,
+and a stage behind the charming steeple style made popular by Sir
+Christopher Wren, and now multiplied in countless graceful examples all
+over New England, the Old Ship is entirely unconscious of the
+distinction which is awaiting it--the distinction of being the oldest
+house for public worship in the United States which still stands on its
+original site, and which is still used for its original purpose. In the
+year 1681 it is merely the new meeting-house of the little hamlet of
+Hingham. The people are very proud of their new building. The timbers
+have been hewn with the broad-axe out of solid white pine (the marks are
+still visible, particularly in those rafters of the roof open to the
+attic). The belfry is precisely in the center of the four-sided pitched
+roof. To be sure this necessitates ringing the bell from one of the
+pews, but a little later the bellringer will stand above, and through a
+pane of glass let into the ceiling he will be able to see when the
+minister enters the pulpit. The original backless benches were replaced
+by box pews with narrow seats like shelves, hung on hinges around three
+sides, but part of the original pulpit remains and a few of the box
+pews. In 1681 the interior, like the exterior, is sternly bare. No
+paint, no decorations, no colored windows, no organ, or anything which
+could even remotely suggest the color, the beauty, the formalism of the
+churches of England. The unceiled roof shows the rafters whose arched
+timbers remind one that ships' carpenters have built this house of God.
+
+This, then, is the meeting-house of 1681. What of the services conducted
+there?
+
+In the first place, they are well attended. And why not, since in 1635
+the General Court decreed that no dwelling should be placed more than
+half a mile away from the meeting-house of any new "plantation"--thus
+eliminating the excuse of too great distance? Every one is expected,
+nay, commanded, to come to church. In fact, after the tolling of the
+last bell, the houses may all be searched--each ten families is under an
+inspector--if there is any question of delinquents hiding in them. And
+so in twos and threes, often the man trudging ahead with his gun and the
+woman carrying her baby while the smaller children cling to her skirts,
+sometimes man and woman and a child or two on horseback, no matter how
+wild the storm, how swollen the streams, how deep the whirling
+snow--they all come to church: old folk and infants as well as adults
+and children. The congregation either waits for the minister and his
+wife outside the door, or stands until he has entered the pulpit. Once
+inside they are seated with the most meticulous exactness, according to
+rank, age, sex, and wealth. The small boys are separated from their
+families and kept in order by tithing-men who allow no wandering eyes or
+whispered words. The deacons are in the "fore" seats; the elderly
+people are sometimes given chairs at the end of the "pues"; and the
+slaves and Indians are in the rear. To seat one's self in the wrong
+"pue" is an offense punishable by a fine.
+
+"Here is the church, and here are the people," as the old rhyme has it.
+What then of the services? That they are interminable we know. The
+tithing-man or clerk may turn the brass-bound hourglass by the side of
+the pulpit two and three times during the sermon, and once or twice
+during the prayer. Interminable, and, also, to the modern Sunday
+observer, unendurable. How many of us of this softer age can contemplate
+without a shiver the vision of people sitting hour after hour in an
+absolutely unheated building? (The Old Ship was not heated until 1822.)
+The only relief from the chill and stiffness comes during the prayer
+when the congregation stands: kneeling, of course, would savor too
+strongly of idolatry and the Church of Rome. They stand, too, while the
+psalms and hymns are lined out, and as they sing them, very uncertainly
+and very incorrectly. This performance alone sometimes takes an hour, as
+there is no organ, nor notes, and only a few copies of the Bay Psalm
+Book, of which, by the way, a copy now would be worth many times its
+weight in gold.
+
+After the morning service there is a noon intermission, in which the
+half-frozen congregation stirs around, eats cold luncheons brought in
+baskets, and then returns to the next session. One must not for an
+instant, however, consider these noon hours as recreational. There is no
+idle talk or play. The sermon is discussed and the children forbidden to
+romp or laugh. One sometimes wonders how the little things had any
+impulse to laugh in such an abysmal atmosphere, but apparently the
+Puritan boys and girls were entirely normal and even wholesomely
+mischievous--as proved by the constantly required services of the
+tithing-man.
+
+These external trappings of the service sound depressing enough, but if
+the message received within these chilly walls is cheering, maybe we
+can forget or ignore the physical discomforts. But is the message
+cheering? Hell, damnation, eternal tortures, painful theological
+hair-splittings, harrowing self-examinations, and humiliating public
+confessions--this is what they gather on the narrow wooden benches to
+listen to hour after hour, searching their souls for sin with an almost
+frenzied eagerness. And yet, forlorn and tedious as the bleak service
+appears to us, there is no doubt that these stern-faced men and women
+wrenched an almost mystical inspiration from it; that a weird
+fascination emanated from this morbid dwelling on sin and punishment,
+appealing to the emotions quite as vividly--although through a different
+channel--as the most elaborate ceremonial. When the soul is wrought to a
+certain pitch each hardship is merely an added opportunity to prove its
+faith. It was this high pitch, attained and sustained by our Puritan
+fathers, which produced a dramatic and sometimes terrible blend of
+personality.
+
+It has become the modern fashion somewhat to belittle Puritanism. It is
+easy to emphasize its absurdities, to ridicule the almost fanatical
+fervor which goaded men to harshness and inconsistency. The fact remains
+that a tremendous selective force was needed to tear the Puritans away
+from the mother church and the mother country and fortify them in their
+struggle in a new land. It was religious zeal which furnished this
+motive power. Different implements and differently directed force are
+needed to extract the diamond from the earth, from the implements and
+force needed to polish and cut the same diamond. So different phases of
+religious development are called forth by progressive phases of
+development. It has been said about the New England conscience: "It
+fostered a condition of life and type of character doubtless never again
+possible in the world's history. Having done its work, having founded
+soundly and peopled strongly an exceptional region, the New England
+conscience had no further necessity for being. Those whom it now
+tortures with its hot pincers of doubt and self-reproach are sacrificed
+to a cause long since won."
+
+The Puritans themselves grew away from many of their excessive
+severities. But as they gained bodily strength from their conflict with
+the elements, so they gained a certain moral stamina by their
+self-imposed religious observance. And this moral stamina has marked New
+England ever since, and marked her to her glory.
+
+One cannot speak of Hingham churches--indeed, one cannot speak of
+Hingham--without admiring mention of the New North Church. This
+building, of exquisite proportions and finish, within and without, built
+by Bulfinch in 1806, is one of the most flawless examples of its type on
+the South Shore. You will appreciate the cream-colored paint, the buff
+walls, the quaint box pews of oiled wood, with handrails gleaming from
+the touch of many generations, with wooden buttons and protruding hinges
+proclaiming an ancient fashion; but the unique feature of the New North
+Church is its slave galleries. These two small galleries, between the
+roof and the choir loft, held for thirty years, in diminishing numbers,
+negroes and Indians. The last occupant was a black Lucretia, who, after
+being freed, was invited to sit downstairs with her master and mistress,
+which she did, and which she continued to do until her death, not so
+very long ago.
+
+Hingham, its Main Street--alas for the original name of "Bachelors
+Rowe"--arched by a double row of superb elms on either side, is
+incalculably rich in old houses, old traditions, old families. Even
+motoring through, too quickly as motorists must, one cannot help being
+struck by the substantial dignity of the place, by the well-kept
+prosperity of the houses, large and small, which fringe the fine old
+highway. Ever since the days when the three Misses Barker kept loyal to
+George IV, claiming the King as their liege lord fifty years after the
+Declaration of Independence, the town has preserved a Cranford-like
+charm. And why not, when the very house is still handsomely preserved,
+where the nameless nobleman, Francis Le Baron, was concealed between the
+floors, and, as we are told in Mrs. Austen's novel, very properly
+capped the climax by marrying his brave little protector, Molly Wilder?
+Why not, when the Lincoln family, ancestors of Abraham, has been
+identified with the town since its settlement? The house of
+Major-General Benjamin Lincoln, who received the sword of Cornwallis at
+Yorktown, is still occupied by his descendants, its neat fence, many
+windows, two chimneys, and its two stories and a half proclaiming it a
+dwelling of repute. Near by, descendants of Samuel Lincoln, the ancestor
+of Abraham, occupy part of another roomy ancient homestead. The
+Wampatuck Club, named after the Indian chief who granted the original
+deeds of the town, has found quarters in an extremely interesting house
+dating from 1680. In the spacious living-room are seventeen panels, on
+the walls and in the doors, painted with charming old-fashioned skill by
+John Hazlitt, the brother of the English essayist. The Reverend Daniel
+Shute house, built in 1746, is practically intact with its paneled rooms
+and wall-paper a hundred years old. Hingham's famous elms shade the
+house where Parson Ebenezer Gay lived out his long pastorate of
+sixty-nine years and nine months, and the Garrison house, built before
+1640, sheltered, in its prime, nine generations of the same family. The
+Rainbow Roof house, so called from the delicious curve in its roof, is
+one of Hingham's prettiest two-hundred-year-old cottages, and Miss Susan
+B. Willard's cottage is one of the oldest in the United States. Derby
+Academy, founded almost two centuries and a half ago by Madam Derby,
+still maintains its social and scholarly prestige through all the
+educational turmoil of the twentieth century. One likes to associate
+Hingham with Massachusetts's stanch and sturdy "war governor," for it
+was here that John Albion Andrew, who proved himself so truly one of our
+great men during the Civil War, courted Eliza Jones Hersey, and here
+that the happy years of their early married life were spent. Later,
+another governor, John D. Long, was for many years a mighty figure in
+the town.
+
+With its ancient churches and institutions, its pensive graveyards and
+lovely elms, its ancestral houses and hidden gardens, Hingham typifies
+what is quaintest and best in New England towns. Possibly the dappling
+of the elms, possibly the shadow of the Old Ship Church, is a bit deeper
+here than in the other South Shore towns. However it may seem to its
+inhabitants, to the stranger everything in Hingham is tinctured by the
+remembrance of the stern old ecclesiasticism. Even the number of
+historic forts seems a proper part of those righteous days, for when did
+religion and warfare not go hand in hand? During the trouble with King
+Philip the town had three forts, one at Fort Hill, one at the Cemetery,
+and one "on the plain about a mile from the harbor"; and the sites may
+still be identified.
+
+Not that Hingham history is exclusively religious or martial. Her little
+harbor once held seventy sail of fishing vessels, and between 1815 and
+1826, 165,000 barrels of mackerel were landed on their salty decks. For
+fifty years (between 1811 and 1860) the Rapid sailed as a packet between
+this town and Boston, making the trip on one memorable occasion in
+sixty-seven minutes. We read that in the War of 1812 she was carried up
+the Weymouth River and covered, masts and hull, with green bushes so
+that the marauding British cruisers might not find her, and as we read
+we find ourselves remembering that _camouflage_ is new only in name.
+
+How entirely fitting it seems that a town of such venerable houses and
+venerable legends should be presided over by a church which is the
+oldest of its kind in the country!
+
+Hingham changes. There is a Roman Catholic Church in the very heart of
+that one-time Puritan stronghold: the New North is Unitarian, and
+Episcopalians, Baptists, and Second Adventists have settled down
+comfortably where once they would have been run out of town. Poor old
+Puritans, how grieved and scandalized they would be to stand, as we are
+standing now, and watch the procession of passing automobilists! Would
+it seem all lost to them, we wonder, the religious ideal for which they
+struggled, or would they realize that their sowing had brought forth
+richer fruit than they could guess? It has all changed, since Puritan
+days, and yet, perhaps, in no other place in New England does the hand
+of the past lie so visibly upon the community. You cannot lift your eyes
+but they rest upon some building raised two centuries and more ago; the
+shade which ripples under your feet is cast by elms planted by that very
+hand of the past. Even your voice repeats the words which those old
+patriarchs, well versed in Biblical lore, chose for their neighborhood
+names. Accord Pond and Glad Tidings Plain might have been lifted from
+some Pilgrim's Progress, while the near-by Sea of Galilee and Jerusalem
+Road are from the Good Book itself.
+
+"Which way to Egypt?" Is this an echo from that time when the Bible was
+the corner-stone of Church and State, of home and school?
+
+"What's the best road to Jericho Beach?" Surely it is some grave-faced
+shade who calls: or is it a peal from the chimes in the Memorial Bell
+Tower--chimes reminiscent of old Hingham, in England? No, it is only the
+shouted question of the motorist, gay and prosperous, flying on his
+Sunday holiday through ancient Hingham town.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+COHASSET LEDGES AND MARSHES[1]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+A sickle-shaped shore--wild, superb! Tawny ledges tumbling out to sea,
+rearing massive heads to search, across three thousand miles of water,
+for another shore. For it is Spain and Portugal which lie directly
+yonder, and the same tumultuous sea that crashes and swirls against
+Cohasset's crags laps also on those sunnier, warmer sands.
+
+Back inland, from the bold brown coast which gives Cohasset her
+Riviera-like fame, lie marshes, liquefying into mirrors at high tide,
+melting into lush green at low tide.
+
+Between the ledges and the marshes winds Jerusalem Road, bearing a
+continual stream of sight-seers and fringed with estates hidden from the
+sight-seers; estates with terraces dashed by spindrift, with curving
+stairways hewn in sheer rock down to the water, with wind-twisted
+savins, and flowers whose bright bloom is heightened by the tang of
+salt. For too many a passing traveler Cohasset is known only as the most
+fashionable resort on the South Shore. But Cohasset's story is a longer
+one than that, and far more profound.
