and clay for miles. Up at Manomet the coast is rock-bound, sure enough!" I was then told, and I have since read all about Elder Faunce, the son of one of the Pilgrims, how at the age of ninety-six, in 1742, three years before his death, he came down from his home in Eelriver village, purposely to identify the Rock; how "a chair was placed for him," and how, in the presence of numbers gathered around, he pointed to the Rock and said his father told him the Pilgrims used it in landing. One Deacon Spooner, then present, told this years afterwards to the Forefathers' tervals haply beguiling resident loiterers into conversation. But when the stir begins in earnest, I hasten up North Street and bend my course to this lone secluded spot, quiet though melancholy, perhaps quiet because melancholy. In the modern atmosphere of the town below, even with Bradford's Journal and Mourt's Relation for daily reading, it is difficult to make their grim realities seem real. But here upon Burial Hill, reclining under the shadow of Governor Bradford's monument, and aided by these printed records, I ignore time-which sundry Day orator of 1817, who in his oration spoke of the occurrence and of his informant. Thus we see that the enthusiasm of General Grant's wife, which caused her, in their visit here, to kneel upon the Rock and kiss it, was wholly warranted. I like to loiter about the place by moonlight, strolling along in the shadows of the ancient storehouses, or down on the deserted wharves, listening to the swash, swash of the waters, now and then catching the far-off stroke-beat of oars, or merry shout or sweet strain of music from some late-returning water party, or glimpse of a swift-passing sail. And in the cool of the very early morning it is pleasant to sit on the caplog, watching the fishboats as they sail away, or the jolly setting-forth of some up-betimes party of young folk, and at in wise ones say has no existence - and live, and land, with the Pilgrims. I look over the town, out across the eight or nine miles of water, to Gurnet Lights, where the land seems to leave off and the harbor begins, and follow that shore inward to the left, by Saquish Beach and Clark's Island, to Captain's Hill, - pausing there to imagine the valiant captain standing at the top of his monument, saluting Faith, who points so serenely and majestically upwards from the National Monument on this side; then follow the curve home around by Duxbury and Kingston shores to the wharves here below, then on to the right, past "Poverty Pint," and so on far around to the end of Manomet Bluffs. And somehow from the space of water thus encircled all the vessels and fish boats, even the white winged mackerel fleet far out, seem to disappear, and I see only one little shallop working along in a furious gale, over darkening seas. That is not open sea, though it appears so, between the Gurnet and Manomet, for behind the Bluffs the coast bends inward and around to Provincetown, at the end of Cape Cod, where the Pilgrims first made land. They sent out a shallop to explore coastwise; and how that shallop ever made its forlorn and unknown way hitherward, in a gale of wind, with snow and sleet beating down, with mast and rudder broke, and steering with an oar, finally drifting through the breakers upon Clark's Island, by Saquish Cove, oh, the wonder of it! I live it all over with them; crawl up the bank with them, wet and half frozen; and with them watch the long night through for the fierce savages and wild beasts they expected to encounter. Interesting indeed are these detailed accounts, telling how they spent Sunday on the island, of their Sabbath services, and of their putting across next day, taking frequent soundings, and how they liked this spot on account of these protecting hills and of its many "sweet springs of water" and "little running brooks," and how they went back to the Cape to tell the good news, and how the Mayflower sailed over and anchored off here, and how the people came ashore in boatloads, -and, after more than four months' tossing upon the waters, here they are landed on this narrow edge of an unknown continent. "Forth They come from their long prison, hardy forms, And savage man . . "In grateful adoration now, Upon the barren sands they bow; What tongues of joy e'er woke such prayer, What arm of strength e'er woke such power Just below, at the foot of Leyden Street, Clark's Island. is Watson's Hill. I seem to see that hill bare of houses, and to see Massasoit and his twenty Indians filing down. Captain Miles Standish meets them with seven armed men and escorts them to a dwelling on this side, where the governor awaits them. Cushions and a 66 green rug" are spread down. The Indians are "pleased with the drum and trumpet." Massasoit and the governor kiss each other, - a true kiss of peace, as the treaty then formed lasted fifty years. Yet for a time the colony must have had cause of alarm, perhaps from unfriendly Indians, for they held their Sabbath meetings in a fort. Just here it stood, made of strong logs clamped together, and with a flat-roof for the artillery pieces. The site is shown by tablets among the headstones. The oldest of these stones says, " 1681." I am told the earlier graves were not thus marked, as for the next arrival. Some cheerful rhymester of the period portrayed the situation in a long string of verses. "And now, too, our garments begin to grow thin, And wool is much wanted to card and to spin. If we can get garments to cover without, Our other, in-garments, are clout upon clout.1 But clouting our garments, that hinders us nothing; Clouts double are warmer than single whole clothing. "For pottage, and puddings, and custards, and pies, Our pumpkins and parsnips are common supplies; We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon; If it were not for pumpkins, we should be undoon. 