American   Historic   Towns

Edited by

LYMAN   P.   POWELL

Illustrated

G.   P.   PUTNAM’S   SONS
NEW YORK   &   LONDON
The   Knickerbocker   Press
1898


Copyright, 1898
BY
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London

The Knickerbocker Press, New York

IN July, 1893, while the first Summer Meeting of the American Society for the Extension of University Teaching was in session at the University of Pennsylvania, I conducted the students, in trips taken from week to week, to historic spots in Philadelphia, the battle-fields of the Brandywine and of Germantown, and to the site of the winter camp at Valley Forge. The experiment was brought to the attention of Dr. Albert Shaw, and at his instance I made a plea through the pages of The American Monthly Review of Reviews, October, 1893, for the revival of the mediæval pilgrimage, and for its adaptation to educational and patriotic uses. After pointing out some of the advantages of visits paid under competent guidance and with reverent spirit to spots made sacred by high thinking and self-forgetful living, I suggested a ten days’ pilgrimage in the footsteps of George Washington.

The suggestion took root in the public mind. Leading journals commended the idea. New England people, already acquainted with the thought of local historical excursions, hailed the proposed pilgrimage with enthusiasm. Men and women from a score of States avowed their eagerness to make the experiment; and at the close of the University Extension Summer Meeting of July, 1894, in which I had lectured on American history, I found myself conducting for the University Extension Society a pilgrimage, starting from Philadelphia, to Hartford, Boston, Cambridge, Lexington, Concord, Salem, Plymouth, Newburg, West Point, Tarrytown, Tappan, New York, Princeton, and Trenton.

The press contributed with discrimination the publicity essential to success. Every community visited rendered intelligent and generous co-operation. And surely no pilgrims, mediæval or modern, ever had such leadership; for among our cicerones and patriotic orators were: Col. T. W. Higginson, Drs. Edward Everett Hale and Talcott Williams, Hon. Hampton L. Carson, Messrs. Charles Dudley Warner, Richard Watson Gilder, Charles Carlton Coffin, Frank B. Sanborn, Edwin D. Mead, Hezekiah Butterworth, George P. Morris, Professors W. P. Trent, William M. Sloane, W. W. Goodwin, E. S. Morse, Brig.-Gen. O. B. Ernst, Major Marshall H. Bright, and Rev. William E. Barton.

I had planned in the months that followed to publish a souvenir volume containing the more important addresses made by distinguished men on the historic significance of the places visited; but as the happy experience receded into the past a larger thought laid hold of me. Why not sometime in the infrequent leisure of a busy minister’s life edit a series of volumes on American Historic Towns? Kingsley’s novels were written amid parish duties, and Dr. McCook has found time, amid exacting ministerial duties, to make perhaps the most searching study ever made by an American of the habits of spiders. Medical experts agree concerning the value of a wholesome avocation to the man who takes his vocation seriously; and congregations are quick to give ear to the earnest preacher whose sermons betray a large outlook on life.

A series of illustrated volumes on American Historic Towns, edited with intelligence, would prove a unique and important contribution to historical literature. To the pious pilgrim to historic shrines the series would, perhaps, give the perspective that every pilgrim needs, and furnish information that no guide-book ever offers. To those who have to stay at home the illustrated volumes would present some compensation for the sacrifice, and would help to satisfy a recognized need. The volumes would probably quicken public interest in our historic past, and contribute to the making of another kind of patriotism than that Dr. Johnson had in mind when he defined it as the “last refuge of a scoundrel.”

I foresaw some at least of the serious difficulties that await the editor of such a series. If all the towns for which antiquarians and local enthusiasts would fain find room should be included, the series would be too long. A staff of contributors must be secured, possessing literary skill, historical insight, the antiquarian’s patience, and enough confidence in the highest success of the series to be prepared to waive any requirement of adequate pecuniary compensation. Space must be apportioned with impartial but not unsympathetic hand, and the illustrations selected with due discrimination. And, finally, publishers were to be found willing to assume the expense required for the production in suitable form of a series for which no one could with accuracy forecast the sale.

The last and perhaps most serious difficulty was removed almost a year ago when Messrs. G. P. Putnam’s Sons expressed a willingness to take the commercial risk involved in publishing the present volume, which will, it is hoped, be the first of a series. Contributors were then found whose work has, I trust, secured for the undertaking an auspicious beginning. Critics inclined at first glance to speak harshly of the differences among the contributors in style and in literary method are advised to withhold judgment till a closer reading has made clear, as it will, the fundamental differences there are among the towns themselves in history and in spirit. Adequate reasons which need not be stated here have made it advisable to omit Lexington, Groton, Portsmouth, the Mystic towns, and other towns which would naturally be included in a later volume on New England Towns, in case the publication should be continued.

So many have co-operated in the making of this book that I will not undertake to name them all. But I cannot forbear to acknowledge the valuable assistance I have received at every stage of the work from Mr. G. H. Putnam, Mr. George P. Morris, associate editor of The Congregationalist, and Miss Gertrude Wilson, instructor in history at the historic Emma Willard School. The Century Company has, in the preparation of the first chapter on Boston and the chapter on Newport, kindly allowed the use of certain illustrations and portions of articles on Boston and Newport, which have appeared in St. Nicholas and old Scribner’s respectively. Some of the illustrations for the Portland chapter have been furnished by Lamson, the Portland photographer.

The Essex Institute, with characteristic generosity, has loaned most of the cuts for the Salem chapter. The Ohio State Archæological and Historical Society has allowed the reproduction from The Ohio Quarterly of some of the designs in the Rutland chapter, while certain of the illustrations in the Cape Cod Towns chapter appeared first in Falmouth Illustrated.

Conscious of the editorial shortcomings of the volume, I still dare to hope that it may have such a cordial reception as will justify the publication at some time of a volume on Historic Towns of the Middle States.

Lyman P. Powell

Ambler, Pennsylvania
September 21, 1898.

{1}

FROM the earliest days of the New England Colonies down to the present time, those European analysts of our national life, whose opinions have been based on personal observation, have usually conceded that in New England towns and villages one might, at almost any period of their history, find a higher average degree of physical comfort, intelligence and mental attainment, and political liberty and power than was or is to be found in any other communities of Christendom. Thus Alexis de Tocqueville, in 1835, wrote:

If this be true, the question inevitably arises, how has it come to pass? New England, as a whole, is far from fertile. Its winters are long and severe. Of mineral wealth it has little. The raw materials for its countless factories and mills, the fuel for its factories, homes, and railroads, must be obtained in the territory south and west of the Hudson River. The cereals which furnish the staple diet of its people{3} come from Western plains. Its best blood and brawn have gone to found commonwealths ranging from the Alleghany to the Sierra Nevada mountains, and, into towns once populated and dominated by the purest of English stock, there have come Irish from Ireland and Canada, French by way of Canada, Portuguese, Italians, and Jews from Russia, so that, in 1890, the alien male adult population of the several States was found by the Federal census takers to be, in Maine, 51.43 per cent.; New Hampshire, 50.5 per cent.; Vermont, 41.25 per cent.; Massachusetts, 46.10 per cent.; Rhode Island, 49.78 per cent.; Connecticut, 36.52 per cent.

And yet, notwithstanding these economic disadvantages, this depletion of a population inheriting noble ideals, and the infusion of a class of settlers holding, in many instances, political and religious convictions quite at variance with those of the founders of the colonies, the “type” persists. The New England towns are still unlike, and in some respects superior to, those of other sections of the country. The New England States still lead in reformatory legislation. New England’s approval or disapproval of ideas affecting national{4} destiny still has weight with Congress and Presidents altogether disproportionate to the number of her representatives in Congress or her votes in the Electoral College.

If one will walk about New England towns one will find in each a church, a town-house, and a school, and in most of them a railroad station and a factory. In the majority of them there will also be a public library, small perhaps and usually housed in the town-house, but open to all, and supported from the public funds. In the larger towns, especially in those where manufacturing is a prominent factor in the communal prosperity, a hospital, supported by public taxation, is open to all. In almost every town there is a grass-covered, tree-shaded “common,” which serves as a village or town park, and on it usually stand memorial tablets or statues testifying to the valor of the dead who went forth to fight in the War of the Revolution or in the Civil War.

The church symbolizes that belief in God and that disposition to obey His will and law which the noblest and wisest men of all ages and climes have agreed upon as the sine qua non of civic as well as of individual prosperity, and in this instance it also stands for that{5} separation of Church and State which our national experience—and that of Canada and the Australian Colonies as well—shows to be the ideal relation. That for a time, in the early days of Massachusetts and Connecticut, there was an unsuccessful attempt to preserve a union of State and Church, an attempt which had for some of its least commendable incidents the wholesale hanging of men and women for witchcraft, the expulsion of Quakers, and the ostracism or exclusion of Roman Catholics and Anglicans, is not to be denied.

That the people of New England have been duly conscientious is apparent by the multiplication of churches at home, and by their never-ceasing, overflowing gifts to establish churches, colleges, schools, and Christian missions in the South and West and in foreign lands. It is from the thrifty, prosperous, philanthropic New Englander that the treasuries of the great Protestant missionary and educational societies receive their largest average per-capita gifts, and it is to New England that the steps of the Western and Southern educator still turn for endowments which his State may not, or the people cannot, or do not, give.

Peopled by inhabitants given over to introspection{6}, and as fond of theology as the Scotch, the early New England communities were intensely religious and sectarian. God to them was a Personal Sovereign, intimately concerned with their daily life. They were His chosen people, and, as such, pledged to obedience to His service. The Church was His Bride; the clergyman was His spokesman, and received the deference—social as well as official—which was due to one so augustly commissioned. The social as well as the intellectual life of the community centred almost exclusively in the life of the church and the sermons of its clergy. Sectarian animosities were the inevitable product of a mistaken emphasis put upon the form or utterance of truth, rather than upon truth itself; or, to put it differently, of a provincialism and narrowness of vision that made it impossible for the many to understand that truth is many-sided, that men are different temperamentally, that revelation is continuous and progressive, and that religion is not theology. Communities exist in New England where the old view still obtains, where sectarianism is as rampant as ever, where the clergyman is the social autocrat as well as the shepherd of souls. But such towns are becoming fewer and fewer{7} as the years go by, and of towns of the newer type, where the church is recognized as only one of the many agents which God has for ushering in His Kingdom on earth, New England now has quite as many, probably, as are to be found elsewhere.

To those interested in the theological and religious history of English-speaking peoples, certain New England towns have a peculiar fascination and value as environments which have affected character. Northampton, Massachusetts, will ever be a Mecca because of the identification of Jonathan Edwards with the town. Concord, in the same commonwealth, has not only the unique glory that belongs to a town where national history has been made and the best American literature of its class written by Hawthorne and Thoreau, but also it is the town where Emerson’s ministerial ancestors lived, where he flowered out and became

Newport, Rhode Island, with all its present pre-eminence as a place {8}where “Fashion is a potency ... making it hard to judge between the temporary and the lasting,” will ever remain most worthy of resort because it was the birthplace of William Ellery Channing, and, for thirty years, was the home of the Rev. Dr. Samuel Hopkins, both eminent as theologians and as brave pioneer antagonists of human slavery. Dr. Hopkins was the model for the New England pastor described by Harriet Beecher Stowe in The Minister’s Wooing. Northfield, Massachusetts, is known to thousands of Christians the world over, who have never seen its rare beauty of river and landscape, because a boy, one Dwight L. Moody, was born and bred there, and has become the greatest evangelist of modern times. Litchfield, Connecticut, is famous as the birthplace of Henry Ward Beecher, and if one wishes flash-light pictures of New England ecclesiastical and social life at the beginning of this century, let one read the autobiographic records of Lyman, Henry Ward, Harriet, and Catherine E. Beecher.

Portland, Maine, is known to thousands throughout the English-speaking world, who are ignorant of every other fact in its long and honorable history, because Francis E. Clark there conceived and began that movement to{9} enlist young people in active Christian service, which is now known as the International Young People’s Society of Christian Endeavor, with 54,191 local societies, and more than three and one quarter million adherents enrolled, Russia alone, of the nations of the earth, being without a society now. Hartford, Connecticut, with a discernment and gratitude not always displayed by municipalities, has named its beautiful municipal park after Horace Bushnell, for many years its most eminent divine and “first citizen.”

Salem, fascinating as it is because of its connection with the witchcraft delusion and the early Puritan theocracy; because of its being for a time the home of Hawthorne, who has preserved its ancient local color and atmosphere in his fiction; and because of its ancient glory as a seaport town, whence departed a fleet of sailing craft that made Salem known throughout the world, in places where Boston and New York were then unknown, nevertheless derives its chief glory from the fact that it was the town where Roger Williams, the Welsh statesman and prophet, found a church willing to sit at his feet. The church’s loyalty, however, gave way at last to the resistless pressure{10} of the civil authorities and the zealous ecclesiastical tyrants of the Puritan commonwealth, and it permitted him to depart, to establish in Rhode Island a community based upon the principle of entire liberty of conscience, and majority rule in secular affairs. Massachusetts’ loss and the world’s gain are thus summed up by Gervinus the German historian:

Boston, with all her glories, has none of which she is more proud, than the fact that within her borders Phillips Brooks was born{11} and labored most of his life. Those who came within his range of influence said of him, as Father Taylor said of Emerson, “He might think this or that, but he was more like Jesus Christ than any one he had ever known.”

To mention Roger Williams, Jonathan Edwards, William Ellery Channing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace Bushnell, Henry Ward Beecher, Phillips Brooks, Francis E. Clark, and Dwight L. Moody, is to name the greatest spiritual forces which New England has known, and towns fed with manna by such prophets have not failed to indicate the influence of personality in transforming environment.

The “town-house,” or town-hall, of the New England town or village, in its architecture, is a modern structure, often as simple, unpretentious, and unornamented as the “meeting-house” near which it usually stands on the village green or “town common.” It is the arena wherein rich and poor, educated and illiterate, wise and foolish, meet, at least annually, and as much oftener as occasion demands, to decide those questions of Home Rule which are most vital to all concerned. Education, wealth, moral worth, shrewd native sense, oratory,{12} gifts of persuasion, the stirrings of ambition, civic pride, thrift, foresight, all have their due weight in this forum, this “school as well as source of democracy”—as Mr. Bryce aptly phrases it. But when the vote is taken, the blacksmith and the bank president, the master and the servant, the principal of the high school and the loafer around the village bar stand on precisely the same footing. The vote of one is as decisive as that of the other,—no less, no more.

Debate and procedure which have the qualitative character are followed by voting of the quantitative character, and the result represents average intelligence and capacity for self-government. But that result, because it is the product of the expressed will of all, has an authority more enduring and inspiring than any that the autocracies, oligarchies, or constitutional monarchies of Europe have ever displayed or now possess.

Using the town-meeting as a rapier, Samuel Adams

This popular government not only enabled the New England Colonies to lead all the others in the War of the Revolution, it also furnished men and ideas for the formidable task of constitution-making after the Revolution was over and independence won. As early as 1773, the rustic Solons of the town of Mendon, Massachusetts, had resolved in town-meeting:

Naturally, a section of the country where such sentiments were held by village Hampdens had a preponderant influence, when the time came to draft the Declaration of Independence and{14} the Constitution, and the readiness of the towns to submit to taxation and to give their sons when the call to arms came is a matter of unimpeachable record. In the army of 231,791 soldiers, furnished by the Thirteen Colonies to combat the forces of Great Britain in the Revolution, the four New England Colonies sent 118,251 men, Massachusetts contributing 67,907, Connecticut 31,939, New Hampshire 12,497, and Rhode Island 5,908.

In the War of 1812, New England, as a section, was not very enthusiastic, but her quota of troops was, nevertheless, forthcoming. In the Civil War, 1861-65, her troops were the first to respond to the call of President Lincoln, and, out of 2,778,304 men who enlisted, 363,161 came from New England. Of these, Massachusetts furnished 146,730, Maine 70,107, Connecticut 55,864, New Hampshire 33,937, Vermont 33,288, and Rhode Island 23,236. In fact, surveying the history of New England towns from the time when they contributed their quota of men and money to the aid of the Mother Country in her fight with France to decide who should be supreme on the North American continent, down to the recent contest between the United States and{15} Spain, it can truthfully be said of their democratic form of government that it “is the most powerful and flexible in history. It has proved to be neither violent, cruel, nor impatient, but fixed in purpose, faithful to its own officers, tolerant of vast expense, of enormous losses, of torturing delays, and strongest at the very points where fatal weakness was most suspected.” And this, be it remembered, where “the poorest and most ignorant of every race ... are the equal voters with the richest and most intelligent.” This, too, where the newly landed, propertyless immigrant from Italy or Russia, if able to comply with the generous provisions governing naturalization and the exercise of the franchise, has the same potentiality at the polls as the thrifty, well-to-do, heavily taxed citizen whose ancestors, perchance, may have come over with the Pilgrims on The Mayflower.

Considered either in its origin or its development, the New England town-meeting merits the study of all who are interested in the extension of principles of democracy. The English settlers of New England were, as Mr. Bryce says, “largely townsfolk, accustomed to municipal life and to vestry meetings.” They{16} brought with them, as an inheritance from their Teutonic ancestors, a habit of self-rule which the peculiar isolation of the colonies and the separate communities in the colonies strengthened; hence a form of government in which the town was the unit evolved inevitably.

The more mixed composition of the population in the Middle Atlantic Colonies, for the same reason, inevitably caused a mixed type of government to be created there, in which the county or shire divided the authority with the town; while in the Southern Colonies the immigrants were of such a character, and the economic conditions so different from those in New England, that a more aristocratic form of government evolved, semi-feudal in its type, and the county, rather than the town, became the important minor political unit within the State, never, however, having a vigorous independent life, the colony and afterward the State becoming the source of authority and the end of government. Long years afterward, in the Civil War, the two types of government clashed, and the type prevailed which Thomas Jefferson praised and wished transferred to Virginia, for, said he:{17}

“Those wards called townships in New England are the vital principle of their governments, and have proved themselves the wisest invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-government and for its preservation.”

It is well, however, to note, that Mr. Charles Borgeaud, the eminent Genevan historian, in his work on the Rise of Modern Democracy, disputes the Teutonic origin of the town-meeting, and contends that it must be credited to the democratic principles of the New Testament as interpreted and accepted, first by the Brownists of England, and held later by the Pilgrim Fathers and those of the Puritans who accepted the Independent form of church government, rather than to any principle of communal government first evolved by Teutons. He says:

In due time, when pioneers from New England found their way to the then virgin lands of Central New York, the valley of the Ohio, and the northern half of the vast valley of the Mississippi, they carried with them the political and religious ideals of New England. Where they were a large majority of the settlers within a given territory, or where at the time when its organic structure was forming they dominated it, the town was established as the political unit in the territory. Such was the case in Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Where New England settlers joined with those from the Middle States, or{19} the border States of Kentucky and Virginia, they often found it necessary to compromise on a system in which the county and the town were peers, as in Ohio, Indiana, and Iowa. But, as experience has proved, the modified township system, as it is found in Illinois and Michigan, is more advantageous than the system of divided authority, and many of the Western States are gradually adopting it, California, Nebraska, and the Dakotas having recently made it either permissible or mandatory.

Nor are signs lacking that in the South, as its white population increases by immigrants from the North, as the patriarchal and pastoral type of civilization gives way to the modern industrial and corporate type, as cities and towns multiply, and local as well as State pride has free chance to develop, there will be an adoption of the modified township system and a gradual abolition of the county system.

Among the changes of the last half-century in New England, one notable one has been the tendency of the larger towns to adopt the city form of government as soon as it was deemed that the increase of population warranted the step and made it necessary. This fact, as well as the marked increase of urban{20} population in New England,[60] is counted by some students of her social development as indicative of retrogression, however inevitable. Certain it is, that if the town of Brookline, with its population of 16,164, and its property valuation of $64,169,200,[61] and annual appropriations of more than $900,000, can still work the ancient machinery of the town-meeting without the slightest loss either of a pecuniary or a civic sort, other towns, with a smaller population and much smaller valuation of property, cannot reasonably claim that mere physical growth is any warrant for the change from a system so purely democratic to one less so and much more readily adapted to serve the ends of partisan bosses and those who batten at the public crib.

The third of the indispensable and ever-present institutions found in every New England town or village is the public school, open{21} to all and supported by all. Roman Catholic, Protestant and Jew, Caucasian and African, French Canadian and Irish, Italian and Portuguese, English and German, mingle in the school-room and learn the essential likeness of each to the other, their common and peculiar gifts, and their common duties to God and the State. No man in the community is so rich or aristocratic as to escape taxation for support of the school, even though his children may never darken the doors. No man in the community is so humble or so poor as to be debarred from sending his children to the highest as well as to the lowest grades. Unsectarian in the sense that they derive support from taxpayers of all sects and inculcate the dogmas of none, secular in the sense that religion is not a part of the curriculum, they ever have been a bulwark to the cause of religion, partly by reason of the example of the teaching force, who usually are men and women with religious faith as well as mental attainment, and partly because they have developed the rational powers of men, and thus enabled them to discriminate between superstition and truth. Beginning, in the more favored and advanced communities, with kindergarten{22} instruction for young children, and not ceasing until the youth or maiden is prepared to enter the college or university, the State and the town, co-operating together, make it possible for every parent to give to his children, or for every ambitious or friendless boy or girl to secure for himself or herself, at the public expense, a thorough preparatory education. Nor is there any item of his yearly tax bill which the typical New Englander pays with greater alacrity and more certainty of belief as to its equity or economy than his annual contribution for popular education. For it is ingrained in his very being, woven into the texture of his life, to believe, as Garfield said, that “next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.” Moreover, being shrewd as well as a man of high principles and a lover of learning for its own sake, the New Englander is convinced that it pays to be educated, and to have educated neighbors and children. His reasoning takes this form: The more children in the schools, the fewer youths and adults in the jails and poorhouses. The better informed the mill operatives, the{23} larger the output of the mills. The higher the standard of living, the larger the demand for the product of the soil and the loom, and the better the home market. The more intelligent the voter, the less the seductive power of the demagogue and the “political boss.” In short, the New England people have always believed, and still believe, what the inscription on the Public Library in Boston declares:

That the policy has been a wise one, is indicated by New England’s share in the various struggles for liberty which the country has seen, the stability of all her institutions, her exemption from disorder and industrial disputes which culminate in violence, her inhospitality to “boss rule” in politics, and the thrift and prosperity of her citizens.

Historically speaking, the “public school” is a very ancient New England institution. Boston had one as early as 1635, and in 1647 the General Court of Massachusetts enacted:{24}

Nine years earlier, in 1638, the same body had founded a college (Harvard) at Cambridge, in order, as they said, that “the light of learning might not go out, nor the study of God’s word perish.” These two acts of the General Court may be reckoned as the germs from which has developed that system of secondary and higher education which has given Massachusetts the place of leader in the history of education in America.

In 1645, Connecticut passed a law similar to the earlier Massachusetts statute of 1642, but not until 1701 was Yale University founded at New Haven. Rhode Island did not have a system of popular education until just as the eighteenth century was closing. New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont accepted the Massachusetts methods and ideals, with some minor variations.{25}

Devout as were the founders of New England, it followed inevitably that they should establish institutions where their children might obtain a distinctly religious training as well as a general education. Thus, for a long period of New England history, the Christian academy, under denominational control, flourished just as it does now in the West, and for much the same reason. As the public-school system has expanded, as town after town has added the high school to the primary and grammar school, as sectarian fences have toppled over or ceased to be restrictive, the academy of the old type has ceased to play the part it once did in New England life. But, in any survey of the history of education in New England, it should not be overlooked. Many excellent institutions of this type still survive to meet the demands of those persons who either distrust the public high school, or else are unable to send their children to one, owing to residence in towns where the school system has not developed to that extent. But, as a rule, the New England boy and girl, no matter what the social station or wealth of his or her parent, still “derives his or her preparation for college or life from the community in{26} which he or she lives.” And, as Phillips Brooks said in his address at the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Boston Latin School:

Emigrating westward, the pioneers from New England carried with them the public school, the academy, and the college. Connecticut’s settlers in the Western Reserve, Ohio, took with them conceptions of duty in this respect, which profoundly affected the future history of the commonwealth. Ohio has come to be, in this later day, what Virginia was in the early history of the country—“The Mother of Presidents”—and has more colleges{27} within its borders than any State in the Union. It was a Massachusetts soldier, Gen. Rufus Putnam of Rutland, a Congregational clergyman, Rev. Manasseh Cutler of Hamilton, Massachusetts, and an Ipswich, Massachusetts, lawyer, Nathan Dane, who founded Marietta, Ohio, and induced Congress to put into the epoch-marking Ordinance of 1787 governing the Northwest Territory, this remarkable declaration and article:

As early as 1797, Muskingum Academy was founded in the territory conceded, and in due time came Marietta, Oberlin, Wabash, Illinois, Knox, Beloit, Olivet, and Ripon Colleges, all Christian institutions within the territory originally governed by the Ordinance of 1787.

Precisely similar has been the record of New England emigrants beyond the Mississippi. Wherever they have settled and shaped the civic ideals, whether in the Dakotas, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, or in California, there they have laid the foundations of a free public-school system, and of academies{28} and colleges controlled by Christian educators and trustees. Nor do they cease to believe in the academy and the college now that the competition of the State university in the States of the interior and the West is so intense, and the reliance of the treasuries of these Western Christian institutions upon the gifts of their friends in New England increases rather than abates.

Impressed with the need, in all sections of the country, of a well-instructed and intelligent electorate, and convinced that the South was too poor to provide for itself the schools that its unfortunate illiterate whites and blacks needed, New Englanders early began to contribute to the support of academies and colleges in the South. Not always welcomed by the ruling class, the pioneers in this work persevered, and many of them have lived long enough to receive the thanks of those who at first despised and scorned them. Millions of dollars have gone from New England for the founding and support of such institutions as Berea College, Kentucky; Atlanta University, Georgia; Hampton Institute, Virginia; Fisk University, Tennessee; and Tuskeegee Institute, Alabama. Three New Englanders,{29} George Peabody of Danvers, Mass., John F. Slater of Norwich, Conn., and Daniel Hand of Guilford, Conn., have given between them $5,100,000 in bequests or donations for the establishment or assistance of schools, colleges, and training schools for teachers in the South. The Peabody Education Fund, from 1868 to 1897, distributed in the South, from its income alone, a sum amounting to $2,478,527.

Nor is New England’s influence, educationally speaking, limited to the United States. The educational system of Honolulu is based on New England models. Robert College, near Constantinople, has spread the principles of Christian democracy in Church and State, as they are held by New Englanders, throughout Bulgaria and the Balkan states, and given ideals to the Young Turkey party in the land where the Sultan is dominant. The Huguenot Seminary in South Africa was distinctly modelled after Mt. Holyoke Seminary, and its first teaching staff was made up of New England women educated at Mt. Holyoke. Wherever American Protestant missionaries have gone and established schools and colleges in Asia, Africa, or Europe, almost invariably the master spirits, the men and women who{30} have given character to, and established the ideals of, the institutions, have been graduates of the New England colleges and academies, even if not New-England-born.

Subtract from the history of education in the United States, during the latter half of the century just closing, the influence of four men, Horace Mann, Henry Barnard, Charles William Eliot, and William Torrey Harris, and you take from it the best that it stands for to-day. All of these men were born in New England. All were reformers. All showed great administrative ability. All lived to see their radical views find general acceptance. Horace Mann did his greatest work in remodelling the public-school system of Massachusetts. Barnard did a similar work in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin, but his greatest service to the cause of education was his masterly editing of the American Journal of Education, from 1855 to 1881. Eliot has transformed the curriculum of Harvard, the oldest university of the North, has resolutely contended for the largest measure of election by the student in his selection of studies, his personal conduct, and his personal attitude toward God, and he has{31} made “Veritas” in very truth the appropriate motto of the leading American institution of learning. Harris, as an interpreter of the philosophy of education, both in his many writings and more numerous addresses, has lifted the popular conception of the profession of teaching to a loftier and more rational plane, while his control of the United States Bureau of Education since 1889 has given it a standing abroad, and a measure of utility at home, which it is gratifying to contemplate.

Few towns in New England possess more charm, whether of nature or society, than the towns in which her long-established institutions of learning have taken root, flourished, and dominated the life of the community. New Haven, Cambridge, and Providence are all cities now with a heterogeneous population and large manufacturing interests, and they each contain thousands of inhabitants to whom Harvard, Yale, and Brown are of as little practical benefit or concern as if they were situated in remote Hawaii or Porto Rico. Nevertheless, the chief glory of each of these large towns is its institution of learning, and to each there come added beauty of life and elevation of tone because of the presence{32} within its borders of so many thirsty and hungry students and highly educated and apt instructors. It would be idle, however, to claim, for instance, that Cambridge to-day is quite as unique and charming in its simplicity and purity of life, or quite as classic in its atmosphere, as it was in the days when the town was a village, when the university was a college, and when thought and manners were as ideal as James Russell Lowell in his essay, Cambridge Thirty Years Ago, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson in his latest book, Cheerful Yesterdays, picture them.

To study the American college town at its best, unsullied by the grime of industrialism and the temptations and conventionalities of city life, one must go to hill-towns like Amherst and Williamstown, Massachusetts, or Hanover, New Hampshire. But even there, standards of living and conduct among students and instructors have been changed and influenced by the habits and ideals of the universities and the cities. Hence, to see the American college town in all its pristine simplicity and beauty, one now has to go to the new New England, and visit such institutions as Oberlin, Beloit, Knox, Iowa, and Colorado{33} colleges, concerning which, and others of their type, Mr. Bryce writes:

New England has a railroad mileage greater in proportion to its population and area than any section of the United States. Indeed, it is greater than that of any European country. In 1895, there were 11.77 miles of railroad for each one hundred square miles of territory, and 14.11 miles for each ten thousand inhabitants, the proportion in Massachusetts rising to 26.35 miles for each one hundred square miles. The same year, the number of employés{34} engaged in railway traffic in New England was 60,593. On January 1, 1840, New England had only 426 miles of railway. January 1, 1895, it had 7,398 miles of road, which reported gross earnings of $82,845,401, and 116,069,178 passengers transported during the previous year.

The significance of these facts is apparent to the casual traveller through New England as well as to the economist. Nerves of steel and iron have bound urban and rural populations together, made the cities and towns accessible to the inland trader, farmer, and producer, and the country districts accessible to the wares of the merchant and manufacturer, and to the lover of nature. Suburban residence for the urban toiler has been made possible and cheap, while New England, as a whole, has been transformed from an agricultural and seafaring section to one with great and most varied manufacturing interests. Boston has come to be next to the largest centre for exports in the country, and the commercial and industrial as well as the intellectual capital of New England.

From the standpoint of æsthetics, the railroad station in the average New England{35} town is a monstrosity, although in all fairness it should be said that within a decade there has been a notable improvement in this respect. But from the standpoint of economics and social science, the railway station is subordinate only to the church and the school in its service to society; and the degree of civilization in any community may be accurately computed by the volume and variety of the traffic done with its station agents. If one is desirous of studying the New England town, let him frequent the platforms of the railroad station and the freight-house, ascertain how large a proportion of its inhabitants leave town daily to do business in the adjacent city, how many travel even farther in pursuit of pleasure or on business, how many depart on outings that imply thrift and a desire for recreation and rest. Let him study the bulk of the raw material as it comes from the wool-markets of Europe and America, from the cotton fields of the South, and from the mines of Alabama, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota, and then inspect it as it goes forth again, converted into manifold forms of useful tools, machinery, fabrics, etc., and he will not lack for data respecting the status of the community. If he{36} finds that pianos, organs, books, pictures, the latest devices of sanitary science, bicycles, etc., are arriving, he may justly infer that the inhabitants are in touch with the outer world and eager to take advantage of the latest discoveries of men of science. Nor is it imprudent to assert that such a study made in the average New England town will indicate economic wants, and their satisfaction, such as no communities elsewhere can display.

Compared with other sections of the country, New England has railroads which are better supervised by the States, more honestly constructed, capitalized and administered, and more responsive to public needs. Concentration of power and responsibility in the hands of the few goes on apace in New England, as well as elsewhere, so that now there are only four railway corporations of much importance in New England. But, through such governmental agents as the Massachusetts Board of Railroad Commissioners (organized in 1869, and the model for similar bodies elsewhere in the nation), the people still retain the whip-hand, still protect the rights of individuals, communities, and investors, and bring about those reductions in fare and freight charges,{37} and those improvements in service, which public welfare and safety demand.

No attempt—however brief or superficial—to describe the life of the New England town of the last decade of the nineteenth century, especially in the States of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, could justifiably fail to note the transformation—economic, physical, and social—which the bicycle and trolley electric railroad have wrought in the life of the towns of those States.

New England capitalists and New England inventors were the first to put on the market safety bicycles that were well constructed, adapted for daily use or pleasure, and reasonably cheap, and New England still retains the lead in the domestic and export trade in bicycles. Naturally, then, New England people were the first to purchase the product of their own factories. Space does not suffice to indicate here how general now is the use of the bicycle even in the remotest hamlets, and how it has changed modes of living. Farmers’ boys and girls among the lakes and hills of Maine and Vermont, fishermen’s children on the sand-dunes of Cape Cod, run their errands, visit their neighbors, and get their daily{38} sport with the bicycle. Artisans and professional men in all the towns and cities go to and from their shops, offices, and homes on steeds that require no fodder, and while doing it gain physical exercise and mental exhilaration that transportation in the old ways never furnished. Horses still are in demand for sport and draught work, and the few who love horses continue to breed and own them. But for the multitude a far cheaper and more tractable kind of steed has come, one which rivals the locomotive as well as the horse and forces steam-railway managers to face serious problems, mechanical and fiscal.