+
+Cohasset is founded upon a rock, and the making of that rock is so
+honestly and minutely recorded by nature that even those who take alarm
+at the word "geology" may read this record with ease. These rocky ledges
+that stare so proudly across the sea underlie, also, every inch of soil,
+and are of the same kind everywhere--granite. Granite is a rock which is
+formed under immense pressure and in the presence of confined moisture,
+needing a weight of fifteen thousand pounds upon every inch. Therefore,
+wherever granite is found we know that it has not been formed by
+deposit, like limestone and sandstone and slate and other sedimentary
+rocks, but at a prodigious depth under the solid ground, and by slow
+crystallizing of molten substances. There must have been from two to
+five miles of other rock lying upon the stuff that crystallized into
+granite. A wrinkling in the skin of the earth exposed the granite, a
+wrinkling so gradual that doubtless if generations of men had lived on
+top of the wrinkle they would have sworn it did not move. But move it
+did, and the superimposed rock must have been worn off at a rate of less
+than a hundredth part of an inch every year in order to lose two or
+three miles of it in twenty-five million years. As the granite was
+wrinkled up by the movement of the earth's crust, certain cracks opened
+and filled with lava, forming dikes. The geologist to-day can glance at
+these dikes and tell the period of their formation as casually as a
+jockey looking at a horse's mouth can tell his age. He could also tell
+of the "faulting," or slipping down, of adjacent masses of solid rock,
+which has occurred often enough to carve the characteristic Cohasset
+coast.
+
+The making of the rock bottom is a story which extends over millions of
+years: the making of the soil extends over thousands. The gigantic
+glacier which once formed all over the northern part of North America,
+and which remained upon it most of the time until about seven thousand
+years ago, ground up the rock like a huge mill and heaped its grist into
+hills and plains and meadows. The marks of it are as easy to see as
+finger prints in putty. There are scratches on the underlying rock in
+every part of the town, pointing in the southerly direction in which the
+glacier moved. The gravel and clay belts of the town have all been
+stretched out in the same direction as the scratches, and many are the
+boulders which were combed out of the moving glacier by the peaks of the
+ledges, and are now poised, like the famous Tipping Rock, just where the
+glacier left them when it melted. Few towns in America possess greater
+geological interest or a wider variety of glacial phenomena than
+Cohasset--all of which may be studied more fully with the aid of E.
+Victor Bigelow's "Narrative History of the Town of Cohasset,
+Massachusetts," and William O. Crosby's "Geology of the Boston Basin."
+
+This, then, is briefly the first part of Cohasset's ledges. The second
+part deals with human events, including many shipwrecks and disasters,
+and more than one romantic episode. Perhaps this human section is best
+begun with Captain John Smith.
+
+Captain John Smith was born too early. If ever a hero was brought into
+the world to adorn the moving-picture screen, that hero of the "iron
+collar," of piratical capture, of wedlock with an Indian princess, was
+the man. Failing of this high calling he did some serviceable work in
+discovering and describing many of the inlets on the coast of New
+England. Among these inlets Cohasset acted her part as hostess to the
+famous navigator and staged a small and vivid encounter with the
+aborigines. The date of this presentation was in 1614; the scenario may
+be found in Smith's own diary. Smith and a party of eight or more
+sailors made the trip between the ledges in a small rowboat. It is
+believed that they landed somewhere near Hominy Point. Their landing was
+not carried out without some misadventure, however, for in some way this
+party of explorers angered the Indians with whom they came in contact,
+and the result was an attack from bow and arrow. The town of Cohasset,
+in commemorating this encounter by a tablet, has inscribed upon the
+tablet Smith's own words:
+
+"We found the people on those parts very kind, but in their fury no less
+valiant: and at Quonhaset falling out there with but one of them, he
+with three others crossed the harbour in a cannow to certain rocks
+whereby we must pass, and there let flie their arrowes for our shot,
+till we were out of danger, yet one of them was slaine, and the other
+shot through the thigh."
+
+History follows fast along the ledges: history of gallant deeds and
+gallant defense during the days of the Revolution and the War of 1812;
+deeds of disaster along the coast and one especial deed of great
+engineering skill.
+
+The beauty and the tragedy of Cohasset are caught in large measure upon
+these jagged rocks. The splinters and wrecks of two and a half centuries
+have strewn the beaches, and many a corpse, far from its native land,
+has been found, wrapped in a shroud of seaweed upon the sand, and has
+been lowered by alien hands into a forever unmarked grave. Quite
+naturally the business of "wrecking"--that is, saving the pieces--came
+to be the trade of a number of Cohasset citizens, and so expert did
+Cohasset divers and seamen become that they were in demand all over the
+world. One of the most interesting salvage enterprises concerned a
+Spanish frigate, sunk off the coast of Venezuela. Many thousand dollars
+in silver coin were covered by fifty feet of water, and it was Captain
+Tower, of Cohasset, with a crew of Cohasset divers and seamen, who set
+sail for the spot in a schooner bearing the substantial name of Eliza
+Ann. The Spanish Government, having no faith in the enterprise, agreed
+to claim only two and one half per cent of what was removed. The first
+year the wreckers got fourteen thousand dollars, and the second they had
+reached seven thousand, when the Spaniards became so jealous of their
+skill that they had to flee for their lives (taking the seven thousand,
+however). The clumsy diving-bell method was the only one known at that
+time, but when, twenty years later, the Spaniards had to swallow their
+chagrin and send again for the same wrecking party to assist them on the
+same task, modern diving suits were in use and more money was
+recovered--no mean triumph for the crew of the Eliza Ann!
+
+As the wrecks along the Cohasset coast were principally caused by the
+dangerous reefs spreading in either direction from what is known as
+Minot's Ledge, the necessity of a lighthouse on that spot was early
+evident, and the erecting of the present Minot's Light is one of the
+most romantic engineering enterprises of our coast history. The original
+structure was snapped off like a pikestaff in the great storm of 1851,
+and the present one of Quincy granite is the first of its kind in
+America to be built on a ledge awash at high tide and with no adjacent
+dry land. The tremendous difficulties were finally overcome, although in
+the year 1855 the work could be pursued for only a hundred and thirty
+hours, and the following year for only a hundred and fifty-seven. To
+read of the erection of this remarkable lighthouse reminds one of the
+building of Solomon's temple. The stone was selected with the utmost
+care, and the Quincy cutters declared that such chiseling had never
+before left the hand of man. Then every single block for the lower
+portion was meticulously cut, dovetailed, and set in position on
+Government Island in Cohasset Harbor. The old base, exquisitely laid,
+where they were thus set up is still visible, as smooth as a billiard
+table, although grass-covered. In addition to the flawless cutting and
+joining of the blocks, the ledge itself was cut into a succession of
+levels suitable to bear a stone foundation--work which was possible only
+at certain times of the tide and seasons of the year. The cutting of
+each stone so that it exactly fitted its neighbor, above, below, and at
+either side, and precisely conformed to the next inner row upon the same
+level, was nothing short of a marvel. A miniature of the light--the
+building of which took two winters, and which was on the scale of an
+inch to a foot--was in the United States Government Building at the
+Chicago Exposition, and is stone for stone a counterpart of the granite
+tower in the Atlantic. Although this is an achievement which belongs in
+a sense to the whole United States, yet it must always seem, to those
+who followed it most closely, as belonging peculiarly to Cohasset. A
+famous Cohasset rigger made the model for the derrick which was used to
+raise the stones; the massive granite blocks were teamed by one whose
+proud boast it was that he had never had occasion to shift a stone
+twice; a Cohasset man captained the first vessel to carry the stone to
+the ledge, and another assisted in the selection of the stone.
+
+It is difficult to turn one's eyes away from the spectacular beauty of
+the Cohasset shore, but magnificent as these ledges are, and glittering
+with infinite romance, yet, rather curiously, it is on the limpid
+surface of the marshes that we read the most significant episodes of
+Colonial and pioneer life.
+
+One of the needs which the early settlers were quick to feel was open
+land which would serve as pasturage for their cattle. With forests
+pressing down upon them from the rear, and a barrier of granite in front
+of them, the problem of grazing-lands was important. The Hingham
+settlement at Bare Cove (Cohasset was part of Hingham originally) found
+the solution in the acres of open marshland which stretched to the east.
+Cohasset to-day may ask where so much grazing-land lay within her
+borders. By comparison with the old maps and surveying figures, we find
+that many acres, now covered with the water of Little Harbor and lying
+within the sandbar at Pleasant Beach, are counted as old grazing-lands.
+These, with the sweep of what is now the "Glades," furnished abundant
+pasturage for neighboring cattle and brought the Hingham settlers
+quickly to Cohasset meadows. Thus it happens that the first history of
+Cohasset is the history of this common pasturage--"Commons," as it was
+known in the old histories. Although Hingham was early divided up among
+the pioneers, the marshes were kept undivided for the use of the whole
+settlement. As a record of 1650 puts it: "It was ordered that any
+townsman shall have the liberty to put swine to Conohasset without yokes
+or rings, upon the town's common land."
+
+But the Massachusetts Bay Colony was hard-headed as well as pious, and
+several naive hints creep into the early records of sharers of the
+Commons who were shrewdly eyeing the salt land of Cohasset. A real
+estate transfer of 1640 has this potential flavor: "Half the lot at
+Conehasset, if any fall by lot, and half the commons which belong to
+said lot." And again, four years later, Henry Tuttle sold to John
+Fearing "what right he had to the Division of Conihassett Meadows." The
+first land to come under the measuring chain and wooden stake of
+surveyors was about the margin of Little Harbor about the middle of the
+seventeenth century. After that the rest of the township was not long in
+being parceled out. One of the curious methods of land division was in
+the Beechwood district. The apportionment seems to have had the
+characteristics of ribbon cake. Sections of differing desirability--to
+meet the demands of justice and natural conditions--were measured out in
+long strips, a mile long and twenty-five feet wide. Many an old stone
+wall marking this early grant is still to be seen in the woods. Could
+anything but the indomitable spirit of those English settlers and the
+strong feeling for land ownership have built walls of carted stone about
+enclosures a mile long and twenty-five feet wide?
+
+Having effected a division of land in Cohasset, families soon began to
+settle away from the mother town of Hingham, and after a prolonged
+period of government at arm's length, with all its attendant
+discomforts, the long, bitter struggle resolved itself into Cohasset's
+final separation from Hingham, and its development from a precinct into
+an independent township.
+
+While the marshes to the north were the cause of Cohasset being first
+visited, settled, and made into a township, yet the marshes to the south
+hold an even more vital historical interest. These southern marshes,
+bordering Bound Brook and stretching away to Bassing Beach, were visited
+by haymakers as were those to the north. But these haymakers did not
+come from the same township, nor were they under the same local
+government. The obscure little stream which to-day lies between Scituate
+Harbor and Cohasset marks the line of two conflicting grants--the
+Plymouth Colony and the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
+
+In the early days of New England royal grants from the throne or patents
+from colonial councils in London were deemed necessary before settling
+in the wilderness. The strong, inherited respect for landed estates must
+have given such charters their value, as it is hard for us to see now
+how any one in England could have prevented the pioneers from settling
+where they pleased. The various patents and grants of the two colonies
+(indefinite as they seem to us now, as some granted "up to" a hundred
+acres to each emigrant without defining any boundaries) brought the two
+colonies face to face at Bound Brook. The result was a dispute over the
+harvesting of salt hay.
+
+All boundary streams attract to themselves a certain amount of fame--the
+Rio Grande, the Saint Lawrence, and the Rhine. But surely the little
+stream of Bound Brook, which was finally taken as the line of division
+between two colonies of such historical importance as the Plymouth and
+the Massachusetts Bay, is worth more than a superficial attention. The
+dispute lasted many years and occasioned the appointing of numerous
+commissioners from both sides. That the salt grass of Bassing Beach
+should have assumed such importance reveals again the sensitiveness to
+land values of men who had so recently left England. The settling of the
+dispute was not referred back to England, but was settled by the
+colonists themselves.
+
+The author of the "Narrative History of Cohasset" calls this an event of
+only less historical importance than that of the pact drawn up in the
+cabin of the Mayflower. He declares that the confederation of states had
+its inception there, and adds: "The appointment for this joint
+commission for the settlement of this intercolonial difficulty was the
+first step of federation that culminated in the Colonial Congress and
+then blossomed into the United States." We to-day, to whom the salt
+grass of Cohasset is little more than a fringe about the two harbors,
+may find it difficult to agree fully with such a sweeping statement, but
+certainly this spot and boundary line should always be associated with
+the respect for property which has ennobled the Anglo-Saxon race.
+
+Between the marshes, which were of such high importance in those early
+days, and the ledges which have been the cause and the scene of so many
+Cohasset adventures, twists Jerusalem Road, the brilliant beauty of
+which has been so often--but never too often--remarked. This was the
+main road from Hingham for many years, and it took full three hours of
+barbarous jolting in two-wheeled, springless ox carts to make the trip.
+Even if a man had a horse the journey was cruelly tedious, for there
+were only a few stretches where the horse could go faster than a
+walk--and the way was pock-marked with boulders and mudholes. With no
+stage-coach before 1815, and being off the highway between Plymouth and
+Boston, it is small wonder that the early Cohasset folk either walked or
+went by sea to Hingham and thence to Boston.