1 Patch upon patch. With so few of our modern facilities then existing anywhere, scarcity must have prevailed for a long period. I doubt if the reign of plenty began much before the time of the ancient Unknown yonder who, in common with the idle tourist, frequents these graveyard paths. Latterly he recognizes me. The aged are garrulous. Questioning may draw out somewhat of interest. "Good morning, my friend. I often see you sitting here." "Yes; I do have a habit of coming." "Because you like the sadness of the place?" "Well- -no no; I am a good ways beyond anything of that sort; but since you ask, I will say that I come up here to think over my thoughts and to look off on the salt water. All my family have passed on, and I have no young ties to join me in with this new generation. You may smile, but I seem to myself to be shed off and left all by myself, and I mostly take my cane,for that seems companionable-like, I've known it so long, and go strolling about among the old landmarks, — what are left of them, and I live over the days of my youth; and somehow the times that I did live in, and take part in, and good, strong part, too, seem more like reality to me than these I've no part in. There's a kind of dulness to these times. Everything is right to your hand. Seems there's nothing doing in these times." "But, my friend, you must allow there's something doing in the way of pleasuring." - yes; "Yes I've looked in at their dancing. Just a kind of standing up to rest and a shoving the feet along. No Nancy Dillard singing, 'Now-a is the set part, set part, set part; Now-a is the turn part, turn part, turn,' and 'Dance up to Rushy Cobbin Barnes,' 'Dance up to the gal with the blue short apron.' No stepping out the tune, and the most they try to do is to keep out of one another's way. You'd have been pleased to see the times we used to have up at Cornish's Tavern; the Thanksgiving parties and Forefathers' parties! That was live fun! But everything is duller nowadays. Even in the schools. 'tis drone, drone, drone. You don't see the rulers flying. the rulers flying. And the meeting-houses are dull; no daylight let in; no rousing kind of sermons that used to keep anybody awake day and night. And the pulpit, and the ministers, too, are right down among the people." "What you just said, my friend, in regard to reality is in the line of my own thought. Life must have had a sterner reality and brought deeper lessons when daily needs demanded immediate effort." "Stranger, you speak truth. What they got to eat had to be clutched right out of the ground or out of the water, and it was so up in our neighborhood even Whoever within my own remembrance. wanted clothes, why, there was your flax and your flock o' sheep, and you could pull and shear and card and spin and weave, or do with fewer clothes. When you wanted bread, there was your ground, and you could plant and hoe and reap, or starve. When it came to sweetenin', why, they did have to buy their sweetenin'; but if wanted meat you had to raise it, and do your own killing, or else hire it done. For fish there was the catching, and for clams there was the digging, and for eels you was spinning and weaving; now 'tis pianoplaying and going to picnics. They would have thought very poorly of carrying their victuals out doors and spreading them out on the ground. It takes more time to make a gown now than it took then to make the cloth and the gown. Half a day did very well for making one, and the regular price was twenty-five cents a day, work till eight o'clock. My sister learned the mantua-maker's trade. In one family, the best off in this town, the woman was close as the bark of a tree. She used to there was the bobbing. In our family, father made scythe-handles and other tool-handles. Mother she carded and spun and wove and made up cloth, and the children made wooden buttons and lead inkstands and run over the bent-up pewter spoons in a mould. Grandmother used the same pins to pin her clothes together for years. The shoemaker went his rounds from house to house, making up shoes for winter wear. All the boys and girls in our neighborhood, and a good many men, went barefooted in the summer; rain or shine, they had to put God's leather to God's weather. More for women to do than there is now? Wellmore, and less. Time was used up then, and 'tis used up now. Then it hire Prudy for half a day, and thread up a whole pincushion full of needles, to save her taking a rest between daylight and dark." "Ah, my friend, I see that human nature was the same in your day as now." "Oh, no! Right-down honesty was of good deal more account. Children were instructed in honesty. Once when I was a little boy I picked up a piece of chalk off a carpenter's bench and carried it home, thinking to please my mammy. 'Go straight back and put that piece of chalk where you found it,' she said. Never take a pin's worth that is not your own.' I carried that chalk all the way back, but the 'Never take a pin's worth' |