As to the electric street railway, perhaps a few facts relative to Massachusetts may indicate a state of affairs that to some extent is typical now of the section, and will become more so as population in New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont drifts townward.

From 1860 to 1889, the number of street-railway companies in Massachusetts increased only from twenty to forty-six, and the mileage from eighty-eight to 574, the motor force of course being horse-power. From 1889 to 1897, the number of companies increased from forty-six to ninety-three, and the mileage from 547 to{39} 1413, the motor power being almost exclusively electric. During the same period, the number of passengers carried on the ten main lines increased from 148,189,403 in 1889, to 308,684,224 in 1897. The total capital invested in these street railways now amounts to $63,112,800, and, in 1897, earned 7·78 per cent. on the average.

So much for statistics which are impressive in themselves. But if one would appreciate the magnitude of this traffic, and the radical transformation which the new power and improved service have wrought in the life of the people who patronize these railroads, he must do more than compare statistics. He must note the result of making the residence in the suburb and the workshop in the city accessible to a degree that the steam railway cannot expect to duplicate, of giving city dwellers opportunities to journey seaward and hillward at a trifling expense, of providing residents of the villages with inexpensive transportation to the towns and residents of the towns with transportation to the cities, of cultivating the knowledge of and love for open-air life and nature among city dwellers and of enlarging the social horizon and area of observation of the villager,{40} of giving a poor man a vehicle that transports him with a speed and a sense of pleasure that vies with that of the high-priced trotter of the wealthy horseman, of giving to society a centripetal force that tends to take city workers countryward at a time when other social forces, centrifugal in their tendency, are drawing him cityward.

Naught would occasion more bewilderment to the ancient residents of Marblehead, Hingham, or Plymouth, could they return to their former places of abode, than the “Broomstick Trains” which Oliver Wendell Holmes’s fancy pictured thus:

These trains whirl through the crooked streets with a mysterious, awe-compelling power, that would suggest witchery were it not for the{41} clang of their alarm bells, and the knowledge that fares must be paid. They disturb the quiet and solemnity of many an ancient village, and have brought knowledge of evil as well as of good to many a youth. What railways and steamship lines have done in bringing peoples of all climes and continents nearer together, and thus at once widened men’s area of knowledge and sympathy, and contracted the physical area of the earth, this the electrically propelled motor is doing on a smaller scale for the people of the towns of the ancient commonwealths of New England.

In ante-bellum days, New England and the South were, perhaps, most unlike in their attitude toward manufacturing, and the difference was one that meant far more than a mere incident of difference of climate or a difference of opinion as to sectional or federal fiscal policy. The art of manufacturing, as New Englanders had practised it for generations before what is now known as the “factory system” developed, had been based on a universal recognition of the nobility of labor, the necessity for personal initiative, and the duty of thrift. Toil was considered honorable for men and women alike. Every hillside stream was{42} set at work turning the wheels of countless mills. Yankee ingenuity was given free play in the invention of appliances, and Yankee initiative saw to it that after the raw material was converted into the finished product, markets were found in the newer settlements of the Interior and West, or in Europe and Asia. Many a farmer was a manufacturer as well. Home industries flourished, and no month in the year was too inclement for toil and its reward.

With the application of steam power to the transportation of freight and passengers, with the invention of the spinning-jenny and the perfecting of the cotton loom and the development of the “factory system” of specialized and divided labor, New England, quick to perceive wherein her future prosperity lay, at once leaped forward to seize the opportunity, and the relative superiority thus early gained she has not lost, even though other sections more favorably situated as to accessible supplies of fuel and raw materials have, in the meantime, awakened and developed.

Whether judged by the legislation governing their operation, their structural adaptability to the work to be done, their equipment of{43} machinery, the variety and quality of their product, or the intelligence and earning capacity of their operatives, the New England factories can safely challenge comparison with those of any in the world, and the typical factory towns of New England, whether along her largest rivers, such as Lowell and Hartford, or at tide-water, as Fall River and Bridgeport, or nestled among the hills, as North Adams or St. Johnsbury, are the frequent subject of study by the deputed agents of European governments or manufacturers, anxious to ascertain what it is that makes the American manufacturer so dangerous a competitor in the markets of Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Few more interesting movements in the history of man’s upward struggle have been chronicled than the successive waves of immigration which have swept into the factories of towns like Lowell, Massachusetts, and Manchester, New Hampshire. First came from the hill towns and farms the daughters of the original English, Irish, and Scotch settlers—women like Lucy Larcom,—then the Irish, specially imported from Ireland, and then the French from Canada. The Irish came when the original stock became, in its own estimation, too{44} select for daily toil in the factory. The French came at an opportune time for the employers, when the Irish were also stirred by loftier ambitions. And it is already apparent that, whereas the French came, at first, only to win money to take back to Canada, now they are settling down to become citizens as well as residents, aspiring to higher and other realms of activity—in short, getting ready to give way in turn to some other nationality. Of course, nothing just stated should be interpreted to imply that the ideals of New England respecting the honorable nature of toil have changed, or that her factory operatives have ceased to be men of all races including the English. She has, however, witnessed or rather been the scene of a remarkable process of assimilation and transformation of races such as none of the manufacturing towns of England have seen.

Thus far, consideration has been given to those factors in the life of the community which it may truthfully be said are to be found in a large majority of the towns and villages of New England. It would be necessary, for a complete study of the New England town at its best, to include other factors, such as the{45} savings-bank, the local lodges of the fraternal, secret orders, the co-operative bank—known in the Middle States as the building loan association,—the daily or weekly local newspaper, and the gossip and wisdom retailed by the habitués of the “village store,” which, in many of the smaller towns, serves as the clearing-house of ideas, local and national. Nor could any thorough study of the New England town as an institution fail to note at least the beneficent effect which the exclusion of shops where intoxicating liquors are retailed has had upon all of the States, thanks to that measure of prohibition which has been made possible through statutory or legislative enactment. So that, in the towns of the agricultural districts of New England, the legalized dram-shop is unknown, as are all the attendant moral and economic evils that follow in its train when the traffic is tolerated. Nor is the possibility of excluding the saloon from larger towns—manufacturing and residential—to be gainsaid in view of the record established by such cities as Cambridge, Somerville, Chelsea, Brookline, and Newton, Massachusetts. In fact, Cambridge, with its more than eighty thousand inhabitants, for nearly twelve years now has enforced local{46} prohibition in a way to make its method of doing so a model for the country; the secret of the method by which it secures an annual “No-license vote” and a non-partisan administration of all city affairs being, in short, the union of temperance men of all degrees of abstinence, Jews and Christians of all sects, and citizens of all national parties on the simple platform—“No saloons, and no tests for local officials other than fitness, and soundness on questions of local policy.”

But there is one factor in the life of very many of the New England towns to-day that cannot be passed by without some allusion. It is the town or city library. In many instances the gift of some private donor, who was either born in the town, and making a home and fortune elsewhere desired to testify that he was not unmindful of ancestral environment and of youthful privileges, or else accumulated a fortune in the town and desired both to perpetuate his memory and to render a public service, the library building usually stands as a token of that marked interest in public education and public welfare which Americans of wealth reveal by gifts, generous to a degree unknown elsewhere in{47} Christendom, competent European judges being witnesses. Appleton’s Annual Encyclopedia records a total of $27,000,000 given to religious, educational, and philanthropic institutions in the United States, in sums of $5000 or more, by individuals, as donations or bequests during the year 1896. In this list are recorded gifts, amounting to $195,000, to establish or to endow town libraries in New England.

Sometimes the major portion of the contents of the library building is also the gift of the generous donor of the edifice, but, usually, the town assumes responsibility for the equipment and maintenance of the library, deriving the necessary income from appropriations voted by the citizens in town-meetings or by aldermen and councilmen, members of the local legislature, and assessed and collected pro rata according to the valuation of property, just as all other town or city taxes are collected. But, whether the gift of some private individual or the creation and property of the town, the fact remains that the handsomest public buildings in New England to-day are the public-library buildings, and in no department of civic life are the New England States and towns so far in advance of those of other{48} sections of the country as in their generous annual appropriations for the maintenance of this form of individual and civic betterment. New Hampshire is to be credited with the first law permitting towns to establish and to maintain libraries by general taxation. This she did in 1849. Massachusetts followed in 1854, Vermont in 1865, Connecticut in 1881. Boston, however, deserves credit for being the pioneer in public taxation for a municipal library, and to the Hon. Josiah Quincy, grandfather of its present mayor, who, in 1847, proposed to the City Council that they request the Legislature for authority to lay a tax to establish a free library, belongs the honor of having founded in America a form of municipal and town activity, than which, as Stanley Jevons says, in his book Methods of Social Reform, “there is probably no mode of expending public money which gives a more extraordinary and immediate return in utility and enjoyment.”

Already, library administrators and far-sighted educators and publicists foresee a time when it will be as compulsory for towns to establish and support free public libraries as it now is compulsory for them to establish and{49} support free public schools. Massachusetts, perhaps, approaches nearer that ideal now than any other State, only ten of its 353 cities and towns being without public libraries.

Fortunately for the sociologist, the historian, the economist, and the lover of literature, the inhabitants of New England have not failed to chronicle in various forms and ways the deeds and thoughts of their contemporaries. Thus there is a large class of historic documents of which Bradford’s history of Plimoth Plantation is the magnum opus. Then there are innumerable town histories,—of which the four-volume history of Hingham, Massachusetts, is a model,—family genealogies, sermons, diaries, volumes of correspondence, such as that which passed between John Adams and his wife, memorial addresses, such as Emerson and G. W. Curtis delivered at Concord, and Webster and Robert C. Winthrop at Plymouth, which inform and often inspire all who patiently explore their contents. Last, but not least, there are the products of New England’s representative authors, who in prose or poetry have recorded indelibly the higher life of their own or of passing generations. In short, a literature-loving people has given birth to literature, and{50} the New England town of the past can never totally fade out of the memory of future generations so long as men and women are left to read the poetry of Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, and Aldrich, Lowell’s Biglow Papers, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Oldtown Folks and A Minister’s Wooing, the short stories of Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary E. Wilkins, Rose Terry Cooke, Alice Brown, Maria L. Pool, and Jane G. Austin, the prose romances of Hawthorne and F. J. Stimson, and the histories of Palfrey, Bancroft, Parkman, and Fiske.

That New Englanders in the past have been and even now are provincial, is the indictment of Europeans and of some Americans. That they have developed reason at the expense of imagination, utility at the expense of beauty, is also affirmed. Their Puritan ancestors are the butt of the ridicule of the caricaturist, of ultra-Liberal preachers and devotees of materialistic science, and of those who have never read history, European or American. No less an authority than Matthew Arnold has described the life of New England as “uninteresting.” To all such critics, the New Englander can and will reply with dignity and force when proper occasion offers, but this is not the place{51} even to summarize his argument. Suffice it to say that the children of New England are ever returning to her. They sojourn for a time in Europe, the valley of the Mississippi, in Southern California, and in Hawaii. They find more salubrious climes, more beautiful works of ecclesiastical and municipal art, better municipal government, and sometimes greater opportunities for investment of capital and ability and choicer circles of society than those which exist in the towns in which they were born or reared. But in due time the yearning for the hills, valleys and seacoast of rocky and rigorous New England, for the established institutions, the generally diffused intelligence, the equality of opportunity, the sane standards of worth, and the inspiring historical traditions of the early home becomes too strong to be resisted longer, and back to the homestead they come—some on annual visits, some as often as the exchequer permits, some never to depart. New England has thousands of citizens to-day who, having either made, or failed to make, their fortunes in the West, have returned to New England to dwell. Once a New Englander, always a New Englander, in spirit if not in residence. Travel abroad, or{52} residence elsewhere, may modify the austerity, broaden the sympathy, polish the manners, and stimulate the imagination of the New Englander, but it never radically alters his views on the great issues of life and death, or makes him less of a democrat or less of a devotee of Wisdom.

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PORTLAND enjoys a peculiar distinction among New England cities, not only by reason of the natural advantages of her location, but because of the historical events of which she has been the theatre, and the men of mark in literature, art, and statesmanship whom she has produced. Among the indentations of the Atlantic coast there is no bay which presents a greater wealth and variety of charming scenery, in combination with the advantages of a safe and capacious harbor, than that on which Portland is situated. It is{54} thickly studded with islands which are of most picturesque forms, presenting beetling cliffs, sheltered coves, pebbly beaches, wooded heights, and wide, green lawns dotted with summer cottages. It is of the beauty of this bay that Whittier, who was familiar with its scenery, sings in The Ranger:

The peninsula upon which Portland is located is almost an island. It is nearly three miles long, and has an average width of three quarters of a mile—making it in area the smallest city in the United States, and the most compactly settled, for its forty thousand inhabitants occupy almost every available building spot. At each extremity of the peninsula is a hill on the summit of which is a wide public promenade, affording charming{55}

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views—to the east, of the bay, the islands, and the blue sea beyond; to the west and northwest, of the White Mountain range, all the peaks of which are visible, the intervening distance being about eighty miles. The Western Promenade is the favorite resort at sunset; the Eastern has charms for all hours of the day. Both can be reached by electric railways.

In 1614, Captain John Smith, of Pocahontas fame, came prospecting along this coast, and gave the name to Cape Elizabeth, which it still bears, in honor of the Virgin Queen, then recently deceased. The first settlers, George Cleeves and Richard Tucker, came hither in 1632, and the settlement was known as Casco until the name was changed to Falmouth in 1658; it was incorporated as Portland in 1785. There were but few settlers in the first forty years, and these lived in amity with the Indians until the time of King Philip’s War.

In 1676, the settlement was utterly destroyed by the savages, and all who were not killed were carried into captivity. One of the killed was Thomas Brackett, an ancestor of the statesman who in these later days has made the name famous—Thomas Brackett Reed. Mrs. Brackett was carried by the Indians{57} dians to Canada, where she died in captivity. Two of her grandchildren came back to Falmouth when the place was rebuilt after the second destruction by the French and Indians, in May, 1690. In 1689, a large body of French and Indians threatened the town. They were routed in Deering’s Woods by troops from Plymouth Colony, commanded by Major Church. Eleven settlers were killed and a large number wounded. It is a curious fact that Speaker Reed is also a descendant of the first settler, Cleeves. There is something remarkable in the persistency with which the descendants of the pioneers returned to the spot where there had been complete and repeated massacres of their ancestors. There are many families in Portland beside the one mentioned above who are descended from the pioneers who were killed or driven off by the savages.

The first minister of Falmouth was the Reverend George Burroughs, who escaped the massacre of 1676 by fleeing to one of the islands in the bay. Unfortunately for him, before the place was rebuilt he removed to Salem; he was too independent, however, to suit the dominant clergy, and was hanged as a wizard in 1692, on charges incredibly ridiculous{58}. The speech made by this worthy man on the scaffold brought the people to their senses and ended the witchcraft craze. His descendants also went back to Falmouth and are represented in many families of the present city of Portland, who take no shame from the hanging of their ancestor.

So thorough was the second destruction of the place in 1690, that no one was left to bury the victims of the slaughter. Their bleached bones were gathered and buried more than two years after by Sir William Phips, while on his way from Boston to build a fort at Pemaquid. The settlement of the peninsula was resumed after the treaty of peace concluded at Utrecht in 1713, and for sixty years thereafter the growth of the place was rapid. When the town was bombarded and burned by a British squadron in October, 1775, there were nearly three hundred families made homeless—about three quarters of the entire population. For nine hours, four ships anchored in the harbor threw an incessant shower of grape-shot, red-hot cannon-balls, and bombs upon the defenceless town, which had shown its sympathy with the patriot cause in a practical way after the battles of Lexington and Bunker Hill. The{59}

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spirited citizens of Falmouth might have avoided the bombardment by giving up a few cannon and small-arms; but this, in town meeting, they refused to do, even when they saw the loaded guns and mortars trained upon them at short range, and knew that Captain Mowatt had a special grudge against the place because of an insult put upon him by some of the citizens a few months earlier. The spirit of the town was not broken by the terrible punishment it received. A few days after Mowatt sailed away, while the ruins were still smoking, a British man-of-war came into the harbor to forbid the erection of batteries, and the demand was met by the throwing up of earthworks and the placing of guns, which forced the immediate departure of the ship. The lines of these earthworks are still to be traced at Fort Allen Park, a beautiful pleasure ground on Munjoy overlooking the harbor, and they are preserved with care as a relic of Revolutionary times. Another relic is a cannon-ball thrown from Mowatt’s fleet, which lodged in the First Parish meeting-house, and is now to be seen in the ceiling of the church which occupies the same site. From this ball depends the large central chandelier. There{61} was an incident of the bombardment which illustrates the simplicity and coolness of a heroine whose name deserves a place beside that of Barbara Frietchie. The fashionable tavern of the town was kept by Dame Alice Greele, and here, during the whole Revolutionary period, the committee of public safety met, the judges held their courts, and political conventions had their sessions. It was here that the citizens in town meeting heroically voted to stand the bombardment rather than give up the guns demanded by Mowatt. But after making this brave decision they hastily packed up all their portable possessions and removed their families to places of safety, some not stopping short of inland towns, and others finding shelter under the lee of a high cliff that used to be at the corner of Casco and Cumberland Streets, at no great distance from their homes. Braver than the bravest of the men of Falmouth, Dame Alice would not desert her tavern, although its position was so dangerously exposed that every house in its vicinity was destroyed by bursting bombs and heated cannon-balls. Throughout that terrible day she stood at her post, and with buckets of water extinguished the fires on her{62} premises as fast as kindled. When Mowatt began to throw red-hot cannon-balls, one of them fell into the dame’s back yard among some chips, which were set on fire. She picked up the ball in a pan, and as she tossed it into the street, she said to a neighbor who was passing: “They will have to stop firing soon, for they have got out of bombs and are making new balls, and can’t wait for them to cool!” Portland ought to mark with a bronze tablet the site of Alice Greele’s tavern. The building stood until 1846 at the corner of Congress and Hampshire Streets. It was then removed to Washington Street.

Portland had a rapid growth of population and increase in wealth during the European disturbances caused by the ambition of Napoleon. The carrying-trade of the world was almost monopolized by neutral American bottoms, and ship-building became then, as it continued to be for a long time afterward, a leading industry along the Maine coast. Great fortunes were made by Portland ship-owners. Many fine old-fashioned mansions that now ornament Congress, High, State, Spring, and Danforth Streets, were built by merchants in the first years of the present century, and are{63}

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reminders of the peculiar conditions of that time. A sharp check to the rising tide of prosperity was given by the embargo act of 1807. After the peace of 1815, the trade with the West Indies grew into great importance, and for fifty years was a leading factor in the commerce of Portland. Lumber and fish were the chief exports, and return cargoes of sugar and molasses made this the principal market for those commodities—the imports in these lines for many years exceeding those at New York and Boston. West India molasses was distilled in large quantities into New England rum, until the temperance reform, under the lead of the Portland philanthropist, Neal Dow, closed up the distilleries; in their place came sugar factories and refineries which turned out a more wholesome product. But about thirty years ago, changes in the methods of making sugar caused the loss of this industry to Portland.

The development of the canning business has of late years been an important feature of the industrial prosperity of Maine, owing partly to the fact that the climate and soil of this State produce a quality of sweet corn that cannot be matched in other States, and also to the fact that the system of canning now in use{65} was a Portland invention. All over the interior of Maine may be found corn factories owned by Portland merchants, and, on the coast, canneries of lobsters and other products of the fields and fisheries of Maine.

Portland is the winter seaport of the Canadas, and several lines of steamships find cargoes of Western produce at this port. For this business the port has excellent facilities, as it is the terminus of the Grand Trunk Railway system, which has its other terminus at Chicago. There is another line to Montreal, through the White Mountain Notch, which, like the Grand Trunk, owes its existence to Portland enterprise. Of late years the lakes and forests and sea-coast of Maine have, to a marked degree, become the pleasure-ground of the Union, and, naturally, Portland is the distributing point for the rapidly increasing summer travel in this direction. Its lines of railway stretch northward and eastward to regions abounding in fish and game; the White Hills of New Hampshire and the Green Mountains of Vermont are within easy reach. Steamers from this port ply along the whole picturesque coast to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. During the summer{66} months, eight or ten pleasure steamers make trips between the city and the islands of Casco Bay, furnishing a great variety of pleasurable excursions. These islands, except the smallest of them, are the summer homes of a multitude of families—many of them from Canada and from the Western States.

The ancient Eastern Cemetery, on the southern slope of Munjoy, is the burying-place of the pioneers, including the victims of the French and Indian massacres of two centuries ago. The graves most frequently visited are those of the captains of the U. S. brig Enterprise and His Majesty’s brig Boxer, both of whom were killed in the naval engagement off this coast, September 5, 1813. By their side lies Lieutenant Waters, mortally wounded in the same action. The poet Longfellow was in his seventh year at the time of this fight, and his memory of it is enshrined in My Lost Youth:

Commodore Edward Preble, of Tripoli fame, and Rear-Admiral Alden, who fought at Vera{67}

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Cruz, New Orleans, and Mobile, both Portlanders, are buried here. There is also a monument commemorating the gallant Lieutenant Henry Wadsworth, who fell before Tripoli in 1804,—a volunteer in a desperate and tragic enterprise. He was a brother of Longfellow’s mother, and a new lustre has been added to his name by the nephew who bore it. In this ground also, but unmarked, are the graves of the victims of the French and Indian siege and massacre of 1690, and of the eleven men killed in the more fortunate battle of the previous year.

The first house in Portland built entirely of brick was erected in 1785, by General Peleg Wadsworth, who was Adjutant-General of Massachusetts during the Revolution; it is now known as the Longfellow house, and stands next above the Preble House, on Congress Street. The poet was not born in this house, but was brought to it as an infant, and it was his home until his marriage, in 1831. It is now owned and occupied by his sister, Mrs. Pierce, who has provided that eventually it shall become the property of the Maine Historical Society, which ensures its preservation as a reminder that Maine gave our country its most{69} widely known and best-loved poet. The house in which Longfellow was born is the three-story frame building at the corner of Fore and Hancock Streets. Around the corner, on Hancock Street, is the house in which Speaker Reed was born.

For his services in the Revolutionary War, Massachusetts gave General Wadsworth a large tract of land in Oxford County, to improve which he removed to Hiram, and the family of his son-in-law, Stephen Longfellow, thereafter occupied his residence in Portland. To the end of his life, the poet made this house his home whenever he visited the scenes of his youth, and many of his best poems were written there. The central part of the hotel adjoining was the mansion of Commodore Edward Preble, built just before his death in 1807, and some of the best rooms in this hotel have still the wood-carving and other ornamentation given them by the hero of Tripoli. A grandson of the Commodore was one of the officers of the Kearsarge when that ship sunk the rebel cruiser Alabama, in the most picturesque naval engagement of modern times.

We have seen that Portland has a history connecting it with the French and Indian{70} Wars, the Revolution, and the War of 1812. It was also the scene of a curious episode in the late Civil War—the cutting out of the United States revenue cutter Caleb Cushing, in June, 1863. The cutter had been preparing for an encounter with the rebel privateer Tacony, which had been capturing and burning many vessels on the coast of New England. A delay in fitting her out had been occasioned by the illness and death of her captain. In the meantime, the Tacony had captured the schooner Archer, and transferred her armament to the prize, which, after burning the Tacony, boldly sailed into Portland harbor in the guise of an innocent fisherman, with Lieutenant Reade in command. His purpose was to burn two gunboats then being fitted out in the harbor, but he found them too well guarded. He then turned his attention to the cutter, which was preparing for a fight with him with no suspicion that he was lying almost alongside. Captain Clarke had died the day before Reade’s arrival, and Lieutenant Davenport, a Georgian by birth, was in command of the cutter. At night, when only one watchman was on deck, a surprise was quietly effected, and the crew put in irons. With a good wind{71} the cutter might easily have gotten away from the sleeping town and slipped by the unsuspicious forts; but she was becalmed just after passing the forts, and in the morning three steamers were armed and sent in pursuit. At the time it was supposed that the Southern lieutenant had turned traitor, but the event proved his loyalty; for he refused to inform his captors where the ammunition was kept, and they had only a dozen balls for the guns, which were all spent without injury to the pursuers. The affair was watched by thousands on the hills and house-tops, and on yachts which in the dead calm were rowed to the scene. At length the town was startled by the blowing up and utter demolition of the cutter; the Confederates had set fire to the vessel and tried to escape in the boats, but were at once captured by the steamers which had been circling around them. The Archer was also captured, with all the chronometers and other valuables of the vessels bonded or destroyed by the Tacony. It proved an important check to the operations of the Confederacy on the sea, and it came just one week before the battle of Gettysburg and the capture of Vicksburg.{72}

The first British squadron to enter the harbor of Portland after the bombardment by Mowatt in 1775, came just eighty-five years afterward to a day. It was sent to give dignity to the embarkation of the Prince of Wales in 1860. It was in Portland, at what are now called the Victoria wharves, that the Prince, then a young man of nineteen, took his last step on American soil. His embarkation on a bright October day was one of the finest pageants ever witnessed in this country. Five of the most powerful men-of-war in the British navy, in gala trim, with yards manned, saluted the royal standard, gorgeous in crimson and gold, then for the first and only time displayed in this country. The deafening broadsides when the Prince reached the deck of the Hero were answered from the American forts and men-of-war.

Another pageant, this time grand and solemn, was enacted in this harbor, in February, 1870. A British squadron, convoyed by American battle-ships, brought the remains of the philanthropist, George Peabody, in the most powerful ironclad the world had then seen. The funeral procession of boats from the English and American ships was an impressive spectacle.{73}

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It was a bright winter day, immediately succeeding a remarkable ice-storm, and the trees of the islands, the cape, and the city sparkled in the sun as if every bough were encrusted with diamonds—a wonderful frame for a memorable picture. Nature had put on her choicest finery to relieve the sombre effect of the draped flags, the muffled oars, the long, slow lines of boats, and the minute guns from ships and forts.

The great fire of July 4, 1866, which burned fifteen hundred buildings in the centre of the city, also destroyed an immense number of shade trees, mostly large elms, the abundance of which had given to Portland the title of “Forest City.” In a few years the buildings were replaced by greatly improved structures; but the trees could not be improvised so readily, and the scar of the fire is still noticeable from the absence of aged trees in the district swept by it. Advantage was taken of the clearing of the ground in the most thickly settled part of the city, to lay out Lincoln Park in the centre of the ruins. This is now a charming spot, with its fountain and flowers, its lawns and shaded walks.

The city is fortunate in the abundance and{75} purity of its water supply, which is drawn from Lake Sebago, sixteen miles distant. The natural outlet of this lake is the Presumpscot River, which has several valuable water-powers along its short course to its mouth in Casco Bay, near Portland harbor.

It will be remembered that Nathaniel Hawthorne received his collegiate education, in the same class with Longfellow, at Brunswick, which is in the same county with Portland, but it is not so generally known that during his teens his home was at Raymond, on the shore of Sebago Lake, and in the same county. Part of each year he spent in school at Salem; but his mother’s home was in the little hamlet in the picturesque wilderness a few miles from Portland, and here he spent the happiest months of his youth, as he has testified in many letters. His biographers have generally failed to take account of this, and, indeed, have asserted that he was at Raymond only a part of one year. A little volume recently published, entitled Hawthorne’s First Diary, brings out the facts in this neglected but important episode in the career of this great master in our literature. While fitting for college, Hawthorne became, for a single term, the pupil{76} of the Reverend Caleb Bradley, of Stroudwater, a suburb of Portland. The building in which he studied is still to be seen at Stroudwater. The house of his mother at Raymond is converted into a church, but as to exterior remains very much as when his boy life was spent in it. It was in this same county of Cumberland that Mrs. Stowe wrote the whole of Uncle Toms Cabin, while her husband was a professor in Bowdoin College. Thus, three of the greatest names in American literature are linked to Portland and its immediate vicinity.

Portland can count to her credit many jurists, lawyers, and orators of national repute, among them Theophilus Parsons, Simon Greenleaf, Ashur Ware, Sargent S. Prentiss, Nathan Clifford, and George Evans. William Pitt Fessenden lived and died in the house on State Street now occupied by Judge W. L. Putnam. Like Fessenden eminent as Senator and Secretary of the Treasury, Lot M. Morrill spent the last years of his life in Portland. Still another great Senator and Secretary of the Treasury, who was also Chief-Justice, honored this city by bearing its name—Salmon Portland Chase. He was actually named for{77}

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the town, his uncle, Salmon Chase, being a Portland lawyer, and his parents were determined that there should be no mistake as to the person for whom he was named!

At an early period in his career, James G. Blaine edited the Portland Daily Advertiser. Among writers of celebrity, we may name N. P. Willis and his sister, “Fanny Fern”; John Neal, poet and novelist; Henry W. and Samuel Longfellow; J. H. Ingraham, whose many novels had a great sale fifty or sixty years ago; Elijah Kellogg; Mrs. Ann S. Stephens; Seba Smith, author of the Jack Downing Letters, and his more famous wife, Elizabeth Oakes Smith; Thomas Hill, for a time President of Harvard University; and the divines, Edward Payson and Cyrus Bartol. The home of Charles Farrar Brown, “Artemus Ward,” was in an adjoining county, but like the Chief-Justice just mentioned, he came to Portland for his baptismal name, his uncle, Charles Farrar, being a Portland physician. Two sculptors of national fame have gone out from Portland—Paul Akers and Franklin Simmons, and some of the best works of both these artists adorn public places in the city. The Dead Pearl Diver, by Akers, may be found in the reading-room{79} of the Public Library; and Simmons has two bronze statues in the city, one a seated figure of Longfellow, at the head of State Street, overlooking “Deering’s Woods,” and the other a noble statue of America, in Monument Square, commemorating the sons of Portland who died for the Union; no finer soldiers’ monument than this has ever been erected. Of other artists who have attained distinction, we may name H. B. Brown, now residing in London, whose landscapes and marine views have given him a recognized position among the best American artists; Charles O. Cole, portrait painter; and Charles Codman, J. R. Tilton, and J. B. Hudson, landscape painters.

Immense sums are being expended on the defences of the city by the United States government, as it is realized that in case of war with Great Britain this would be the point of attack, because Portland is the natural seaport of the Canadas, and Maine is thrust, in a provoking way, between the Maritime Provinces and the Province of Quebec. Portland can indulge in no dream of great commercial importance so long as the country which its position especially dominates is under a foreign{80} flag; but if ever Maine should be annexed to Canada, or the annexation takes the alternative form, a great future is assured for a town so favorably located. In the meantime, the beautiful city must be content to be the centre of distribution for the pleasure travel of the summer, and for the other half of the year, by means of its capacious harbor, it can continue to furnish an outlet for that part of the business of the Great Lakes which in summer is handled at Montreal.

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THE Old South Historical Society in Boston inaugurated in 1896 the custom of annual historical pilgrimages. It had learned from Parkman and Motley and Irving how vital and vivid history is made by visits to the scenes of history. Its pilgrimages must be short to places near home; but the good places to visit in New England are many. Great numbers of people, young and old, join in the pilgrimages. Six hundred went to the beautiful Whittier places beside the Merrimac, the second year; and as many the third year to the King Philip country, on Narragansett Bay.

The first year’s pilgrimage was to old Rutland, Massachusetts, “the cradle of Ohio.” A hundred of the young people went on the train{82} from Boston, on that bright July day; and when they had climbed to the little village on the hill, and swept their eyes over the great expanse of country round about Wachusett and away to Monadnock, and strolled down to the old Rufus Putnam house, by whose fireside the settlement of Marietta was planned, a hundred more people had come from the surrounding villages; and a memorable little celebration was that under the maples after the luncheon, with the dozen energetic speeches from the young men and the older ones. It was a fine inauguration of the Old South pilgrimages, and woke many people to the great possibilities of the historical pilgrimage as an educational factor.[63]

Ten years before, there was hardly a man in Massachusetts who ever thought of Rutland as a historical town. The people of Princeton and Paxton and Hubbardston and Oakham looked across to the little village on the hill from their villages on the hills, and they did not think of it; the people of Worcester drove up of a Sunday to get a dinner at the old village tavern, and they did not think of it; the Amherst College boys and the Smith College{83}

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girls rode past on the Central Massachusetts road, at the foot of the hill, on their way to Boston, and heard “Rutland!” called, but they thought nothing of history; and in Boston the last place to which people would have thought of arranging a historical pilgrimage was this same Rutland.

Yet when the Old South young people went there on their first pilgrimage, Rutland had already become a name almost as familiar in our homes as Salem or Sudbury or Deerfield. The Old South young people themselves had been led to think very much about it. In 1893, the year of the World’s Fair at Chicago, the great capital of the great West, a place undreamed of a hundred years before, when Rutland was witnessing its one world-historical event, the Old South lectures were devoted to “The Opening of the West.” Two of the eight lectures were upon “The Northwest Territory and the Ordinance of 1787” and “Marietta and the Western Reserve”; two of the leaflets issued in connection were Manasseh Cutler’s Description of Ohio in 1787 and Garfield’s address on The Northwest Territory and the Western Reserve; and one of the subjects set for the Old South essays{85}

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was “The Part Taken by Massachusetts Men in Connection with the Ordinance of 1787.” These studies first kindled the imaginations of hundreds of young people and first roused them to the consciousness that westward expansion had been the great fact in our history from the time of the Revolution to the time of the Civil War; that New England had had a controlling part in this great movement, which, by successive waves, has reached Ohio, Illinois, Kansas, Colorado, Oregon, so that there is more good New England blood to-day west of the Hudson than there is east of it; and that this movement, which has transformed the United States from the little strip along the Atlantic coast which fought for independence to the great nation which stretches now from sea to sea, began at the old town of Rutland, Massachusetts. This Rutland on the hill is the cradle of Ohio, the cradle of the West.