+
+It has been suggested that the "keeper of young cattle at Coneyhassett,"
+who drove his herd over from Hingham, was moved either by piety or
+sarcasm to give the trail its present arresting name. However, as the
+herdsman did not take this route, but the back road through Turkey
+Meadows, it is more probable that some visitors, who detected a
+resemblance between this section of the country and the Holy Land, were
+responsible for the christening of this road and also of the Sea of
+Galilee--which last has almost dropped into disuse. There does not seem
+to be any particular suggestion of the land of the Pharaohs and
+present-day Egypt, but tradition explains that as follows: Old Squire
+Perce had accumulated a store of grain in case of drought, and when the
+drought came and the men hurried to him to buy corn, he greeted them
+with "Well, boys, so you've come down to Egypt to buy corn." Another
+proof, if one were needed, of the Biblical familiarity of those days.
+
+It is hard to stop writing about Cohasset. There are so many bits of
+history tucked into every ledge and cranny of her shore. The green in
+front of the old white meeting-house--one of the prettiest and most
+perfect meeting-houses on the South Shore--has been pressed by the feet
+of men assembling for six wars. It makes Cohasset seem venerable,
+indeed, when one thinks of the march of American history. But to the
+tawny ledges, tumbling out to sea, these three hundred years are as but
+a day; for the story of the stones, like the story of the stars, is
+measured in terms of milliards. To such immemorial keepers of the coast
+the life of man is a brief tale that is soon told, and fades as swiftly
+as the fading leaf.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] For much of this chapter I am indebted to my friend Alice C. Hyde.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE SCITUATE SHORE
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Scituate is different: different from Cohasset, with its superbly bold
+coast and its fashionable folk; different from Hingham, with its air of
+settled inland dignity. Scituate has a quaintness, a casualness, the
+indescribable air of a land's-end spot. The fine houses in Scituate are
+refreshingly free from pretension; the winds that have twisted the trees
+into Rackham-like grotesques have blown away falsity and formality.
+
+Scituate life has always been along the shore. It is from the shore that
+coot-shooting used to furnish a livelihood to many a Scituate man, and
+still lures the huntsmen in the fine fall weather. It is the peculiar
+formation of the shore which has developed a small, clinker-built boat,
+and made the town famous for day fishing. It is along the shore that the
+unique and picturesque mossing industry is still carried on, and along
+the shore that the well-known colony of literary folk have settled.
+
+Scituate's history is really a fishing history, for as early as 1633 a
+fishing station was established here, and in course of time the North
+River, winding twenty miles through green meadows to the sea, was once
+the scene of more shipbuilding than any other river in New England.
+
+There is nothing more indicative of the Yankees' shrewd practicality
+than the early settlers' instant appreciation of the financial and
+economic potentialities of the fishing-trade. The Spaniard sought for
+gold in the new country, or contented himself with the fluctuating fur
+trade with its demoralizing slack seasons. But the New Englander
+promptly applied himself to the mundane pursuit of cod and mackerel.
+Everybody fished. As John Smith, in his "Description of New England,"
+says: "Young boyes and girles, salvages or any other, be they never such
+idlers, may turne, carry, and returne fish without shame or either great
+pain: he is very idle that is past twelve years of age and cannot doe so
+much: and shee is very old that cannot spin a thread to catch them."
+
+It began when Squanto the Indian showed the amazed colonists how he
+could tread the eels out of the mud with his feet and catch them with
+his hands. This was convenient, to be sure, but the colonists did not
+long content themselves with such primitive methods. They sent to
+England for cod hooks and lines; mackerel hooks and lines; herring nets
+and seines; shark hooks, bass nets, squid lines, and eel pots; and in a
+short time they had established a trade which meant more money than the
+gold mines of Guiana or Potosi. The modern financier who makes a fortune
+from the invention of a collar button or the sale of countless penny
+packages of gum is the lineal descendant of that first thrifty New
+Englander who did not scorn the humble cod because it was cheap and
+plentiful (you remember how these same cod "pestered" the ships of
+Gosnold in 1602), but set to work with the quiet initiative which has
+distinguished New Englanders ever since, first to catch, then to barter,
+and finally to sell his wares to all the world. For cheap as all fish
+was--twopence for a twelve-pound cod, salmon less than a penny a pound,
+and shad, when it was finally considered fit to eat at all, at two fish
+for a penny--yet, when all the world is ready to buy and the supply is
+inexhaustible, tremendous profits are possible. The many fast days of
+the Roman Catholic Church abroad opened an immense demand, and in a
+short time quantities of various kinds of fish (Josselyn in 1672
+enumerates over two hundred caught in New England waters) were dried and
+salted and sent to England.
+
+This constant and steadily increasing trade radically affected the whole
+economic structure and history of New England for two centuries. Ships
+and all the shipyard industries; the farm, on which fish was used not
+only as a medium of exchange, but also as a valuable fertilizer; the
+home, where the many operations of curing and salting were carried
+on--all of those were developed directly by the growth of this
+particular trade. Laws were made and continually revised regarding the
+fisheries and safeguarding their rights in every conceivable fashion;
+ship carpenters were exempt from military service, and many special
+exemptions were extended to fishermen under the general statutes.
+
+The oyster is now a dish for the epicure and the lobster for the
+millionaire. But in the old days when oysters a foot long were not
+uncommon, and lobsters sometimes grew to six feet, every one had all he
+wanted, and sometimes more than he wanted, of these delicacies. The
+stranger in New England may notice how certain customs still prevail,
+such as the Friday night fish dinner and the Sunday morning fish-cakes;
+and also that New Englanders as a whole have a rather fastidious taste
+in regard to the preparation of both salt- and fresh-water products.
+The food of any region is characteristic of that region, and to travel
+along the Old Coast Road and not partake of one of the delicious fish
+dinners, is as absurd as it would be to omit rice from a menu in China
+or roast beef from an English dinner.
+
+While the fishing trade was highly important in all the South Shore
+towns, yet it was especially so in Scituate. In 1770 more than thirty
+vessels, principally for mackerel, were fitted out in this one village,
+and these vessels not infrequently took a thousand barrels in a season.
+In winter they were used for Southern coasting, carrying lumber and fish
+and returning with grain and flour. The reason why fishing was so
+persistently and exclusively followed in this particular spot is not
+hard to seek. The sea yielded a far more profitable and ready crop than
+the land, and, besides, had a jealous way of nibbling away at the land
+wherever it could. It is estimated that it wastes away from twelve to
+fourteen inches of Fourth Cliff every year.
+
+But in spite of the sea's readily accessible crop it was natural that
+the "men of Kent" who settled the town should demand some portion of dry
+land as well. These men of Kent were not mermen, able to live in and on
+the water indefinitely, but decidedly gallant fellows, rather more
+courtly than their neighbors, and more polished than the race which
+succeeded them. Gilson, Vassal, Hatherly, Cudworth, Tilden, Hoar,
+Foster, Stedman, and Hinckley had all been accustomed to the elegancies
+of life in England as their names testify. The first land they used was
+on the cliffs, for it had already been improved by Indian planting; then
+the salt marshes, covered with a natural crop of grass, and then the
+mellow intervales near the river. When the sea was forced to the
+regretful realization that she could not monopolize the entire attention
+of her fellows, she was persuaded to yield up some very excellent
+fertilizer in the way of seaweed. But she still nags away at the cliffs
+and shore, and proclaims with every flaunting wave and ripple that it is
+the water, not the land, which makes Scituate what it is.
+
+And, after all, the sea is right. It is along the shore that one sees
+Scituate most truly. Here the characteristic industry of mossing is
+still carried on in primitive fashion. The mossers work from dories,
+gathering with long-handled rakes the seaweed from the rocks and ledges
+along the shore. They bring it in, a heavy, dark, inert mass, all sleek
+and dripping, and spread it out to dry in the sun. As it lies there,
+neatly arranged on beds of smoothest pebbles, the sun bleaches it. One
+can easily differentiate the different days' haul, for the moss which is
+just spread out is almost black and that of yesterday is a dark purple.
+It shimmers from purple into lavender; the lavender into something like
+rose; and by the time of the final washing and bleaching it lies in fine
+light white crinkles, almost like wool. It is a pretty sight, and the
+neatness and dispatch of the mossers make the odd sea-flower gardens
+attractive patches on the beach. Sometimes a family working together
+will make as much as a thousand dollars in a season gathering and
+preparing the moss. One wonders if all the people in the world could
+eat enough blancmange to consume this salty product, and is relieved to
+be reminded that the moss is also used for brewing and dyeing.
+
+It is really a pity to see Scituate only from a motor. There is real
+atmosphere to the place, which is worth breathing, but it takes more
+time to breathe in an atmosphere than merely to "take the air." Should
+you decide to ramble about the ancient town you will surely find your
+way to Scituate Point. The old stone lighthouse, over a century old, is
+no longer used, and the oil lantern, hung nightly out at the end of the
+romantic promontory, seems a return to days of long ago. You will also
+see the place where, in the stirring Revolutionary days, little Abigail
+and Rebecca Bates, with fife and drum marched up and down, close to the
+shore and yet hidden from sight, playing so furiously that their
+"martial music and other noises" scared away the enemy and saved the
+town from invasion. You will go to Second Cliff where are the summer
+homes of many literary people, and you will pass through Egypt,
+catching what glimpse you can of the stables and offices, paddocks and
+cottages of the immense estate of Dreamwold. And of course you will have
+pointed out to you the birthplace of Samuel Woodworth, whose sole claim
+to remembrance is his poem of the "Old Oaken Bucket." The well-sweep is
+still where he saw it, when, as editor of the _New York Mirror_, it
+suddenly flashed before his reminiscent vision, but the old oaken bucket
+itself has been removed to a museum.
+
+After you have done all these things, you will, if you are wise, forsake
+Scituate Harbor, which is the old section, and Scituate Beach, which is
+the newer, summer section, and find the way to the burial ground, which,
+after the one in Plymouth, is the oldest in the State. Possibly there
+will be others at the burial ground, for ancestor worshipers are not
+confined to China, and every year there springs up a new crop of
+genealogists to kneel before the moss-grown headstones and, with truly
+admirable patience, decipher names and dates, half obliterated by the
+finger of time. One does not wonder that their descendants are so eager
+to trace their connection back to those men of Kent, whose sturdy title
+rings so bravely down the centuries. To be sure, what is left to trace
+is very slight in most cases, and quite without any savor of
+personality. Too often it is merely brief and dry recital of dates and
+number of progeny, and names of the same. Few have left anything so
+quaint as the words of Walter Briggs, who settled there in 1651 and from
+whom Briggs Harbor was named. His will contains this thoughtful
+provision: "For my wife Francis, one third of my estate during her life,
+also a gentle horse or mare, and Jemmy the negur shall catch it for
+her."
+
+The good people who came later (1634) from Plymouth and Boston and took
+up their difficult colonial life under the pastorate of Mr. Lathrop,
+seem to have done their best to make "Satuit" (as it was first called,
+from the Indians, meaning "cold brook") conform as nearly as possible to
+the other pioneer settlements, even to the point of discovering witches
+here. But religion and fasting were not able to accomplish what the
+ubiquitous summer influx has, happily, also failed to effect. Scituate
+remains different.
+
+Perhaps it was those men of Kent who gave it its indestructibly romantic
+bias; perhaps it is the jealousy of the ever-encroaching sea. The gray
+geese flying over the iridescent moss gleaming upon the pebbled beaches,
+the solitary lantern on the point are all parts of that differentness.
+And those who love her best are glad that it is so.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+MARSHFIELD, THE HOME OF DANIEL WEBSTER
+
+[Illustration]
+
+    Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free!
+    Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!
+    Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,
+    Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won
+    God out of knowledge, and good out of infinite pain,
+    And sight out of blindness, and purity out of a stain.
+
+
+It was these mighty marshes--this ample sweep of grass, of sea and
+sky--this vast earthly and heavenly spaciousness that must forever stand
+to all New Englanders as a background to the powerful personality who
+chose it as his own home. Daniel Webster, when his eyes first turned to
+this infinite reach of largeness, instinctively knew it as the place
+where his splendid senses would find satisfaction, and his splendid mind
+would soar into an even loftier freedom. Webster loved Marshfield with
+an intensity that made it peculiarly his own. Lanier, in language more
+intricate and tropical, exclaimed of his "dim sweet" woods: "Ye held me
+fast in your heart, and I held you fast in mine." Webster wielded the
+vital union between his nature and that of the land not only by profound
+sentiment, but by a vigorous physical grappling with the soil.
+
+Is it that vivid natures unconsciously seek an environment
+characteristic of them? Or are they, perhaps, inevitably forced to
+create such an environment wherever they find themselves? Both facts
+seem true in this case. This wide world of marsh and sea is not only
+beautifully expressive of one who plunged himself into a rich communion
+with the earth, with her full harvests and blooded cattle, with her
+fruitful brooks and lakes; but it is still, after more than half a
+century, vibrant with the spirit of the man who dwelt there.
+
+We of another generation--and a generation before whom so many
+portentous events and figures have passed--find it hard to realize the
+tremendous magnetism and brilliancy of a man who has been so long dead,
+or properly to estimate the high historical significance of such a life.
+The human attribute which is the most immediately impelling in direct
+intercourse--personality--is the most elusive to preserve. If Webster's
+claim to remembrance rested solely upon that attribute, he would still
+be worthy of enduring fame. But his gifts flowered at a spectacular
+climax of national affairs and won thereby spectacular prominence. That
+these gifts were to lose something of their pristine repute before the
+end infuses, from a dramatic point of view, a contrasted and heightened
+luster to the period of their highest glory.
+
+Let us, casual travelers of a later and more careless day, walk now
+together over the place which is the indestructible memorial of a great
+man, and putting aside the measuring-stick of criticism--the sign of
+small natures--try to live for an hour in the atmosphere which was the
+breath of life to one who, if he failed greatly, also succeeded greatly,
+and whose noble achievement it was not only to express, but to vivify a
+love for the Union which, in its hour of supreme trial, became its
+triumphant force.
+
+Could we go back--not quite a hundred years--a little off the direct
+route to Plymouth, on a site overlooking the broad marshes of Green
+Harbor and the sea, where there now stands a boulder erected in 1914 by
+the Boston University Law School Association, we would find a
+comfortable, rambling house, distinguished among its New England
+neighbors by an easy and delightful hospitality--the kind of hospitality
+we call "Southern." There are many people in the house, on the veranda
+and lawns: a hostess of gentle mien and manners; children attractive in
+the spontaneity of those who continually and happily associate with
+their elders; several house guests (yonder is Audubon the great
+naturalist, here is an office-seeker from Boston, and that chap over
+there, so very much at home, can be no other than Peter Harvey,
+Webster's fond biographer). Callers there are, also, as is shown by the
+line of chaises and saddle horses waiting outside, and old Captain
+Thomas and his wife, from whom the place was bought, and who still
+retain their original quarters, move in and out like people who consider
+themselves part of the family. It is a heterogeneous collection, yet by
+no means an awkward one, and every one is chatting with every one else
+with great amiability. It is late afternoon: the master of the house has
+been away all day, and now his guests and his family are glancing in the
+direction from which he may be expected. For although every one is
+comfortable and properly entertained, yet the absence of the host
+creates an inexpressible emptiness; it is as if everything were
+quiescent--hardly breathing--merely waiting until he comes. Suddenly the
+atmosphere changes; it is charged with a strong vibrant quality;
+everything--all eyes, all interest--is instantly focused on the figure
+which has appeared among them. He is in fisherman's clothes--this
+newcomer--attired with a brave eye for the picturesque, in soft hat and
+flowing tie; but there are no fisherman's clothes, no, nor any other
+cloakings which can conceal the resilient dignity of his bearing, his
+impressive build, and magnificent, kingly head. Sydney Smith called
+Webster a cathedral; and surely there must have been something in those
+enormous, burning eyes, that craglike brow, that smote even the most
+superficial observer into an admiration which was almost awe.
+
+Many men--perhaps even the majority--whatever their genius in the outer
+world, in their own houses are either relegated to--or choose--the
+inconspicuous role of mere masculine appendages. But here we have a man
+who is superbly the host: he knows and welcomes every guest and caller;
+he personally supervises the disposal of their baggage and the selection
+of their chambers; he himself has ordered the dinner--mutton which he
+has raised, fish which he has caught--and it is being cooked by Monica,
+the Southern slave whose freedom he purchased for her. He carves at
+table, priding himself on his dispatch and nicety, and keeps an eye on
+the needs of every one at the long board. Everything, every one in the
+house is irresistibly drawn about this magnetic center which dominates
+by its innate power of personality more than by any deliberate
+intention. His children worship him; his wife idolizes him; each man and
+woman on the place regards him with admiring affection. And in such
+congenial atmosphere he expands, is genial, kindly, delightful. But
+devoted as he is to his home, his family, and his friends, and charming
+as he shows himself with them, yet it is not until we see him striding
+over the farm which he has bought that we see the Daniel Webster who is
+destined to live most graphically in the memories of those who like to
+think of great men in those intimate moments which are most personally
+characteristic of them.
+
+We must rise early in the morning if we would accompany him on his day's
+round. He himself is up at sunrise, for the sunrise is to him signal to
+new life. As he once wrote: "Among all our good people not one in a
+thousand sees the sun rise once a year. They know nothing of the
+morning. Their idea of it is that part of the day which comes along
+after a cup of coffee and a beefsteak or a piece of toast. With them
+morning is not a new issuing of light, a new bursting forth of the sun,
+a new waking up of all that has life from a sort of temporary death, to
+behold again the works of God, the heavens and the earth.... The first
+faint streak of light, the earliest purpling of the east which the lark
+springs up to greet, and the deeper and deeper coloring into orange and
+red, till at length the 'glorious sun is seen, regent of the day'--this
+they never enjoy, for they never see it."
+
+So four o'clock finds Webster up and dressed and bound for the little
+study in his garden (the only building spared by the fire which
+destroyed the house in 1878) and beginning his correspondence. If he has
+no secretary he writes himself, and by time breakfast is announced
+twenty letters, all franked and sealed, are ready to be posted.
+
+"Now," he says, smiling benignantly down the long breakfast table of
+family and friends, "my day's work is done--I have nothing to do but
+fish."
+
+Although this is, indeed, his favorite sport, and there is hardly a
+brook or lake or pond within a radius of twenty miles which does not
+bear the charmed legend of having been one of his favorite fishing
+grounds, he does not spend his days in amusement, like the typical
+country gentleman. Farming to him, the son of a yeoman, is no mere
+possession of a fine estate, but the actual participation in ploughing,
+planting, and haying. His full animal spirits find relief in such labor.
+We cannot think of any similar example of such prodigious mental and
+physical energy. Macaulay was a great parliamentary orator, but he was
+the most conventional of city men; Burke and Chatham had no strength for
+such strenuousness after their professional toil. But Webster loved to
+know and to put his hand to every detail of farming and stock-raising.
+When he first came to Marshfield the soil was thin and sandy. It was he
+who instituted scientific farming in the region, teaching the natives
+how to fertilize with kelp which was easily obtainable from the sea, and
+also with the plentiful small herring or menhaden. He taught them the
+proper care of the soil, and the rotation of crops. This passionate love
+of the earth was an integral part of the man. As the force of his mind
+drew its power, not from mere rhetorical facility, but from fundamental
+principles, so his magnificent body, like that of the fabled Antaeus,
+seemed to draw perennial potency from contact with the earth. To acquire
+land--he owned nearly eighteen hundred acres at the time of his
+death--and to cultivate it to the highest possible degree of
+productiveness was his intense delight. The farm which he purchased from
+Captain Thomas grew to an estate of two or three dozen buildings,
+outhouses, tenant houses, a dairyman's cottage, fisherman's house,
+agricultural offices, and several large barns. We can imagine that he
+shows us all of these things--explaining every detail with enthusiasm
+and accuracy, occasionally digressing upon the habits of birds or fish,
+the influence of tides and currents, the changes of sky and wind. All
+natural laws are fascinating to him--inspiring his imagination and
+uplifting his spirit--and it is these things, never politics or
+business, which he discusses in his hours of freedom. He himself
+supervises the planting and harvesting and slaughtering here and on his
+other farm at Franklin--the family homestead--even when obliged to be
+absent, or even when temporarily residing in Washington and hard pressed
+with the cares of his office as Secretary of State.
+
+Those painters who include a parrot in the portrait of some fine
+frivolous lady do so to heighten their interpretation of character. We
+all betray our natures, by the creatures we instinctively gather about
+us. One might know that Jefferson at Monticello would select high-bred
+saddle horses as his companions; that Cardinal Richelieu would find no
+pet so soothing, so alluring, as a soft-stepping cat; that Charles I
+would select the long-haired spaniel. So it is entirely in the picture
+that of all the beasts brought under human yoke, that great oxen, slow,
+solemn, strong, would appeal to the man whose searching eyes were never
+at rest except when they swept a wide horizon; whose mind found its
+deepest satisfaction in noble languages, the giant monuments of
+literature and art, and whose soul best stretched its wings beside the
+limitless sea and under the limitless sky. Webster was fond of all
+animal life; he felt himself part of its free movement. Guinea hens,
+peacocks, ducks, flocks of tamed wild geese, dogs, horses--these were
+all part of the Marshfield place, but there was within the breast of the
+owner a special responsiveness to great herds of cattle, and especially
+fine oxen, the embodiment of massive power. So fond was he of these
+favorite beasts of his, that often on his arrival home he would fling
+his bag into the hall without even entering the house, and hasten to the
+barn to see that they were properly tied up for the night. As he once
+said to his little son, as they both stood by the stalls and he was
+feeding the oxen with ears of corn from an unhusked pile lying on the
+barn floor: "I would rather be here than in the Senate," adding, with
+his famous smile, "I think it is better company." So we may be sure as
+we walk in our retrospect about the farm with him--he never speaks of it
+as an "estate" but always as a farm--he will linger longest where the
+Devon oxen, the Alderneys, Herefordshire, and Ayrshire are grazing, and
+that the eyes which Carlyle likened to anthracite furnaces will glow and
+soften. Twenty years from now he will gaze out upon his oxen once again
+from the window before which he has asked to be carried, as he lies
+waiting for death. Weariness, disease, and disappointment have weakened
+the elasticity of his spirit, and as they pass--his beloved oxen,
+slowly, solemnly--what procession of the years passes with them! Years
+of full living, of generous living; of deep emotions; of glory; years of
+ambition; of bereavement; of grief. It is all to pass--these happy days
+at Marshfield; the wife he so fondly cared for; the children he so
+deeply cherished. Sycophants are to fill, in a measure, the place of
+friends, the money which now flows in so freely is to entangle and
+ensnare him; the lofty aspiration which now inspires him is to
+degenerate into a presidential ambition which will eat into his soul.
+But to-day let us, as long as we may, see him as he is in the height of
+his powers. Let us walk with him under the trees which he planted. Those
+large elms, gracefully silhouetted against the house, were placed there
+with his own hands at the birth of his son Edward and his daughter
+Julia, and he always refers to them gently as "brother" and "sister." To
+plant a tree to mark an event was one of his picturesque customs--an
+unconscious desire, perhaps, to project himself into the future. I am
+quite sure, as we accompany him, he will expatiate on the improvement in
+the soil which he has effected; that he will point out eagerly not only
+the domestic but the wild animals about the place; and that he will
+stand for a few moments on the high bluff overlooking the sea and the
+marshes and let the wind blow through his dark hair. He is carefully
+dressed--he always dresses to fit the occasion--and to-day, as he stands
+in his long boots reaching to the knee and adorned with a tassel, his
+bell-crowned beaver hat in his hand, and in his tight pantaloons and
+well-cut coat--a magnificent specimen of virile manhood--the words of
+Lanier, although written at a later date, and about marshes far more
+lush than these New England ones, beat upon our ears:
+
+[Illustration]
+
+    "Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?
+    Somehow my soul seems suddenly free
+    From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,
+    By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn."
+
+On the way back he will show us the place where three of his favorite
+horses are buried, for he does not sell the old horses who have done him
+good service, but has them buried "with the honors of war"--that is,
+standing upright, with their halters and shoes on. Above one of them he
+has placed the epitaph:
+
+    "Siste Viator!
+    Viator te major his sistit."
+
+I do not know if, as we return to the house where already a fresh group
+of visitors has arrived, he will pause by a corner of the yard set off
+by an iron fence. He has chosen this spot as the place where he shall
+lie, and here, in time, are to repose under the wide and simple vault
+of sky the wife and children whose going before is to bring such
+desolation. It is a place supremely fitting for that ample spirit which
+knew for its own the nobility of large spaces, and the grandeur of
+repose.
+
+The life of Daniel Webster is one of the most dramatic and touching of
+any of our great men. He was an orator of such solid thought and chaste
+eloquence that even now, without the advantage of the marvelously rich
+and flexible voice and the commanding presence that made each word burn
+like a fire, even without this incalculable personal interpretation, his
+speeches remain as a permanent part of our literature, and will so long
+as English oratory is read. He was a brilliant lawyer--the foremost of
+his day--and his statesmanship was of equal rank. In private life he was
+a peculiarly devoted and tender son, husband, father, and friend. That
+he should have become saddened by domestic losses and somewhat vitiated
+by flattery were, perhaps, inevitable. He was bitterly condemned--more
+bitterly by his contemporaries than by those who now study his words and
+work--for lowering his high standard in regard to slavery. It is
+impossible to refute the accusation, at the end of his life, of a
+carelessness approaching unscrupulousness in money matters. His personal
+failings, which were those of a man of exceptional vitality, have been
+heavily--too heavily--emphasized. He ate and drank and spent money
+lavishly; he had a fine library; he loved handsome plate and good
+service and good living. He was generous; he was kind. That he was
+susceptible to adulation and, after the death of his first wife, drifted
+into associations less admirable than those of his earlier years, are
+the dark threads of a woof underrunning a majestic warp. He adored his
+country with a fervor that savors of the heroic, and when he said,
+"There are no Alleghanies in my politics," he spoke the truth. The
+intense passion for the soil which animated him at Marshfield was only a
+fragment of that higher passion for his country--feeling never tainted
+by sectionalism or local prejudice. It was this profound love for the
+Union, coupled with his surpassing gift of eloquence in expressing that
+love and inspiring it in all who heard him, that distinguishes him for
+all time.