It was not, by any means, these Boston lectures on “The Opening of the West” which reawakened Massachusetts and the country to the forgotten historical significance of old Rutland. That awakening was done by Senator Hoar, in his great oration at the Marietta centennial, in 1888. Senator Hoar’s oration did not indeed{87} awaken Massachusetts to the great part taken by Massachusetts men in connection with the Ordinance of 1787, or the part of New England in the settlement and shaping of the West. No awakening to these things was necessary. There is no New England household which has not kindred households in the West, ever in close communication with the old home; and the momentous significance of the Ordinance of 1787, and the decisive part taken by Massachusetts statesmen in securing it, the Massachusetts historian and orator were never likely to let the people forget.

Mr. Hoar spoke as strongly of the Ordinance, in his Marietta oration. “The Ordinance of 1787 belongs with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution; it is one of the three title-deeds of American constitutional liberty.” But the chief merit of his oration was not the new emphasis with which he said what Webster had said, but the picturesqueness and the power with which he brought the men and the events of that great period of the opening of the West home to the imagination. The oration was especially memorable for the manner in which it set Rufus Putnam, the man of action, the head of the Ohio Company, the leader of the Marietta colony, in the centre of the story, and made us see old Rutland as the cradle of the movement.

Complete religious liberty, the public support of schools, and the prohibition forever of slavery,—these were what the Ordinance{89} of 1787 secured for the Northwest. “When older States or nations,” said Mr. Hoar, “where the chains of human bondage have been broken, shall utter the proud boast, ‘With a great sum obtained I this freedom,’ each sister of this imperial group—Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin—may lift her queenly head with the yet prouder answer, ‘But I was free-born.’ ” The moment of this antislavery article of the Ordinance, in view of the course of our national history during the century that has followed, it would not be possible to overstate. When the great test of civil war came, to settle of what sort this republic should be, who dare contemplate the result had these five States been slave States and not free!

Massachusetts makes no false or exclusive claims of credit for the Ordinance of 1787. She does not forget the services of William Grayson, nor those of Richard Henry Lee. She does not forget Thomas Jefferson.[64]

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The names of Nathan Dane, Rufus Putnam, Rufus King, Timothy Pickering and Manasseh Cutler are names of the greatest moment in the history of the West. No other group of men did so much as these Massachusetts men to determine what the great West should be, by securing the right organization and institutions for the Northwest Territory and by securing at the beginning the right kind of settlers for Ohio.

It was really Manasseh Cutler who did most at the final decisive moment to secure the adoption{91}

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of the clause in the great Ordinance which forever dedicated the Northwest to freedom. Of all these Massachusetts men he was by far the most interesting personality; and of all revelations of the inner character of that critical period, none is more interesting or valuable than that given by his Life and Letters. It is to be remembered too that the first company of men for Marietta—Cutler urged Adelphia as the right name for the town—started from Manasseh Cutler’s own home in Ipswich, joining others at Danvers, December 3, 1787, almost a month before the Rutland farmers left to join Putnam at Hartford. For the shrine of Manasseh Cutler is not at Rutland, but at Hamilton, which was a part of Ipswich. The home of Nathan Dane was Beverly.

Senator Hoar, in his oration, said of Manasseh Cutler:

But here, in old Rutland, it is not with Manasseh Cutler that we are concerned, but with Rufus Putnam. Rufus Putnam was the head of the Ohio Company, and the leader in the actual settlement of the new Territory. It was with Putnam that Manasseh Cutler chiefly conferred concerning the proposed Ohio colony. He left Boston for New York, on his important mission, on the evening of June 25, 1787, and on that day he records in his diary: “I conversed with General Putnam, and settled the principles on which I am to contract with Congress for lands on account of the Ohio Company.” Of Rufus Putnam, Senator Hoar said in his oration, after his tributes to Varnum, Meigs, Parsons, Tupper and the rest:{95}

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Mr. Hoar recounts the great services of Putnam during the Revolution, beginning with his brilliant success in the fortification of Dorchester Heights:

But it was not Senator Hoar’s task to narrate the military services of General Putnam.[65]

Putnam’s chief counsellor in his design at the first was Washington, whose part altogether in the opening of the West was so noteworthy. Mr. Hoar tells of the correspondence between Putnam and Washington, and follows the interesting history to the organization of the Ohio Company, at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern in Boston, in 1786, and the departure of the Massachusetts emigrants at the end of the next year.

To Rutland, as one who loved the old town and its history has well said, “belongs the honor of having carried into action the Ordinance of 1787. Standing on Rutland hill, and looking around the immense basin of which it{99} forms the centre, it is with conscious pride that one looks upon the old landmarks and calls up to the imagination the strong and brave and true men whose traditions have permeated the soil and left their marks in the civilization which has been the type for the development of the whole of the great Northwest.” For this old town on the hilltop was veritably “the cradle of Ohio.” Here was first effectually heard that potent invitation and command, so significant in the history of this country in these hundred years, “Go West!” This town incarnates and represents as no other the spirit of the mighty movement which during the century has extended New England all through the great West.

As early as 1783, about the time of the breaking up of the army at Newburgh on the Hudson, General Putnam and nearly three hundred army officers had proposed to form a new State beyond the Ohio, and Washington warmly endorsed their memorial to Congress asking for a grant of land; but the plan miscarried. As soon as the Ordinance was passed, the Ohio Company, of which Putnam was the president, bought from the government five or six million acres, and the first great movement{100} of emigration west of the Ohio at once began. Within a year following the organization of the territory, twenty thousand people became settlers upon the banks of the Ohio. But the Pilgrim Fathers of the thousands and the millions, the pioneers to whom belongs the praise, were the forty or fifty farmers who from old Rutland pushed on with Putnam through the snows of Connecticut and Pennsylvania, coming to Pittsburgh just as the spring of 1788 came, and dropping down the river to Marietta in the little boat which they had named, by a beautiful fatality, the Mayflower. “Forever honored be Marietta as another Plymouth!”

The men who first settled the Northwest Territory,—as President Hayes, following Mr. Hoar at Marietta, well called it, “the most fortunate colonization that ever occurred on earth,”—and who set the seal of their character and institutions upon it, were of the best blood of New England.

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Here we remember too the words of Washington.

We honor old Rutland not only because she sent men to open the West, but because she sent her best, because she pitched the tone for the great West high.

But Rutland is not only “the cradle of Ohio,” pre-eminent as that distinction is in her history. She also—like the other towns on the hills round about her, and like every good old New England town—has her long line of simple local annals, well worthy the attention of the summer visitor from Boston or Chicago. Happy are you if you hear them all from the lips of one or another of the local antiquarians, as you ride with him through the fields{103} to Muschopauge Pond, or along the Princeton road to Wachusett, or over Paxton way to see the lot which Senator Hoar has bought on the top of Asnebumskit Hill,—perhaps finding the Senator himself on the hill, as we did, where he could see Worcester in one direction, and in the other, Rutland.

I remember well the crisp September night when I first saw Rutland, with the new moon in the clear sky, and the evening star. I remember that the man who drove me up from the little station to the big hotel on the hill, while I filled my lungs with Rutland air, proved to be the hotel proprietor himself, and, which was much better, proved—and proved it much more the next day—to be the very prince of local antiquarians. He had himself written a history of Rutland for a history of Worcester County, and there was nothing that he did not know. If there was anything, then the good village minister—he has been to Marietta since, and is president of the Rutland Historical{104} Society—had read it in some book; or the town clerk knew it; or Mr. Miles remembered it—who was to Rutland born, and whose memory was good. So in the dozen pleasant visits which I have made to Rutland since, I have not only taken mine ease with the benevolent boniface, but have taken many history lessons on the broad piazzas and the hills.

The boniface will tell you, sitting in the corner looking toward Wachusett, how, in 1686, Joseph Trask, alias Pugastion, of Pennicook; Job, alias Pompamamay, of Natick; Simon Pitican, alias Wananapan, of Wamassick; Sassawannow, of Natick, and another—Indians who claimed to be lords of the soil—gave a{105} deed to Henry Willard and Joseph Rowlandson and Benjamin Willard and others, for £23 of the then currency, of a certain tract of land twelve miles square, the name in general being Naquag, the south corner butting upon Muschopauge Pond, and running north to Quanitick and to Wauchatopick, and so running upon great Wachusett, etc. Upon the petition, he will tell you, of the sons and grandsons of Major Simon Willard, of Lancaster, deceased—that famous Major Willard who went to relieve Brookfield when beset by the Indians—and others; the General Court in 1713 confirmed these lands to these petitioners, “provided that within seven years there be sixty families settled thereon, and sufficient lands reserved for the use of a gospel ministry and schools, except what part thereof the Hon. Samuel Sewall, Esq., hath already purchased,—the town to be called Rutland, and to lye to the county of Middlesex.” The grant was about one eighth of the present Worcester County, comprising almost all the towns round about. When the new Worcester County was incorporated, Rutland failed of becoming the shire town, instead of Worcester, by only one vote—and that vote, they say in Rutland, was{106} bought by a base bribe. The antiquarian taverner will point his spy-glass toward Barre for you, and tell you it was named after our good friend in the House of Commons in the Stamp Act days; toward Petersham hill, back of it, where John Fiske spends his summers, and tell you about Shays’ Rebellion; toward Hubbardston, and tell you it was named for an old speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives; toward Princeton, and tell you it perpetuates the memory of Thomas Prince, the famous old pastor of the Old South Church in Boston, founder of the Prince Library; toward Paxton, and tell you about Charles Paxton, who was something or other; toward Oakham, and tell you something else. He will tell you that Holden is so called after that same family whose name is also honored in Holden Chapel at Harvard College; and he will probably point to Shrewsbury, on the hill away beyond Holden, and talk about General Artemas Ward, whose old home and grave are there.

He will tell about the first settlers of Rutland, respectable folk from Boston and Concord and other places, and how many immigrants from Ireland there were, with their church-membership{107}

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papers in their pockets. He will tell you of Judge Sewall’s farm of a thousand acres in the north part of the town, and of his gift of the sacramental vessels to the church; of the five hundred acres granted to the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company; of how the road through the village was laid out ten rods wide, and so remains unto this day; of the call to the “able, learned, orthodox minister,” Joseph Willard, in 1721, and how he was “cut off by the Indians”—shot in the field north of the meeting-house—just before the installation day, so that Thomas Frink, “an able and learned, orthodox and pious person,” was called instead. Presently there was “a coolness in affection in some of the brethren” towards Mr. Frink, because two fifths of the church-members were Presbyterians, over against the three fifths Congregationalists, and “contrary to his advice and admonition communed with the Presbyterians in other towns.” The upshot was a split, and a Presbyterian church in the west part of the town. These Rutland Presbyterians seem to have come from Ireland—they were of the same sort as those who founded Londonderry, New Hampshire just before; and some of them were so tenacious of their{109} own ordinances that they carried their infants in their arms on horseback as far as Pelham to have them baptized in good Presbyterian form.

Rutland had her minute-men, and fifty of them were at Bunker Hill. She had some hot town-meetings between the Stamp Act time and Lexington, and passed ringing resolutions and some stiff instructions to Colonel Murray, her representative to the General Court, whom more and more she distrusted, and who, when the final pinch came, declared himself a Tory out-and-out, and fled to Nova Scotia, leaving Rutland “by a back road,” to avoid a committee of the whole, which was on its way to visit him.

To tell the truth, this Tory Colonel, John Murray, must have been the most interesting figure ever associated with old Rutland, save General Rufus Putnam himself; and, curiously enough, the Putnam place had belonged first to Murray,—the house being built by him for one of his married daughters, all of Murray’s lands and goods being confiscated, and this house falling into Putnam’s hands in 1780 or 1782, probably at a very low figure.

He was not John Murray when he came to Rutland, but John McMorrah. He came{110} from Ireland with John and Elizabeth McClanathan, Martha Shaw and others, his mother dying on the passage. He was not only penniless when he set his foot on the American shore, but in debt for his passage. “For a short time,” says the chronicle,” he tried manual labor; but he was too lazy to work, and to beg ashamed.” He found a friend in Andrew Hendery, and began peddling; then he kept a small store, and later bought cattle for the army. Everything seemed to favor him, and he became the richest man that ever lived in Rutland. “He did not forget Elizabeth McClanathan, whom he sailed to America with, but made her his wife.” She lies, along with Lucretia Chandler, his second wife, and Deborah Brindley, the third, in the old Rutland graveyard. “He placed horizontally over their graves large handsome stones underpinned with brick, whereon were engraved appropriate inscriptions.” He had a large family, seven sons and five daughters; and the oldest son, Alexander, remained loyal to America and to Rutland when his father fled—entering the army and being wounded in the service. Murray became a large landholder and had many tenants; he was the “Squire” of the region. He grew{111} arbitrary and haughty as he grew wealthy, but was popular, until the stormy politics came. “On Representative day,” we read, “all his friends that could ride, walk, creep or hobble were at the polls; and it was not his fault if they returned dry.” He held every office the people could give him, and represented them twenty years in the General Court. He was a large, fleshy man, and, “when dressed in his regimentals, with his gold-bound hat, etc., he made a superb appearance.” He lived in style, with black servants and white. “His high company from Boston, Worcester, etc., his office and parade, added to the popularity and splendor of the town. He promoted schools, and for several years gave twenty dollars yearly towards supporting a Latin grammar school.” He also gave a clock to the church, which was placed in front of the gallery, and proved himself a thoroughly modern man by inscribing on the clock the words, “A Gift of John Murray, Esq.”

All these things your loyal Rutland host will tell you, or read to you out of the old books,—where you can read them, and many other things. And he will take you to drive, down past the Putnam place, to the field where a{112}

large detachment of Burgoyne’s army was quartered after the surrender at Saratoga. The prisoners’ barracks stood for half a century, converted to new uses; and the well dug by the soldiers is still shown—as, until a few years ago, were the mounds which marked the graves of those who died. Three of the officers fell in love with Rutland girls, and took them back to England as their wives. Yet none of their stories is so romantic as the story of that vagrant Betsy, whose girlhood was passed in a Rutland shanty, and who, after she married in New York the wealthy Frenchman, Stephen Jumel, and was left a widow, then married Aaron Burr.{113}

St. Edmundsbury, in old Suffolk, where Robert Browne first preached independency, has an air so bracing and salubrious that it has been called the Montpellier of England. Old Rutland might well be called the Montpellier of Massachusetts. Indeed, when a few years ago the State of Massachusetts decided to establish a special hospital for consumptives, the authorities asked the opinions of hundreds of physicians and scientific men in all parts of the State as to where was the best place for it, the most healthful and favorable point; and a vast preponderance of opinion was in behalf of Rutland. On the southern slope, therefore, of Rutland’s highest hill the fine hospital now stands; and until people outgrow the foolish notion that a State must have all its State institutions within its own borders,—until Massachusetts knows that North Carolina is a better place for consumptives than any town of her own,—there could not be a wiser choice. The town is so near to Worcester, and even to Boston, that its fine air, broad outlook and big hotel draw to it hundreds of summer visitors; and latterly it has grown enterprising,—for which one is a little sorry,—and has water-works and coaching parades.{114}

The central town in Massachusetts, Rutland is also the highest village in the State east of the Connecticut. From the belfry of the village church, from the dooryards of the village people, the eye sweeps an almost boundless horizon, from the Blue Hills to Berkshire and from Monadnock to Connecticut, and the breezes on the summer day whisper of the White Hills and the Atlantic. It is not hard for the imagination to extend the view far beyond New England, to the town on the Muskingum which the prophetic eye of Putnam saw from here, and to the great States beyond, which rose obedient to the effort which began with him; it is not hard to catch messages borne on winds from the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific.

Just at the foot of the hill,—to the west, as is fitting,—stands the old Rufus Putnam house, the church clock telling the hours above, Wachusett looming beyond the valley, the{115} maples rustling before the door, to the west the sough of the pines. Its oaken timbers are still as sound as when Murray put them in place before the Revolution, each clapboard still intact, the doors the same, the rooms but little altered. Could Putnam return to earth again and to Rutland, he would surely feel himself at home as he passed through the gate.

In 1893, when the enthusiasm re-inforced by our Old South lectures on “The Opening of the West” was strong, I wrote these words about the Rufus Putnam house:

Just a year from the time these words were written, the pleasing plan and prophecy—more fortunate than most such prophecies—began to be fulfilled. It was a memorable meeting in old Rutland on that brilliant October day in 1894. Senator Hoar and seventy-five good{117} men and women came from Worcester; and Edward Everett Hale led a zealous company from Boston; and General Walker drove over with his friends from Brookfield, his boyhood home near by,—the home, too, of Rufus Putnam before he came to Rutland; and when everybody had roamed over the old Putnam place, and crowded the big hotel dining-room for dinner, and then adjourned to the village church, so many people from the town and the country round about had joined that the church never saw many larger gatherings. The address which Senator Hoar gave was full of echoes of his great Marietta oration; and when the other speeches had been made, it was very easy in the enthusiasm to secure pledges for a third of the four thousand dollars necessary to buy the old house and the hundred and fifty acres around it. The rest has since then been almost entirely raised; the house has been put into good condition, and is visited each year by hundreds of pilgrims from the East and the West; and a noteworthy collection of historical memorials has already been made,—all under the control of the Rutland Historical Society, which grew out of that historic day, and which is doing a noble{118} work for the intellectual and social life of the town, strengthening in the minds of the people the proud consciousness of their rich inheritance, and prompting them to meet the new occasion and new duty of to-day as worthily as Rufus Putnam and the Rutland farmers met the duty and opportunity of 1787. In the autumn of 1898, there was another noteworthy celebration at Rutland. This time it was the Sons of the Revolution who came; and they placed upon the Putnam house a bronze tablet with the following inscription, written by Senator Hoar, who was himself present and the chief speaker, as on the earlier occasion:

Many such celebrations will there be at the{119} home of Rufus Putnam, and at the little village on the hill. Ever more highly will New England estimate the place of old Rutland in her history; ever more sacred and significant will it become as a point of contact for the East and West; and in the far-off years the sons and daughters of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin will make pilgrimages to it, as the children of New England pilgrimage to Scrooby.

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SALEM is what historical students would call a palimpsest, an ancient manuscript that has been scraped and then rewritten with another and later text. By careful study of the almost illegible characters and sometimes by chemical treatment, great treasures of the ancient learning, such as Orations of Cicero, the Institutes of Gaius and versions of the New Testament, have been discovered under monkish rules and medieval chronicles. Such a charm of research and discovery awaits the historical student in this modern, progressive city. The stranger within our gates is at first impressed by the many good business blocks, the elegant residences amid beautiful lawns on the broad, well-shaded streets, the handsome public buildings, many of them once stately mansions of{122}

the old sea-captains, and a very convenient electric-car service that makes the city a famous shopping-place for the eastern half of the county. But here and there the visitor comes upon some memorial tablet or commemorative stone, some ancient cemetery or venerable building—faded characters of an earlier text—that brings to mind the great age of Puritanism or the only less interesting era of our town’s commercial supremacy; while if he enters the Essex Institute to see its large and valuable historical collection, it is modern Salem that is obliterated and the stern poverty and austere piety of the Fathers that stand out distinctly. With what interest he will look at the sun-dial and sword of Governor Endicott, at the baptismal shirt of Governor{123}

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Bradford, and at the stout walking-stick of George Jacobs, one of the victims of the Witchcraft Delusion! The ancient pottery, the old pewter and iron vessels, the antique fowling-pieces and firebacks, the valuable autographs of charters and military commissions and title-deeds—all these survivals of the seventeenth century help to reconstruct that Puritan settlement under the direction of Endicott and Bradstreet, of Higginson and Roger Williams. Or if the visitor has entered the Peabody Academy of Science, rich in natural history and ethnological collections, it is the proud record of commercial supremacy at the beginning of this century which the old palimpsest reveals. As he studies the models of famous privateers and trading-vessels, the oil portraits of the old sea-captains and merchant princes, the implements and idols, the vestments and pottery, they brought

he can easily imagine himself back in the days when Derby Street was the fashionable thoroughfare and its fine mansions overlooked the beautiful harbor, the long black wharves with{125} their capacious warehouses and, moored alongside, the restless barks and brigantines for the moment quiet under the eyes of their hardy and successful owners.

Thanks to the historic spirit and the painstaking, loving labors of her citizens, Old Salem is easily deciphered under the handsome, modern, progressive city of thirty-four thousand inhabitants with factories, electric plants and Queen Anne cottages. Thanks to the genius of her distinguished son Nathaniel Hawthorne, the interpreter of the Puritan spirit, an invisible multitude of figures in steeple-hats and black cloaks and trunk-breeches, with here and there some gallant whose curling locks and gay attire are strangely out of place in the sober company, may always be suspected on the sleepy back-streets with their small, wooden, gambrel-roofed houses, or musing under the ancient willows in the venerable cemetery since 1637 known as “The Burying Point,” where were laid the bodies of Governor Bradstreet and many another Puritan. There are few American{126} cities in which it is so easy to feel the influence of a great past and to call up the images of Puritan minister and magistrate, for in Salem we are surrounded by their memorials, the houses they built, the church in which they first worshipped, their charter and title-deeds, their muskets and firebacks, even the garments they wore.

Salem really dates from 1626, when Roger Conant and a little band of English farmers and fishermen, in discouraged mood, left the bleak shore of Cape Ann and came to this region, then called by the Indians Naumkeag, a large tract of land, heavily wooded to the westward, and at the east running in irregular, picturesque manner out into Massachusetts Bay. Hither came in September, 1628, Captain John Endicott and a hundred adventurers, bringing with them a charter from the English company that claimed ownership of this territory, and many articles of English manufacture to exchange with the Indians for{127} fish and furs. Endicott had been appointed Governor by the company, and immediately began to display the strength of character and readiness in resource that justified the wisdom of the directors and made him during his lifetime one of the commanding figures of the Bay Colony.

It was a busy time for these serious immigrants, who came in the fall and had to make hurried preparation for the winter. Behind them extended the vast, unknown forest, tenanted by savages and wild beasts, while in front stretched the three thousand miles of salt water they had just traversed. They built houses, they felled trees, they made treaties with the Indians, they hunted, fished, and ploughed the land they cleared. Apparently little had been done by Conant and his discouraged friends, but they had left a “faire house” at Cape Ann which was now brought to Naumkeag for the Governors use.

Some of the colonists were actuated by love of religious freedom and some by hopes of gain. A strong hand was needed to enforce order and to give the settlement that religious character which its founders desired. It was found in Endicott, then in the prime of life,{128} sternest of Puritans, quick of temper, imperious of will, and fortunately of intense religious convictions.

Hawthorne is the poet of the Puritan age. After reading the events of that memorable century in Felt’s Annals of Salem and Upham’s Salem Witchcraft, the student should turn to the pages of the romancer for vivid pictures of the Puritan in his greatness of spirit and severity of rule. In The Maypole of Merry Mount Hawthorne has shown us, as only this Wizard of New England could, the dramatic moment when Endicott, accompanied by his mail-clad soldiers, presented himself at Mount Wollaston, near Quincy, and abruptly ended the festivities of the young and thoughtless members of the colony whom the lawless Morton had gathered around him. Nor would the portrait of Endicott be complete without the touch that shows him, in fierce anti-prelatial mood, cutting out the blood-red cross from the English flag, for which daring deed the General Court, fearing trouble with the home{129} government, condemned him, then ex-Governor, to the loss of his office as assistant, or councillor, for one year.

The beginning of the severe, repressive rule of the Puritan over domestic and social life, so repellent to modern thought, is found in the instructions sent to Endicott by the directors of the English company.

He was also to see that at least some members of each family were well grounded in religion,

For this purpose the company furnished him with blank books to record the daily employments of each family and expected these records to be sent over to England twice a year.{130} In our natural dislike and distrust of such a Puritan Inquisition we should remember that the exigencies of the time and place go far towards justifying such stern precautions. The English company wanted a successful settlement, one to which they could themselves retreat if political and ecclesiastical oppression in the old country should prove too great for their endurance; and they well knew that prosperity depended upon order, sobriety, thrift, and piety. The splendid history and the moral leadership of New England in these three centuries have justified this painstaking, minute, even exasperating watch over the welfare of a colony far from the restraints of an old civilization, in peril from hostile savages and lawless adventurers on an inhospitable soil.

As a contrast to this gloomy picture of social life, their intentions towards the Indians shine in a bright light. The company wrote to Endicott in reference to the land questions certain to arise:

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Great pains were taken to establish just and humane relations with the red man. One of the objects of the company was the conversion of the Indians to the Gospel of Christ. Among the wise measures of the day it was forbidden to sell them muskets, ammunition or liquor, and they were permitted to enter the settlement at certain stated times only, for purposes of trade or treaty. As a nation, our treatment of the Indian has been so barbarous that this sagacious and Christian policy of the first Puritans calls for the highest praise and reveals another valuable trait in the heroic character of the Fathers.

That first winter at Naumkeag was a severe test of the fortitude of the Puritans. They suffered from lack of sufficient food and adequate shelter, and many died from disease. In their great need Governor Endicott wrote to Governor Bradford and asked that a physician be sent to them from the Plymouth settlement{132}. Soon Dr. Fuller came and not only ministered to the sick, but in many conversations with Endicott and his companions doubtless prepared the way for their adoption of the Congregational or Independent form of church. The Pilgrims had withdrawn from the Church of England, averse to its ritual and discipline, and were known as Separatists. Even before their arrival at Plymouth they instituted the Congregational form of worship and discipline which they had already practised in England and Holland. But the Puritans at Naumkeag had intended to reform and not to give up the Anglican liturgy to which they were attached by tradition and sentiment. The Episcopal or the Congregational order of service was a momentous issue in these formative months and it is significant that on Dr. Fuller’s return to Plymouth Endicott wrote to Bradford: “I am by him satisfied, touching your judgement of the outward form of God’s worship; it is, as far as I can yet gather, no other than is warranted by the evidence of truth.”

In the following spring four hundred immigrants and four Non-conformist clergymen, among them Francis Higginson and Samuel{133} Skelton, arrived and steps were then taken for the formal organization of the church. In the contract the English company made with the Rev. Francis Higginson there is another evidence of its generous and enlightened policy. He was to receive £30 for his outfit, £10 for books and £30 per annum for three years. In addition, the company was to find him a house, food, and wood for that period, to transport himself and family, and to bring them back to England at the expiration of the time if it should then be his wish. He was also to have one hundred acres of land, and if he died his wife and children were to be maintained while on the plantation.

At this time the Indian name Naumkeag was given up and the settlement took its present name of Salem, an abbreviation of Jerusalem and meaning, as every one knows, Peace. The important event was the organization of the church. Services had been held during the winter, perhaps in that “faire house” of the Governors, and doubtless the whole or parts of the Anglican liturgy had been used. A radical change now occurred. After suitable preparation by prayer and fasting the ministers were examined to test their fitness for the{134} office, and then by a written ballot, the first use of the ballot in this country, Samuel Skelton was elected pastor and Francis Higginson teacher or assistant pastor. Then Mr. Higginson and “three or four of the gravest members of the church” laid their hands upon the head of Mr. Skelton, and with appropriate prayer installed him as minister of this first Puritan (as distinguished from the Pilgrim) church in America. Afterwards, by a similar imposition of hands and prayer by Mr. Skelton, Mr. Higginson was installed as teacher. The Plymouth church had been invited to send delegates, and as one of them Governor Bradford came, delayed by a storm, but in time to offer the right hand of fellowship. Thirty names were signed to the following covenant and the First Church of Salem was organized: “We covenant with the Lord and with one another, and do bind ourselves in the presence of God, to walk together in all His ways, according as He is pleased to reveal Himself unto us in His blessed word of truth.” The deed was done. The Congregational creed and polity were adopted and the church that for more than two centuries dominated New England thought and life was established in Salem.{135}

For several years the youthful church met in a private house. But in 1634 the colonists were ready to build the “meeting-house” and the small, bare edifice, built of logs and boasting a thatched roof and stone chimney, was soon erected. “A poor thing, but mine own,” the Puritan might have said as he recalled the venerable and beautiful cathedrals of the mother-country. But the Puritan doubtless never quoted Shakespeare. It is more probable that he thought of the tabernacle with which the chosen people journeyed in the wilderness, long before Solomon’s temple crowned Mount Moriah, and rejoiced that the House of the Lord was at last set up in their midst. The sinewy oak timbers of this ancient building, within modern roof and walls, still remain, one of the most impressive monuments of this ancient town. Its size, 20 x 17 feet, makes one somewhat skeptical of the familiar statement that everybody went to church in the good old times. But I doubt not that both floor and gallery were well filled Sundays and at the great Thursday lecture, although on both days the preacher had the privilege, to modern divines denied, of reversing his hour-glass after the sand had run out and, secure of{136} his congregation, deliberately proceeding to his “Finally, Brethren.” On one side sat the men, on the other the women and small children, each in his proper place, determined by wealth or public office. Even in that religious age four men, it appears, were appointed to prevent the boys from running downstairs before the Benediction was pronounced, while the constable, armed with a long pole tipped with a fox’s tail, was always at hand to rouse the drowsy or inattentive. There was at each service a collection. Only church-members could vote at the town-meetings, held at first in the new meeting-house, but every householder was taxed for the support of the church.

In 1630, John Winthrop, the newly appointed Governor of the Colony, accompanied by several hundred persons, came to Salem. Disappointed in the place, they soon moved to Charlestown, and there established the seat of government. From that date Salem took the second place in the Colony, but always maintained, then as now, an independent, public-spirited life.

Hither came, in 1634, Roger Williams, after the vicissitudes in those days experienced by an original and outspoken man. After the{137}

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death of Mr. Higginson, he became the minister of the First Church. The original timbers of his dwelling-house, dating from 1635, are still to be seen, more ancient than the ancient roof and walls that cover them, and reveal faded characters of the Puritan palimpsest. A double interest attaches to this venerable building, since as the residence of Judge Corwin tradition has made it the scene of some of the preliminary examinations in the witch trials. But the wanderings of Roger Williams were not yet ended. His attacks upon the authority of the magistrates as well as his controversies with the ministers brought him under the condemnation of the General Court. Though the Salem church resisted, it was obliged to part with its minister who quitted Massachusetts under sentence of banishment, to become the Founder of Rhode Island. A remarkable man was Roger Williams, of great gifts and singular purity of conscience, but his inflexible spirit, opposed to the theocratic rule of ministers and magistrates, was wisely set at constructive work in another colony.

This was the eventful age of Puritanism in the mother-country and in the colonies. All{139} that we read of the austere piety and social restraints of the Puritan theocracy is found in this period from 1629 to 1700. Much might be said of the growth of Salem in population and wealth and influence in this century, but there is no time to tell the story in a single chapter. We come at once to the close of the century when the old town earned an unenviable notoriety by the tragic affair known as the Witchcraft Delusion.

We must think of Salem in 1692 as a town of 1700 inhabitants, in a delightful situation on Massachusetts Bay, almost encircled by sea-water, while at the west stretched away the vast forest, broken here and there by large plantations or farms which it was the policy of the Governor to grant to those who would undertake the pioneer work of cultivation. These farms, widely scattered, were known as Salem Village, and at a place a few miles from Salem, now known as Danvers Centre, there was a little group of farmhouses surrounding a church, of which the Rev. Samuel Parris was minister. In this family were two slaves, John and Tituba, whom he had brought from the West Indies, and two children, his daughter Elizabeth, nine years old, and his niece Abigail{140} Williams, eleven years of age. In the winter of 1691-92 these children startled the neighborhood by their unaccountable performances, creeping under tables, assuming strange and painful attitudes, and uttering inarticulate cries. At times they fell into convulsions and uttered piercing shrieks. Dr. Griggs, the local physician, declared the children bewitched, and this explanation was soon after confirmed by a council of the ministers held at Mr. Parris’s house.

Absurd as such an explanation seems to us, it must be remembered that, with rare exceptions, every one at that time believed in witchcraft. It found an apparent confirmation in the text, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Exodus xxii., 18), and the great legal authorities of England, Bacon, Blackstone, Coke, Selden, and Matthew Hale, had given decisions implying the fact of witchcraft and indicating the various degrees of guilt. It was easier to accept this explanation since executions for this crime had already taken place at Charlestown, Dorchester, Cambridge, Hartford and Springfield. Governor Winthrop, Governor Bradstreet and Governor Endicott had each sentenced a witch to death. Governor{141} Endicott had pronounced judgment upon a person so important as Mistress Ann Hibbins, widow of a rich merchant and the sister of Governor Bellingham, familiar to us all in the pages of The Scarlet Letter. A few years before, Cotton Mather, the distinguished young divine of Boston, had published a work affirming his belief in witchcraft and detailing his study of some bewitched children in Charlestown, one of whom he had taken into his own family the better to observe.

It is not surprising, therefore, that these young girls, instead of being punished for mischievous conduct or treated for nervous derangement, were pitied as the victims of some malevolent persons and urged to name their tormentors. Encouraged by the verdict of physician and ministers, countenanced by Mr. Parris and the church-members, these “afflicted children,” as they and some other girls and women similarly affected in the village were now called, began their accusations. The first persons mentioned were Tituba, the Indian slave, Goody Osborn, a bedridden woman whose mind was affected by many troubles, physical and mental, and Sarah Good, a friendless, forlorn creature, looked upon as a vagrant.{142}

In March, 1692, the first examinations were held in the meeting-house in Salem Village, John Hawthorne, ancestor of the novelist, and Jonathan Corwin acting as magistrates. The accused did not receive fair treatment—their guilt was assumed from the first, no counsel was allowed, the judges even bullied them to force a confession. The evidence against them, as in all the following cases, was “spectral evidence,” as it was called. It consisted of the assertions of the children that they were tortured whenever the accused looked at them, choked, pinched, beaten, or pricked with the pins which they produced from their mouths or clothing, and in one instance, at least, stabbed by a knife the broken blade of which was shown by the “afflicted child.” In one or two cases the children were convicted of deception, as in the case of the broken knife-blade. A young man present testified that he had broken the knife himself and had thrown away the useless blade in the presence of the accusing girl. But with merely{143} a reprimand from the judge and the injunction not to tell lies, the girls were permitted to make their monstrous charges against the men and women who stood amazed, indignant, helpless, before accusations they could only deny, not refute.