+
+There are other memorable things about Marshfield. Governor Edward
+Winslow, who was sent to England to represent the Plymouth and
+Massachusetts Bay Colonies, and whose son Josiah was the first native
+Governor of the Colony, may both be called Marshfield men. Peregrine
+White, the first white child born in this country, lies in the Winslow
+Burying Ground. One of the most singular changes on our coast occurred
+in this vicinity when in one night the "Portland Breeze" closed up the
+mouth of the South River and four miles up the beach opened up the mouth
+of the North River, making an entrance three quarters of a mile wide
+between Third and Fourth Cliff.
+
+These and many other men and events of Marshfield are properly given a
+place in the history of New England, but the special glory of this spot
+will always be that Daniel Webster chose to live, chose to die, and
+chose to be buried under the vast vault of her skyey spaces, within the
+sound of her eternal sea.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+DUXBURY HOMES
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+There are certain places whose happy fortune seems to be that they are
+always specially loved and specially sought by the children of men. From
+that memorable date in 1630 when a little group of the Plymouth
+colonists asked permission to locate across the bay at "Duxberie" until
+now, when the summer colony alone has far surpassed that of the original
+settlers, this section of the coast--with its lovely six-mile beach, its
+high bluffs, and its pleasant hills and pasture lands, upon which are
+found quite a southern flora, unique in this northern latitude--has been
+thoroughly frequented and enjoyed.
+
+There is no more graphic index to the caliber of a people than the
+houses which they build, and the first house above all others which we
+must associate with this spot is the Standish cottage, built at the foot
+of Captain's Hill by Alexander Standish, the son of Myles, partly from
+materials from his father's house, which was burned down, but whose
+cellar is still visible. This long, low, gambrel-roofed structure, with
+a broad chimney showing the date of 1666, was a long way ahead of the
+first log cabins erected by the Pilgrims--farther than most of us
+realize, accustomed as we are to glass instead of oiled paper in
+windows; to shingles, and not thatch for roofs. It is fitting that this
+ancient and charming dwelling should be associated with one of the most
+romantic, most striking, names in the Plymouth Colony. There are few
+more picturesque personalities in our early history than Myles Standish.
+Small in stature, fiery in spirit, a terror to the Indians, and a strong
+arm to the Pilgrims, there is no doubt that his determination to live in
+Duxbury--which he named for Duxborough Hall, his ancestral home in
+Lancashire--went far in obtaining for it a separate incorporation and a
+separate church. This was the first definite offshoot from the Plymouth
+Colony, and was accompanied by the usual maternal fears. While he could
+not forbid them going to Duxbury to settle, yet, when they asked for a
+separate incorporation and church, Bradford granted it most unwillingly.
+He voiced the general sentiment when he wrote that such a separation
+presaged the ruin of the church "& will provoke y^e Lord's displeasure
+against them."
+
+However, such unkind predictions in no wise bothered the sturdy little
+group who moved over to the new location, needing room for their cattle
+and their gardens, and most of all a sense of freedom from the
+restrictions of the mother colony. The son of Elder Brewster went, and
+in time the Elder himself, and so did John Alden and his wife Priscilla,
+whose courtship has been so well told by Longfellow that it needs no
+further embellishing here. On the grassy knoll where John and Priscilla
+built their home in 1631, their grandson built the cottage which now
+stands--the property of the Alden Kindred Association. John Alden seems
+to have been an attractive young fellow--it is easy to see why Priscilla
+Mullins preferred him to the swart, truculent widower--but from our
+point of view John Alden's chief claim to fame is that he was a friend
+of Myles Standish.
+
+Let us, as we pay our respects to Duxbury, pause for a moment and recall
+some of the courageous adventures, some of the brave traits and some of
+the tender ones, which make up our memory of this doughty military
+commander. In the first place, we must remember that he was never a
+member of the church of the Pilgrims: there is even a question if he
+were not--like the rest of his family in Lancashire--a Roman Catholic;
+and this immediately places him in a position of peculiar distinction.
+From the first his mission was not along ecclesiastical lines, but along
+military and civil ones. The early histories are full of his intrepid
+deeds: there was never an expedition too dangerous or too difficult to
+daunt him. He would attack with the utmost daring the hardest or the
+humblest task. He was absolutely loyal to the interest of the Colony,
+and during that first dreadful winter when he was among the very few who
+were not stricken with sickness, he tended the others day and night,
+"unceasing in his loving care." As in many audacious characters this
+sweeter side of his nature does not seem to have been fully appreciated
+by his contemporaries, and we have the letter in which Robinson, that
+"most learned, polished and modest spirit," writes to Bradford, and
+warns him to have care about Standish. He loves him right well, and is
+persuaded that God has given him to them in mercy and for much good, if
+he is used aright; but he fears that there may be wanting in him "that
+tenderness of the life of man (made after God's image) which is meet."
+This warning doubtless flattered Standish, but Robinson's later
+criticism of his methods at Weymouth hurt the little captain cruelly. He
+seems to have cherished an intense affection for the Leyden pastor,
+such as valorous natures often feel for meditative ones, and that
+Robinson died before he--Standish--could justify himself was a deep
+grief to the soldier to whom mere physical hardships were as nothing. We
+do not know a great deal about this relationship between the two men: in
+this as in so many cases the intimate stories of these men and women,
+"also their love, and their hatred, and their envy is now perished." But
+we do know that thirty years later when the gallant captain lay dying he
+wrote in his will: "I give three pounds to Mercy Robinson, whom I
+tenderly love for her grandfather's sake." Surely one feels the touching
+eloquence of this brief sentence the fitting close of a life not only
+heroic in action, but deeply sensitive in sentiment.
+
+He died on his farm in Duxbury in 1656 when he was seventy-three, and
+the Myles Standish Monument on Captain's Hill, three hundred and ten
+feet above the bay, is no more conspicuous than his knightly and tender
+life among the people he elected to serve. His two wives, and also
+Priscilla and John Alden, for whom he entertained such lively love and
+equally lively fury, all are buried here--the Captain's last home
+fittingly marked by four cannon and a sturdy boulder.
+
+Not only for Standish and Alden is Duxbury famous. The beloved William
+Brewster himself moved to this new settlement, and up to a few years ago
+the traces of the whitewood trees which gave the name of "Eagle's Nest"
+to his house could be distinguished. One son--Love--lived with the
+venerable elder, who was a widower, and his other son Jonathan owned the
+neighboring farm. In the sight of the Plymouth Colony--their first home
+in the new land--the three men often worked together, cutting trees and
+planting.
+
+Others of the original Mayflower company came too, leaving traces of
+themselves in such names as Blackfriars Brook, Billingsgate, and
+Houndsditch--names which they brought from Old England.
+
+The homes which these pioneers so laboriously and so lovingly
+wrought--what were they? How did they compare with the modern home and
+household? In Mr. Sheldon's "History of Deerfield" we find such a
+charming and vivid picture of home life in the early days--and one that
+applies with equal accuracy to Duxbury--that we cannot do better than
+copy it here:
+
+"The ample kitchen was the center of the family life, social and
+industrial. Here around the rough table, seated on rude stools or
+benches, all partook of the plain and sometimes stinted fare. A glance
+at the family gathered here after nightfall on a winter's day may prove
+of interest.
+
+"After a supper of bean porridge or hasty pudding and milk of which all
+partake in common from a great pewter basin, or wooden bowl, with spoons
+of wood, horn or pewter; after a reverent reading of the Bible, and
+fervent supplications to the Most High for prayer and guidance; after
+the watch was set on the tall mount, and the vigilant sentinel began
+pacing his lonely beat, the shutters were closed and barred, and with a
+sense of security the occupations of the long winter evening began.
+Here was a picture of industry enjoined alike by the law of the land and
+the stern necessities of the settlers. All were busy. Idleness was a
+crime. On the settle, or a low armchair, in the most sheltered nook, sat
+the revered grandam--as a term of endearment called granny--in red
+woolen gown, and white linen cap, her gray hair and wrinkled face
+reflecting the bright firelight, the long stocking growing under her
+busy needles, while she watched the youngling of the flock in the cradle
+by her side. The good wife, in linsey-woolsey short-gown and red
+petticoat steps lightly back and forth in calf pumps beside the great
+wheel, or poising gracefully on the right foot, the left hand extended
+with the roll or bat, while with a wheel finger in the other, she gives
+the wheel a few swift turns for a final twist to the long-drawn thread
+of wool or tow. The continuous buzz of the flax wheels, harmonizing with
+the spasmodic hum of the big wheel, shows that the girls are preparing a
+stock of linen against their wedding day. Less active and more fitful
+rattled the quill wheel, where the younger children are filling quills
+for the morrow's weaving.
+
+"Craftsmen are still scarce, and the yeoman must depend largely on his
+own skill and resources. The grandsire, and the goodman, his son, in
+blue woolen frocks, buckskin breeches, long stockings, and clouted
+brogans with pewter buckles, and the older boys in shirts of brown tow,
+waistcoat and breeches of butternut-colored woolen homespun, surrounded
+by piles of white hickory shavings, are whittling out with keen Barlow
+jack-knives implements for home use: ox-bows and bow-pins, axe-helves,
+rakestales, forkstales, handles for spades and billhooks, wooden
+shovels, flail staff and swingle, swingling knives, or pokes and hog
+yokes for unruly cattle and swine. The more ingenious, perhaps, are
+fashioning buckets or powdering tubs, or weaving skeps, baskets or
+snowshoes. Some, it may be, sit astride the wooden shovel, shelling corn
+on its iron-shod edge, while others are pounding it into samp or hoiminy
+in the great wooden mortar.
+
+"There are no lamps or candles, but the red light from the burning pine
+knots on the hearth glows over all, repeating, in fantastic pantomime on
+the brown walls and closed shutters, the varied activities around it.
+These are occasionally brought into higher relief by the white flashes,
+as the boys throw handfuls of hickory shavings onto the forestick, or
+punch the back log with the long iron peel, while wishing they had as
+'many shillings as sparks go up the chimney.' Then, the smoke-stained
+joists and boards of the ceiling with the twisted rings of pumpkin
+strings or crimson peppers and festoons of apple, drying on poles hung
+beneath; the men's hats, the crook-necked squashes, the skeins of thread
+and yarn hanging in bunches on the wainscot; the sheen of the pewter
+plates and basins, standing in rows on the shelves of the dresser; the
+trusty firelock with powder horn, bandolier, and bullet pouch, hanging
+on the summertree, and the bright brass warming-pan behind the bedroom
+door--all stand revealed more clearly for an instant, showing the
+provident care for the comfort and safety of the household. Dimly seen
+in the corners of the room are baskets in which are packed hands of flax
+from the barn, where, under the flaxbrake, the swingling knives and the
+coarse hackle, the shives and swingling tow have been removed by the
+men; to-morrow the more deft manipulations of the women will prepare
+these bunches of fiber for the little wheel, and granny will card the
+tow into bats, to be spun into tow yarn on the big wheel. All quaff the
+sparkling cider or foaming beer from the briskly circulating pewter mug,
+which the last out of bed in the morning must replenish from the barrel
+in the cellar."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One notices the frequent reference to beer in these old chronicles. The
+tea, over which the colonists were to take such a dramatic stand in a
+hundred years, had not yet been introduced into England, and neither had
+coffee. Forks had not yet made their appearance. In this admirable
+picture Mr. Sheldon does not mention one of the evening industries
+which was peculiarly characteristic of the Plymouth Colony. This was
+the making of clapboards, which with sassafras and beaver skins,
+constituted for many years the principal cargo sent back to England from
+the Colony. Another point--the size of the families. The mother of
+Governor William Phips had twenty-one sons and five daughters, and the
+Reverend John Sherman had six children by his first wife and twenty by
+his second. These were not uncommon figures in the early life of New
+England; and with so many numbers within itself the home life was a
+center for a very complete and variegated industrial life. Surely it is
+a long cry from these kitchen fireplaces--so large that often a horse
+had to be driven into the kitchen dragging the huge back log--these
+immense families, to the kitchenette and one-child family of to-day!
+
+This, then, was the old Duxbury: the Duxbury of long, cold winters,
+privations, and austerity. Down by the shore to-day is the new
+Duxbury--a Duxbury of automobiles, of business men's trains, of gay
+society at Powder Point, where in the winter is the well-known boys'
+school--a Duxbury of summer cottages, white and green along the shore,
+green and brown under the pines. Of these summer homes many are new: the
+Wright estate is one of the finest on the South Shore, and the pleasant,
+spacious dwelling distinguished by its handsome hedge of English privet
+formerly belonged to Fanny Davenport, the actress. Others are old
+houses, very tastefully, almost affectionately remodeled by those for
+whom the things of the past have a special lure. These remodeled
+cottages are, perhaps, the prettiest of all. Those very ancient
+landmarks, sagging into pathetic disrepair, present a sorrowful, albeit
+an artistic, silhouette against the sky. But these "new-old" cottages,
+with ruffled muslin curtains at the small-paned, antique windows, brave
+with a shining knocker on the green-painted front door, and gay with
+old-fashioned gardens to the side or in the rear--these are a delight to
+all, and an honor to both past and present.
+
+Surely the fair town of Duxbury, which so smilingly enticed the
+Pilgrims across the bay to enjoy her sunny beach and rolling pasture
+lands, must be happy to-day as she was then to feel her ground so deeply
+tilled, and still to be so daintily adorned with homes and gardens and
+with laughing life.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+KINGSTON AND ITS MANUSCRIPTS
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+On a charming eminence at two crossroads, delicately dappled by fine elm
+shade and clasped by an antique grapevine, rests the old Bradford house.
+From the main road half a mile away you will see only the slanting roof,
+half concealed by rolling pasture land, but if you will trouble to turn
+off from the main road, and if you will not be daunted by the
+unsavoriness of the immediate neighborhood, you will find it quite worth
+your while. The house presents only a casual side to the street--one
+fancies it does not take much interest in its upstart neighbors--but
+imagination makes us believe that it regards with brooding tenderness
+the lovely tidal river which winds away through the marshes to the sea.
+Interesting as the house is for its architectural features and for its
+delightful location--despite the nearness of the passing train--yet it
+is on neither of these points that its fame rests.
+
+In this house, built in 1674, and once belonging to Major John Bradford,
+the grandson of the Governor, was preserved for many years one of the
+most valuable American manuscripts in existence, and one fated to the
+most romantic adventures in the annals of Lost and Found.
+
+Bradford's "History of the Plymouth Plantation" is our sole source of
+authentic information for the period 1606-46. It is the basis for all
+historical study of the early life of the Pilgrims in this country, and
+when we look at the quiet roof of the Bradford house to-day and realize
+how narrowly the papers--for they remained in manuscript form for two
+hundred years--escaped being lost forever, our minds travel again over
+the often told story.
+
+The manuscript, penned in Governor Bradford's fine old hand, in a folio
+with a parchment back, and with some childish scribblings by little
+Mercy Bradford on the cover, passed at the Governor's death to his son,
+and at his death to his son. It reposed in the old house at which we are
+now looking until 1728, doubtless regarded as something valuable, but
+not in the least appreciated at its full and peculiar worth. When Major
+John Bradford lent it to the Reverend Thomas Prince to assist him in his
+"Chronological History of New England," he was merely doing what he had
+done many times before. In these days of burglar-proof safes and fire
+protection it makes us shiver to think of this priceless holograph
+passed from hand to hand in such a casual manner. But it seems to have
+escaped any mishap under Dr. Prince, who deposited it eventually in the
+library of the Old South Church. Here it remained for half a century,
+still in manuscript form and frequently referred to by scholars. Thomas
+Hutchinson used it in compiling his "History of Massachusetts Bay," and
+Mather used it also. At the time of the Revolution the Old South was
+looted, and this document (along with many others) disappeared
+absolutely. No trace whatever could be found of it: the most exhaustive
+search was in vain, and scholars and historians mourned for a loss that
+was irreparable. And then, after half a century, after the search had
+been entirely abandoned, it was discovered, quite by chance, by one who
+fortunately knew its value, tucked into the Library of Fulham Palace in
+London. After due rejoicing on the American side and due deliberation on
+the English side of the water, it was very properly and very politely
+returned to this country in 1897. Now it rests after its career of
+infinite hazard, in a case in the Boston State House, elaborately
+protected from fire and theft, from any accidental or premeditated harm,
+and Kingston must content itself with a copy in Pilgrim Hall at
+Plymouth.
+
+Kingston's history commences with a manuscript and continues in the same
+form. If you would know the legends, the traditions, the events which
+mark this ancient town, you will have to turn to records, diaries,
+memoranda, memorial addresses and sermons, many of them never published.
+
+It is rather odd that this serene old place, discovered only two or
+three days after the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, is so devoid
+of a printed career. As soon as the Pilgrims had explored the spot, they
+put themselves on record as having "a great liking to plant in it"
+instead of in Plymouth. But they decided against it because it lay too
+far from their fishing and was "so encompassed with woods," that they
+feared danger from the savages. It was very soon settled, however, and
+remained as the north end of Plymouth for a hundred and six years, until
+1726. Governor Bradford writes, in regard to its colonization:
+
+"Y^e people of y^e plantation begane to grow in their outward estate ...
+and as their stocks increased and y^e increase vendible, ther was no
+longer any holding them togeather, but now they must of necessitoe goe
+to their great lots: they could not otherwise keep catle; and having
+oxen grown they must have land for plowing and tillage. And no man now
+thought he could live except he had catle and a great deal of ground to
+keep them: all striving to increase their stocks. By which means they
+were scattered all over y^e bay, quickly, and y^e towne, in which they
+had lived compactly till now [1632] was left very thine, and in a short
+time almost desolate."
+
+Governor Bradford seems to deplore this moving out of Plymouth, but as a
+matter of fact he was among the first to go, and his estate on Jones
+River comprised such a goodly portion of what is now Kingston that when
+he died he was the richest man in the Colony! A boulder marks the place
+which he, with that unerring eye for a fine view which distinguished the
+early settlers, chose for his estate. From here one catches a glimpse of
+water, open fields, trees, the Myles Standish Monument to the left, the
+sound of the passing automobiles behind. The distant smokestacks would
+be unfamiliar to Governor Bradford's eye, but the fragrant Kingston air
+which permeates it all would greet him as sweetly to-day as it did
+three hundred years ago.
+
+Governor Bradford, who was Governor for thirty-seven years, was a man of
+remarkable erudition. Cotton Mather says of him: "The Dutch tongue was
+become almost as vernacular to him as the English; the French tongue he
+could also manage; the Latin and the Greek he had mastered; but the
+Hebrew he most of all studied." Therefore if the curious spelling of his
+history strikes us as unscholarly, we must remember that at that time
+there was no fixed standard for English orthography. Queen Elizabeth
+employed seven different spellings for the word "sovereign" and
+Leicester rendered his own name in eight different ways. It was by no
+means a mark of illiteracy to spell not only unlike your neighbor, but
+unlike yourself on the line previous.
+
+But it is more than quaint diction and fantastic spelling which
+fascinates us as we turn over, not only the leaves of Bradford's famous
+history, but the pile of fading records of various kinds of this once
+prosperous shipbuilding town. The records of Kingston are valuable, not
+only because they tell the tale of this particular spot, but because
+they are delightfully typical of all the South Shore towns. The
+yellowing diaries mention crude offenses, crude chastisements; give
+scraps of genealogies as broken as the families themselves are now
+broken and scattered; lament over one daughter of the Puritans who took
+the veil in a Roman Catholic convent; sternly relate, in Rabelaisian
+frankness, dark sins, punished with mediaeval justice. In fact, these
+righteous early colonists seemed to find a genuine satisfaction in
+devising punishments, and in putting them into practice. We read that
+the stocks (also called "bilbaos" because they were formerly
+manufactured in Bilbao, in Spain) were first occupied by the man who had
+made them, as the court decided that his charge for the work was
+excessive! There were wooden cages in which criminals were confined and
+exposed to public view; whipping-posts; cleft sticks for profane
+tongues. Drunkenness was punished by disfranchisement; the blasphemer
+and the heretics were branded with a hot iron.
+
+Let us look at some of these old records, not all of them as ferocious
+as this, but interesting for the minutiae which they preserve and which
+makes it possible for us to reconstruct something of that atmosphere of
+the past. It was ninety-six years after the settlement at Plymouth that
+Kingston made its first request for a separation. It was not granted for
+almost a decade, but from then on the ecclesiastical records furnish us
+with a great deal of intimate and chatty material. For instance, we
+learn in 1719 that Isaac Holmes was to have "20 shillings for sweeping,
+opening and shutting of the doors and casements of the meeting house for
+1 year," which throws some light upon sextons' salaries!
+
+The minute directions as to the placing of the pews in the meeting-house
+(1720) contain a pungent element of personality. Major John Bradford is
+"next to the pulpit stairs"; Elisha Bradford on the left "as you go in";
+Benjamin Eaton's place is "between minister's stairs and west door";
+while Peter West is ingloriously, and for what reason we know not,
+relegated to the gallery "in the front, next to the stairs, behind the
+women."
+
+It is significant to note (1728) that seats are built at each end above
+the galleries for the Indians and negroes.
+
+Fish laws, rewards for killing wild cats, bickerings with the minister,
+and brief mention of the death of many women at an early age--after
+having given birth to an incredible number of children--fill up pages
+and pages.
+
+The eye rests upon a resolution passed (1771) to "allow Benjamin Cook
+the sum of 8 shillings for a coffin, and liquor at the funeral of James
+Howland." They might not believe in prayers for the dead in those days,
+but there was evidently no reason why the living should not receive some
+cheer!
+
+How is this for the minister's salary? The Reverend Doctor Willis (1780)
+is to receive eighty pounds a year, to be paid partly in Indian corn,
+rye, pork, and beef. Ten cords of wood yearly are allowed him "until he
+have a family, then twenty cords, are to be allowed, the said wood to
+be delivered at his door."
+
+Mr. Levi Bradford agrees to make the whipping-post and stocks for nine
+shillings, if the town will find the iron (1790).
+
+The wage paid for a day's labor on the highway (1791) was as follows:
+For a day's labor by a man, 2 shillings, 8 pence; for a yoke of oxen, 2
+shillings; for a horse, 1 shilling, 6 pence; for a cart, 1 shilling, 4
+pence. One notes the prices are for an eight-hour day.
+
+However, the high cost of living began to make itself felt even then.
+How else account for the statement (1796) that Mr. Parris, the
+schoolmaster, has been allowed fifty shillings in addition to his salary
+"considering the increase in the price of provisions"?
+
+There seems to have been a great celebration on the occasion of raising
+the second meetinghouse in Kingston (1798). One old account reads:
+"Booths were erected on the field opposite, and all kinds of liquor and
+refreshment were sold freely." After the frame was up a procession was
+formed of those who were employed in the raising, consisting of
+carpenters, sailors, blacksmiths, etc., each taking some implement of
+his trade such as axes, rules, squares, tackles and ropes. They walked
+to the Great Bridge and back to the temporary building that had been
+used for worship (the Quail Trap) while the new one was being planned.
+Here they all had punch and an "hour or so of jollity."
+
+If the women's lives were conspicuously short, it was not so with the
+men. Ebenezer Cobb, who died in 1801 in the one hundred and eighth year
+of his age, had lived in no less than three centuries, having seen six
+years in the seventeenth, the whole of the eighteenth, and a year of the
+nineteenth.
+
+The minister's tax is separated from the other town taxes in 1812--thus
+even in this little village is reflected the great movement of
+separation of Church and State. In 1851 when we read of a Unitarian
+church being built we realize that the Puritan regime is over in New
+England.
+
+Thus with the assistance of the Pelegs and Hezekiahs, the Zadocks,
+Ichabods, and Zenases--names which for some absurd and irreverent reason
+suggest a picture puzzle--we manage to piece together scraps of the
+Kingston of long ago.
+
+We must confess to some relief at the inevitable conclusion that such
+study brings--namely, that the early settlers were not the unblemished
+prigs and paragons tradition has so fondly branded them. They seem to
+have been human enough--erring enough, if we take these records penned
+by themselves. However, for any such iconoclastic observation it is
+reassuring to have the judgment of so careful a historian as Charles
+Francis Adams. He says:
+
+"That the earlier generations of Massachusetts were either more
+law-abiding or more self-restrained than the later is a proposition
+which accords neither with tradition nor with the reason of things. The
+habits of those days were simpler than those of the present: they were
+also essentially grosser...."
+
+He then gives a dozen pages or so of hitherto unpublished church
+records, gathered from as many typical Massachusetts towns, which throw
+an undeniable and unflattering light on the social habits of that early
+period. As explicit and public confession before the church congregation
+was enforced, these church records contain startlingly graphic
+statements of drunkenness, blasphemy, stealing, and immorality in all
+its various phases.
+
+There are countless church records which duplicate this one of the
+ordination of a Massachusetts pastor in 1729: "6 Barrels and a half of
+Cyder, 28 gallons of wine, 2 gallons of Brandy, and 4 of rum, loaf
+sugar, lime juice and pipes," all, presumably, consumed at the time and
+on the spot of the ordination. Even the most pessimistic must admit that
+long before our prohibition era we had traveled far beyond such
+practices.
+
+The immorality seems to have been the natural reaction from morbid
+spiritual excitement induced by religious revivals. Poor Governor
+Bradford never grasped this, and we find him lamenting (1642):
+"Marvilous it may be to see and consider how some kind of wickedness did
+grow and break forth here in a land where the same was much witnessed
+against, and so narrowly looked on and severely punished when it was
+known."
+
+We hear the same plaint from Jonathan Edwards a century later.
+
+It is well to honor the Pilgrims for their many stanch and admirable
+qualities, but it is only fair to recall that the morbidity of their
+religion made them less healthy-minded than we, and that many of their
+practices, such as the well-recognized custom of "bundling," were
+indications of a people holding far lower moral standards than ours.
+
+The old sermons, diaries, biographies, and records lie on dusty shelves
+now, and few pause to read them, and in Kingston no one yet has gathered
+them into a local history. There are other records traced, not in sand,
+but on the soil that may also be read by any who pass. Some remnants of
+the trenches and terraces dug by the quota of Arcadian refugees who
+fell to Kingston's share after the pathetic flight from Nova Scotia may
+still be seen--claimed by some to be the first irrigation attempt in
+America.
+
+The old "Massachusetts Payth" which follows the road more or less
+closely beyond Kingston is traced with difficulty and uncertainty in
+Kingston itself, but there is another highway as clear to-day as it was
+three hundred years ago. And this is the lovely tidal river, named after
+the master of the Mayflower, up which used to come and go not only many
+ships of commerce, but, in the evenings after life had become less
+austere, boatloads of merry-makers from Plymouth and Duxbury to attend
+the balls given at what was originally the King's Town.