In this first trial Tituba confessed that under threats from Satan, who had most often appeared to her as a man in black accompanied by a yellow bird, she had tortured the girls, and named as her accomplices the two women, Good and Osborn. After the trial, which took place a little later in Salem, Tituba was sent to the Boston jail, where she remained until the delusion was over. She was then sold to pay the expenses of her imprisonment, and is lost to history. The other women were sent to the Salem jail, which they left only for their execution the following July.

The community felt a sense of relief after the confession of Tituba and the imprisonment of the other women. It was hoped Satan’s power was checked. But on the contrary the power of the devil was to be shown in a far more impressive manner. The “afflicted children” continued to suffer and soon began to accuse men and women of unimpeachable{144} lives. Within a few months several hundred people in Salem, Andover and Boston were arrested and thrown into the jails at Salem, Ipswich, Cambridge and Boston. As Governor Hutchinson, an historian of the time, stated, the only way to prevent an accusation was to become an accuser. The state of affairs resembled the Reign of Terror in France a century later, when men of property and position lived in fear of being regarded as “a suspect.”

For the thrilling story of these trials and their wretched victims the student should turn to Mr. Upham’s authoritative and popular volumes upon Salem Witchcraft. The reader can never forget the tragic fate of the venerable Rebecca Nurse, George Burroughs, a former clergyman of the church in Salem Village, and the other victims. Here we can review only the trial of the Corey family, a fitting climax to this scene of horror.

Two weeks after the trial of Tituba and her companions, a warrant was issued for the arrest of Martha Corey, aged sixty, the third wife of Giles Corey, a well-known citizen. She was a woman of unusual strength of character and from the first denounced the witchcraft excitement{145}, trying to persuade her husband who believed all the monstrous stories, not to attend the hearings or in any way countenance the proceedings. Perhaps it was her well-known opinion that directed suspicion to her. At her trial the usual performance was enacted. The girls fell on the floor, uttered piercing shrieks, cried out upon their victim. “There is a man whispering in her ear!” one of them suddenly called out. “What does he say to you?” the judge demanded of Martha Corey, accepting without any demur this “spectral evidence.” “We must not believe all these distracted children say,” was her sensible answer. But good sense did not preside at the witch trials. She was convicted and not long afterward executed. Her husband’s evidence went against her and is worth noting as fairly representative of much of the testimony that convicted the nineteen victims of this delusion:

It is hard to believe that such statements, most probable events interpreted in the least probable manner, should have had any judicial value whatever. Yet it is precisely such a mixture of superstition and stupid speculation about unusual or even daily incidents that was regularly brought forward and made to tell against the accused.

Soon after his wife’s arrest Giles Corey himself was arrested, taken from his mill and brought before the judges of the special court, appointed by Governor Phipps but held in Salem, to hear the witch trials. Again the accusing girls went through their performance, again the judges assumed the guilt of the accused, and tried to browbeat a confession from him. But in the interval between his arrest and trial this old man of eighty had had abundant leisure for reflection. He was sure{147} not only of his own innocence but of his wife’s as well, and it must have been a bitter thought that his own testimony had helped convict her. Partly as an atonement for this offense and partly to save his property for his children, which he could not have done if he had been convicted of witchcraft, after pleading “not guilty” he remained mute, refusing to add the necessary technical words that he would be tried “by God and his country.” Deaf alike to the entreaties of his friends and the threats of the Court, he was condemned to the torture of peine forte et dure, the one instance when this old English penalty for contumacy was enforced in New England. According to the law the aged man was laid on his back, a board was placed on his body with as great a weight upon it as he could endure, while his sole diet consisted of a few morsels of bread one day and a draught of water the alternate day, until death put an end to his sufferings.

The execution of eight persons on Gallows Hill three days later, September 22, were the last to occur in the Colony. Accusations were still made, trials were held, more people were thrown into jail. But there were no more executions, and the next spring there was, according{148} to Hutchinson, such a jail delivery as was never seen before.

The tragedy was at an end. It lasted about six months, from the first accusations in March until the last executions in September. Nineteen persons had been hanged, and one man pressed to death. There is no foundation for the statement that witches were burned. No one was ever burned in New England for witchcraft or any other crime. But hundreds of innocent men and women were thrown into jail or obliged to flee to some place of concealment, their homes were broken up, their property injured, while they suffered great anxiety for themselves and friends.

It was an epidemic of mad, superstitious fear, bitterly to be regretted, and a stain upon the high civilization of the Bay Colony. It is associated with Salem, but several circumstances are to be taken into consideration. First of all, note the fact that while the victims were residents of Essex County, of Salem and{149} vicinity, and the trials were held in Salem, yet the special court that tried them was appointed by the Governor; the Lieutenant-Governor of the Colony, Stoughton, presided; and Boston ministers, notably Cotton Mather, the influential minister of the North Church, were interested observers. Boston as well as Salem is responsible for the tragedy. In the second place, remember that this dramatic event with all its frightful consequences led to a more rational understanding of the phenomena of witchcraft. By a natural revulsion of feeling future charges of witchcraft were regarded with suspicion, “spectral evidence” was disallowed, and there were no more executions for this crime in New England.

Various explanations of the conduct of the “afflicted children” have been offered. One writer has suggested that they began their proceedings in jest but, partly from fear of punishment if they confessed, partly from an exaggerated sense of their own importance, they continued to make charges against men and women whom they heard their elders mention as probable witches. In that little settlement there were property disputes, a church quarrel, jealousies, rivalries, and much{150} misunderstanding, which had their influence. Another writer lays stress upon “hypnotic influence” and believes these young girls and nervous women were improperly influenced by malevolent persons, probably John and Tituba the Indian slaves. But a more natural explanation is that they were the victims of hystero-epilepsy, a nervous disease not so well understood in the past as to-day, which has at times convulsed the orderly life of a school or convent, and even a whole community. Then, too, the belief in witchcraft was general. Striking coincidences, personal eccentricities, unusual events and mysterious diseases seemed to find an easy explanation in an unholy compact with the devil. A witticism attributed to Judge Sewall, one of the judges in these trials, may help us to understand the common panic: “We know who’s who but not which is witch.” That was the difficulty. At a time when every one believed in witchcraft it was easy to suspect one’s neighbor. It was a characteristic superstition of the century and should be classed with the barbarous punishments and religious intolerance of the age.

Eventually, justice, so far as possible, was{151} done to the survivors. The Legislature voted pecuniary compensations and the church excommunications were rescinded. Ann Putnam, one of the more prominent of the “afflicted children,” confessed her error and prayed for divine forgiveness. Rev. Samuel Parris offered an explanation that might be considered an apology. Judge Sewall, noblest of all the civil and ecclesiastical authorities implicated in this tragedy, stood up in the great congregation, Fast Day, in the South Church, Boston, and acknowledged his error in accepting “spectral evidence.”

Salem grew in wealth and population slowly but substantially. In 1765 there were only 4469 inhabitants. With the rest of the Colony she was putting forth her strength in the French-Indian wars and also resisting what she termed the usurpations of the Royalist governors or English Parliament. It was a public-spirited as well as high-spirited life. Soldiers and bounties and supplies were generously furnished{152} for the wars. Pirates were captured or driven from the coast. A valuable commerce was developed, churches were built and schools increased. In 1768 the Essex Gazette was founded, with the motto, “Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci,”—a motto that measures the social changes from the time of Endicott and Williams.

The citizens of Salem were not wanting in patriotism or courage in the years immediately preceding the Revolution. They met in the old town-house to protest against the Stamp Act, to denounce the tax on tea and the closing of Boston port, and in 1774, in defiance of General Gage, to elect delegates to the First Continental Congress about to meet in Concord. As early as 1767 a committee had been appointed “to draft a subscription paper for promoting industry, economy and manufactures in Salem, and thereby prevent the unnecessary importation of European commodities which threaten the country with poverty and ruin.” The report of the committee was not accepted but the movement was characteristic of the attitude of Salem.

A just claim is made that the first armed resistance to the British government was made{153}

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in Salem at the North Bridge, Sunday, February 26, 1775, when the citizens assembled and took their stand on the north bank of the river to prevent Colonel Leslie and his three hundred soldiers from marching into North Fields in search of cannon supposed to be concealed there. The British officer thought of firing upon the citizens who, after crossing the bridge, had raised the draw and now stood massed on the opposite bank. But a townsman, Captain John Felt, said to the irate officer who had looked for an unimpeded march, “If you do fire you will all be dead men.” His prompt utterance appears to have restrained the firing. Tradition says that there was a struggle to capture some boats, one of which at least was scuttled. After an hour and a half of delay, in which time Rev. Mr. Barnard of the North Church was conspicuous for his moderate counsels, the vexed and defeated Colonel Leslie promised that if the draw were lowered and he were permitted to march his men over it a distance of thirty rods, he would then wheel about and leave the town, an agreement fairly carried out. A commemorative stone marks this place and significant event at the beginning of the Revolution.{155}

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The years from 1760 to the War of 1812 were the period of commercial prestige. At the beginning of the Revolution Washington turned to the coast towns for a navy, and Salem answered by furnishing at least 158 privateers. Many were the prizes brought into the harbor as the war continued, and, as a result of this seamanship, an immense impetus was given to ship-building and the development of foreign commerce. This may be called the romantic era in the life of the venerable town. At the close of the war the town could boast of its great merchants and adventurous captains whose vessels were found in every port. Where did they not go, these vessels owned by Derby, Gray, Forrester, Crowninshield, and many another well-known merchant!

Under the stern rule of Endicott the old Puritan town had banished Quakers and Baptists and Episcopalians, but in the early years of this century her sons were intimate with Buddhist and Mohammedan and Parsee merchants. In 1785 “Lord” Derby, as Hawthorne called him, sent out the Grand Turk which, nearly two years later, brought back the first cargo direct from Canton to New{157} England. At this time it is with peculiar interest we read that in 1796 this same “Lord” Derby sent the Astrea to Manila, which returned the following year with a cargo of sugar, pepper and indigo upon which duties of over $24,000 were paid. That was the time when a sailing-vessel after a long voyage might enter the harbor any day, and therefore the boys of the town lay on the rocks at the Neck, eager to sight the incoming ship, and earn some pocket-money for their welcome news. Significant is the motto on the present city seal: Divitis Indiæ usque ad ultimum sinum. They were a hardy race—these Vikings of New England—bold, self-reliant, shrewd, prosperous, equally ready to fight or trade, as occasion might demand. The sailors of that day were the native sons of Salem, sturdy citizens, often well-to-do, who might have an “adventure” of several hundred dollars aboard to invest in tea or sugar or indigo. At fourteen or fifteen the Salem boy went out in the cabin of his father’s vessel, at twenty he was captain, at forty he had retired and in his stately mansion enjoyed the wealth and leisure he had bravely and quickly earned. In 1816 Cleopatra’s Barge, a vessel{158}

of 190 tons burden, was launched in the harbor, and George Crowninshield went yachting in the Mediterranean in this luxurious vessel,—perhaps the first American pleasure yacht, as much admired in Europe as in New England. Many are the traditions of this romantic and prosperous era. Many are the famous names of merchants and sailors—men of great wealth and public spirit, mighty in time of war and influential in affairs of state, as Colonel Timothy Pickering, and Benjamin W. Crowninshield, esteemed at home and abroad for their enlightened, progressive, humane, public-spirited services to town and State.

Many of their stately mansions still remain to attest the wealth and fashion and gracious hospitality of that period. The spacious rooms, rich in mahogany furniture, carved wainscoting, French mirrors, and Canton china, were the scenes of elegant and memorable entertainments when Washington, Lafayette, and many other celebrated men of Europe{159} and America visited the old town. As regards the beautiful objects of interior decoration,—now so eagerly sought, and often purchased at high prices,—Salem is one vast museum, almost every home boasting its inherited treasures, while a few houses are so richly dowered that the envy of less fortunate housekeepers can be easily pardoned.

The commerce in time went to Boston, and many of the sons of Salem followed it to help build up the wealth and character of the larger city. In fact where have not the sons, like the vessels, of Salem gone? Their memory is green in the old town and the citizen points with pride to the former residence-site of many a distinguished man she calls her son; of Bowditch, mathematician and author of the famous Navigator, of Judge Story and his no less eminent son, the poet and sculptor, of W. H. Prescott, the heroic historian of Spain, of Jones Very, poet and mystic, and of many another man of mark in law and literature.

But of all the distinguished sons of Salem no one makes so eloquent an appeal to the popular heart as Nathaniel Hawthorne. Visitors are particularly interested in the places associated with his life and romances. Of these{160}

there are many, for the novelist lived at one time or another in half a dozen Salem houses, while several are identified with his stories. To appreciate Hawthorne one should read him here, in the old Puritan town with its ancient houses, several of which date from the seventeenth century, its commemorative tablets, ancient tombstones, family names, and the collections of the Essex Institute. With magic{161} pen he traced the greatness and the littleness of the Puritan age, its austere piety, its intolerance, its stern repression of the lighter side of human nature, its moral grandeur and its gloomy splendor. He did for our past what Walter Scott did for the past of the mother-country. Another “Wizard of the North,” he breathed the breath of life into the dry and dusty materials of history; he summoned the great dead again to live and move among us.

The visitor will be interested in all the houses associated with his name,—the modest birthplace on Union Street, the old residence on Turner Street popularly but erroneously called the House of the Seven Gables, the Peabody homestead, beside the Old Burying Point, where he found his wife and also Dr. Grimshawe’s Secret. The visitor will be most interested, however, in the three-story, wooden building with the front door opening into the little garden at the side, after the fashion of many Salem houses, where he lived when Surveyor of the Port and wrote the immortal romance of Puritan New England. Here his wife wept over the woe of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, and hither came James T.{162} Fields to hear the story which he so eagerly accepted. After one has read the facts of history in Felt and Upham and the diaries and chronicles of the seventeenth century, it is well to turn to Hawthorne for the realistic touch that makes the Puritan characters live once more for us. His sombre genius was at home in the Puritan atmosphere. How clearly its influence over him is acknowledged in the Introduction to The Scarlet Letter! He had the literary taste and the literary ambition, and he found his material in the musty records of the Custom-house, in the town pump so long a feature of Salem streets, in the church steeple, the ancient burying-ground, the old gabled houses, even the Main Street that had witnessed the varied pageants of more than two centuries. He was always leaving Salem and always returning, drawn by the “sensuous sympathy of dust for dust.” Here his ancestors lay buried, and here, although he has said he was happiest elsewhere, lay his inspiration. The strange group of Pyncheons, Clifford, Hepzibah and the Judge, the Gentle Child, the Minister with the Black Veil, Lady Eleanore in her rich mantle, and the tragic group of The Scarlet Letter—these are not simply the creations{163}

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of a delicate and somewhat morbid imagination, even more are they the marvellous resurrection of a life long dead.

The old town has a genuine pride in her great son whose fame, assured in England as in America, has added to her attractions. But owing to his invincible reserve and long absences he had only a limited acquaintance in Salem, and there is comparatively little of reminiscence and anecdote among those who remember him. He chose his companions here, perhaps in reaction from the intellectual society he had had in Concord, perhaps in search of literary material, from a jovial set with many a capital tale to tell of the old commercial days when the Custom-house with its militant eagle aloft was the centre of a bustling, cosmopolitan life that surged up and down its steps and over the long black wharves of Derby Street. Like many men of genius his character had more than one side and can now be studied in the abundance of material which the unwearied industry of his children has given us.

The novelist has gone, as the merchant and sailor went, as the Puritan magistrate and minister went. Another set of priceless{165}

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associations is added to the old town which now must confess to factories and a foreign population like many another New England seaport. The resident of Salem lives in a modern, progressive, handsome city, made the more attractive by eccentric roofs, “Mackintire” doorways, carved wooden mantels and wainscoting, ever suggestive of the venerable and impressive past, a past that may well serve as a challenge to the children of Viking and Puritan, inviting them to a fine self-control and a broad public spirit.

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The summer traveller who approaches Boston from the landward side is apt to notice a tall and abundant wayside plant, having a rather stiff and ungainly stem, surmounted by a flower with soft and delicate petals and of a lovely shade of blue. This is the succory (Cichorium Intybus of the botanists), described by Emerson as “succory to match the sky.” But it is not commonly known in rural New England by this brief name, being oftener called “Boston weed,” simply because it grows more and more abundant as one comes{168} nearer to that city. When the experienced Boston traveller, returning to his home in late summer, sees this fair blossom on an ungainly stem assembled profusely by the roadside, he begins to collect his parcels and hand-bags, knowing that he approaches his journey’s end.

The original Boston, as founded by Governor John Winthrop in 1639, was established on a rocky, three-hilled peninsula, in whose thickets wolves and bears were yet harbored, and which was known variously as Shawmut and Trimountain. The settlement itself was a sort of afterthought, being taken as a substitute for Charlestown, where a temporary abode had been founded by Winthrop’s party. There had been much illness there, and so Mr. Blackstone, or Blaxtone, who had for seven years been settled on the peninsula, urged the transfer of the little colony. The whole tongue of land then comprised but 783 acres—an area a little less than that originally allotted to Central Park in New York. Boston now includes 23,661 acres—about thirty times the original extent of the peninsula. It has a population of about 500,000—the State Census of 1895 showing 496,920 inhabitants. By the United States Census of 1890{169}

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it had 448,477, and was then the sixth in population among American cities, being surpassed by New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, and St. Louis; and the union of New York and Brooklyn probably making it now the fifth. In 1880 it ranked fifth, St. Louis having since outstripped it. In 1870 it was only seventh, both St. Louis and Baltimore then preceding it. As with most American cities, this growth has been partly due to the annexing of suburbs; but during the last fifteen years there has been no such annexation, showing the increase to be genuine and intrinsic. The transformation in other ways has, however, been more astonishing than the growth. Of the original three hills, one only is now noticeable by the stranger. I myself can remember Boston, in my college days, as a pear-shaped peninsula, two miles by one, attached to the mainland by a neck a mile long and only a few yards wide, sometimes actually covered by the meeting of the tide-waters from both sides. The water also almost touched Charles Street, where the Public Garden now is, and it rolled over the flats and inlets called the Back Bay, where the costliest houses of the city now stand.{171}

The changes of population and occupation have been almost as great as of surface. The blue-jacketed sailor was then a figure as familiar in the streets as is now the Italian or the Chinese; and the long wharves, then lined with great vessels, two or three deep, and fragrant with spicy Oriental odors, are now shortened, reduced, and given over to tugs and coasters. Boston is still the second commercial port in the country; but its commerce is mainly coast-wise or European only, and the picturesque fascination of the India trade has passed away. Even on our Northwest Pacific coast the early white traders, no matter whence they came, were known by the natives as “Boston men.” The wealth of the city, now vastly greater than in those days, flows into other channels—railways, factories, and vast land investments in the far West—enterprises as useful, perhaps more lucrative, but less picturesque. It is a proof of the vigor and vitality of Boston, and partly, also, of its favorable situation, that it has held its own through such transformations. Smaller cities, once powerful, such as Salem, Newburyport, and Portsmouth, have been ruined as to business by the withdrawal of foreign trade.{172}

Boston has certainly, in the history of the country, represented from an early time a certain quality of combined thrift and ardor which has made it to some extent an individual city. Its very cows, during its rural period, shared this attribute, from the time when they laid out its streets by their devious wanderings, to the time when “Lady Hancock”—as she was called—helped herself to milk from the herd of her fellow-citizens in order to meet a sudden descent of official visitors upon her husband, the Governor. From the time when Boston was a busy little colonial mart—the epoch best described in Hawthorne’s Province House Legends and My Kinsman Major Molineux—through the period when, as described in Mrs. Quincy’s reminiscences, the gentlemen went to King’s Chapel in scarlet{173} cloaks,—down to the modern period of transcontinental railways and great manufacturing enterprises, the city has at least aroused a peculiar loyalty on the part of its citizens. Behind all the thunders of Wendell Phillips’s eloquence there lay always this strong local pride. “I love inexpressibly,” he said, “these streets of Boston, over which my mother held up my baby footsteps; and if God grants me time enough, I will make them too pure to be trodden by the footsteps of a slave.” He survived to see his dream fulfilled. Instead of the surrendered slave, Anthony Burns, marching in a hollow square, formed by the files of the militia, Phillips lived to see the fair-haired boy, Robert Shaw, riding at the head of his black regiment, to aid in securing the freedom of a race.

During the Revolution, Boston was the centre of those early struggles on which it is now needless to dwell. Faneuil Hall still stands—the place from which, in 1774, a letter as to grievances was ordered to be sent to the other towns in the State; the old State House is standing, where the plans suggested by the Virginia House of Burgesses were adopted; the old South Church remains, whence the disguised Indians of the Boston Tea-Party{174} went forth, and where Dr. Warren, on March 5, 1775, defied the British officers, and when one of them held up warningly some pistol-bullets, dropped his handkerchief over them and went on. The Old North or Christ Church also remains, where the two lights were hung out as the signal for Paul Revere’s famous ride, on the eve of the battle of Lexington.

So prominent was Boston during this period that it even awakened the jealousy of other colonies; and Mr. Thomas Shirley, of Charleston, South Carolina, said to Josiah Quincy, Jr., in March, 1773: “Boston aims at nothing less than the sovereignty of this whole continent.... Take away the power and superintendence of Britain, and the colonies must submit to the next power. Boston would soon have that.”

One of the attractions of Boston has long been, that in this city, as in Edinburgh, might be found a circle of literary men, better organized and more concentrated than if lost in the confusion of a larger metropolis. From the point of view of New York, this circle might be held provincial, as Edinburgh no doubt seemed from London; and the resident of the larger{175}

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community might scornfully use about the Bostonian the saying attributed to Dr. Johnson about the Scotchman, that “much might be made of him if caught young.” Indeed, much of New York’s best literary material came always from New England; just as Scotland still holds its own in London literature. No doubt each place has its advantages, but there was a time when one might easily meet in a day, in one Boston bookstore—as, for instance, in the “Old Corner Bookstore,” built in 1712, and still used for the same trade—such men as Emerson, Parker, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Whittier, Sumner, Agassiz, Parkman, Whipple, Hale, Aldrich, and Howells; such women as Lydia Maria Child and Julia Ward Howe. Now, if we consider how much of American literature is represented by these few names, it is evident that if Boston was never metropolitan, it at least had a combination of literary ability such as no larger American city has yet rivalled.

I remember vividly an occasion when I was required to select a high-school assistant for the city where I then lived (Newport, Rhode Island), and I had appointed meetings with several candidates at the bookstore of Fields & Osgood at Boston. While I was talking{177}

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with the most promising of these—the daughter of a clergyman in northern Vermont—I saw Dr. O. W. Holmes pass through the shop, and pointed him out to her. She gazed eagerly after him until he was out of sight, and then said, drawing a long breath, “I must write to my father and sister about this! Up in Peacham we think a great deal of authors!”

Certainly a procession of foreign princes or American millionaires would have impressed her and her correspondents far less. It was like the feeling that Americans are apt to have when they first visit London or Paris and see—in Willis’s phrase—“whole shelves of their library walking about in coats and gowns”; and, strange as it may seem, every winter brings to Boston a multitude of young people whose expressed sensations are very much like those felt by Americans when they first cross the ocean.

The very irregularity of the city adds to its attraction, since most of our newer cities are apt to look too regular and too monotonous. Foreign dialects have greatly increased within a few years; for although the German element has never been large, the Italian population is constantly increasing, and makes itself very apparent{179}

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to the ear, as does also latterly the Russian. Books and newspapers in this last tongue are always in demand. Statues of eminent Bostonians—Winthrop, Franklin, Samuel Adams, Webster, Garrison, Everett, Horace Mann, and others—are distributed about the city, and though not always beautiful as examples of art, are suggestive of dignified memories. Institutions of importance are on all sides, and though these are not different in kind from those now numerous in all vigorous American cities, yet in Boston they often claim a longer date or more historic associations. The great Public Library still leads American institutions of its class; and the Art Museum had a similar leadership until the rapid expansion of the Metropolitan Museum of New York City. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the New England Conservatory of Music educate large numbers of pupils from all parts of the Union; while Boston University and Boston College hold an honored place among their respective constituencies. Harvard University, Tufts College, and Wellesley College are not far distant. The Boston Athenæum is an admirable model of a society library. The public-school system of Boston has in{181}

times past had a great reputation, and still retains it; though it is claimed that the newer systems of the Western States are in some degree surpassing it. The Normal Art School of the State is in Boston; and the city has its own Normal School for common-school teachers. The free lectures of the Lowell Institute are a source of instruction to large numbers every season; and there are schools and classes in various directions, maintained from the same foundation. The great collections of the Boston Society of Natural History are open to the public; and the Bostonian Society has been unwearied in its efforts to preserve and exhibit all memorials of local history. The Massachusetts Historical Society includes among its possessions the remarkable private library of Thomas Dowse, which was regarded as one of the wonders of Cambridge fifty years ago, and it possesses also the invaluable manuscript collections brought together by Francis Parkman when preparing his great series of histories. The New England Historic-Genealogical Society has a vast and varied store of materials in the way of local and genealogical annals; and the Loyal Legion has a library and museum of war memorials.{182}

For many years there has been in Boston a strong interest in physical education—an interest which has passed through various phases, but is now manifested in such strong institutions as the Athletic Club and the Country Club—the latter for rural recreation. There is at Charlesbank, beside the Charles River, a public open-air gymnasium which attracts a large constituency; and there is, what is especially desirable, a class for women and children, with private grounds and buildings. It is under most efficient supervision, and is accomplishing great good. There are some ten playgrounds kept open at unused schoolhouses during the{183} summer vacations, these being fitted up with swings, sand-pens, and sometimes flower-beds, and properly superintended. A great system of parks has now been planned, and partly established, around Boston, the largest of these being Franklin Park, near Egleston Square; while the system includes also the Arnold Arboretum, the grounds around Chestnut Hill Reservoir and Jamaica Pond, with a Marine Park at South Boston. Most of these are easily accessible by steam or electric cars, which are now reached from the heart of the city, in many cases through subways, and will soon be supplemented or superseded, on the more important routes, by elevated roads. The steam railways of the city are also to have their stations combined into a Northern and a Southern Union Station, of which the former is already in use and the latter in process of construction.

This paper is not designed to be a catalogue of the public institutions and philanthropies of Boston, but aims merely to suggest a few of the characteristic forms which such activities have taken. Nor is it written with the desire to praise Boston above her sisters among American cities; for it is a characteristic of American{184} society that, in spite of the outward uniformity attributed to the nation, each city has nevertheless its own characteristics; and each may often learn from the others. This is simply one of a series of papers, each with a specific subject and each confined to its own theme. The inns, the theatres, the club-houses of a city, strangers are likely to discover for themselves; but there are further objects of interest not always so accessible. For want of a friendly guide, they may miss what would most interest them. It is now nearly two hundred years since an English traveller named Edward Ward thus described the Boston of 1699:

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The leadership of Boston in a thousand works of charity and kindness, during these two centuries, has completely refuted the hasty censure of this roving Englishman; and it is to be hoped that the Boston of the future, like the Boston of the past, will do its fair share in the development of that ampler American civilization of which all present achievements suggest only the promise and the dawn.

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THE American Revolution began in Boston. Different dates are set for the beginning. John Adams says of Otis’s speech in 1761 in the Council Chamber of the Old State House, “Then and there American Independence was born.” The visitor to Boston should go, very early in his visit, into the Old State House; and when he stands in the Council Chamber he will remember that as distinguished a person as John Adams fixed that place as the birthplace of independence.

But one does not understand the history of the opening of the great struggle without going back a whole generation. It was in 1745 that Governor William Shirley addressed the Massachusetts General Court in a secret session. He brought before them a plan{188} which he had for the conquest of Louisburg in the next spring, before it could be re-inforced from France. The General Court (which means the general assembly of Massachusetts) at first doubted the possibility of success of so bold an attempt; but eventually Shirley persuaded them to undertake it. The Province of New Hampshire and that of Connecticut co-operated, and their army of provincials, with some assistance from Warren of the English navy, took Louisbourg, which capitulated on the 17th of June, 1745. Observe that the 17th of June is St. Botolph’s day; and that he is the godfather of Boston.

When Louis XV. was told that this handful of provincials had taken the Gibraltar of America, he was very angry. In the next spring, the spring of 1746, with a promptness and secrecy which make us respect the administration of the French navy, a squadron of more than forty ships of war, and transports sufficient to bring an army of three thousand men, was fitted out in France and despatched to America, with the definite and acknowledged purpose of wiping Boston from the face of the earth:{189}

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It was a disgrace to the military and naval organizations of England at the same time, that they had so little information there on the subject.{191}

They found out at last that this immense French fleet had sailed or was sailing. I think that it was the strongest expedition ever sent from Europe to America between Columbus’s time and our own. Some blundering attempts to meet it were made by the English Admiralty. But their admiral had to make the lame excuse that seven times he tried to go to sea and seven times he was driven back by gales. Whatever the gales were, they did not stop D’Anville and his Armada, and poor Boston, which was to be destroyed, our dear little “town of hen-coops,” clustering around the mill-pond, knew as little of the fate prepared for it as the British Admiralty. It was not until the month of September, 1746, that a fishing-boat from the Banks, crowding all sail, came into Boston and reported to Governor Shirley that her men had seen the largest fleet of the largest vessels which they had ever seen in their lives, and that these were French vessels. Shirley at once called his Council together and “summoned the train bands of the Province.” The Council sank ships laden with stones in the channels of the harbor. Hasty fortifications were built upon the islands, and Shirley mounted upon them such guns as he{192} could bring together. The “train bands” of the Province promptly obeyed the call, and for the next two months near seven thousand soldiers were encamped on Boston Common, ready for any movement which the descent of D’Anville might require. Cautious, wise, and strong beyond any of his successors in his office, Shirley put his hand upon the throttle of the newspapers. D’Anville should not learn, nor should anybody learn, that he had an army in Boston or that he knew his danger. And so you may read the modest files of the Boston papers of that day and you shall find no reference to these military movements of which every man and woman and child in Boston was thinking. It is not till his young wife dies that, by some accident in an editorial room, the confession slips into print that the train bands of the Province accompanied her body to its grave.

It was the only military duty which was required of that army of six thousand four hundred. The people of the times would have told you, every man and woman of them, that the Lord of Hosts had other methods for defending Boston.

What happened, or, if you please, what{193}

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transpired, was this: Among his other preparations for his enemy, Shirley proclaimed a solemn Fast Day, in which the people should meet in all their meeting-houses and seek the help of the Almighty, and they did so. Thomas Prince, of the Old South Meeting-house, tells us what happened there. In the morning, a crowded congregation joined in prayer, and Prince told them of their danger and exhorted them to their duty. In the afternoon the assembly met again. As Prince led them in their prayer, what seemed a hurricane from the southwest struck the meeting-house. A generation after, men remembered how the steeple above them shook in the gale, and Prince went on, calmly, in his address to the God who rides on the whirlwind:

“We do not presume to advise, O Lord, but if Thy Providence requires that this tempest shall sweep the invaders from the sea, we shall be content.”

And this was precisely what happened: This southwest gale tore down the Bay. This side Cape Sable, just off Grand Manan, it found D’Anville’s squadron in its magnificent array. It drove ship against ship. It capsized and sank some of the noblest vessels.{195} It tore the masts out of others. It discouraged their crews and their officers. All that was left of this gallant squadron (which was to burn our “hen-coops” here) took refuge in Halifax Bay or crept back under jury-masts to France. In the harbor of Chebucto, as they called Halifax, the wrecks of the fleet were repaired as best they might be. D’Anville and his first officer both died, one as a suicide, and the other from the disgrace of the discomfiture. It is said in Nova Scotia that you may see some of the ships now, if you will look down at the right place in the clear sea, off Cape Sable. A miserable handful of the vessels straggled back to France at the opening of the winter.

The colonists of New England had thus learned two lessons, one in 1745, and one in 1746. In 1745 they had learned that without any assistance from their own king they could storm and take the strongest fortress in America. In 1746 they learned that the anger of the strongest prince in Europe was powerless against them. Those who believed in the immediate providence of God thought that He stretched out His arm in their defense. Those who did not, thought that in the general{196} providence of God, a people who were three thousand miles away from the greatest sovereign of the world might safely defy his wrath. Curiously enough, in the next year, 1747, the people of Boston had an opportunity to learn a third lesson by measuring strength with their own sovereign.

In that year Admiral Knowles, in command of the English squadron,—rather a favorite till then, I fancy, with the people here,—happened to want seamen. He availed himself of that bit of unwritten law which held in England till within my own memory, by impressing seamen from the docks. A memorial of the General Court says that the English government had carried this matter so far that, as they believed, three thousand Americans were at that time in the service of the British navy, having been unwillingly impressed there. But Knowles carried it farther yet. He took on board his fleet some hundreds of ship-carpenters, mechanics, and laboring men; and Boston broke out into a blaze of excitement and fury. There followed the first of the series of proceedings which, with various modifications, lasted for thirty years, until General Howe withdrew the British fleet and army from{197}

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Boston. It was a combination of riots and town-meetings, the town-meetings expressing seriously what the rioters did not express so well, the rioters giving a certain emphasis, such as was understood in England, as to the intention of the town-meetings of Boston. We have the most amusing details of this affair in a very valuable and interesting history just published by Mr. John Noble. The rioters seized Knowles’s officers whom they found in the town, and shut them up for hostages. Knowles declared that he would bombard the town. But what with the General Court and the town-meetings and the magistrates and the rest, he was soothed down, the people gave up their hostages, and he gave up the men whom he had seized. Boston had measured forces in this affair with King George. Both were satisfied with the result; and, if I may so speak, this first tussle ended in a tie.