+
+It has carried much traffic in its day, that river which now winds so
+gracefully down to the sea, and which we see so well from the yard of
+the old Bradford house. Down it floated the vessels made by Kingston
+men, and out of it was dug much bog iron for the use of Washington's
+artillery.
+
+Monk's Hill--which the old records call Mont's Hill Chase, a name
+supposed to have been applied to a hunt in England--could tell a story
+too, if one had ears to hear. The highest land in Kingston, during the
+Revolution it was one of the points where a beacon fire was lighted to
+alarm the town in case of invasion by the enemy.
+
+Kingston is not without history, although its manuscripts lie long
+untouched upon library shelves, and its historic soil is tramped over by
+unheeding feet. That the famous manuscript which was its greatest
+historical contribution has been taken away from it, is no loss in the
+truest sense of the word, for this monumental work, which belongs to no
+one place, but to the country as a whole, is properly preserved at the
+State House.
+
+Kingston seems amenable to this arrangement, just as she seems entirely
+willing that Plymouth should claim the first century of her career. When
+one is sure of one's heritage and beauty, one does not clamor for
+recognition; one does not even demand a printed history. It is quality,
+not quantity, that counts, and even if nothing more is ever written in
+or about this dear old town, Kingston will have made a distinguished
+contribution to American history and literature.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+PLYMOUTH
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+One of the favorite pictures of New Englanders, and one which hangs in
+innumerable dining-rooms and halls, is by Boughton, the popular American
+artist, and is named "The Return of the Mayflower." I suppose thousands
+of New England children have gazed wonderingly at this picture, which,
+contrary to the modern canons of art, "tells a story," and many of those
+naive minds have puzzled as to how those poor Pilgrims, who had no tea
+or coffee or milk or starch, managed to appear so well fed and so
+contented, and so marvelously neat and clean. The inexhaustible bag
+which inevitably appeared at crucial moments in the career of "Swiss
+Family Robinson" is nowhere mentioned in the early chronicles of the
+Plymouth Plantation, and the precise manner in which a small vessel of a
+hundred and eighty tons, carrying a hundred passengers, and all the
+innumerable cradles, chairs, and highboys which have since flooded the
+museums as "genuine relics" of that first voyage, could also have
+brought sufficient washboards, soap, and flatirons to have kept the
+charming costumes so immaculate is a mystery which will probably never
+be solved--especially since the number of relics appears to increase
+instead of diminish with the passage of time.
+
+However, that is a mere trifle. Mr. Boughton, in catching this touching
+and dramatic moment in the history of the Plymouth Colony, has rendered
+a graphic service to us all, and if we could stand upon the little
+plateau on which this man and maid are standing, and could look out with
+them--we should see--what should we see?
+
+We may, indeed, stand upon the little plateau--possibly it is no other
+than the base of Cole's Hill, that pathetic spot on which the dead were
+buried those first sad months, the ground above being leveled and
+planted with corn lest the Indians should count the number of the
+lost--and look out upon that selfsame harbor, but the sight which meets
+our eyes will be a very different one from that which met theirs. Let
+us, if we can, for the space of half an hour or so, imagine that we are
+standing beside this Pilgrim man and maid, on the day on which Mr.
+Boughton portrayed them.
+
+Instead of 1920 it is 1621. It is the 5th of April: the winter of
+terrifying sicknesses and loss has passed; of the hundred souls which
+left England the autumn previously more than a half have died. The
+Mayflower which brought them all over, and which has remained in the
+harbor all winter, is now, having made repairs and taking advantage of
+the more clement weather, trimming her sails for the thirty-one days'
+return voyage to England. They may return with her, if they wish, any
+or all of the sturdy little band; they may leave the small, smoky log
+cabins; the scanty fare of corn and fish; the harassing fear of the
+Indians; they may leave the privations, the cramped quarters, and return
+to civilized life--to friends and relatives, to blooming English
+hedgerows and orderly English churches. But no one--no, not a single one
+returns! They have thrown in their lot with the new country--the new
+life. Their nearest civilized neighbors are the French of Nova Scotia,
+five hundred miles to the north, and the English of Virginia five
+hundred miles to the south. But they are undaunted. And yet--who can
+doubt that as they gaze out upon the familiar sails--the last banner
+between themselves and their ancestral home, and as they see them
+sailing out and out until they sink below the verge of sea and sky, the
+tears "rise in the heart and gather to the eyes" in "thinking of the
+days that are no more."
+
+Three hundred years ago! The same harbor now as then, with the highland
+of Cape Cod dimly outlined in the gray eastern horizon; the bluffs of
+Manomet nearer on the right; opposite them, on the left, Duxbury Beach
+comes down, and ends in the promontory which holds the Gurnet Lights.
+Clarke's Island--already so named--lies as it does to-day, but save for
+these main topographical outlines the Plymouth at which we are looking
+in our imagination would be quite unrecognizable to us.
+
+There is a little row of houses--seven of them--that is all. Log cabins,
+two-roomed, of the crudest build, thatched with wildgrass, the chinks
+between the logs filled with clay, the floors made of split logs;
+lighted at night with pieces of pitch pine. Each lot measures three rods
+long and a rod and a half wide, and they run on either side of the
+single street (the first laid out in New England, and ever afterward to
+be known as Leyden Street), which, in its turn, is parallel to the Town
+Brook. There is no glass in these cabin windows: oiled paper suffices;
+the household implements are of the fewest. The most primitive modern
+camping expedition is replete with luxuries of which this colony knows
+nothing. They have no cattle of any kind, which means no milk or
+butter; they have no poultry or eggs. Twenty-six acres of cultivated
+ground--twenty-one of corn, the other five of wheat, rye, and
+barley--have been quite enough for the twenty-one men and six boys (all
+who were well enough to work) to handle, but it is not a great deal to
+feed them all. At one end of the street stands the common house, twenty
+feet square, where the church services are held; the store-house is near
+the head of the pier; and at the top of what is now Burial Hill is the
+timber fort, twenty by twenty, built the January before by Myles
+Standish. In April, 1621, this is all there is to what is now the
+prosperous town of Plymouth.
+
+And yet--not entirely. There are a few things left in the Plymouth of
+to-day which were in the Plymouth of three hundred years ago. If our man
+and maid should turn into Pilgrim Hall their eyes would fall upon some
+of the selfsame objects which were familiar sights to them in 1621.
+Those sturdy oaken chairs of Governor Carver, Elder Brewster, and
+Edward Winslow; the square, hooded wooden cradle brought over by Dr.
+Samuel Fuller; and the well-preserved reed one which rocked Peregrine
+White, and whose quaint stanchness suggests the same Dutch influence
+which characterizes the spraddling octagonal windmills--they would
+quickly recognize all of these. Some of the books, too, chiefly
+religious, some in classic tongues, William Bradford's Geneva Bible
+printed in 1592, and others bearing the mark of 1615, would be well
+known to them, although we must not take it for granted that the
+lady--or the man either--can read. Well-worn the Bibles are, however,
+and we need not think that lack of learning prevented any of the
+Pilgrims from imbibing both the letter and spirit of the Book. Those who
+could write were masters of a fine, flowing script that shames our
+modern scrawl, as is well testified by the Patent of the Plymouth
+Colony--the oldest state document in New England--as well as by the
+final will and various deeds of Peregrine White, and many others. The
+small, stiff baby shoes which encased the infant feet of Josiah
+Winslow, the son of Governor Winslow and destined to be Governor
+himself, are of a pattern familiar to our man and maid, as are the now
+tarnished swords of Carver, Brewster, and Standish. Probably they have
+puzzled, as we are still doing, over the Kufic or Arabic inscriptions on
+the last. The monster kettle and generous pewter plate brought over by
+the doughty Captain would be too well known to them to attract their
+attention, as would be the various tankards and goblets, and the
+beautiful mortar and pestle brought over by Winslow. But the two-tined
+fork they would regard with curiosity, for forks were not used, even in
+England, until 1650. The teapots, too, which look antiquated enough to
+us, would fill them with wonder, for tea was practically unknown in both
+colony and mother country until 1657. Those fragments of rude
+agricultural implements which we treasure would not interest our man and
+maid for whom they are ordinary sights, and neither would they regard
+with the same historical interest that moves us the bits of stone from
+the Scrooby Manor in England, the bricks from the old pier at Delft
+Haven in Holland, or the piece of carved pew-back from the old church at
+Scrooby. Possibly our Pilgrim maid is one of the few who can write, and
+if so, her fingers have doubtless fashioned a sampler as exquisite as
+that of Lora Standish, whose meek docility and patient workmanship are
+forever preserved in her cross-stitched words.
+
+From all around the walls of Pilgrim Hall look down fine, stern old
+portraits, real and imaginary, of the early colonists. Modern critics
+may bicker over the authenticity of the white bull on which Priscilla
+Alden is taking her wedding trip; they may quarrel over the fidelity of
+the models and paintings of the Mayflower, and antiquarians may
+diligently unearth bits of bone to substantiate their pet theories. Our
+man and maid could tell us all, but, alas, their voices are so far away
+we cannot hear them. They will never speak the words which will settle
+any of the oft-disputed points, and, unfortunately, they will leave us
+forever to argue about the truth of the famous Plymouth Rock.
+
+To present the well-worn story of Plymouth Rock from an angle calculated
+to rouse even a semblance of fresh interest is comparable to offering a
+well-fed man a piece of bread, and expecting him to be excited over it
+as a novelty. Bread is the staff of life, to be sure, but it is also
+accepted as matter of course in the average diet, and the story of
+Plymouth Rock is part and parcel of every school-book and guide-book in
+the country. The distinguished, if somewhat irreverent, visitor, who,
+after being reduced to partial paralysis by the oft-repeated tale,
+ejaculated fervently that he wished the rock had landed on the Pilgrims
+instead of the Pilgrims on the rock, voiced the first original remark
+about this historic relic which has refreshed our ears for many years.
+However, as Americans we are thoroughly imbued with the theory on which
+our advertising is based. Although it would seem that every housekeeper
+in the land had been kept fully informed for forty years of the
+advantages incident to the use of a certain soap, the manufacturers
+still persist in reciting these benefits. And why? Because new
+housekeepers come into existence with each new day. So, if there be any
+man who comes to Plymouth who does not know the story of Plymouth Rock,
+it is here set down for him, as accurately and briefly as possible.
+
+This rock--which is an oval, glacial boulder of about seven tons--was
+innocently rearing its massive, hoary head from the water one day in
+December, 1620, as it had done for several thousand years previously in
+unmolested oblivion. While engaged in this ponderous but harmless
+occupation it was sighted by a boatful of men and women--the first who
+had ever chosen to land on this particular part of the coast. The rock
+presented a moderately dry footing, and they sailed up to it, and a
+charming young woman, attired, according to our amiable painter, in the
+cleanest and freshest of aprons and the most demure of caps, set a
+daintily shod foot upon it and leaped lightly to shore. This was Mary
+Chilton, and she was promptly followed by an equally trig young
+man--John Alden. Thus commenced the founding of Plymouth Colony, and
+thus was sown the seed of innumerable pictures, poems, stories, and
+sermons.
+
+Now the Pilgrims themselves, in none of their various accounts, ever
+mention the incident of the landing described above, or the rock. In
+fact they are so entirely silent about it that historians--besides
+discrediting the pretty part about Mary Chilton and John Alden, in the
+brusque fashion characteristic of historians--have pooh-poohed the whole
+story, arguing that the rock was altogether too far away from the land
+to be a logical stepping-place, and referring to the only authentic
+record of that first landing, which merely reads: "They sounded y^e
+harbor & founde it fitt for shipping, and marched into y^e land & found
+diverse cornfeilds & little running brooks, a place fitt for situation:
+at least it was y^e best they could find." The Pilgrims, then, were
+quite oblivious of the rock, the historians are entirely skeptical
+concerning it, and the following generation so indifferent to the
+tradition which was gradually formulating, that in the course of events
+it was half-covered with a wharf, and used as a doorstep to a warehouse.
+
+This was an ignominious position for a magnificent free boulder which
+had been a part of the untrammeled sea and land for centuries, but this
+lowly occupation was infinitely less trying than the fate which was
+awaiting. At the time the wharf was suggested, the idea that the rock
+was the actual landing-place of the first colonists had gained such
+momentum that a party was formed in its defense. An aged man, Thomas
+Faunce, was produced. He was ninety-five and confined to an armchair. He
+had not been born until twenty-six years after the landing of the
+Pilgrims; his father, whom he quoted as declaring this to be the
+original rock and identical landing-place, had not even come over in the
+Mayflower, but in the Anne. However, this venerable Canute, carried to
+the water's edge in his armchair, in the presence of many witnesses,
+assured them and all posterity that this was the genuine, undeniable
+landing-place of the Pilgrims. And from that moment the belief was so
+firmly set in the American mind that no power could possibly dislodge
+it. In accordance with this suddenly acquired respect, it was decided to
+move the huge bulk to the more conspicuous location of the Town Square.
+When it was lifted from its prehistoric bed, it broke, and this was
+hailed as a propitious omen of the coming separation of the Colonies
+from the mother country. Only the upper half was dragged up to the Town
+Square--a process which took twenty yoke of oxen and was accompanied by
+wild huzzahing. There the poor, broken thing lay in the sun, at the
+bottom of the Liberty Pole on which was flying, "Liberty or Death." But
+its career as a public feature had only begun. It remained in the square
+until 1834, and then on July 4 it was decided to drag it to a still more
+conspicuous place. So with a formal procession, it was again hoisted and
+hauled and set down in front of the entrance porch of Pilgrim Hall,
+where it lay like a captive mammoth animal for curious folk to gaze at.
+Here it was granted almost half a century of undisturbed if not secluded
+slumber. But the end was not yet. In 1880 it was once more laid hold of
+and carted back to its original setting, and welded without ceremony, to
+the part from which it had been sundered. Now all of this seems quite
+enough--more than enough--of pitiless publicity, for one old rock whose
+only offense had been to be lifting its head above the water on a
+December day in 1620. But no--just as the mind of man takes a singular
+satisfaction in gazing at mummies preserved in human semblance in the
+unearthly stillness of the catacombs, so the once massive boulder--now
+carefully mended--was placed upon the neatest of concrete bases, and
+over it was reared, from the designs of Hammatt Billings, the ugliest
+granite canopy imaginable--in which canopy, to complete the grisly
+atmosphere of the catacombs, were placed certain human bones found in an
+exploration of Cole's Hill. Bleak and homeless the old rock now lies
+passively in forlorn state under its atrocious shelter, behind a strong
+iron grating, and any of a dozen glib street urchins, in syllables
+flavored with Cork, or Genoese, or Polish accents, will, for a penny,
+relate the facts substantially as I have stated them.[2]
+
+It is easy to be unsympathetic in regard to any form of fetishism which
+we do not share. And while the bare fact remains that we are not at all
+sure that the Pilgrims landed on this rock, and we are entirely sure
+that its present location and setting possess no romantic allurement,
+yet bare facts are not the whole truth, and even when correct they are
+often the superficial and not the fundamental part of the truth. Those
+hundreds--those thousands--of earnest-eyed men and women who have stood
+beside this rock with tears in their eyes, and emotions too deep for
+words in their hearts, "believing where they cannot prove," have not
+only interpreted the vital significance of the place, but, by their very
+emotion, have sanctified it.
+
+It really makes little difference whether the testimony of Thomas Faunce
+was strictly accurate or not; it really makes little difference that the
+Hammatt Billings canopy is indeed dreadful. Plymouth Rock has come to
+symbolize the corner-stone of the United States as a nation, and symbols
+are the most beautiful and the most enduring expression of any national
+or human experience.
+
+It is estimated that over one hundred thousand visitors come to Plymouth
+annually. They all go to see the Rock; most of them clamber up to the
+quaint Burial Hill and read a few of the oldest inscriptions; they
+glance at the National Monument to the forefathers, bearing the largest
+granite figure in the world, and they take a turn through Pilgrim Hall.
+But there is one place they often forget to see, and that is the harbor
+itself.
+
+We began our tour through Plymouth through the eyes of a Pilgrim man and
+maid watching the departing Mayflower. It was the Mayflower, battered
+and beaten, her sails blackened and mended, her leaks hastily caulked,
+which was the first vessel to sail into Plymouth Harbor--a harbor so
+joyfully described as being a "most hopeful place" with "innumerable
+store of fowl and excellent good ... in fashion like a sickel or fish
+hook."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+All that first dreadful winter, while the Pilgrims were struggling to
+make roofs to cover their heads, while, with weeping hearts, they buried
+their dead, and when, according to the good and indestructible instincts
+of life, which persist in spite of every calamity, they planted seed for
+the coming spring--all this while the Mayflower lay at anchor in the
+harbor. Every morning they could see her there; any hour of the day they
+could glance out at her; while they slept they were conscious of her
+presence. And just so long as she was there, just so long could they see
+a tangible connection between themselves and the life, which, although
+already strangely far away, was, nevertheless, the nearest and the
+dearest existence they had known. And then in April, the familiar
+vessel, whose outlines were as much a part of the seascape as the Gurnet
+or the bluffs of Manomet, vanished: vanished as completely as if she had
+never been. The water which parted under her departing keel flowed
+together. There was no sign on earth or sea or in the sky of that last
+link between the little group of colonists and their home land. They
+were as much alone as Enoch Arden on his desert isle. Can we imagine the
+emptiness, the illimitable loneliness of that bay? One small shallop
+down by the pier--that was the only visible connection between
+themselves and England!
+
+I do not believe that we can really appreciate their sense of complete
+severance--their sense of utter isolation. And I do not believe that we
+can appreciate the wild thrill of excitement, the sudden gush of
+freshly established connection that ran through the colony, when, seven
+months later--the following November--a ship sailed into the harbor. It
+was the Fortune bringing with her news and letters from home--word from
+that other world--and bringing also thirty-five new colonists, among
+them William Brewster's eldest son and Robert Cushman. Probably the
+greetings were so joyful, the messages so eagerly sought, the flutter of
+welcome so great that it was not until several days had passed that they
+realized that the chief word which Thomas Weston (the London merchant
+who was the head of the company which had financed the expedition) had
+sent them was one of reproof. The Mayflower had brought no profitable
+cargo back to England, he complained, an omission which was "wonderful
+and worthily distasted." While he admitted that they had labored under
+adverse circumstances, he unkindly added that a quarter of the time they
+had spent in discoursing and arguing and consulting could have
+profitably been spent in other ways. That the first official word from
+home should be one of such cruel reprimand struck the colonists--who had
+so wistfully waited for a cheering message--very hard. Half frozen, half
+starved, sick, depressed, they had been forced to struggle so
+desperately to maintain even a foothold on the ladder of existence, that
+it had not been humanly possible for them to fulfill their pledge to the
+Company. Bradford's letter back to Weston--dignified, touching--is
+sufficient vindication. When the Fortune returned she "was laden with
+good clapboards, as full as she could stowe, and two hogsheads of beaver
+and other skins," besides sassafras--a cargo valued at about five
+hundred pounds. In spite of the fact that this cargo was promptly stolen
+by a French cruiser off the English coast, it nevertheless marks the
+foundation of the fur and lumber trade in New England. Although this
+first visitor brought with her a patent of their lands (a document still
+preserved in Pilgrim Hall, with the signatures and seals of the Duke of
+Lenox, the Marquis of Hamilton, the Earl of Warwick, and Sir Ferdinando
+Gorges), yet to us, reading history in the perspective of three hundred
+years, the disagreeable impression of Weston's letter outweighs the
+satisfaction for the patent. When the Fortune sailed away it was like
+the departure of a rich, fault-finding aunt, who suddenly descends upon
+a household of poor relations, bringing presents, to be sure, but with
+such cutting disapproval on her lips that it mars the entire pleasure of
+her visit.
+
+The harbor was once more empty. I suppose that in time the Pilgrims half
+forgot, half forgave, the sting of Weston's reproof. Again they gazed
+out and waited for a sail; again England seemed very far away. So,
+doubtless, in the spring, when a shallop appeared from a fishing vessel,
+they all eagerly hurried down to greet it. But if the Fortune had been
+like a rich and disagreeable aunt, this new visitation was like an
+influx of small, unruly cousins. And such hungry cousins! Weston had
+sent seven men to stay with them until arrangements could be made for
+another settlement. New Englanders are often criticized for their lack
+of hospitality, and in this first historic case of unexpected guests the
+larder was practically bare. Crops were sown, to be sure, but not yet
+green; the provisions in the store-house were gone; it was not the
+season for wild fowl; although there were bass in the outer harbor and
+cod in the bay there was neither tackle nor nets to take them. However,
+the seven men were admitted, and given shellfish like the rest--and very
+little beside.
+
+At this point the Pilgrims looked with less favorable eyes upon
+newcomers into the harbor, and when shortly after two ships appeared
+bringing sixty more men from Weston, consternation reigned. These
+emigrants were supposed to get their own food from their own vessels and
+merely lodge on shore, but they proved a lawless set and stole so much
+green corn that it seriously reduced the next year's supply. After six
+weeks, however, these uninvited guests took themselves off to
+Wessagusset (now Weymouth) leaving their sick behind, and only the
+briefest of "thank you's."
+
+The next caller was the Plantation. She anchored only long enough to
+offer some sorely needed provisions at such extortionate prices that the
+colonists could not buy them. Another slap in the face!
+
+Obviously, none of these visitors had proved very satisfactory. It had
+been entertaining under difficulties, and if the entertainers had hoped
+for the "angels unawares," they had been decidedly disappointed.
+Therefore it is easy to believe that they took fresh courage and sincere
+delight when, in July, 1623, the Anne and the Little James arrived--no
+strangers, for they brought with them additional stores, and best of
+all, good friends and close kinsfolk from the church at Leyden. Yes, the
+Pilgrims were delighted, but, alas, tradition has it that when they
+pressed forward in glad greeting to their old acquaintances, these
+latter started back, nonplussed--aghast! Like Mr. Boughton they had
+fondly pictured an ideal rustic community, in which the happy, carefree
+colonists reveled in all the beauty of picturesque and snowy collars and
+cuffs in Arden-like freedom. Instead they saw a row of rough log cabins
+and a group of work-worn, shabby men and women, men and women whose
+faces were lined with exposure, and whose backs were bent with toil, and
+who, for their most hospitable feast, had only a bit of shellfish and
+water to offer. Many of the newcomers promptly burst into tears, and
+begged to return to England immediately. Poor Pilgrims! Rebuffed--and so
+unflatteringly--with each arriving maritime guest, who can doubt that
+there was born in them at that moment the constitutional dislike for
+unexpected company which has characterized New England ever since?
+
+However, in a comparatively short time the colonists who had been
+brought over in the Anne and the Little James--those who stayed, for
+some did return at once--adjusted themselves to the new life. Many
+married--both Myles Standish and Governor Bradford found wives among
+them; and now the Plymouth Colony may be said to have fairly started.
+
+Just as a trail which is first a mere thread leading to some
+out-of-the-way cabin becomes a path and then a road, and in due time a
+wide thoroughfare, so the way across the Atlantic from Old England to
+New became more charted--more traveled. At first there was only one boat
+and one net for fishing. In five years there was a fleet of fifty
+fishing vessels. Ten years later we have note of ten foreign vessels in
+the harbor in a single week. And to-day, if the Pilgrim man and maid
+whom we joined at the beginning of our reminiscences could gaze out over
+the harbor, they would see it as full of masts as a cornfield is of
+stalks. Every kind of boat finds its way in and out; and not only
+pleasure craft: Plymouth Harbor is second only to Boston among the
+Massachusetts ports of entry, receiving annual foreign imports valued at
+over $7,000,000. Into the harbor, where once a single shallop was the
+only visible sign of man's dominion over the water, now sail great
+vessels from Yucatan and the Philippines, bringing sisal and manila for
+the largest cordage company in the whole country--a company with an
+employees' list of two thousand names, and an annual output of
+$10,000,000. Furthermore, the flats in the harbor are planted with
+clams, which (through the utilization of shells for poultry feeding, and
+by means of canning for bouillon) yield a profit of from five hundred to
+eight hundred dollars an acre.
+
+No, our Pilgrim man and maid would not recognize, in this Plymouth of
+factories and industries, the place where once stood the row of log
+cabins, with oiled-paper windows. And yet, after all, it is not the
+prosperous town of to-day, but the rude settlement of yesterday, which
+chiefly lives in the hearts of the American people. And it lives, not
+because of its economic importance, but because of its unique
+sentimental value. As John Fiske so admirably states: "Historically
+their enterprise [that of the Pilgrims at Plymouth] is interesting not
+so much for what it achieved as for what it suggested. Of itself the
+Plymouth Colony could hardly have become a wealthy and powerful state.
+Its growth was extremely slow. After ten years its numbers were but
+three hundred. In 1643, when the exodus had come to an end and the New
+England Confederacy was formed, the population of Plymouth was but three
+thousand. In an established community, indeed, such a rate of increase
+would be rapid, but was not sufficient to raise in New England a power
+which could overcome Indians and Dutchmen and Frenchmen and assert its
+will in opposition to the Crown. It is when we view the founding of
+Plymouth in relation to what came afterward, that it assumes the
+importance which belongs to the beginning of a new era."
+
+For this reason the permanent position of Plymouth in our history is
+forever assured. Old age, which may diminish the joys of youth,
+preserves inviolate memories which nothing can destroy. The place whose
+quiet fame is made is surer of the future than the one which is on the
+brink of fabulous glory. It is impossible to overestimate the
+significance of this spot.
+
+The Old Coast Road--the oldest in New England--began here and pushed its
+tortuous way up to Boston along the route we have so lightly followed.
+Inheritors of a nation which these pioneers strove manfully,
+worshipfully, to found, need we be ashamed of deep emotion as we stand
+here, on this shore, where they landed three hundred years ago?
+
+[Illustration]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] It is hoped that by the summer of 1921 a beautiful and dignified
+portico of granite will be raised as a final and permanent memorial over
+the rock, which will be moved for the last time--lowered to as near its
+original bed as possible. This work, which has been taken in charge by
+the National Society of Colonial Dames of America will be executed by
+McKim, Mead & White. The General Society of Mayflower Descendants are
+also working for the redemption of the first Pilgrim burial place on
+Cole's Hill. The Pilgrim Society is to assume the perpetual care of both
+memorial and lot.
+
+
+THE END
+
+_The Riverside Press_
+
+CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS
+
+U. S. A.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD COAST ROAD***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 21895.txt or 21895.zip *******
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