Here were three trials of strength in three years. And the Boston people learned in each of them the elements of their real power. When, nearly twenty years after, Otis made his eloquent protest against the Writs of Assistance, he did not succeed. The Court{199}

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decided that the Province must permit the officers to make the searches in private houses which the Crown asked. But there was a point gained, in the confession that the Crown must ask, and thinking men took note of that confession.

“Sam” Adams, as he was always affectionately called, had graduated at Harvard College in 1740. There is no direct evidence known to me, but without it I believe that almost from that time Sam Adams was the inspiring genius of one or more private clubs in which the young men of Boston were trained in the fundamental principles of independence. On the other side it may be said that from the moment when Quebec fell the home government of England did everything that can be conceived of to disgust and alienate the people of Boston. The disgust showed itself now in grumbling, now in physical violence. In the midst of it all there was one quiet leader behind the scenes. Sam Adams had the confidence of the gentry and of the people both. When he wanted a grave and dignified expression of opinion he had a town-meeting called, and then this town-meeting heard speeches and passed resolutions of such dignity and{201}

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gravity as were worthy of any senate in the world. On the other hand, if Sam Adams needed to give emphasis to such resolution, the mob of Boston appeared in her streets, did what he wanted it to do, and stopped when he wanted it to stop. It is fair to say that George III.’s ministers lost their heads in their rage against the riots of Boston. The Boston Port Bill, the maddest and most useless act of vengeance, was aimed at the Boston mob; and yet in the thirty years between Louisbourg and Lexington this riotous mob of Boston never drew a drop of human blood in all its excesses. And this, though once and again the soldiers and sailors of England killed one and another of the people.

Now to follow along step by step the visible memorials of the war, I advise you to go to Roxbury through Washington Street by one of the Belt-line cars. The very name, Washington Street, should remind you that Washington rode in in triumph by this highway on the 17th of March, 1776, the day when General Howe and the English troops evacuated the town. Let the car drop you at the Providence railway crossing in Roxbury and take another car to{203}

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Brookline; or go on foot. All this time you have been on the track of the English general, Lord Percy, who was sent out with his column to reinforce Colonel Smith, who had charge of the earlier column sent against Concord, on the day of the battle of Lexington. You can, if you choose, on your wheel or on your feet, go into Cambridge with this column; but take care not to cross Charles River by the first bridge, but by that where the students’ boat-houses are, on the road which becomes Boylston Street as you enter Cambridge. You may then go on to Lexington and Concord.

On another day, start from Cambridge at the Law School. This stands on the very site of the old parsonage—General Ward’s headquarters. The evening before the battle of Bunker Hill, Prescott’s division was formed in parade here and joined in prayer with the minister of Cambridge before they marched to Bunker Hill. Anybody will show you Kirkland Street, which is the name now given to the beginning of “Milk Row,” the road over which they crossed to Charlestown. If you are afraid to walk, take your wheel. Two miles, more or less, will bring you eastward to Charlestown Neck. Then turn to your right{205}

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and walk to Bunker Hill Monument, which you can hardly fail to see.

It is quite worth while to ascend the monument. It gives you an excellent chance to obey Dr. Arnold’s rule and study the topography on the spot. You cannot fail to see the United States Navy Yard just at your feet. Here Howe’s forces gathered for the attack on Prescott’s works on the day of the battle. And to the shore they retired after they were flung back in the first two unsuccessful attacks.

In the mad attack on Prescott’s works, General Gage lost, in killed and wounded, one quarter of his little army. What was left became the half-starved garrison of Boston. I say “mad attack,” because Gage had only to order a gunboat to close the retreat of the American force, and he could have starved it into surrender. But such delay was unworthy of the dignity of English generals, or, as they then called themselves, “British” generals. It is to be remembered that this use of the word “British,” now much laughed at, was the fashionable habit of those times.

The date of the battle was June 17, 1775. Oddly enough, this had long been the saint’s day of St. Botolph, the East Anglian saint{207}

for whom Boston in England was named. It seems probable, however, that this odd coincidence was never noticed for a hundred years. Since the majority of the people of Boston and Charlestown have been Catholics, it has attracted attention.

From that date to March 17, 1776, the date just now alluded to, Boston and the English army were blockaded by the American troops. They had gathered on the day after Lexington, commanded at first by Artemas Ward, the commander of the militia of Massachusetts, and afterwards by Washington, with Ward as his first major-general. The English retained their hold on Charlestown, but once and again the Americans attacked their forces there. They never marched out beyond Boston Neck or Charlestown Neck.

On the south, their most advanced works were where are now two little parks, Blackstone Square and Franklin Square, on the west and east sides of Washington Street, respectively. They had a square redoubt on the Common, where is now a monument to the heroes of the Civil War. A little eastward of this was a hill called Fox Hill, which was dug away to make the Charles Street of to-day.{208} Farther west, where the ground is now covered with buildings, were two or three redoubts, generally called forts, by which they meant to prevent the landing of the Americans.

At that time Beacon Hill was much higher than it is now. Exactly on the point now marked by a monument, a monument was erected after the Revolution, in commemoration of the events of the year when it began. The present monument—completed lately—is an exact imitation of the first, but that this is of stone, and that was of brick. This has the old inscriptions.

Washington drove out the English by erecting the strong works on what was then called Dorchester Heights, which we now call South Boston. The places where most of these works existed are marked by inscriptions. Independence Square is on the site of one of them.

The careful traveller may go out to Roxbury, follow up Highland Street and turn to the right, and he will find an interesting memorial of one of the strong works built by General Ward. From this point, north and east, each of the towns preserves some relic of the same kind. In Cambridge one is marked{209}

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by a public square, on which the national flag is generally floating.

At the North End of Boston, where is now, and was then, the graveyard of Copp’s Hill, the English threw up some batteries. These are now obliterated, but the point is interesting in Revolutionary history, because it was from this height that Gage and Burgoyne saw their men flung back by the withering fire of Bunker Hill.

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THE early history of New England seems to many minds dry and unromantic. No mist of distance softens the harsh outlines, no mirage of tradition lifts events or characters into picturesque beauty, and there seems a poverty of sentiment. The transplanting of a people breaks the successions and associations of history. No memories of Crusader and Conqueror stir the imagination. Instead of the glitter of chivalry we have but the sombre homespun of Puritan peasants. Instead of the castles and cathedrals on which time has laid a hand of benediction we have but the rude log meeting-house and schoolhouse. Instead of Christmas merriment the voice of our past brings to us only the noise of axe and{212} hammer, or the dreary droning of Psalms. It seems bleak, and destitute of poetic inspiration; at once plebeian and prosaic.

But I cannot help feeling that if we look beneath the uncouth exterior we shall find in New England history much idealism, much that can inspire noble daring and feed the springs of romance. Out of the hard soil of the Puritan thought, out of the sterile rocks of the New England conscience, spring flowers of poetry. This story of the planting of Cambridge has—if I might linger on it—a wealth of dramatic interest, not indeed in its antiquity,—it is but a story of yesterday,—but in the human associations that belong to it and the patriotic memories it stirs. The Cambridge dust is eloquent of the long procession of saints and sages, scholars and poets, whose works and words have made the renown of the place. First the Puritan chiefs of Massachusetts; then the early scholars of the budding commonwealth; then the Tory gentry who made the town in the days before the Revolution the centre of a lavish hospitality, and who maintained a happy social life of which the memories still linger in the beautiful homes which they left behind them; then the patriot{213}

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army surging about Boston in the exciting year of the siege, with the inspiring traditions of what Washington and Warren and Knox and Greene and the rest did and said; and finally the later associations of our great scholars and men of letters, chief of whom we rank Lowell and Holmes and Longfellow, whose lives were rooted deep in the Cambridge soil and whose dust there endears the sod.

The first figures on our Cambridge stage are those of the leaders of the Massachusetts colony. While Boston was clearly marked for prominence in the colony because of its geographical position, there was not at first the intention to make it the seat of government. It was too open to attack from the sea; a position farther inland could be more easily defended, not indeed from the Indians, but from the enemy most to be dreaded,—the war-ships of an irate and hostile motherland. Accordingly Governor John Winthrop and his assistants, shortly after the planting of Boston, journeyed in the shallop of the ship in which they had come from England, four miles up the Charles River behind Boston until they came to a meadow gently sloping to the riverside, backed by rounded hills and protected{215} by wide-spreading salt marshes. There on the 28th of December, 1630, they landed and fixed the seat of their government. To quote the old chronicle:

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It was agreed that the Governor, John Winthrop, the Deputy Governor, Thomas Dudley, and all the councillors, except John Endicott, who had already settled at Salem, should build and occupy houses at Newtowne, but this agreement was never carried out. Winthrop, Dudley and Bradstreet built houses, and the General Court of the colony met alternately at Newtowne and at Boston until 1638, when it finally settled in Boston. Yet in spite of the superior advantages of Boston the new settlement evidently flourished, for in 1633 a traveller—the writer of New England’s Prospect—describes the village as “one of the neatest and best compacted towns in New England, having many fair structures, with many handsome contrived streets. The inhabitants, most of them, are rich and well stored with cattle of all sorts.”

This is doubtless an extravagant picture and true only in comparison with some of the neighboring plantations which were not so favorably situated. Newtowne was really a crude and straggling settlement made up of some sixty or seventy log cabins or poor frame houses stretching along a road which skirted the river marshes and of which the wanderings{217} were prescribed more by the devious channel of the Charles than by mathematical exactness. The meeting-house, built of rough-hewn boards with the crevices sealed with mud, stood at the crossing of the road with the path that led down to the river, where there was a ladder for the convenience of landing. So primitive was the place that Thomas Dudley, the chief man of the town, writing home, could say, “I have no table nor any place to write in than by the fireside on my knee.” Such was the splendor of the whilom capital of New England.

Like most of the Massachusetts towns, Cambridge began as a church. Though Dudley and Bradstreet and Haynes were high in the councils of the infant commonwealth, holding successively or simultaneously the offices of governor and military chief, yet the leading personality of the village was the minister. The roll of Cambridge ministers begins with the great name of Thomas Hooker, the founder of Connecticut, and the man who first visioned and did much to make possible our American democracy. Hooker, with his congregation from Braintree, in Essex, England, came to Massachusetts in 1632, and after a short stay{218} at Mount Wollaston, settled at Newtowne, raising the population to nearly five hundred souls. But the stay of the Braintree church was short. Some adventurous spirits had penetrated the wilderness of the interior until they discovered the charm and fertility of the valley of the Connecticut, and soon Hooker and his company were impelled by “the strong bent of their spirits” to remove thither. They alleged, in petitioning the General Court for permission to remove, that their cattle were cramped for room in Newtowne, and that it behooved the English colonists to keep the Dutch out of Connecticut; but the real motive of the exodus was doubtless ecclesiastical. Hooker did not find himself altogether in accord with the Boston teacher, John Cotton. “Two such eminent stars,” says Hubbard, writing in 1682, “both of the first magnitude, though of different influence, could not well continue in one and the same orb.” Hooker took the more liberal side in the antinomian controversy which had already begun to make trouble, and his subsequent conduct of affairs in Connecticut shows that he did not approve the Massachusetts policy of restricting the suffrage to church members. In the spring of{219} 1636, therefore, Hooker and most of his congregation sold their possessions, and driving one hundred and sixty cattle before them, went on their way to the planting of Hartford and the founding of a new commonwealth.

This was the first of many separations by which Cambridge has become the mother of many sturdy children. The original boundaries of the town stretched from Dedham on the south all the way to the Merrimac River on the north. Gradually, by the gathering of new churches and peaceable partition, this territory has been divided, and out of the original Newtowne have been formed, besides the present Cambridge, Billerica, Bedford, Lexington, Arlington, Brighton and Newton. Governors Dudley and Bradstreet removed to Ipswich, and Simon Willard went to be the chief layman of Concord and a famous builder and defender of towns.

The rude houses of Hooker’s congregation were bought by a newly arrived company, the flock of the Rev. Thomas Shepard. This firm but gentle leader, who left a deep impress on the habit of the town, was a youth of thirty-one, and a graduate, like many of the Massachusetts leaders, of Emanuel College, at{220} Cambridge. He came to New England with a company of earnest followers, actuated, as he wrote, by desire for “the fruition of God’s ordinances. Though my motives were mixed, and I looked much to my own quiet, yet the Lord let me see the glory of liberty in New England, and made me purpose to live among God’s people as one come from the dead to His praise.” His brave young wife died “in unspeakable joy” only a fortnight after his settlement at Cambridge, and was soon followed by the chief man of his flock and his closest friend, Roger Harlakenden, another godly youth of the manly type of English pioneers. At once, too, Shepard was plunged into the stormy debates of the antinomian controversy which nearly caused a permanent division in the Congregational churches. The general election of 1637, which was held on the Common at Newtowne, was a tumultuous gathering, and discussion over the merits of “grace” and “works” ran high till John Wilson, minister of the Boston church, climbed up into a big oak tree, and made a speech which carried the day for John Winthrop to the confusion of the heretical disciples of Anne Hutchinson. Through these stormy waters Shepard{221}

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steered his course so discreetly that he came into high favor among all people as a sound and vigilant minister, and Cotton Mather tells us that “it was with a respect unto this vigilancy and the enlightening and powerful ministry of Mr. Shepard, that, when the foundation of a college was to be laid, Cambridge, rather than any other place, was pitched upon to be the seat of that happy seminary.”

The founding of Harvard College by the little colony was surely one of the most heroic, devout and fruitful events of American history. Upon the main entrance to the college grounds is written to-day an inscription taken from one of the earliest chronicles, entitled New England’s First Fruits. We read that:

Accordingly, on the 28th day of October, 1636, Sir Harry Vane—Milton’s “Vane, young in years, but in sage counsel old”—being the{223} Governor, the General Court of the colony passed the following memorable vote: “The Court agrees to give £400 towards a school or college—whereof £200 shall be paid the next year and £200 when the work is finished.” In the following year this vote was supplemented by a further order that the college “is ordered to be at Newtowne, and that Newtowne shall henceforth be called Cambridge.” This is the significant act that marks the distinction between the Puritan colony and all pioneer settlements based on material foundations. For a like spirit under like circumstances history will be searched in vain. Never were the bases of such a structure laid by a community of men so poor, and under such sullen and averted stars. The colony was nothing but a handful of settlers barely clinging to the wind-swept coast; it was feeble and insignificant, in danger from Indians on the one hand and foreign foes on the other; it was in throes of dissension on the matter of heresy which threatened to divide it permanently, yet so resolved were the people that “the Commonwealth be furnished with knowing and understanding men and the churches with an able ministry,” that they voted the entire{224} annual income of the colony to establish a place of learning. Said Lowell:

But even the self-sacrificing zeal of the colonists would have been almost unavailing had it not been for the coming to Massachusetts at this time of a young Puritan minister, another graduate of Emanuel, upon whom death had already set his seal. Says the chronicler:

Was ever a gift so marvellously multiplied as the bequest of this obscure young scholar?{225}

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By this one decisive act of public-spirited and well-directed munificence this youth made for himself an imperishable name and enrolled himself among the foremost of the benefactors of humanity. In acknowledgment of Harvard’s bequest the General Court voted in 1638 “that the College at Cambridge be called Harvard College.”

It is the presence of the college that has given distinctive atmosphere to Cambridge. The character of the place has been determined by the fact that for more than two centuries and a half it has been the home of succeeding generations of men devoted not to trade and manufacture, but to the cultivation of the intellectual and spiritual elements in human life. Over the college gate stands an iron cross and upon the gate-post is the seal of the college with “Veritas” written across its open books. The Harvard life and spirit and teaching are all adapted to lead young men to the love and service of truth and to send them out to a ministry as wide and varied as the needs of humanity. The influence of the scholars and teachers and administrators that have been drawn into the service of the college is paramount, even if it is unconsciously{227} exercised and felt, in the community about the college. Here have always been—inevitable in a town which is the resort of the chosen youth of the country—a healthy, wholesome independence of spirit and a high-minded earnestness. Here has always been the refined simplicity of life natural to a community composed of, or influenced by, men of quiet tastes and modest incomes. Here is that touch of sentiment which binds men to the place of their education and to the memories and friendships of youth. Here are the associations with great events and names which inspire patriotism and ambition of worthy service. Then, too, it has been said:

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The place is not unworthy of the wealth of affection and poetic tribute that has been lavished upon it. The old Puritan church records, with their quaint entries about heresies and witchcraft, about ordinations where “four gallons of wine” and bushels of wheat and malt and hundredweights of beef and mutton were consumed, and about funerals conducted with solemn pomp; and the town records with notes about the “Palisadoe” and the Common rights and “the Cowyard” and the building of “The Great Bridge,”—a vast undertaking,—have more than merely antiquarian interest, for they reveal the intelligent and sturdy democracy and broad principles of government upon which the American republic rests.

But if these ancient records seem uninviting, let the visitor turn to the annals of the stirring time of the Revolution. General Gage called Harvard College “that nest of sedition.” In that nest were hatched John Hancock, James Otis, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Joseph Warren and many another of the patriot leaders. The town was the abode of many of the leading Tory families, but as early as 1765 the town-meeting voted “that (with all humility) it is the opinion of the town that{229}

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the inhabitants of this Province have a legal claim to all the natural, inherent, constitutional rights of Englishmen and—that the Stamp Act is an infraction upon these rights.” And after an argument on the merits of the question it was further ordered “that this vote be recorded in the Town Book, that the children yet unborn may see the desire their ancestors had for their freedom and happiness.” For the next ten years there is scarcely a proceeding in the preliminary debates and contests that led up to open revolution that is not illustrated in the resolutions recorded by the Cambridge town clerk. Vote followed vote, as the restrictive measures of Parliament irritated the townsmen, till at the town-meeting of 1773 it was resolved “that this town—is ready on the shortest notice, to join with the town of Boston and other towns, in any measures that may be thought proper, to deliver ourselves and posterity from slavery.” The 2d of September, 1774, just escaped the historic importance of April 19th in the next year. On that day several thousand men gathered on Cambridge Common and proceeded in orderly fashion to force the resignation of two of His Majesty’s privy councillors,{231}

and then, marching up Brattle Street to the house of the Lieutenant-Governor of the Province, Thomas Oliver—the house that was afterwards the home in succession of Elbridge Gerry, Rev. Charles Lowell and his son James Russell Lowell—they extorted from him, too, a pledge to resign. “My house in Cambridge,” he wrote, “being surrounded by about four thousand men, I sign my name—{232}Thomas Oliver.” Both the first and second of the Provincial Congresses met in Cambridge, and at last the running battle of April 19, 1775, swept through the borders of the town. Twenty-six Americans were killed within the boundaries of Cambridge, six of them citizens of the place, and the American militia who followed the British retreat from Concord on that momentous evening lay on their arms at last on Cambridge Common.

For eleven months after the Concord fight, Cambridge was a fortified camp. The college buildings, the Episcopal church and the larger houses were occupied as barracks. General Ward established his headquarters in the gambrel-roofed house which was afterwards the birthplace of Oliver Wendell Holmes. On the lawn before the house, in the hush of the June evening, Prescott’s men were drawn up, while President Langdon of the college, in cap and gown, prayed for the success of their arms ere they marched to Bunker Hill. Two weeks later Washington reached the camp, and on July 3d, under the spreading elm at the western end of the Common, unsheathed his sword and, as the inscription reads, “took command of the American Army.” Washington lived{233}

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for a while in the president’s house, but soon made his headquarters in the fine old mansion of the Vassalls which was later the home of Longfellow.

After March, 1776, when Boston was finally evacuated by the British, Cambridge ceased to be involved in the military events of the Revolution, but in 1777 the captured troops of Burgoyne were quartered in the town, the soldiers swinging their hammocks in the college buildings and the officers occupying the deserted mansions of “Tory Row.” Burgoyne lived in the house sometimes called, in derision of its first clerical occupant, “The Bishop’s Palace,” and Riedesel and his accomplished wife in the Lechmere house. “Never have I chanced,” wrote Madame Riedesel, “upon such a charming situation,” and never has our colonial life been more charmingly described than by this brave and vivacious German lady in the letters written from her pleasant prison to her distant home.

For fifty years after the Revolutionary epoch, Cambridge was a country town of quiet habits, its only distinguishing characteristic being the scholastic and literary atmosphere that hung about the college. It was a good{235}

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place to be born in, and it was surely good to live in the place where Everett and Quincy ruled the academic world; where Longfellow wrote his poetry, and Palfrey his history, and Sparks his biographies; where Washington Allston painted and Margaret Fuller dreamed; where William Story and Richard Dana and Lowell and Holmes and the rest walked to church and stopped to gossip with the neighbors at the post-office.

To these happy descriptions we may now add the accounts of Colonel Higginson’s boyhood in his Cheerful Yesterdays, and Dr. Holmes’s loving story of his birthplace in the Poet at the Breakfast Table.

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Cambridge is no longer the idyllic village of{239} Lowell’s boyhood, but a great suburban city bustling with many activities. So rapid has been the growth that Lowell on his return from Europe in 1889 wrote:

Cambridge is to-day the abode of as happy, comfortable and progressive a people as the world contains. It presents a unique example in this country of a city thoroughly well governed. It is now a quarter-century since partisanship has been tolerated in city affairs. In the City Hall, erected under the administration of Mayor William E. Russell, who here got his training for the splendid service he afterward rendered to the State, and might, had his{240}

life been spared, have rendered to the nation, no liquor license has ever been signed. So excellent has been the record of successive non-partisan administrations in the city that the very phrase, “The Cambridge Idea,” has become well known even outside the limits of Massachusetts as signifying the conception of public office as a public trust and the conduct of municipal affairs on purely business principles. Yet in spite of its municipal expansion and business enterprises, Cambridge is still pre-eminently the place where the lamp of learning is kept lighted. Though the college waxes great in numbers and its buildings multiply, and the jar of business invades the academic quiet, yet the purposes and habits of the scholar’s life still distinguish the community. It is said that when Cambridge people are at a{241} loss for conversation one asks the other, “How is your new book coming on?” and the question rarely fails to bring a voluble reply. There is an entire alcove in the City Library devoted to the works of Cambridge writers. “Brigadier-Generals,” said Howells, himself once a resident of the town, “were no more common in Washington during the Civil War than authors in Cambridge.” It is an interesting illustration of the persistence of good tradition that the place where was established the first printing-press in America, set up by Stephen Daye in 1639, should still be a centre of book-production. Not only do John Fiske and Charles Eliot Norton and Thomas Wentworth Higginson and a score of others maintain the literary reputation of the place, but the great establishments of the Riverside Press, the University Press and the Athenæum Press put forth a constant stream of high-standard publications, and send a most characteristic Cambridge product all over the world. Still is Cambridge one of the shrines of pilgrimage. The antiquarians ponder over the mossy gravestones in the little “God’s Acre” between the “Sentinel and Nun,” as Dr. Holmes called the two church towers which front the college gate, and there{242} they read the long inscriptions that tell the virtues of the first ministers of the parish and the early presidents of the college. The patriots come and stand under the Washington elm, or linger by the gates of the Craigie house or Elmwood, or pace the noble Memorial Hall, which declares how Harvard’s sons died for their country, while visitors flock to the great museum which the genius and energy of Louis Agassiz upbuilt, and to the garden where Asa Gray taught and botanized. Thousands of men all over the country think of Cambridge with grateful love as they remember the years of their happy youth; and the citizens of the place, while they look backward with just pride, look forward with confidence that there is to be more of inspiring history and true poetry in the city’s future than in its fortunate past.{243}

OLD this New World is,—geologically more ancient, perhaps, than that hemisphere from whose western edge Columbus set sail, four centuries ago, and found our continent lying across his way, as he plodded to Cathay. Yet, uncounted as our barbarous centuries and antediluvian æons are, real history begins only with the opening of the seventeenth century, when the English Puritan and the French Jesuit transferred to these shores the unfolding civilization and the rival religions of Western Europe. When we see at Plymouth the wooded glacial hillsides, under which the Pilgrims landed and established democracy in their wilderness, we may remember that their venture, though bolder, because earlier, than that of Bulkeley and Willard, who planted{244} the Concord colony, was yet but fifteen years in advance, and was made beside a friendly ocean, bearing succor and trade, and feeding them from its abundance. But the Concord colonists sat down in the gloomy shadow of the forest, amid trails of the savage and the wolf. Still more heroic was the crusade of the Jesuit in New France; but while romance and martyrdom were his lot, our Puritans planted here the germs of a grand republic.

The first event in the history of Massachusetts was this planting of a territorial democracy. The colony of Concord was granted by Winthrop and his legislature in September, 1635, to Peter Bulkeley, a Puritan minister, from the little parish of Odell or Woodhill (colloquially called “Wuddle”) in English Bedfordshire, and to Simon Willard, a merchant, from Hawkshurst in Kent. Twelve other{245}

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families were joined with them in the grant, and another minister, Rev. John Jones, brought other families from England, aiming towards Concord, in October, 1635. The situation was doubtless chosen by Major Willard, an Indian trader and in after years a fighter of the Indians; who also selected and partly colonized two other towns, farther in the wilderness,—Groton and Lancaster. But the true father of this Concord, and probably the giver of its name (altering it from the Indian Musketaquit), was Rev. Peter Bulkeley, ancestor of its most celebrated citizen, Waldo Emerson. Of this worthy, whose grave, like that of Moses, is unknown to this day, something should be said, before we come to later heroes. Peter Bulkeley was the son of Rev. Edward Bulkeley, a doctor of divinity in English Cambridge,—a scholar and man of wealth, who was rector of the Bedfordshire parish just named, where his son was born in 1583. He succeeded his father there in 1620.

It is in the country of John Bunyan and Cowper the poet, this little parish of Odell. Like Concord River, the Ouse, on which it stands, is unmatched for winding, even in England. Below the old castle of Odell, and{247} the church, still standing, where the Bulkeleys preached, runs this crooked stream, murmuring as it meanders through its fringe of meadowland, green as the richest strip of English pasture can be, which lies between such a river and the low hills that come down towards its edge. This Ouse (there is another in Yorkshire) flows from Bucks, the county of John Hampden, through Bedford, the county of the Russells, and Huntingdon, where Cromwell lived, and finally into the North Sea at Lynn. On the north bank lies the hill upon which Odell stands,—the highway from Sharnbrook to Harrold and Olney (long the home of Cowper) running from east to west along the breast of the hill. The old church standing amid trees—conspicuous is a chestnut of surpassing size and beauty—is directly opposite the ancient castle, now a comfortable and handsome mansion, built some two hundred years ago,—or about the time the oldest houses in Concord were built.

It was no love of adventure, we may be sure, that brought Peter Bulkeley, at the age of fifty-two, from this lovely country into a land of forests and of poverty; but a desire to escape the ecclesiastical tyranny of Laud and his bishops{248}, and to establish a true church in the wilderness. Some difficulties attended even this, for when, in July, 1636, Mr. Bulkeley was about to organize his church at Cambridge, in order to have Sir Henry Vane and John Winthrop (Governor and Deputy Governor that year) present at the ceremony, lo and behold! these great men “took it in ill part, and thought not fit to go, because they had not come to them before, as they ought to have done, and as others had done before them, to acquaint them with their purpose.” Again, in April, 1637, when Mr. Bulkeley was to be ordained (also in Cambridge), Winthrop says that Vane and John Cotton and John Wheelwright, and the two ruling elders of Boston “and the rest of that church which were of any note, did none of them come to this meeting.” “The reason was conceived to be,” adds Winthrop, “because they counted the Concord ministers as legal preachers,”—that is, believers in a covenant of works (of the Law) instead of a covenant of grace. This was the issue upon which Wheelwright and Mrs. Hutchinson were banished, soon after.

Indeed, the ordination of Mr. Bulkeley took place in the very height of that fierce controversy{249} between John Cotton and his former supporters, Wheelwright and Vane, which came near breaking up the little colony; and the Concord minister was one of the synod which, the next August, or perhaps later, specified some eighty doctrinal opinions as erroneous or heretical,—about one error for every two white persons in Concord. The covenant of the village church, however, breathes a more liberal spirit; for in it we find these words, evidently from the hand of Bulkeley:

And the spirit of his oft-quoted sermon is also a witness to his true piety, whatever his doctrinal narrowness:

Let us hope that the wish of the good pastor was granted, and that he lived to see the fruit of his labors. Yet there is a letter of his, written in 1650 to John Cotton, in which Bulkeley seems to regret the democratic liberty which Emerson, his descendant, never ceased to approve. The Concord minister writes:

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This was the caution and reversion of age,—for the doubting Peter was then sixty-seven. But Emerson, at the age of sixty, could say, with unabated faith in Freedom:

The experience of the ages has shown that the Puritans were right in making the doors of the church wider, not narrower; though we still hear the complaint of aged men, or young men born with a call to be old, that the former times were better than ours, and the “headless multitude” must be deprived of a voice in their own destiny.

When Emerson in 1835, at the two hundredth anniversary of Concord, proposed to requite England’s gift of her printed Doomsday Book by presenting her and the other European nations with our yet unpublished town records, he said: “Tell them the Union has 24 States, and Massachusetts is one; that in Massachusetts are 300 towns, and Concord is one;{252} that in Concord are 500 rateable polls, and every one has an equal vote.” To-day there are 45 States; Massachusetts has 322 towns, besides nearly 30 cities; and instead of 500 ratable polls, Concord has now 1200; but each one still has an equal vote.

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Men are carried along, in spite of themselves, by the doctrine or system which they embrace; their life principle, once adopted, has more force than their temporary wish or will. So Calvinism, of which Peter Bulkeley was a fervent disciple, with its constant stress laid on the worth of the individual man, led inevitably to democracy, no matter how much the innate aristocratic feeling of the English gentleman—the class to which Bulkeley belonged—might revolt thereat. It was the same in both countries, the mother and the daughter; Old England and New England found John Calvin leading them along towards the Commonwealth of equal rights and abolished privileges,—towards Sidney and Locke, Franklin and Jefferson, Lincoln and Gladstone.

This, then, is the first historic lesson of Concord, as of all New England,—Democracy through Calvinism, in spite of recalcitrant gentry and reactionary ministers. Philanthropy, too, that modern invention, which may almost be said to have come in with the eighteenth century, and to have had Franklin for its first missionary, began to show itself in our meadowy town, whose very name prefigured it. The epitaph of Rev. John Whiting{254}, parish minister here for twenty-six years (dying in 1752), records that he was “a gentleman of singular hospitality and generosity, who never detracted from the character of any man, and was a universal lover of mankind.” This would have been no compliment in Bulkeley’s time, when the saints were entitled to be loved, and sinners were excluded; but the eighteenth century set up a higher standard, which has been maintained till now, when the votaries of evolution and the survival of the fittest are teaching a return to the old doctrine,—only reversing it; for now it is the sinners whom we are expected to admire, and to hate the saints.

The second historic lesson of Concord is like unto the first,—but more startling and brilliant. It was the lesson of Revolution, which has been thoroughly learned since 1775. The embattled farmers who, at yonder bridge,

were conservative revolutionists, and as far from anarchy as from atheism. In the instructions given by this town to its representative in 1774,—or rather, in a report made in town-meeting, January 20th of that year, in view of{255}

{256}the Boston Tea-Party,—it was declared as the voice of the town:

Three months after this, when the Boston Port Bill was in agitation, and two months later, when it had passed Parliament, the farmers of Concord took a bolder tone,—“conscious,” as they said in town-meeting, “of no alternative between the horrors of slavery, and the carnage and desolation of a civil war,” except non-importation of British goods, to which the good citizens bound themselves. Still later, in a county convention which met in Concord, August 31, 1774, it was resolved:

This was peaceful revolution, proceeding, not upon any vague notion of a general “Social Contract,” but on formal violations of a written contract, the Colony Charter, as explicitly stated. I ask attention to this, because it has been a favorite fancy of some modern writers, who praise the Puritans and disparage Jefferson and Franklin, that our Revolutionary fathers had gained through those two latitudinarians a glimpse of the levelling French doctrines, and gave themselves up to be guided{258} by Rousseau and Voltaire, in dereliction of their Puritan ancestry. Precisely the opposite is true; the French author whom Jefferson may have had in mind, when he was not thinking of Pym and Hampden, Sergeant Maynard, Locke, and Algernon Sidney,—I mean Montesquieu,—having derived his theories more from the English constitutionalists than they from him. Probably not one of the men of Middlesex, who thus led the way to revolution in this law-abiding town of Concord (the seat of county justice), ever heard of Rousseau; but they were lawyers, deacons, country justices and farmers, accustomed to sit on juries; and they understood the law of contract and the obligations of fair trade as well as any English lord could tell them.

They voted further, on this eventful summer day, that “a Provincial Congress is absolutely necessary, in our present unhappy situation,”—and they named October, and Concord, as a suitable time and place for its assembling. This first Provincial Congress did meet, October 7th, at Salem, but adjourned to Concord that day; it first met here, October 11, 1774, and, finding the county court-house too small for its three hundred members and clerks,{259} and the people who gathered to support them, it moved over to the parish meeting-house (built in 1712), and remained in session there five days, when it removed to Cambridge, for the sake of being nearer Boston, then held as a garrison by British troops. The second Provincial Congress, of 1775, also met in Concord for four weeks of March and April; and it had only been adjourned four days when the British grenadiers made their midnight march from Boston to Lexington, hoping to catch there the arch-rebels Hancock and Sam Adams, who had gone to Lexington as members of the Committee of Public Safety (of which Dr. Warren was chairman), then the executive of Massachusetts under the new revolutionary government. The Provincial Congress, the legislature of the Province, met again for the last time in Concord, April 22, 1775, to consider the results of the eventful 19th. It finally dissolved May 31st, after hearing a sermon from Dr. Langdon, the President of Harvard College; and Concord ceased forever to be the legislative capital of Massachusetts. It became temporarily, however, the seat of Dr. Langdon’s College, which in October, 1775, began its recitations in the{260} court-house and meeting-house, and so continued till June, 1776.

Even Harvard College was at that time revolutionary; it gave up its few buildings in Cambridge to the army of Washington, and its president, a cousin of the wealthy New Hampshire patriot, John Langdon, made the prayer for Bunker Hill battle, as the troops marched out of Cambridge to give a feeble support to Prescott and his Middlesex farmers, entrenched on the hill. Washington had not yet reached Cambridge, to take command; had his strategic eye taken in the situation that morning, the result at Bunker Hill would have been different.

Lexington, the town which gave its name to the battle of April, 1775, more decidedly than Concord,—though both names occur from the first,—was an offshoot from the older towns of Cambridge, Watertown and Woburn, rather than an original church seat, and was not established as a town until 1712. A range of hills separates it from the valley of the Musketaquit, and Paul Revere, in his night ride of April 18th, celebrated by Longfellow, could not cross those hills, but left his message of war to be borne on to Concord village{261} by young Prescott, distantly related to Prescott of Bunker Hill. But Lexington, though little more than half so populous as Concord at that time, had a warlike people, many of them descended from the fighting Monros of Scotland, captured by Cromwell, and exiled for their loyalty to the Stuarts. In Lexington they again turned out against the house of Hanover, and they were commanded that April morning by the grandfather of Lexington’s most famous son, Theodore Parker. Captain John Parker, though ill on the 19th of April, did his soldier’s duty from two in the morning till midnight; and some of his men returned the British fire in early morning, against hopeless odds. Their turn came in the afternoon, when the retreating British were only saved from total defeat by the cannon of Lord Percy. Those first heroes of the Revolution, John Hancock and Samuel Adams, who had been at the Provincial Congress in Concord, at Lexington were in the early morning in the parsonage of Rev. Mr. Clark, a kinsman of Hancock, and narrowly escaped capture by the British soldiers, who had special orders to seize them.

John Pierpont, a poet whose Pegasus balked{262} now and then, in his verses at Acton, April 19, 1851, anticipated Longfellow by this Wordsworthian version of Revere’s ride to Lexington:

As compared with Concord, though both were rural towns, Lexington was then, and long remained, more rustic than its westward neighbor; with less trade, less culture and fewer of the tendencies toward literature which early showed themselves in the parish of the Bulkeleys and Emersons. When Theodore Parker, in his career of scholarship and reform, began to look outward from his father’s Lexington farm, it was towards Concord, as well as towards Boston, that he turned his eyes; he taught a district school in Concord, and preached in its pulpit as a candidate to stand beside Dr. Ripley, the pastor of the Old Manse. In after years he thus described the event which gave Lexington its chief title to fame, before Parker’s own birth there:{263}

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Seven men had been killed on the spot,{265} nine wounded,—a quarter-part of all who had stood in arms on the Green, under the eyes of Hancock and Adams.

One of the Lexington Munroes, Ensign Robert, was the first man killed by Pitcairn’s volley; he was sixty-four years old, and had been color-bearer in the capture of Louisburg by assault in 1745. Two of his sons and two sons-in-law were in his company on Lexington Green, and eleven of the Munroe clan were in arms that day. Captain Parker did not long survive the battle, dying the next September; but when the Civil War came on, his grandson Theodore had bequeathed to Massachusetts, and Governor Andrew had placed in her Senate Chamber, beside the trophies sent by Stark from Bennington,

Theodore Parker had died in May, 1860.

Pitcairn and his redcoats, delayed only half an hour by this bloody overture to Washington’s grand career, marched on towards{266}

Concord, little knowing what would meet them there. As they climbed the hills in Lexington and Lincoln, they could surmise, however, that the country was rising, for the church-bells were ringing an alarm of fire. Pierpont, at Acton, overlooking the neighboring towns named by him, gave the geography of this rising in spirited couplets:

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These are the small towns lying along the Concord and Merrimac rivers, and their tributaries, which sent forth the minute-men to fight at Concord Bridge.

Prescott had done his warning work well; and as Emerson said in 1835:

It was Emerson’s grandfather, the town minister, who met them on Concord Green, before his church, and who entered that night in his almanac the events he had witnessed, as soon to be quoted.

By the 17th of June, Massachusetts had an army; but when the Concord farmers made their appeal to arms, two months earlier, it was the spontaneous uprising of an armed people to maintain their own votes and defend their threatened homes. This it is, and not their military achievement, striking as that was, which gives their town a place in martial history. The unregenerate imagination of mankind{268} still delights, after so many centuries of barbarous warfare, in the recital of deeds of battle and the conquering march of great soldiers; Alexander and Cæsar—even Hannibal and Bonaparte—continue to receive admiration for their victories; but the purer fame of Washington rests on the accomplishment of that for which the men of Middlesex rushed to arms on the 19th of April, 1775. As Emerson, our Washington in the field of literature, said, “If ever men in arms had a spotless cause, they had.”

War had been the normal state of Europe; and from the hour when Bulkeley and Willard made here their honest bargain with the red landlords of these game preserves, cornfields, and fishing-places, down to the Franco-German campaigns of 1870,—235 years,—there had been scarcely a period of twenty peaceful{269}

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years in that hemisphere. With us it was different; but for the strife between France and England, in which the colonies were more or less entangled, Massachusetts had seen no warfare in her borders for nearly a century, when the insolence of the mother-country forced independence upon us against our will. Yet the fight at the North Bridge was no impromptu affair, as the utterances of our Concord yeomen show. They had declared they would fight for King George or against him, as His Majesty might elect; and when he had made his foolish choice they did not hesitate,—much as they had reason to dread the ordeal by combat. And here again came in the spirit of Calvinism, rallying to the Old Testament, rather than to the New with its gospel of peace and love,—its amnistie générale, as poor Trilby says. The grandfather of Emerson (who was also the great-great-great-grandson of Peter Bulkeley) was parish minister of Concord; he had been chaplain to the Provincial Congress, and he died in Vermont, as chaplain in the Revolutionary army of General Gates. Five weeks before the invasion of his parish by the redcoats, he had preached to the militia companies gathered in{271} this town for review, a famous sermon from the text, “And behold, God Himself is with us for our Captain, and His priests with sounding trumpets to cry alarm against you.” He was as good as his word, for he was one of the first to take his musket and join the minute-men in the early morning of the 19th of April; and returning to the Old Manse (then the new manse, for it was built for him and his bride a few years earlier) to protect his family, he saw the brief fight at the bridge from his study window, and wrote of the day’s doings this brief chronicle of an eye-witness. His grandson found it in a page or two of his family almanac, where, at the end of April, he wrote, “This month remarkable for the greatest events of the present age.”

This account differs slightly from others, and omits many particulars; it is the most valuable single version of the memorable skirmish at the Bridge,—in itself trifling, but momentous in its results. Parson Emerson was himself one of those who wished to meet the troops near his{275} own meeting-house, but was wisely overruled. He says that two British soldiers were killed at the Bridge—Shattuck, the town historian, says three; the difference is accounted for by a dismal tale which Hawthorne was perhaps the first to print. He derived it, he says, from Lowell, the poet, who had picked it up, no doubt, in his short residence at Concord in the spring of 1838, when “rusticated” here from Harvard College. It may be read in the Mosses from an Old Manse, wherein is found one of the best pictures of our peaceful scenery,—so far removed from thought of bloodshed.

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To a certain extent, Bancroft, in his account of the fight, confirms this tale, saying:

It is traditional that when this party, which had been sent to destroy the military stores at Colonel James Barrett’s, two miles to the westward, came back to the Bridge, alarmed by the firing, and saw their countrymen lying dead there, one of them with his head laid open, they were struck with fear and ran on to the main body in the village, telling of what they had seen. And it was this single incident, very likely, which led the English officers, and Lord Percy himself, to report “that the rebels scalped and cut off the ears of some of the wounded who fell into their hands.” Bancroft indignantly denies this, saying, “The falsehood brings dishonor on its voucher; the people whom Percy reviled were among the mildest and most compassionate of their race,”—which is true.

It is no wonder that the British troops on{277}

their flight back to Boston that day, pursued and ambuscaded by hundreds and thousands of the aroused militia of Middlesex and Essex counties, should themselves have committed some barbarities,—for their defeat and humiliation were great. They lost in course of the day 273 men and officers,—more than had fallen on that glorious day, sixteen years before, when Wolfe died in the arms of victory at Quebec. The loss of the yeomanry was only ninety-one—a third of the British loss,—while all the trophies and circumstances of victory were on the American side. From that day, the Revolution was begun,—to end only with{278} the creation of a new republic. Concord, as President Dwight said, “prefaced the history of a nation, the beginning of an empire.” “Man,” he added, “from the events that have occurred here, will in some respects assume a new character; and experience a new destiny.” Hence the interest with which the world, from that day forward, began to look on this little town.

Yet the prominence of Concord in the revolutionary century that followed her skirmish at the Bridge and along the Lexington road was in part accidental; for Boston and Virginia were the two foci of the American revolt, and Concord became famous chiefly because it was near Boston. It was otherwise with the literary revolution that began sixty years later, with Emerson for its Washington,—and with results that seem as permanent, and in some sort as important, as those which Washington secured to his countrymen. In 1835, when Emerson’s literary career may be said to have fairly begun, America had maintained her political independence, but had lost much of her political principle: she was powerful without moral progress, and without either a profound philosophy or an original literature.{279} The beginnings of poetry and art were visible, but they were more in promise than in performance. Our political writings, though disparaged by Jeremy Bentham, were coming to be recognized as among the foremost; but we had little else that Europe cared to read,—a few sketches by Irving, a dozen novels by Cooper, two or three sermons and as many essays by Channing.

Into the stagnation of this shallow pool of American letters, Emerson, in 1836, cast the smooth stone of his philosophical first book,—Nature. It made little immediate stir; the denizens of the pool paid small heed to it, and few of them guessed what it meant. It was written in Concord, and chiefly at the Old Manse, where Emerson dwelt with his mother and kindred before his second marriage in 1835, and where Hawthorne afterward made the house and himself widely known. The fixing of his own residence in this town by Emerson was due in part to ancestry, and still more to a perception of the fitness of the region for the abode of a poet and sage. The same perception, by Hawthorne, Alcott, Ellery Channing and others,—together with the important fact that it{280}

was Emerson’s chosen retreat,—brought those literary men here. Thoreau, the most original and peculiar genius of the whole group, was born here, and never had much inclination to leave Concord, although in youth he talked of adventuring to the wild West,—Kentucky and Illinois at that time,—whither his friend, Ellery Channing, afterward did in fact go. Around Emerson, this circle, with many who only lived here temporarily (like Margaret Fuller and George William Curtis), or not at all, gathered as friends and brothers, or else as disciples,—and thus the name of Concord became associated, and justly, with a special and remarkable school of thought and literature. Thousands now visit the graves of these worthies, to which, and to their haunts in life—their walks and seats and sylvan places of resort,—an increasing host of pilgrims come year by year.{281}

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

The attraction of Emerson and the rest of the Concord authors, whose homes or tombs so many pilgrims visit, comes chiefly from the recognition by them of this search by mankind{282} after the Infinite,—their insight into the nature and worth of this pilgrimage of life which all are making. Man loves and seeks amusement to beguile his toilsome or monotonous journey,—and hence the pleasure so many take in the lighter and more graceful or laughable forms of literature. But sooner or later, and in many persons at all times, what Tennyson calls “the riddle of the painful earth” is before us all for consideration, if not for solution. We see that the universe is moral,—even if we cannot read the moral aright,—and we seek those who can give us “the word of the enigma,” as the French say. Emerson gave it in his manner, Hawthorne in his, Thoreau in still another way; and these three Concord authors not only had much vogue in their lifetime, but are yet more widely read since their death. Others, like Ellery Channing, found little audience in youth, and time has not yet essentially enlarged the circle of their readers. With the same moral view of life which his more successful friends took, Channing, the poet (who must always be distinguished from Dr. Channing, the divine, his uncle), had in his style something of that distraction which Montaigne declares is needful to poets.{283}

{284}

To this wild rule more than one of the Concord philosophers conforms; there is a perceptible lack of method, even when their meaning is fairly clear. Hawthorne incurs less of this censure than the rest; but he confessed that he did not always comprehend his own allegories, nor know exactly the moral he would insinuate. Emerson goes more directly to his mark; a Frenchman (Chantavoine) has said of him, “In his Essays he is first of all a philosophic moralist, never quite forgetting that he was once a preacher.” But, in contrasting him with French writers, Chantavoine admits that{285} Emerson has something which the light and brilliant Parisian essayists lack:

Emerson was a reader and admirer of French prose; he did not find much poetry in French verse. The glancing of his wit was as quick and searching as that of Paris; but he belongs more to the literature of the world than most of the French prose authors since Montaigne and Pascal. In American literature he is unique; so, in his very different way, is Thoreau; so is Hawthorne; and no American, not even one of these three, can be compared with any of them on terms of similarity. There is that in their best writing which puts us upon our best thinking, and leads us along the upper levels of life. Particularly is this true of Emerson; Virtue, radiant, serene and sovereign{286}, sways the realm where Emerson abides, and to which he welcomes his readers, who become his friends. It was said of Socrates, in a dubious compliment, that he “brought philosophy down from heaven to earth”; it might as truly be said of Emerson that he raises earth to the level of divine philosophy. His method in this is purely poetic; therefore, while in verse he lacks what is usually called creative power, he brings with him the atmosphere of poesy more constantly than any modern poet; nor, since Milton, Spenser, and Shakespeare, has any English poet excelled him in this. To this quality, as well as to his courage of opinion and his penetrating insight, do we owe it that he first proclaimed our intellectual independence of the mother-country, as Franklin, Washington and Jefferson declared our political independence. There is, indeed, a certain resemblance between Washington and Emerson which might escape the notice of those who look chiefly at the totally different work each had to do, and the diversity of life and opinion which contrasted Virginia and New England so sharply.

It must be confessed that, in 1732, Concord was hardly so constituted as naturally{287}

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to give birth to Washingtons; indeed, Virginia produced but this one, amid all her great men. The extreme narrowness of Puritan opinion, even when modified by Baptists and Quakers, was not favorable to the rise of men like the great Virginians of the eighteenth century. A milder intellectual climate, a temper less given to disputes about faith and works, election and reprobation, was needful to produce characters so broad, so moderate, and yet so firm, as Washington’s. New England did give birth to Franklin, in the very midst of Mathers and Sewalls; but he had to slip away to Philadelphia, in order to grow into his full stature as philanthropist and philosopher. The intolerance of New England deprived us, for more than a century, of the opportunity to produce genius and the gentler forms of heroism. We had the Adamses to set the Revolution on foot, the soldiers of New Hampshire and rural New England to fight its battles; but its noblest leader must come to us from the Potomac, and take us back there, when the long fight was won, to establish our government beside its waters, in sight of his own broad domain. It was not till this century, now declining, that Concord could{289} show an intellectual Washington; and Emerson must be born in Boston, less provincial than our meadowy village, our “rural Venice,” as Thoreau called it in times of river-freshet.

Naturally, when men appear on earth of Washington’s or of Emerson’s stamp, there has been a long preparation for their advent. They are not found among Hottentots or corn-crackers, ‘longshoremen or cowboys; but in some long-tilled garden of the human species, where certain qualities have been inbred by descent and betterment for many generations. Poverty may be their birthright, as in the case of that greatest of Washington’s successors, Abraham Lincoln, but the experiences that are transmuted by descent into greatness are quite as often those of poverty as of wealth. Self-reliance, veracity, courage, and the gift of command are essentials in the founders and preservers of nations; these are fostered in all new colonies, and therefore were common qualities in New England, as in Kentucky and Virginia, in their early years. But among the planters of Virginia there grew up a form of society, now forever extinct there, in which these high qualities, together with courtesy and breadth of view, were cultivated{290} and flourished to an extent which the Calvinistic rigors and enforced economies of New England never knew. That petty system of inquiring into creeds and points of doctrine which our ancestors brought with them from the Puritan parishes of England, and which was increased here by infusions from Scotland, and the tyranny of ecclesiastical control in Massachusetts and Connecticut, was not wholly unknown in Virginia; but its ill effects were dissipated by the customs of large landholding, outdoor sports, and certain traditions of honor and breeding which the best of the Virginians brought with them from England, and kept up by their habit of frequent intercourse with the mother-country.

It was no sin in Virginia to dance and play the fiddle; the Anglican Church, while prescribing a formal creed, did not concern itself to inquire every Sunday, or every Thursday, into all the dogmatic abstractions of the Westminster Assembly’s Catechism, longer or shorter; men’s minds were left to take the course most natural to them. But in New England, along with much acute speculation (the best type of which is Jonathan Edwards), there went a morbid conscientiousness{291}, turning its eyes upon inward and even petty matters, and leading to numberless quarrels about Original Sin, Half-way Covenants, Justification by Faith, etc. Concord was less infested by this carping, persecuting, quarrelsome spirit than most of New England; yet the church records, and the collections of old Dr. Ripley, show there was much of it. Emerson declares, and justly, that good sense has marked our town annals: “I find no ridiculous laws, no eaves-dropping legislators, no hanging of witches, no ghosts, no whipping of Quakers, no unnatural crimes.” But the spirit which led to these mischiefs in other regions of Massachusetts and Connecticut was all about us; and it narrowed the minds and the opportunities of Concord before the Revolution. It was chiefly in New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont, where ecclesiastical domination was less rigid, that mental freedom manifested itself. In the other colonies of the North, wealth and culture were apt to be on the side of England, when our troubles began; in Virginia and the Carolinas, and to some extent in New Hampshire and Maine, wealth took the colonial side.

We may call the imaginative force and{292}

breadth of the Concord authors “Shakespearian” for lack of a better word; but there was a man of singular mental penetration sometimes visiting here,—Jones Very, of Salem,—who once made a wider generalization—whether wisely or not. When Very was asked to discriminate betwixt Wisdom and Genius, he said, “Wisdom is of God; Genius is the decay of Wisdom”; adding in explanation, “To the pre-existent Shakespeare, wisdom was offered; he did not accept it, and so he died away into genius.” We had a superior sage here (Bronson Alcott), who had little of the Shakespearian genius, but much of that mystic wisdom which Very thought older and nobler than genius. Religion was his native air,—the religion of identity, not{293} of variety; he could not be polytheistic, as many Christians are, even while fancying themselves the most orthodox worshippers of the One God. He had that intense application of the soul to one side of this sphere of life, which led him to neglect the exercise of intellectual powers that were amply his. His gift it was, not to expand our life into multiplicity,—which was the tendency of Emerson, as of Goethe and Shakespeare,—but to concentrate multiplicity in unity, seeking ever the one source whence flow these myriad manifestations. His friends used to call him, in sport, the “Vortical philosopher,” because his speculations all moved vortically toward a centre, or were occupied with repeating one truth in many forms. He was a votary of the higher Reason; not without certain foibles of the saint; but belonging unmistakably to the saintly order. Of course he was the mock of the market-place, as all but the belligerent saints are; but he was a profound, vivifying influence in the lives of the few who recognized his inward light.

From Alcott, in his old age,—he was in his eightieth year when the experiment began,—came the impulse to that later manifestation{294} of the same spirit which had led Emerson and his youthful friends to the heights and depths of Transcendentalism. I speak of the Concord School of Philosophy, which, in the last years of Emerson and Alcott, and with the co-operation of disciples of other philosophic opinion, gave to the town a celebrity in some degree commensurate with its earlier reputation. It began in the library of Alcott’s Orchard House, where his genial daughter, Louisa, had written several of her charming books; it was continued in a chapel, built for the purpose, under the lee of Alcott’s pineclad hill, and amid his orchard and vineyard. It brought to reside in Concord that first of American philosophers, Dr. W. T. Harris; and it gathered hundreds of eager or curious hearers to attend the lectures and debates on grave subjects which a learned body of teachers gave forth. It continued in existence from the summer of 1879 to that of 1888, when its lessons were fitly closed with a memorial service for Bronson Alcott, its founder, who had died in March, 1888. As was said by the Boston wit of the fight on the 19th of April,—“The Battle of Lexington; Concord furnished the ground, and Acton the men,”—so it might{295}

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

Along with the events and the literature that have given our town a name throughout the world, there has flowed quietly the stream of civil society, local self-government and domestic life; broadened at critical times by manifestations of political energy, in which families like those of Hoar, Heywood, Barrett, Whiting, Robinson, Gourgas, etc., have distinguished themselves. Benefactors like Munroe, who built the Public Library, Dr. Ripley, who for half a century filled the pulpit and took pastoral care, and John Tileston, who brought the public schools to their present useful form; soldiers of the Civil War, like Colonel Prescott and Lieutenant Ripley, and hundreds of unnamed soldiers in the battle of life,—women no less than men,—have given their innumerable touch of vigor{297} and grace to the ever-building structure of Concord life. Painters of our own have added color, and sculptors like French, Elwell and Ricketson have adorned the town with art. And so we pass on into the new century, with no conscious loss of vital power,—yet with a keen regret for the great men who have gone from among us.

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

For the many latter-day pilgrims who visit the shrines of New England, the gray boulder{300} on Clarke’s Island where the weary voyagers rested after their stormy cruise in the shallop; the humble rock on our shore where they at length found shelter; our noble statue of “clear-eyed Faith” and the not far distant monument on Bunker Hill, will ever bear like testimony to the courage of that little band of independent thinkers. Meeting in secret in the Manor-House of Scrooby, these far-sighted heroes, when they “shooke of the yoake of antichristian bondage” of the Church of England, made possible for their descendants a later Declaration of Independence!

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

One enthusiast even finds the earliest evidences of this movement in the concerted action of certain rebellious weavers of the twelfth{301}

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century—thirty weavers of the diocese of Worcester—who were summoned before the Council of Oxford to answer a charge of making light of the sacraments and of priestly power. Though they answered that they were Christians and reverenced the teachings of the apostles, they were driven from the country as heretics, to perish of cold. This “pious firmness” on the part of the council, writes the short-sighted chronicler, not only cleansed the realm of England from the pestilence which had crept in, but also prevented it from creeping in again. But the pestilence did creep in{303} again and again and the weeds grew apace, for which thanks are chiefly due to John Wyclif and his followers.

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

So these brave men, whose hearts the Lord had touched with heavenly zeal for His truth,{304}

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

Here, too, from the neighboring hamlet of Austerfield, came the lad William Bradford, already eager for spiritual guidance.{305}

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

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

We like to believe that Bradford belonged{307} to the honest yeoman class, that he “was used to a plaine country life & the innocente trade of husbandrey”; we know that he had a natural love of study which led him, despite the many difficulties he met, to master the Dutch tongue as well as French, Latin, Greek and Hebrew, which latter tongue he studied the more, “that he might see with his own eyes the ancient oracles of God in all their native beauty.”

Associated as teacher here with the venerable Richard Clyfton, “the minister with the long white beard,” and succeeding him as pastor, we have found the eloquent John Robinson{308}, that winner of all men’s hearts, that helper of all men’s souls. A youthful student at Cambridge, living in an age and in an atmosphere of religious questioning, he was deeply troubled with scruples concerning conformity. He tells us “had not the truth been in my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, I had never broken those bonds of flesh and blood wherein I was so straitly tied, but had suffered the light of God to have been put out in mine unthankful heart by other men’s darkness.” Happy in finding congenial spirits in the new community at Scrooby, Bradford tells us he soon became

Under his inspiring guidance, and with William Brewster as their especial stay and help, they were mercifully enabled to “wade through{309} things.” Some twenty-three years older than Bradford, we learn from that modest chronicler, who wrote “in a plaine stile, with singuler regard unto y^e simple trueth in all things,” that Brewster had also a wider experience of the world.

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

But these assemblies, however humble and{310} secret, could not long escape the vigilant eye of the law. They were now

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

But in the midst of the wealth of this fair city they soon saw “the grime and grisly face of{311} povertie coming upon them like an armed man, with whom they must bukle and incounter, and from whom they could not flye.” For this reason, and to avoid religious contentions already rife there, in a year’s time they decided to remove to Leyden, “a fair and bewtifull citie, & of a sweete situation.” Here the story of the long siege of Leyden, bravely sustained in 1573, must have excited their ready sympathy, and the city’s choice of a university, offered by William of Orange, instead of the exemption the city could have had from certain imposts, must have won the admiration of these scholarly men.

The stay of the English exiles here of some twelve years—the period of the truce between Holland and Spain—was, though trying, no doubt a good preparation for the greater hardships they were to endure. While Bradford wove fustian and his fellow-workers carded wool, made hats and built houses, Brewster printed “heretical” books, and taught English “after y^e Latin manner.” The harmony of their peaceful and industrious lives attracted many friends, until some three hundred kindred spirits joined John Robinson in his prayers for “more light.”{312}

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

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

Serving in the troops sent over by Elizabeth to aid the Dutch in maintaining the Protestant religion against the Spaniards was the valiant soldier, Myles Standish, of the Dokesbury branch of the Standishes of Lancashire, who date from the Conquest. There the beautiful Standish church still bears on its buttresses the family shield—three standing dishes argent on a field azure—and Standish Hall is still hung with portraits of warriors in armor, beruffed lawyers with pointed beards, and gay courtiers of the Queen—the Roman Catholic ancestors of our plain fighter! Luckily for us all, he{313}

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

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

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

Winslow tells us, in his Briefe Narrative of the True Grounds for the First Planting of New England, that when their plans were laid before King James he remarked that “it was{315} a good and honest notion,” and asking further what profits might arise, he was answered, “fishing.” “So God have my soul,” he said, “so God have my soul, ’tis an honest trade; ‘twas the apostles’ own calling!” And we may state here, notwithstanding Bradford’s statement that in the beginning “we did lack small hooks,” New England, before 1650, annually sent to Europe £100,000 worth of dried codfish.

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

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

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

After a good run with a prosperous wind they found the Mayflower at Southampton, but as the Speedwell proved unseaworthy they were again delayed, and after putting in for repairs to Dartmouth and Plymouth, the Mayflower finally, on September 16th, sailed alone from Plymouth. Observe the group of brave voyagers setting forth on an unknown “sea of troubles,” trustful wives and children, manly youths and blooming maidens, as they wave a last good-by to dear Old England from the deck of the Mayflower. Their leaders form{317} a notable band: Brewster, Carver, Bradford, Winslow, Standish, the soul, the heart, the head, the good right hand, the flashing sword, well-chosen instruments to unlock the frozen heart of New England, and to found there

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

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

Determining to put in to Cape Cod harbor, and so to land on a territory where their patent could confer no rights, the leaders of the expedition, after consulting together in the cabin of the Mayflower, there drew up and signed the historic “Compact” which was to convert the hundred voyagers into the founders of a{318} commonwealth. There they solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and of one another, combined themselves into a civil body politic, to frame and enact such just and equal laws from time to time as should be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony, unto which they promised all due submission and obedience.

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

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

The weakness and illness natural after the discomforts of such a voyage now made themselves felt in an alarming manner, and an exploring{319} party was hastily organized to select the spot for their final settlement. Setting forth in the frail shallop, a party of eighteen picked men, after a successful “First Encounter” with the Indians, were driven by a furious gale to take shelter in the lee of a little island lying in a friendly harbor to the west of their starting-point. After thawing out over a good cedar-wood fire and resting for a night, they explored the island and repaired their boat. Of this island, afterward named for John Clarke, mate of the Mayflower, Bradford writes:

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

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

And now, “Courteous Reader,” as writes that most faithful secretary of the Pilgrims, Nathaniel Morton, in his New England Memorial (1669), “that I may not hold thee too long in the porch,” even in such goodly company, I bid you welcome to the Plymouth of to-day. For in the harbor, the sand-dunes, the green hillsides and the fresh valleys and{321}

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

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

The site of their first or “Common-House” is now marked, and near the lot assigned to Elder Brewster still we may stop to drink from the Pilgrim Spring: the “delicate water” is fresh and sweet now as when our thirsty forefathers delighted in it.{323}

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

In the autumn of 1621, this was the scene{325} of the first Thanksgiving held in New England, when, their houses built, their crops garnered from some thirty fertile acres, their furs and lumber safely stored, they made merry for three days, with Massasoit and ninety Indians as guests. Even with fish, wild-fowl and deer in plenty, the good housewives must have spent a lively week of preparation for such a feast!

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

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

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

Here in the shelter of the fort they met{326} for worship; here their hymns of praise and prayers for guidance arose in the still air of the wilderness. In four short months one half of these brave souls had been laid to rest on Cole’s Hill by the waterside. And yet, when one April morning those who were left to mourn them stood here watching the Mayflower weigh anchor, to flit with her white sails over the blue sea which parted them from Old England, not one soul faltered, not one went back!

The sad loss of their good Governor Carver, whose responsible place was taken by William Bradford, and the daily trials and hardships of that first long year, shook not their sturdy faith. Each day brought its absorbing task, and when, one morning in November, the sentry at the fort shouted, “Sail, ho!” and the Fortune came sailing in by the Gurnet Nose, bringing the first news from the other side, they were ready with a return load of lumber, furs and sassafras for the Merchant Adventurers. Of this load, valued at £500, Edward Winslow modestly writes in his letter to England: “Though it be not much, yet it will witness for us that we have not been idle, considering the smallness of our numbers this summer.”{327}

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

In the Anne, perhaps, came the Old Colony record-book, in which was made the early registration of births, marriages and deaths. The first of the laws therein enacted, dating from December 27, 1623, established trial by jury, as may still be seen in the quaint handwriting of these hard-working heroes. This book, together with the Charter of 1629, curious old papers concerning the division of cattle brought over in the Charity in 1624, ancient deeds signed by the Indians, the original owners of this our goodly heritage, and many another time-stained treasure, is now carefully{328} preserved and gladly shown in the Registry of Deeds in the Court House.

Looking to the north, beyond the town of Kingston, lying, with its sweet rose-gardens, on the pretty winding river named for that arch betrayer, Captain Jones, of the Mayflower, we see Duxbury and the green slopes of Captain’s Hill, so named in honor of Myles Standish, who from the top of his gray stone monument still guards us in effigy. Lingering near the fort and the guns he loved so well, he must often have looked this way, and admired the fine position this hill offered for a homestead. And as with years the colony grew larger, as children came to him and Barbara, and when his first Company of Standish Guards were in perfect training and could be relied upon to defend the colony at need, he bought out Winslow’s share in the famous red cow, and led the way to the new fields he longed to conquer. There he was soon followed by John Alden and Priscilla, the Brewsters and other families, and at Marshfield, near by, the Winslows became their neighbors. So some eleven years after the landing came the first separation, which though not a wide one was a sore grief to their tender-hearted governor.{329}

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

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

That the rôle played by her was a worthy one, the tablets about us testify. Heroes of the expedition against Louisbourg, in 1745, lie here; more than a score of Plymouth patriots who served in the Revolution, and many a brave soldier who won his laurels in the War{330} of 1861. Under this stone, with its quaint urn and willow-branch, rests the famous naval hero of the Revolutionary war, Captain Simeon Sampson, whose cousin Deborah spun, dyed, and wove the cloth for the suit in which she left home to serve as a soldier. Their story, and that of many another hero and heroine now lying here, have been well told by Mrs. Jane Goodwin Austin.

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

Here, in old times, could be had a grand view of the shipping, come from the West Indies and all parts of the world; from here the news of many fatal shipwrecks had been spread through the town, to rouse willing help for suffering sailors; here, too, no doubt, men{331}’s souls were often tempted to incur the fine of twenty shillings, the cost of “telling a lie about seeing a whale,” in those strict days when a plain lie, if “pernicious,” was taxed at half that price!

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

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

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

Among the many priceless books and documents here we find the lately acquired Speculum Europæ (1605) by Sir Edwin Sandys, the active friend of our Separatists in England;{333}

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

A large copy of the seal of the colony, in handsomely carved oak, reminds us that the original seal was stolen in the days of Andros. Its appropriate motto, “Patrum pietate ortum, filiorum virtute servandum,” may be found{335}

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

Here the sword of the truculent Myles Standish lies at rest, and beside it, in lighter vein, a bit of the quilt that belonged to his wife Rose, and a sampler skilfully embroidered by his daughter Lora. Between the ample armchairs in which Governor Carver and Elder Brewster must have pondered over many a weighty problem of government for the people and by the people, is the closely woven little Dutch cradle{337}

in which Peregrine White, that most youthful of voyagers, was rocked to sleep. The large hole worn in the foot of the cradle suggests pleasantly that the rosy toes of the sturdy baby colonists made early for freedom! Perhaps the tiny leathern ankle-ties, hardly four inches in length, which belonged to Josiah Winslow—this was long before they thought of making him governor—had a hand, or rather a foot, in that bombardment! Near the shoes is a dainty salt-cellar of blue and white enamel, delicately painted with pink and yellow roses, suggestive of fine linen and pleasant hospitality. Here too are{338}

those anxious, lonely housewives, waiting for their good men to return from dangerous expeditions in the forest or on the sea. Thus varied was the freight of the Mayflower.

As we walk through the lively main street of the town, we must stop to admire the fine gambrel roof of the old house where lived James Warren, that active patriot, who became president of the Provincial Congress, and whose wife, Mercy Otis Warren, wrote the “rousing word” which kindled many a heart in Revolutionary days. The line of fine lindens just beyond, as they rustle in the cool sea-breeze, could whisper many a charming tale of lovely dames and stately men, of scarlet cloaks and powdered wigs they have watched pass by under their shading branches, of treasures of{339} old china and old silver, of blue tiles and claw-footed furniture, of Copley portraits now packed off to the great city, and of many changes come about since they came here as young trees from Nova Scotia, in a raisin-box.

Overlooking the blue water stands the old Winslow house, the solid frame of which came from England in 1754. Under its spreading lindens, through the fine colonial doorway so beautifully carved, many distinguished guests have passed, and here Ralph Waldo Emerson was married to Lydia Jackson, who was born in the picturesque house just beyond, almost hidden in trees and vines.{340}

A drive toward the south will take us by some of the oldest houses. From the one with a dyke in front, Adoniram Judson, the famous Baptist missionary, took his departure for Burmah. His devoted sister then vowed that no one should cross the threshold until his return, and the door-step was taken away. Grass grew over the pathway, and the front door remained closed, for he died at sea, in 1850.

As we pass the handsome new building of the High School, it is good to remember, in this Plymouth of eight thousand inhabitants, paying thirty-four thousand dollars for last year’s “schooling,” that in 1672 it was decided that Plymouth’s school, supported by the rents of her southerly common-lands, was entitled to £33, the fishing excise from the Cape, offered to any town which would keep a free colonial school, classical as well as elementary. And in that free school began an early struggle of the three R’s against Latin and Greek. From Plymouth went Nathaniel Brewster, a graduate of Harvard’s first class of 1642, and the first of a long line of Plymouth students to enter Harvard.

Past the blue Eel River, flowing gently through shining green meadows to the sea, we{341} may drive along quiet roads in Plymouth Woods, under sweet pines and sturdy oaks, by the shore of many a calm pond, sparkling in its setting of white beach sand. We cross old Indian trails, perhaps, and skirt acre after acre of level cranberry-bogs, pink and white, like a sheet of delicate sprig-muslin, when in bloom, and bright with the crimson fruit in early autumn. In these woods in their season bloom sweet mayflowers, the rare rhodora, the sabbatia, sundew and corema, and there many another treasure may be found by those who know how to seek!

When these forests were first explored, an enterprising member of the Mayflower’s crew, climbing a high tree to see how the land lay, saw shining before him a blue sheet of water which he took to be the ocean, and this was called after him “Billington’s Sea.” Following the shore of this lake, through the leafy paths of Morton’s Park, we come upon the source of the famous Town Brook, which with its honorable record of two centuries’ supply of alewives has always played an important part in the town’s annals, helping to grind the Pilgrims’ first grists in 1636, and now lending its busy aid in turning complicated machinery.{342} In the fields on either side—the hunting-grounds of the banished race who once rejoiced in their possession—are still found the beautifully worked Indian arrow-heads and hatchets; here the smoke arose from their wigwams; here they often paddled past in their swift canoes, and here, perhaps, were shot the five deer that formed their offering in the first New England Thanksgiving.

But the manifold charms of Plymouth and{343} Plymouth Woods must be seen and felt on the soil whence they sprung! So in the hope that the “Courteous Reader” to whom they are still unfamiliar may care to verify this truthful statement, we leave in brief and imperfect outline this story of the Old Colony, whither “they wente weeping and carried precious seeds; but they shall returne with joye and bring their sheaves.”

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“CAPE COD,” wrote Thoreau, “is the bared and bended arm of Massachusetts; the shoulder is at Buzzard’s Bay; the elbow, or crazy-bone, at Cape Mallebarre; the wrist at Truro; and the sandy fist at Provincetown—behind which the State stands on her guard.”

This sandy fist curls toward the wrist in such fashion as to form a semicircular harbor, famous as the New World haven which first gave shelter to the Mayflower and her sea-worn company. On the 21st of November (by our modern reckoning), 1620, the Pilgrims, after their two bleak months of ocean, cast anchor here, rejoicing in the sight and smell of “oaks, pines, juniper, sassafras and other sweet wood.” Here they signed their memorable{346} compact, forming themselves into a “civil body politic” and covenanting with one another, as honest Englishmen, to “submit to such government and governors as we should by common consent agree to make and choose.” Upon the adoption of this simple and significant constitution, the Pilgrim Fathers, still on board the Mayflower in Provincetown harbor, proceeded to set in motion the machinery of their little republic, for “after this,” wrote Bradford, “they chose, or rather confirmed, Mr. John Carver (a man godly and well approved amongst them) their Governor for one year.” That same day a scouting party went ashore and brought back a fragrant boatload of red cedar for firewood, with a goodly report of the place.

These stout-hearted Pilgrims were not the first Europeans to set foot on Cape Cod. Legends of the Vikings which drift about the low white dunes are as uncertain as the shifting sands themselves, and the French and Florentine navigators who sailed along the North American coast in the first half of the sixteenth century may have done no more than sight this sickle of land between sea and bay, but there are numerous records of{347}

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English, French and Dutch visits within the last twenty years before the coming of the Mayflower. It may be that no less a mariner than Sir Francis Drake was the first of the English to tread these shores, but that distinction is generally allowed to Captain Bartholomew Gosnold, who made harbor here in 1602 and was “so pestered with codfish” that he gave the Cape the name, “which,” said Cotton Mather, “it will never lose till shoals of codfish be seen swimming upon the tops of its highest hills.” Gosnold traded with the Indians for furs and sassafras root, and was followed the next year by Martin Pring, seeking a cargo of this latter commodity, then held precious in pharmacy. Within the next four years three French explorers touched at the Cape, and a French colony was projected, but came to nothing. The visit of Henry Hudson, too, left no traces. In 1614 that rover of land and sea, Captain John Smith, took a look at Cape Cod, which impressed him only as a headland of hills of sand, overgrown with scrubby pines, hurts [huckleberries] and such trash, but an excellent harbor for all weathers.” After Smith’s departure, Hunt, his second in command, enticed a group of Nauset Indians on{349}

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shipboard, carried them off, and sold them into slavery at Malaga, Spain, for twenty pounds a man. As a consequence of this crime, the Indians grew suspicious and revengeful, but nevertheless an irregular trade was maintained with them by passing vessels, until the pestilence that raged among the red men of the region from 1616 to 1619 interrupted communication.

The Pilgrims tarried in Provincetown harbor nearly a month. The compact had been signed, anchor dropped and the reconnoissance made on a Saturday. The Sunday following, the first Pilgrim Sabbath in America, was devoutly kept with prayer and praise on board the Mayflower, but the next morning secular activities began. The men carried ashore the shallop which had been brought over in sections between-decks and proceeded to put it together, while the women bundled up the soiled linen of the voyage and inaugurated the first New England Monday by a grand washing on the beach. On Wednesday, Myles Standish mustered a little army of sixteen men, each armed with musket, sword and corselet, and led them gallantly up the wooded cape, “thorou boughes and bushes,” nearly as{351} far as the present town of Wellfleet. After two days the explorers returned with no worse injury than briar-scratched armor, bringing word of game and water-springs, ploughed land and burial-mounds. William Bradford showed the noose of the deer-trap, a “very pretie devise,” that had caught him by the leg, and two of the sturdiest Pilgrims bore, slung on a staff across their shoulders, a kettle of corn. As the few natives whom the party had met fled from them, the corn had been taken on credit from a buried hoard. The following year that debt was scrupulously paid, but a custom had been established which still prevails with certain summer residents on the Cape, who are said to make a practice of leaving their grocery bills over until the next season.

As soon as the shallop could be floated, a larger expedition was sent by water along the south coast to seek a permanent settlement. Through wind and snow the Pilgrim Fathers made their way up to Pamet River, in Truro, the limit of the earlier journey. They did not succeed in agreeing upon a fit site for the colony, but they sought out the corn deposit and, breaking the frozen ground with their swords, secured ten bushels more of priceless{352} seed for the springtime. On the return of the second expedition there was anxious discussion about the best course to pursue. Some were for settling on the Cape and living by the fisheries, pointing out, to emphasize their arguments, the whales that sported every day about the anchored ship; but the Pilgrims were of agricultural habit and tradition and had reason enough just then to be weary of the sea. The situation was critical. “The heart of winter and unseasonable weather,” wrote Bradford, “was come upon us.” The gradual slope of the beach made it always necessary to “wade a bow-shoot or two” in going ashore from the Mayflower, and these icy foot-baths were largely responsible for the “vehement coughs” from which hardly one of the company was exempt.

Once more, on the 16th of December, the shallop started forth to find a home for the Pilgrims. Ten colonists, including Carver, Bradford and Standish, together with a few men of the ship’s crew, volunteered for this service. It was so cold that the sleety spray glazed doublet and jerkin “and made them many times like coats of iron.” The voyagers landed within the present limits of Eastham or Orleans, where, hard by the shore, a camp was{353} roughly barricaded. One day passed safely in exploration, but at dawn of the second, when, “after prayer,” the English sat about their camp-fire at breakfast, “a great and strange cry” cut the mist, and on the instant Indian arrows, headed with deer-horn and eagles’ claws, whizzed about their heads. But little Captain Standish was not to be caught napping. “Having a snaphance ready,” he fired in direction of the war-whoop. His comrades supported him manfully, their friends in the shallop, themselves beset, shouted encouragement, and the savages, gliding back among the trees, melted into “the dark of the morning.” After this taste of Cape Cod courtesy, the Pilgrim Fathers can hardly be blamed for taking to their shallop again and plunging on, in a stiff gale, through the toppling waves, until, with broken rudder and mast split in three, they reached a refuge in the harbor of Plymouth.

When the adventurers returned to the Mayflower with glad tidings that a resting-place was found at last, the historian of the party, William Bradford, had to learn that during his absence his wife had fallen from the vessel’s side and perished in those December{354} waters. Three more of the colonists died in that first haven, and there little Peregrine White began his earthly peregrinations. In view of all these occurrences,—the signing of the compact in Provincetown harbor, the first landing of the Pilgrims on the tip of Cape Cod, the explorations, the first deaths and the first birth,—it would seem that Provincetown is fairly entitled to a share of those historic honors which are lavished, none too freely, but, perhaps, too exclusively, upon Plymouth.

When the Mayflower sailed away, carrying William Bradford and his tablets, the beautiful harbor and its circling shores were left to a long period of obscurity. Fishers, traders and adventurers of many nations came and went on their several errands, but these visits left little trace. The Plymouth colonists, meanwhile, did not forget their first landing-point, but returned sometimes, in the fishing season, for cod, bass and mackerel, always claiming full rights of ownership. This claim rested not only on their original brief occupation, but on formal purchase from the Indians, in 1654, or earlier, the payment being “2 brasse kettles six coates twelve houes 12 axes 12 knives and a box.” In process of time, as the{355}

{356}

English settlers gradually pushed down the Cape, a few hovels and curing-sheds rose on the harbor shore, but the land was owned by Plymouth Colony until Massachusetts succeeded to the title. These Province Lands were made a district, in the charge of Truro, in 1714, but in 1727 the “Precinct of Cape Cod” was set off from Truro, and established, under the name of Provincetown, as a separate township. It was even then merely a fishing-hamlet, with a fluctuating population, which by 1750 had almost dwindled away. In Revolutionary times, it had only a score of dwelling-houses, and its two hundred inhabitants were defenseless before the British, whose men-of-war rode proudly in the harbor. One of these, the Somerset, while chased by a French fleet on the Back Side, as the Atlantic coast of the Cape is called, struck on Peaked Hill bars, and the waves, taking part with the rebels, flung the helpless hulk far up the beach. Stripped by “a plundering gang” from Provincetown and Truro, the frigate lay at the mercy of the sands, and they gradually hid her even from memory; but the strong gales and high tides of 1886 tore that burial-sheet aside, and brought the blackened timbers again to{357} the light of day. The grim old ship, tormented by relic-hunters, peered out over the sea, looking from masthead to masthead for the Union Jack, and, disgusted with what she saw, dived once more under her sandy cover, where the beach-grass now grows over her.

Since the Revolution, Provincetown has steadily progressed in numbers and prosperity, until to-day, with over four thousand five hundred inhabitants, it is the banner town of the Cape. During this period of development, the Province Lands, several thousand acres in extent, naturally became a subject of dispute. Old residents had fallen into a way of buying and selling the sites on which they had built homes and stores, as if the land were theirs in legal ownership. Five years ago, however, the General Court virtually limited State ownership to the waste tracts in the north and west of the township, leaving the squatters in possession of the harbor-front. “The released portion of the said lands,” stated the Harbor and Land Commissioners in their report of 1893, “is about 955 acres and includes the whole inhabited part of the town of Provincetown.”

The present Provincetown is well worth a{358} journey. From High Pole Hill, a bluff seventy feet high in the rear of the populated district, one gazes far out over blue waters, crossed with cloud-shadows and flecked with fishing-craft. Old sea-captains gather here with spy-glasses to make out the shipping; bronzed sailor-boys lie in the sun and troll snatches of song; young mothers of dark complexion and gay-colored dress croon lullabies, known in Lisbon and Fayal, over sick babies brought to the hilltop for the breezy air; the very parrot that a black-eyed urchin guards in a group of admiring playmates talks “Portugee.” Leaning over the railing, one looks down the bushy slope of the bluff to the curious huddle of houses at its base. Out from the horseshoe bend of shore, run thin tongues of wharf and jetty. Front Street follows the water-line, a seaport variety of outfitting stores and shops, mingled with hotels, fish-flakes, shipyards and the like, backing on the beach, with the dwelling-houses opposite facing the harbor-view. Back Street copies the curve of Front, and the two are joined by queer, irregular little crossways, that take the abashed wayfarer close under people’s windows and along the very borders of their gardens and poultry-yards.{359} Although nearly all of the buildings stand on one or the other of these main streets, there are bunches and knots of houses in sheltered places, looking as if the blast had blown them into accidental nooks. In general these houses are built close and low, tucked in under one another’s elbows, but here and there an independent cottage thrusts its sharp-roofed defiance into the very face of the weather.

Up and down the sandy knolls behind the{360} streets straggle populous graveyards, where one may read the fortunes of Provincetown more impressively, if less precisely, than in the census reports. Where the goodly old Nathaniels and Shubaels and Abrahams and Jerushas rest, a certain decorum of green sodding and white headstone is maintained, despite the irreligious riot of the winds. The Catholic burial-ground, too, is not uncared for in its Irish portion. Marble and granite monuments implore “Lord have mercy on the soul” of some Burke or Ryan or McCarty, but the Portuguese, wanderers from the Cape Verde Islands and the Azores, sleep the sleep of strangers, with no touch of tenderness or beauty about their dreary lodging. Only here and there a little Jacinto or Manuel or Antone has his short mound set about with fragments of clam-shell, as if in children’s play. Some lots are enclosed, the black posts with rounded tops looking like monastic sentries, and a few headboards, with the painted name already rain-washed out of recognition, lean away from the wind. In the centre of this gaunt graveyard, where the roaring Atlantic storms tear up even the coarse tufts of beach-grass, a great gray cross of wood, set in a hill of sand,{361} spreads weather-beaten arms. The guardianship of the Church and the fellowship of the sea these Portuguese fisherfolk brought with them, and as yet America has given them nothing dearer.

The Portuguese constitute a large proportion of the foreign element in Barnstable County, where nearly nine tenths of the people are of English descent. The protruding tip of Cape Cod easily catches such ocean drift as these Western Islanders, and they have made their way as far up the Cape as Falmouth, where they watch their chance to buy old homesteads at low rates. They are natural farmers and even in Harwich and Truro divide their labors between sea and land. But it is in Provincetown that these swart-faced strangers most do congregate, gardening wherever a garden is possible, tending the fish-weirs, working, when herring are plenty, in the canning factories, and almost monopolizing the fresh fishing industry. Even those who are most thrifty, building homes and buying vessels, wear the look of aliens, and some, when their more active years are over, gather up their savings and return to the Azores; but the raven-haired girls are beginning to listen to Yankee wooers,{362} and the next century may see the process of amalgamation well under way. Already these new Pilgrims have tasted so much of the air of freedom as to wax a little restive under the authority of their fiery, devoted young priest, who upbraids them with his last expletive for their shortcomings as energetically as he aids them with his last dollar in their distress.

In the general aspect of the port, it is as true to-day as when, in 1808, the townspeople petitioned for a suspension of the embargo, that their interest is “almost totally in fish and vessels.” A substantial citizen keeps his boat as naturally as an inlander would keep his carriage. Any loiterer on the street can lend a hand with sweep-seine or jibstay, but the harnessing of a horse is a mystery known to few. In 1819, there was but one horse owned in Provincetown, and that “an old, white one with one eye.” In point of fact, however, the fortunes of Provincetown seem to demand, at present, some further support than the fisheries. It is believed that, by dint of capital, labor and irrigation, more could be gained from the soil, and that the advantages of the place as a summer resort might be developed. The whaling business has greatly declined{363}

since the discovery of petroleum, the mackerel have forsaken their old haunts, and even cod-fishing, in which Provincetown long stood second to Gloucester, is on the wane. Wharves and marine railways are falling into ruin, and the natives of the old Cape seek a subsistence in Western ranches and crowded cities, leaving their diminished home industries to the immigrants. Still twoscore or so of vessels go to the Grand Banks, and as many more engage in the fresh fishing. Emulous tales do these fishermen tell of quick trips and large catches, for example the clipper Julia Costa, under a Portuguese skipper, which set sail at six in the morning for fishing-grounds about fifteen miles{364} northeast of Highland Light, took fifteen thousand pounds of cod, and arrived at her Boston moorings an hour before midnight. But the “fish-stories” told in Provincetown are more often legends of the past, before the heroic days of whaling went out with the invention of the explosive bomb lance,—legends of fortunes made in oil and ambergris, of hair-breadth escapes from the infuriated monsters, and especially of Moby Dick, the veteran whale who, off the coast of Chili, defied mankind until the whale-gun rolled him over at last, with twenty-three old harpoons rusted in his body.

The foreign element in Provincetown is not all Portuguese. There is a sprinkling of many nationalities, especially Irish, and, more numerous yet, English and Scotch from the British provinces, while sailor-feet from all over the globe tread the long plank-walk of Front Street. This famous walk was built, after much wrangling, from the town’s share of the Surplus Revenue distributed by Andrew Jackson, and the story goes that the more stiff-necked opponents of this extravagance refused their lifetimes long to step upon the planks, and plodded indignantly through the sandy middle of the road. Upon this chief thoroughfare{365} stand several churches, looking seaward. Sailors in these waters used to steer by the meeting-house steeples, which are frequent all along the Cape. Some of those early churches now struggle on with meagre congregations, and a few are abandoned, the wind whistling through the empty belfries. Provincetown has a record of ancient strife between the Orthodox and the Methodists. The established sect resented the intrusion of the new doctrine to such a degree that they made a bonfire of the timber designed for the Methodist building. The heretics effectively retaliated by securing the key to the Orthodox meeting-house, locking out the astonished owners, and taking permanent possession, triumphantly singing Methodist hymns to the Orthodox bass-viol. It was thirty-two years before the discomfited Orthodox rallied sufficiently to build themselves another church.

Journeying from Provincetown, “perched out on a crest of alluvial sand,” up the wrist of the Cape, one sees the land a-making. At first the loose sand drifts like snow. Then the coarse marsh-grasses begin to bind and hold it, low bushes mat their roots about it, and planted tracts of pitch-pine give the shifting{366} waste a real stability. The Pilgrims found, they said,—but perhaps there was a Canaan dazzle in their eyes,—their landing-place well wooded and the soil “a spit’s depth, excellent black earth.” But now all sods and garden-ground must be brought from a distance, and a mulberry or a sycamore, even the most stunted apple-tree that squats and cowers from the wind, is a proud possession. When President Dwight of Yale rode through Truro into Provincetown a century ago, he was amazed at the sterility and bleak desolation of the landscape, half hidden as it was by “the tempestuous tossing of the clouds of sand.” He was told that the inhabitants were required by law to plant every April bunches of beach-grass to keep the sand from blowing. The national government, stirred by the danger to the harbor, afterwards took the matter in hand. Between 1826 and 1838, twenty-eight thousand dollars were expended in an attempt to strengthen the harbor shores by beach-grass. Of late Massachusetts has become aroused to the desolate condition of her Province Lands, and is making a determined effort to redeem them by the planting of trees and by other restorative measures. These blowing sand-dunes have,{367} however, a strange beauty of their own, and the color effects in autumn, given by the low and ragged brush, are of the warmest.

The sand has dealt most unkindly of all with Truro, choking up her harbor, from which a fine fleet of mackerel vessels used to sail. No longer is her rollicking fishing-song, apparently an inheritance from Old England, lifted on the morning breeze:

This town, the Indian Pamet, was formally settled in 1709 by a few English purchasers from Eastham, having been occupied earlier only by irresponsible fishermen and traders. The new planters took hold with energy, waging war against blackbirds and crows, wolves and foxes, for the protection of their little wealth in corn and cattle, while none the less they dug clams, fished by line and net and watched from their lookouts for offshore whales. The Cape plumes itself not a little upon its early proficiency in whaling. In 1690, one Ichabod Paddock, whose name might so easily have been Haddock, went from Yarmouth to Nantucket “to instruct the people in the art of killing whales in boats from the shore.” And when the sea-monster, thus maltreated, withdrew from its New England haunts, the daring whalemen built ships and followed, cruising the Atlantic and Pacific, even the Arctic and Antarctic oceans. But the Revolution put a check on all our maritime enterprises. The Truro fishermen, like the rest, laid by{369} their harpoons, and melted up their mackerel leads for bullets. From one village of twenty-three houses, twenty-eight men gave up their lives for liberty. In religion, too, Truro had the courage of her convictions, building the first Methodist meeting-house on the Cape, the second in New England. The cardinal temptation of Cape Cod is Sunday fishing, and Truro righteousness was never put more sharply to the pinch than in 1834, when a prodigious school of blackfish appeared off Great Hollow one autumnal Sabbath morning. A number of Truro fishermen, from the Grand Banks and elsewhere, were on their way home in boats from Provincetown, when the shining shoulders of hundreds of the great fish were seen moving through the waves. With fortunes in full view, a goodly number of these men shifted into boats which rowed soberly for their destination, while the rest, with eager outcry, rounded up the school, and drove the frightened creatures, with shouts and blows from the oars, like sheep upon the beach. Church-members who took part in the wild chase were brought to trial, but a lurking sympathy in the hearts of their judges saved them from actual expulsion.{370}

This befell within the period of Truro’s highest prosperity. From 1830 to 1855 the wharves were crowded with sloops and schooners, a shipyard was kept busy, and salt was made all along the shore. At the middle of the century, the town had over two thousand inhabitants, but the number has now fallen off by some three fifths. The “turtle-like sheds of the salt-works,” which Thoreau noted, have been long since broken up and sold for lumber. There is weir-fishing still, supplying fresh fish for market and bait for the fishing-fleets of Provincetown and Gloucester. Rods of the black netting may be seen spread over the poverty-grass to dry.

Although the sand of Cape Cod is in some places three hundred feet deep, there is believed to be a backbone of diluvian rock. There is a clay vein, too, which slants across the Cape and crops out at Truro in the so-called Clay Pounds, now crowned by Highland Light, shining two hundred feet above the ocean. This hill of clay thus renders a sovereign service to that dangerous stretch of navigation. It must be borne in mind that Cape Cod runs out straight into the Atlantic for twoscore miles, by the south measurement, and then,{371}

{372}

abruptly turning, juts up another forty to the north. The shifty sand-bars of the Back Side have caught, twisted and broken the hulls of innumerable craft. One gale of wind wrecked eighteen vessels between Race Point, at the extremity of the Cape, and Highland Light. The average width of our crooked peninsula is six miles, but at Truro it narrows to half that distance. Across this strip the storms whirl the flinty sand, until the humblest cottage may boast of ground-glass window-panes. The coast outline is ever changing and the restless dunes show the fantastic carvings of the wind. The houses cuddle down into the wavy hollows, with driftwood stacked at their back doors for fuel, and with worn-out fishnets stretched about the chicken-yards. Here and there a pine-tree abandons all attempt at keeping up appearances and lies flat before the blast. The ploughed fields are as white with sand as so many squares of beach, and the sea-tang is strong in the air. Accustomed, before their harbor failed them, to depend chiefly upon the sea for subsistence, the people of Truro now find it no easy matter to wrest a living from what they have of land. Everything is turned to account, from turnips to{373}

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mayflowers. Along those sand-pits of roads, bordered with thick beds of pink-belled bear-berries, or where the dwarfish pines, their wizened branches hung with gray tags of moss, yellow the knolls, are gathered large quantities of sweetest, pinkest arbutus for the Boston market.

Wellfleet, which drew off from Eastham in 1763, has also fallen on evil days. Perhaps the fishermen have overreached themselves with the greedy seines. There is high controversy on this point between line-fishers and weir-fishers, but the fact stands that fish are growing scarce. Wellfleet had once her hundred vessels at the Banks, her whaling-schooners, built in her own yards from her own timber, and beds of oysters much prized by city palates. There was a time when forty or fifty sail were busy every season transporting Wellfleet shell-fish to Boston. “As happy as a clam” might then have been the device of Wellfleet heraldry. But suddenly the oyster died and, although the beds have been planted anew, the ancient fame has not been fully regained. A town, too, many of whose citizens spent more than half their lives on shipboard, was sure to suffer from our wars, peculiarly{375} disastrous to seafaring pursuits. Early in the Revolution, Wellfleet was constrained to petition for an abatement of her war-tax, stating that her whale-fishery, by which nine tenths of her people lived, was entirely shut off by British gunboats, and that the shell-fish industries, on which the remaining tenth depended, was equally at a standstill. In this distress, as again in the Civil War, Cape Cod sailors took to privateering and made a memorable record. Wellfleet, like Truro, has lessened more than one half in population since 1850, but her shell roads are better than the sand-ruts of her neighbor, and bicyclists and other summer visitors are beginning to find her out. She has her own melancholy charm of barrenness and desolation quite as truly as she has her characteristic dainties of quahaug pie and fried-quahaug cakes. The place abounds in dim old stories, from the colonial legend of the minister’s deformed child, done to death by a dose from its father’s hand, that child whose misshapen little ghost still flits, on moonlight nights, about a certain rosebush, to the many-versioned tale of the buccaneer, ever and anon seen prowling about that point on the Back Side where Sam Bellamy’s pirate-ship was cast{376} away, and stooping to gather the coins flung up to him by the skeleton hands of his drowned shipmates. A volume would not suffice for the stories of these Cape towns. Their very calendar is kept by storms: as the Magee storm of December, 1778, when the government brig General Arnold, commanded by Captain James Magee, went down; or the Mason and Slidell storm of 1862, when the Southern emissaries were brought from Fort Warren to Provincetown, and there, amidst the protest of the elements, yielded up to the British steamer Rinaldo; or the pitiless October gale of 1841, when from Truro alone forty-seven men were swallowed by the sea.

The quiet little town of Eastham, originally “Nawsett,” settled in 1646, only seven years after the three pioneers, Barnstable, Sandwich{377} and Yarmouth, has shared the hard fortunes of the lower Cape. With a remnant of less than five hundred inhabitants, it finds, under the present stress, a resource in asparagus, shipping a carload or two to Boston every morning in the season. To this land industry the ocean consents to contribute, the soil being dressed for “sparrowgrass” with seaweed and shells. But no hardship can deprive Eastham of its history. After the encounter between the Pilgrims and Indians here in 1620, the place was not visited again until the following July, when Governor Bradford sent from Plymouth a boatload of ten men to recover that young scapegrace, John Billington. This boy, whose father, ten years after, was hanged by the colonists for murder, had come near blowing up the Mayflower, in Provincetown harbor, by shooting off a fowling-piece in her cabin, close by an open keg of powder, and, later, must needs lose himself in Plymouth woods. He had wandered into the territory of the Nausets, who, although this was the tribe which had suffered from Hunt’s perfidy, restored the lad unharmed to the English. The Nausets further proved their friendliness by supplying the Pilgrims, in the starving time of 1622, with{378} stores of corn and beans. But the following year, suspecting an Indian plot against the colonists, Myles Standish, that “little chimney soon on fire,” appeared upon the Cape in full panoply of war, executed certain of the alleged conspirators and so terrified the rest that many fled to the marshes and miserably perished.

The traveller up the Cape notices still that Eastham has more of a land look than the lower towns. The soil is darker, small stones appear, and the trees, although still twisted to left and right, as if to dodge a blow, are larger. The Indians had maize-fields there and the site seemed so promising to the Pilgrims that talk sprang up in the early forties of transferring the Plymouth colony thither. As a compromise, several of the old-comers obtained a grant of the Nauset land, and established a branch settlement, soon incorporated as a township{379}. Promptly arose their meeting-house, twenty feet square, with port-holes and a thatch. They secured a full congregation by absence penalties of ten shillings, a flogging or the stocks. One of these sturdy fathers in the faith, Deacon Doane, is said to have lived to the patriarchal age of one hundred and ten, rounding life’s circle so completely that at the end, as at the beginning, he was helplessly rocked in a cradle.

Thoreau was amused over a provision made by the town of Eastham in 1662, that “a part of every whale cast on shore be appropriated for the support of the ministry,” and drew a fancy-picture of the old parsons sitting on the sand-hills in the storms, anxiously watching for their salaries to be rolled ashore over the bars of the Back Side. One of these worthies, Rev. Samuel Treat, whose oratory outroared the stormy surf, shares with Richard Bourne, of Sandwich, the memory of a true pastoral care for the Cape Indians. He was, in return, so well beloved, that, on his death, his wild converts dug a long passage through the remarkably deep snowfall of the time, and bore him on their shoulders down this white archway to his grave. The Revolutionary War{380} was a heavy drain on the resources of the staunch little town, but, with the restoration of peace, whaling and all kinds of deep-sea fishing were resumed, and a tide of prosperity set in. Salt-works were established, and presently Eastham was able to afford such luxuries as a pulpit cushion and a singing-school.

Orleans, set off in 1797 from the southerly portion of Eastham, has an old-fashioned quaintness that is better than business prosperity. Sand has partially closed the harbors, and the population has been dwindling for the past half-century, but the ocean still serves old neighbors as it can with quahaugs and the seaweed, now collected for paper-making. The distinction of being the terminus of the French Atlantic Cable from Brest is in keeping with the name Orleans—a unique instance of a foreign title among these old Cape towns. The early settlers put by the melodious Indian words, Succanessett, Mattacheeset, and the rest, and substituted the dear home names from Devon, Cornwall, Norfolk and Kent. The christening of Brewster, Bourne and Dennis honored severally the Pilgrim elder, the Sandwich friend of the Indians and a Yarmouth pastor; but these are of comparatively recent date. As Wellfleet{381} and Orleans have been cut, on north and south, out of the original Eastham, so were Harwich, Chatham, Dennis, Brewster, once “within the liberties of Yarmouth.”

The history of Yarmouth, too, is so closely allied to the histories of Barnstable and of Sandwich, with her daughter Bourne, that the story of all these may be told as one.

These three initial settlements on the Cape were recognized as townships in 1639. From the outset, the difference in their locations imposed upon them different tasks. Yarmouth, the elbow town of the Cape, bore the brunt of wind and wave; Sandwich kept the border, notably in King Philip’s War, when she guarded the faithful Cape Indians from temptation and received for safe harborage English refugees from the ravaged districts; and Barnstable, the aristocratic sister of the group, made traditions, set examples and produced the Otis family. With Old Yarmouth, the Cape widens. No longer do householders, as at Truro, own land in strips from shore to shore. The soil, too, deepens, and the cows need not with hungry noses brush away the drifted sand to find the grass. On the Back Side is no marked change in aspect. Still pine grove after pine grove{382} adds flavor to the salt air, and where the carpet of needles is trodden through, gleam patches of white sand. The strange reappearance of the Somerset is out-miracled in Old Ship Harbor, where, in 1863, long after the significance of the name had been forgotten, the hull of the Sparrow-Hawk, wrecked there in 1626, on her way from London to Virginia, rose again to view. This portion of the Cape is in excellent repute with pleasure-seekers, and the seaside cottage is ubiquitous, especially in beautiful Chatham, whose ever-changing shore takes the wildest raging of the surf. Harwich, which has gone through the regular stages of whaling, codding, mackerel-fishing and salt-making, cultivates in turn the summer boarder, but somewhat quizzically. Retired sea-captains are not easily overawed even by golf-sticks, and retired sea-captains, in Harwich, are as thick as cranberries. Snuffing the brine, they pace their porches like so many quarter-decks and delight their auditors and themselves with marvellous recitals. The Cape has not proved friendly to manufactures in general. Salt-works and glass-works have come to naught,—but the spinning of sea-yarns is a perennial industry.{383}

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Many of the summer guests prefer the north side of the Cape, where fogs are less frequent, or where, in ancient Indian parlance, old Maushope smokes his pipe less often. Such find in Brewster and Dennis no less delightful colonies of ancient ship-masters, living easily off their sea-hoards. In 1837 that little town of Dennis claimed no fewer than one hundred and fifty skippers sailing from various American ports, and in 1850 it was said that more sea-captains went on foreign voyages from Brewster than from any other place in the United States. Often their wives sailed with them and had thereafter something wider than village gossip to bring to the quilting-and the sewing-circle. It was a great day for the children in the village when a sea-captain came home. From door to door went his frank sailor-gifts, jars of Chinese sweetmeats, shimmering Indian stuffs, tamarinds, cocoanuts, parrots, fans of gay feather, boxes of spicy wood, glowing corals, and such great, whispering shells as Cape Cod beaches never knew. It was a hospitable and merry time, given to savory suppers, picnic clambakes, and all manner of neighborly good-cheer. Even the common dread made for a closer sympathy. Any{385} woman, going softly to her neighbor to break the news of the husband lost in Arctic ice, might in some dark hour drop her head upon that neighbor’s shoulder in hearing of a son drowned off the Banks or slain by South Sea Islanders.

The old town of Yarmouth, dozing thus among children already gray, has many a thing to dream about, when the surf is loud. She remembers the terrible gale of 1635, in which the Thacher family were wrecked upon the island that since has borne their name, the March snow-storm that destroyed the three East Indiamen from Salem, the stranding of the English Jason, and many a tragedy more. Along that treacherous Back Side, lighthouse towers are now closely set, and well-equipped, well-manned life-saving stations have succeeded the rude Charity Houses, the fireplace, wood and matches, straw pallet, and signal-pole which used to give what succor they might to hapless mariners. The old volunteer coast-guard, which rarely failed to pace the beach in storms, is now replaced by a regular patrol, carrying lanterns and red hand-lights and thoroughly drilled in the use of shot-line and breeches-buoy. But still the fierce-blowing{386}

sand cuts their faces to bleeding and still the furious surf makes playthings of their lifeboats, so that manhood has no less heroic opportunity than in the earlier days. The crew at one of these stations, after an exposure of twelve hours on the wintry beach, failed in every effort to launch the surf-boat and had to see the rescue they should have made effected by a crew of fishermen volunteers. The keeper brooded over his disgrace and the following winter wiped out what is known upon the Cape as the “goading slur” by a{387}

{388}

desperate launching in a surf that beat the life from his body.

Ever since the day of the Pilgrims, who made the suggestion, and of George Washington, who furthered the project, there has been talk of a Cape Cod canal to expedite traffic and avert disaster. A channel between Eastham and Orleans was once forced by the sea, and various routes through Yarmouth, Barnstable and Sandwich have been surveyed, and charters granted, but ships still round Race Point. The railroad, however, which was built by slow stages down the Cape and reached Provincetown only a quarter of a century since, has facilitated travel, doing away both with the red-and-yellow mail-coach, which used, a hundred years ago, to clatter through to Boston in two glorious days, and with the packet service of jolly memory. Yarmouth and Barnstable were sharp rivals in these packet trips, Barnstable putting her victories into verse:

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Barnstable has pursued from the outset a course of modest prosperity. She does not ask too much of fortune. If her census-roll has gained only five in the last decade, that is better than losing, as most of the Cape towns have done, and, even so, her numbers rank next to Provincetown. How humble were the beginnings of this sedate and gracious county seat may be learned from the letter of an early citizen, declining Governor Winslow’s appointment to lead an expedition against the Dutch. This quiet colonist, who commanded the Plymouth forces in King Philip’s War, pleads his domestic cares:

An “effeminate or dastardly spirit” would indeed be a novelty in the birthplace of James Otis. But it was not only in face of the Indian and the redcoat that these three old towns showed firm courage. To their glory be it remembered that they withstood the persecutor and bluntly refused to enforce the laws against heresy, so that a special officer had to be sent by Plymouth Court to hunt out and oppress{391} the Quakers. Under his petty tyrannies, the faith of the Friends gained many converts, and Quakerism became permanently established on the Cape.

These upper towns have never depended on the sea as exclusively as those below, and hence the decline of the fisheries has been less disastrous to them. They need industries to hold their young people at home, but the marine manufacture of salt by solar evaporation, the discovery of a Dennis sea-captain, has had its day, and the once famous Sandwich glass-works are now idle. Sheep-raising and cattle-raising were long since abandoned, but while the New England Thanksgiving lasts, cranberry culture bids fair to yield an honest profit. As early as 1677, Massachusetts presented Charles II. (put out of humor by the pine-tree shilling) with three thousand codfish, two hogsheads of samp and ten barrels of cranberries. These last are still good enough for a better king than the Merry Monarch, and cranberry-picking is one of the most picturesque sights on the modern Cape. Hundreds of pickers, gathering by hand or with the newly invented machines, move over a bog in ordered companies. The “summer{392} folks” flock to the fun, and Portuguese, Italians, Swedes, Poles, Finns, Russians, troop down from Boston and over from New Bedford for the brief cranberry season, or they may come earlier to join the blueberry-pickers that dot the August hills. The bogs are easily made from the wastes of swamp, which are drained, sanded, planted and given three years to grow a solid mat of vines. The crop from a few acres brings dollars enough to carry the thrifty Cape Codder through the year. Rents are of the lowest, and the shrewd old seaman who tends his own garden, salts his own pork, raises his own chickens, milks his own cow and occasionally “goes a-fishin’,” while his wife cooks and sews, and “ties tags” for pin-money, has no heavy bills to meet. There is so little actual poverty in these towns that the poorhouse is often rented.

Even Mashpee, once the Indian reservation, but now a little township peopled by half-breeds, mulattoes and a sprinkling of whites, grows tidier and more capable every year. The aborigines of Cape Cod have left slight traces save the melodious names that cling to bay and creek. Arrow-heads are scattered about, and now and then the plough turns up one of{393} the clam-shell hoes with which the Nausets used to till their maize-fields. The Praying Indians of the Cape deserve our memory, for they were always faithful to their English neighbors. When the first regiment was raised in Barnstable County for the Revolutionary War, twenty-two Mashpees enlisted, of whom but one came home. A Praying Indian of Yarmouth has won a place in New England song,—Nauhaught the Deacon, who, hunger-pinched, restored the tempting purse of gold to the Wellfleet skipper and received a tithe “as an honest man.”

The beauty of the upper Cape, culminating in the lovely town of Falmouth, is largely rural and sylvan. A system of dyking has, within the last fifty years, converted much of the salt marsh to good, fresh meadow, and, from Orleans up, the look of the country is more and more agricultural. Portions of Yarmouth are well wooded, and in Barnstable, Sandwich and Falmouth are depths of forest where the fox and the deer run wild. The wolf alone has been exterminated, and that with no small trouble, the Cape finally proposing, after grisly heads had been nailed on all her meeting-houses, to build a high fence along her upper{394} border and shut the wolves out. But Plymouth and Wareham objected, from their side of the question, to having the wolves shut in, and this ingenious scheme had to be abandoned. These woodlands are dotted in profusion with silvery ponds, which the Fish Commission at Wood’s Holl keeps well stocked. Often the north side, as in Sandwich, is skirted by long stretches of unreclaimed marsh, over which the heron flaps, with the distinguished air of an old resident, and from which the sweet whistle of the marsh quail answers the “Bob White” of the woods. There is plenty of rock in this landscape, the backbone of the Cape jutting through. Barnstable proudly exhibits four hundred feet of wall, two feet in width, wrought from a single mass of granite found within her limits. Falmouth arbutus grows pinkest about the base of a big boulder known as City Rock, and a field of tumbled stones upon her Quisset road is accounted for on the hypothesis that here the Devil, flying with his burden over to Nantucket, “broke his apron-string.” The trees, too, are of goodly size and stand erect. Elms, silver-leaf poplars, balm of Gileads, great sycamores, spotted with iron-rust lichen,{395}

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and willows, lemon yellow in the sun, shade the waysides. Golden-winged woodpeckers and red-shouldered blackbirds dart to and fro, while the abundance of jaunty martin-houses shows that Cape Cod hospitality is not limited to the human.

The quiet, white homesteads, with green blinds, broad porches and sometimes a cupola for the sea-view, stand in a sweet tranquillity and dignity that should abash the showy summer residence. But these old-fashioned homes keep up with the times. Against the well-sweep leans the bicycle. The dooryards are blue with myrtle, or pink with rose-bushes, or gay with waving daffodils. Old age is in fashion on the Cape. When twilight fades, the passer-by sees gathered about the early evening lamp the white heads of those whose “chores” are done. And though death comes at last, the cemeteries are so tenderly kept that the grave is robbed of half its dread. Even in the oldest burial-grounds, where the worn, scarred stones lean with the privilege of age, the staring death’s-heads are cozily muffled in moss, and “Patience, wife of Experience,” sleeps under a coverlet of heartsease.

All the way from Provincetown to Falmouth{397}

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are certain briny signals,—a ship’s figure-head, marble steps whose stone was washed ashore as wreckage, lobster-pots, herring-nets, conch-shells set on lintels, a discontented polar bear pacing a stout-paled yard, ruffling cockatoos, boats converted into flower-boxes, whales’ vertebræ displayed for ornament, garden-beds marked out with scallop-shells, everywhere the ship-shape look, the sailor’s handy rig, and everywhere the codfish used for weathercocks. In Barnstable court-house a mammoth cod is suspended from the ceiling. Vistas of ocean outlook, too, from under arches of green branches, flash upon the eye, the salty flavor is not lost in woodland fragrances, and the rolling hills and wavy pastures take their model from the sea.

Of the old-timey features of the Cape, no one is more impressive than the witch-like windmill with its peaked cap, outspread arms and slanting broomstick, reminding us that the Pilgrims came from Holland. Some of these antique mills have been bought by summer residents and moved to their estates for curiosities, but the one at Orleans was in use as late as 1892, taking its profitable toll of two quarts out of the bushel.{399}

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The general history of Falmouth but repeats the story of her sister towns. The first settlers are believed to have come in boats from Barnstable, in 1660. They encamped for the night among the flags of Consider Hatch’s Pond, where a child was born and, in recognition of the rushes that sang his earliest lullaby, named Moses. The town was duly incorporated in 1686, next after Eastham, and has steadfastly stood for piety, wisdom and patriotism. She admitted the Quakers, and if one of her deacons held a negro slave, as colonial deacons often did, poor Cuffee was at least brought to the communion table. It is Truro that contains “Pomp’s Lot,” where the stolen African, with loaf of bread and jug of water at his feet for sustenance on his new journey, escaped slavery by hanging. As for learning, it was Sandwich Academy which the Cape towns held in awe, but our Falmouth men, like the rest, half sailor, half farmer and all theologian, had a genuine culture, born of keen-eyed voyaging and of lonely thought, that kept the air about them tingling with intelligence. When it comes to war stories, if Provincetown, from her end of the Cape, can tell of her boy in blue that went down with the Cumberland,{401}

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and her naval captain at Manila, Falmouth can recall that twice she was bombarded by the British and twice defended by the valor of her sons, and when the Civil War broke out, with the larger share of her able-bodied men at sea, she yet sent more than her quota of soldiers to the front.

Within the last quarter-century, Falmouth has entered on new activities, largely due to the increasing fame of Buzzard’s Bay as a summer resort. The story goes that the town had all gone to sleep, but somebody woke one day and painted his front fence, and forthwith his neighbors, not to be outdone, painted theirs, and their houses too, and the new era came in with a rush. But whatever good fortune the future has in store, Paul Revere’s bell, that sounds from her central steeple, will hold Falmouth true to her traditions; for these Cape towns, simple as their record is, have worked out on unconsciously heroic lines the essential principles of a God-fearing, self-respecting democracy.{403}

TO every one familiar with the history of the old Bay State, the name of Deerfield naturally brings to mind two diverse pictures: one, the giant trees of the primeval forest under whose sombre shade the white-haired Eliot prayed, and the sluggish stream beside whose banks he gathered its roving denizens for a test of civilization; the other, that scene of woe and desolation, when, under a wintry sky, the glare of burning houses lighted up a wide expanse of snow, shaded by dark columns of wavering smoke, and splashed here and there with red. The first picture suggests possibilities, the second results. The connecting link between the two is the fact that out of the labors of Eliot on the river Charles{404} grew directly the settlement of the English on the Pocumtuck.

Back of all was the interest in the newly discovered heathen, which sent currents of gold from England across the seas to the Indian missions. Of all these that of the Apostle Eliot was the head and front. His first attempt, at Newton, was a failure, from its proximity to a Christian town. On his petition, the General Court granted him a tract in the wilderness where he and the uncontaminated native could come face to face with the God of Nature. This tract was claimed by the town of Dedham, and, after a successful legal contest, the General Court gave the claimant in lieu of it the right to select eight thousand acres in any unoccupied part of the colony. After wide search this grant was laid out on Pocumtuck River, and the selection was ratified by the Court, October 11, 1665.

This power, however, was only leave to purchase of the native owners. The laws recognized the rights of the Indians to the soil, and no Englishman was allowed to buy or even receive as a gift any land from an Indian without leave of the General Court. The oft-repeated slander that the fair purchase of land from the{405}

{406}

Indians was peculiar to William Penn, can be refuted in general by a study of our early statute books, and in particular by an examination of the original deeds from the Indians, now in our Memorial Hall.

It will be seen by these deeds that the Indians reserved the right of hunting, fishing and gathering nuts—all, in fact, that was of any real value to them. The critic says that in such trades the price was nominal and that the Indian was outrageously cheated. Fortunately, in this case existing evidence proves that Dedham paid the natives more than the English market price, in hard cash, and besides gave one acre at Natick for every four here.

The money to pay for the eight thousand acres was raised by a tax on the landholders of Dedham, the owners paying in proportion to the number of shares or “cow commons” held; and their ownership of the new territory was in the same proportion. There were five hundred and twenty-two shares in all, held in common, covering the whole of Dedham.

In 1671 a committee from Dedham laid out highways, set apart tracts for the support of the ministry, laid out a “Town Plott,” and large sections of plow-land and of mow-land.{407} In each of these sections individuals were assigned by lot their respective number of cow commons. Later the woodlands were divided in the same manner. For generations this land was bought and sold, not by the acre, but by the cow common, fractions thereof being sheep or goat commons, five of these being a unit.

The “Town Plott,” laid out in 1671, is the Old Deerfield Street of to-day.

The first settlers at Pocumtuck were not, as generally supposed, the original Dedham owners. The shares of the latter had been for years on the market, and many had passed to outsiders. But only picked men were allowed to become proprietors. This fact is illustrated by votes like the following:

“Dec. 4, 1671. John Plimpton is allowed to purchase land of John Bacon at Pawcumtucke provided that the said John Plimpton doe settle thereupon in his owne person.” On the same day the request of Daniel Weld for leave to purchase was refused. No reason was assigned, and Mr. Weld was admitted soon after.

“Feb. 16, 1671-2. Lieft. Fisher is alowed libertie to sell 6 cow common rights and one{408} sheepe common right at Paucomtuck to Nathaniel Suttlife of Medfield.”

The pioneer settler here was Samuel Hinsdell, of Medford. He had bought shares, and, impatient of delay in making the division, he became a squatter, and in 1669 turned the first furrow in the virgin soil of Pocumtuck. Samson Frary was a close second, if not a contemporary; “Samson Frary’s cellar” is mentioned in the report of the Committee, May, 1671.{409}

The settlers increased rapidly. May 7, 1673, the General Court gave them “Liberty of a Towneship,” which is Deerfield’s only “Act of Incorporation.” Soon after, a rude meeting-house was built, and Samuel Mather served as a minister among them.

A loose sheet of paper has been found dated Nov. 7, 1673, with a record of a town-meeting. This was signed by the following, who must be called the earliest settlers:

The action of this meeting was chiefly on the division of land, but it was voted that “all charges respecting the ministers sallerye or maintenance bee leuied and raised on lands for the present.” Another page shows a meeting{410} November 17, 1674, when the plantation was called Deerfield. We have no clue as to why or by what authority it was so called.

The newcomers found the meadows free from trees, with a rich soil which soon yielded abundantly of wheat, rye, peas, oats, beans, flax, grass and Indian corn. The meadows were enclosed with a common fence to keep out the common stock, which roamed at will on the common land outside.

The war of 1675 is called “Philip’s War” because Philip was able to incite the tribes to hostilities against the whites, rather than because it was carried on under his direction. A seer and a patriot Philip may have been, but he was not a warrior. It is not known that he was ever in a single conflict.

When the first blood was shed at far-away Swanzey, in June, 1675, the men of Pocumtuck were not disquieted. With the Indians about them they had lived for years in perfect harmony. But when the blow fell on Captains Beers and Lothrop under the shadow of their own Wequamps, war became a reality. As a measure of defense two or three houses were slightly fortified, and none too soon. The village was marked for destruction. On the{411} morning of September 1, 1675, the Indians gathered in the adjoining woods, awaiting the hour when the men, scattered about the meadows at their work could be shot down one by one, leaving the women and children to the mercy of the Indians. This plan was frustrated. The Indians were discovered early in the morning by James Eggleston, while looking for his horse. Eggleston was shot and the alarm given. The people fled to the forts. These were easily defended by the men, but beyond the range of their muskets ruin and devastation held sway.

Deerfield was the first town in the Connecticut Valley to be assaulted, and the alarm was general. The news reached Hadley the same day while the inhabitants were gathered in the meeting-house observing a fast; “and,” says Mather, “they were driven from the holy service they were attending by a most sudden and violent alarm which routed them the whole day after.” Their alarm and rout were needless; no enemy appeared. Yet these words of the historian are the narrow foundation on which Stiles and others gradually built up the romantic myth of Goffe, as the guardian and deliverer of Hadley.{412}

September 2, the tactics at Deerfield were successfully repeated by the Indians at Northfield. Eight men were killed in the meadows, but enough were left in the village to hold the stockade. September 4, Captain Richard Beers with his company who were marching to their relief, were surprised, and himself and twenty men were slain. September 5, Major Robert Treat, with a superior force, brought off the beleaguered survivors.

Sunday, September 12, another blow fell upon Deerfield. The place had now a garrison under Captain Samuel Appleton. The Indians could see from the hills the soldiers gathering in one of the forts for public worship. They laid an ambush to waylay the soldiers and people returning after service to the north fort, but all escaped their fire save one, who was wounded. Nathaniel Cornbury, left to sentinel the north fort, was captured, and never again heard from. Appleton rallied his men, and the marauders, after inflicting much loss on the settlers, drew off to Pine Hill.

But a sadder blow was to fall upon the dwellers in this little vale. The accumulated result of their industry and toil was to disappear in flame and ashes. In their wanton destruction{413} the Indians had spared the wheat in the field for their own future supply; “3000 bushels standing in stacks,” says Mather. This wheat was needed at headquarters to feed the gathering troops, and Colonel Pynchon, the Commander-in-Chief, gave orders to have it threshed and sent to Hadley. Captain Thomas Lothrop, with his company, was sent to convoy the teams transporting it.

September 18, 1675, “that most fatal day, the saddest that ever befel New England,” says a contemporary, “Captain Lothrop, with his choice company of young men, the very flower of the county of Essex,” marched boldly down the street, across South Meadows, up Long Hill, into the woods stretching away to Hatfield Meadows. Confident in his strength, scorning the enemy, Captain Lothrop pushed on through the narrow path, with not a flanker or vanguard thrown out. Extending along his left lay a swampy thicket through which crept a nameless brook. Gradually, the swamp narrowed, and turned to the right across the line of march. At this spot the combined force of the enemy lay in ambush, and into this trap marched Lothrop and his men. While the teams were slowly dragging their loads through{414} the mire, it is said the soldiers laid down their guns to pluck and eat the grapes which grew in abundance by the way. Be this true or not, at this spot they were surprised and stunned by the fierce war-whoop, the flash and roar of muskets with their bolts of death. Captain Lothrop and many of his command fell at the first fire. The men of Pocumtuck sank, the “Flower of Essex” wilted before the blast, and—

The sluggish stream was baptized for aye, “Bloody Brook.”

Captain Samuel Moseley, who was searching the woods for Indians, hearing the firing, was soon on the ground. Too late to save, he did his best to avenge; he charged repeatedly, scattering the enemy, who swarmed as often as dispersed. But he defied all their efforts to surround him. His men exhausted with their long efforts, Moseley was about to retire, when just in the nick of time Major Treat appeared, with a force of English and Mohegans. The enemy were driven westward and were pursued until nightfall. The united{415} force then marched to Deerfield, bearing their wounded, and leaving the dead where they fell.

Mather says, “this was a black and fatal day wherein there was eight persons made widows and six and twenty children made orphans, all in one little Plantation.” That plantation was Deerfield, and these were the heavy tidings which the worn-out soldiers carried to the stricken survivors of the hamlet. Of the seventeen fathers and brothers who left them in the morning, not one returned to tell the tale. The next morning, Treat and Moseley marched to Bloody Brook and buried the slain—“64 men in one dreadful grave.” The names of sixty-three are known, and also of seven wounded. John Stebbins, ancestor of the Deerfield tribe of that name, is the only man in Lothrop’s command known to have escaped unhurt.

The reported force of the enemy was a thousand warriors, and their loss ninety-six. This must be taken with a grain of allowance.

Deerfield was now considered untenable, and the poor remnant of her people were scattered in the towns below.

October 5, Springfield was attacked. The Indians laid the same plan as at Deerfield and Northfield. Only notice given by a friendly{416} Indian during the night before saved the town from total destruction. The assailants were Indians who had lived for generations neighbors and friends of the Springfield people. On the 4th they had made earnest protestations of friendship, on the strength of which the garrison had marched to Hadley. This deliberate treachery was probably planned by Philip.

October 19, a large party made an attack on Hatfield, but was repulsed.

As the spring of 1676 advanced, a large body of Indians collected at Peskeompskut for the purpose of catching a year’s stock of shad and salmon. Parties from thence occasionally harassed the settlers below, who knew that when the fishing season was over, the enemy would constantly infest the valley, and watch every chance to kill the unprotected. They therefore determined to take the initiative, and at nightfall of May 18, a party of about a hundred and fifty men under Captain William Turner made a night march, surprised the camp at daylight the next morning and destroyed many of the enemy.

The homeward march was delayed so long that Indians from neighboring camps began to appear. A released captive reported that{417} Philip with a thousand warriors was at hand, and as the enemy swarmed on rear and flank, the retreat became almost a panic. The straggling and the wounded were cut off. Captain Turner was shot while crossing Green River, about a mile from the battle-field, and the party, under Captain Samuel Holyoke, reached Hatfield with the loss of forty-two men.

The warring Indians never recovered from the blow at Peskeompskut. Besides their slain, they lost their year’s stock of fish, and the hundreds of acres of Indian corn they had planted with the assurance of a permanent abode in that region. The broken, disheartened clans drifted aimlessly eastward. They quarrelled among themselves. Philip, with a few followers, skulked back to Pokanoket, where he fell, August 12, 1676. The war ended soon after.

In the spring of 1677, some of the old settlers came back and planted their deserted fields; preparations for building were well advanced by some of the more venturesome, when, September 19, they were surprised by Ashpelon with a party of Indians from Canada, and all were either killed or captured.

In 1679 the General Court passed an act regulating the resettlement of deserted towns,{418} requiring the consent of certain authorities who should prescribe

By virtue of this act a committee was appointed under whose direction a resettlement of the town began in the spring of 1682. Induced by grants of land, new settlers appeared, and the plantation progressed rapidly. In 1686, sixty Proprietors are named. This year, young John Williams appears on the scene as candidate for the ministry; and, September 21, he received a “call.” He was married July 20, 1687, to Eunice, daughter of Rev. Eleazer Mather, of Northampton. October 18, 1688, he was ordained, and the First Church was organized.

The second meeting-house was built in 1684, the third in 1695, the fourth, a very elaborate one, in 1729, the fifth, the present brick structure, in 1824, and it is still occupied by the First Church. In all these, save the last, the worshippers were “seated” by authority.{419}

In 1688, on the news of the Revolution in England, the seizure of Andros in Boston and the call for the election of representatives to organize a new government for the Colony, the men of Deerfield acted promptly. Lieutenant Thomas Wells, a commissioned officer under Andros, was selected to represent the town, and the selectmen sent to Boston a certificate to that effect. These men were fully aware{420} that in the case of a failure of the movement, the vindictive Andros would wreak his vengeance upon all concerned. Shrewd men were at the fore, and Randolph himself might search the town records in vain for any trace of these proceedings or other treasonable action.

During King William’s War, the town was harassed by the enemy; drought and insects ruined the crops, and a fatal distemper prevailed. There was question of deserting the place, but bolder counsels controlled. Baron Castine with an army from Canada attempted a surprise of the town, September 15, 1694, but he was discovered just in time to close the gates, and was driven back with small loss to the defenders. Another army organized in Canada for the same purpose turned back on being discovered by scouts. During this trial Deerfield suffered great losses, but pluck carried her through.

Queen Anne’s War broke out in 1702. The population here was about three hundred souls. The fortifications on Meeting-house Hill were strengthened, and the house of the commander, Captain Wells, about forty rods south, was palisaded. In May, 1703, Lord Cornbury, Governor of New York, sent word that he had{421}

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learned through his spies of an expedition fitting out against Deerfield. Soon after, Major Peter Schuyler sent a similar warning to Rev. John Williams. These warnings were emphasized in July by news that the Eastern Indians had made a simultaneous attack on all the settlements in Maine, only six weeks after signing a treaty of peace with the most solemn declarations of eternal friendship. Twenty soldiers were sent here to reinforce the home guard, and all were on the alert; two men, however, were captured October 8, and were carried to Canada. On the alarm which followed sixteen more men were sent here. October 21, Rev. John Williams writes, on behalf of the town, to Governor Dudley:

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Nothing can add to this simple and pathetic statement.

The months dragged slowly on, and no enemy. The deep winter snows seemed a safe barrier against invasion. The people, breathing more freely, gradually resumed their wonted ways; but dark clouds loomed up, all unseen, just beyond the northern horizon. In the early morning of February 29, 1703-4, like a thunderbolt from a clear sky, an army of French and Indians under Hertel de Rouville burst upon the sleeping town, and killed or captured nearly all of the garrison and inhabitants within the fort. Through criminal carelessness the snow had been allowed to drift against the palisades, until, being covered with a hard crust, it afforded an easy and noiseless entrance, so that the enemy were dispersed among the houses before they were discovered.

The captives were collected in the house of Ensign John Sheldon, which, being fired by the enemy only on their retreat, was easily saved, and stood until 1848. It was popularly considered the only one not burned, and has gone{425}

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into history as the “Old Indian House.” Its front door, hacked by the Indians, is now preserved in Memorial Hall. By sunrise the torch and tomahawk had done their work. The blood of forty-nine murdered men, women and children reddened the snow. Twenty-nine men, twenty-four women and fifty-eight children were made captive, and in a few hours the spoil-encumbered enemy were on their three-hundred miles’ march over the desolate snows to Canada. Twenty of the captives were murdered on the route, one of them Eunice Williams, wife of the minister. The spot where she fell is marked by a monument of enduring granite.

The desolated town was at once made a military post, and strongly garrisoned. Of the survivors, the men were impressed into the service, and the non-combatants sent to the towns below. Persistent efforts were made to recover the captives. Ensign Sheldon was sent three times to Canada on this errand. One by one, and against great odds, most of the surviving men and women were recovered; but a large proportion of the children remained in Canada. Many of their descendants have been traced by Miss Baker, author of True Stories{427} of New England Captives, among them some of the most distinguished men and women of Canadian history.

The inhabitants of Deerfield gradually returned to their desolate hearthstones and abandoned fields, and held their own during the war, but not without severe suffering and a considerable loss of life. Peace was established by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.

Nine years of quiet followed, in which the town prospered. The Indians mingled freely with the people, bartering the products of their hunting for English goods. A permanent peace was hoped for, but this hope was blasted on the outbreak of the Eastern Indians in 1722. Incited by the Canadians, the northern tribes joined in the war; and Father Rasle’s war brought the usual frontier scenes of fire and carnage; the trading Indians being the most effective leaders or guides for marauding parties. Many Deerfield men were in the service, notably as scouts. Inured to hardship, skilled in woodcraft, they were more than a match for the savage in his own haunts and in his own methods of warfare.

In 1729, before the new meeting-house was finished, the people were called to mourn the{428} death of their loved and revered pastor, Rev. John Williams, so widely known as “The Redeemed Captive.” His successor was Rev. Jonathan Ashley, who was ordained in 1732 and died in 1780.

Rev. Stephen Williams, a son of Rev. John Williams, the first pastor, was born in Deerfield in 1693, taken captive to Canada in 1704,{429} redeemed in 1705, graduated at Harvard in 1713, settled as minister at Longmeadow in 1716, dying there in 1782; he was Chaplain in the Louisburg expedition in 1745, and in the regiment of Col. Ephraim Williams in his fatal campaign in 1755, and again in the Canadian campaign of 1756. His portrait, reproduced on page 428, was painted about 1748; it is now in the Memorial Hall of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, within fourscore rods of the spot where the original was born, and whence he was carried into captivity.

On the closing of Father Rasle’s war the settlement expanded; trade and home manufactures flourished. Deerfield remained no longer the frontier town of the valley, and the brunt of the next border war (of 1743) was felt by the outlying settlements. The one sad blow upon this town fell at a little hamlet called The Bars. August 25, 1746, the families of Samuel Allen and John Amsden, while working in a hay-field on Stebbins Meadow, with a small guard, were surprised by a party of Indians from Canada, and five men were killed, one girl wounded and one boy captured. This followed close on the fall of Fort Massachusetts, and danger of French invasion was{430} felt to be imminent. Active measures were taken for defense; the forts were repaired and the woods filled with scouts.

The closing war with France found Deerfield more strongly bulwarked, and still less exposed to attack. No blood was shed within her narrowed bounds. Her citizens held prominent positions, and did their part in the campaigns which resulted in the conquest of Canada and the consequent immunity from savage depredations. The nest destroyed, the sting of the hornets was no longer felt or feared. The last raid on Massachusetts soil is described in the following mutilated despatch to the military authorities in Deerfield:

The most important civil events of this{431} period were the divisions of the township. In 1753 the Green River District, which included what is now Greenfield and Gill, was made a distinct municipality. The next year the construction of a bridge over the Pocumtuck River at Cheapside was a prominent issue; the discussion ended in establishing a ferry at the north end of Pine Hill in 1758. That year the people in the vicinity of Sugar Loaf petitioned the General Court—but without success—for liberty to form a ministerial and educational connection with the town of Sunderland, and to be exempted from paying certain town taxes in consequence. In 1767 the inhabitants of Deerfield-Southwest were set off into a town named Conway; and Deerfield-Northwest became the town of Shelburne in 1768. The same year Bloody Brook people caught the division fever, but it did not carry them off.

A permanent peace being settled and an unstable currency fixed on a firm cash basis, business projects multiplied, and Deerfield became the centre of exchange and supply for a large territory. The mechanics, or “tradesmen” as they were called, and their apprentices, rivalled in numbers the agricultural population. Here were found the gunsmith, blacksmith,{432} nailer and silversmith, the maker of snowshoes and moccasins, the tanner, currier, shoemaker and saddler, the pillion, knapsack and wallet-maker, the carpenter and joiner, the clapboard and shingle-maker, the makers of wooden shovels, corn-fans, flax-brakes, hackels, looms and spinning-wheels, cart-ropes and bed-lines, and pewter buttons, the tailor, hatter, furrier, feltmaker, barber and wigmaker, the cartwright, millwright, cabinet-maker, watchmaker, the brickmaker and mason, the miller, the carder, clothier, fuller, spinner, weaver of duck and common fabrics, the potter, the gravestone-cutter, the cooper, the potash-maker, the skilled forger who turned out loom and plow irons, farm and kitchen utensils. There were doctors and lawyers, the judge and the sheriff; storekeepers were many, and tavern-keepers galore. To all these the old account-books in Memorial Hall bear testimony.

Many leading men held commissions from the King in both civil and military service. These were rather a distinctive class, holding their heads quite high, and when the Revolution broke out they were generally loyal to the King, making heavy odds against the Whigs. But new leaders came to the front, who, so far{433} as they had character and force, held their own after the war, and the old Tory leaders were relegated to the rear.

At the opening of the Revolutionary War the parties were nearly equal in numbers; on one yea and nay test vote there was a tie. Excitement ran high. In 1774 the “Sons of Liberty” erected a Liberty Pole, and at the same time a “Tory Pole,” whatever that might be. The mob spirit was rampant. Through it the fires of patriotism found vent; but it was always under the control of the leaders, and its most common office was to “humble the Tories,” and compel them to sign obnoxious declarations of neutrality, or of submission to the will of the Committees of Safety and Correspondence. A Tory of this period wrote: “Oh Tempora, all nature seems to be in confusion; every person in fear of what his Neighbor may do to him. Such times never was seen in New England.”

In October, 1774, a company of minute-men was organized here as part of a regiment under the Provincial Congress. November 14, staff-officers were chosen. David Field, colonel, and David Dickinson, major, were both of Deerfield. December 5, the town raised{434} money to buy ammunition by selling lumber from its woodland. January 5, 1775, an emissary from General Gage was here, advising the Tories to go to Boston. “The standard will be set up in March,” he said, “and those who do not go in and lay down their arms may meet with bad luck.” He was discovered, but had the good luck to escape a mob; another agent who came a few days later was not so fortunate.

But the culmination of all the secret machinations and open preparations was at hand. April 20, at a town-meeting, votes were passed to pay wages to the minute-men for what they had done; “to encourage them in perfecting themselves in the Military Art,” provision was made for “practicing one half-day in each week.”

The voters could hardly have left the meeting-house, when the sound of a galloping horse was heard, and the hoarse call, “To arms! To arms!” broke upon the air. The horse bloody with spurring and the rider covered with dust brought the news of Concord and Lexington. The half-day drills had done their work. Before the clock in the meeting-house steeple struck the midnight hour, fifty minute-men,{435} under Captain Jonas Locke, Lieutenant Thomas Bardwell and Lieutenant Joseph Stebbins, were on the march to Cambridge. This company was soon broken up; Captain Locke entered the Commissary Department, while Lieutenant Stebbins enlisted a new company, with which he assisted General Putnam in constructing the redoubt on Bunker Hill, and in its defense the next day, the ever-glorious 17th of June. One Deerfield man was killed and several were wounded.

Independence Day should be celebrated, in Deerfield, June 26, for on that day in 1776 the town

Here was treason proclaimed and recorded, and every voter was exposed to its penalty. Ten days later the Continental Congress issued the world-stirring Declaration of Independence.{436}

On Burgoyne’s invasion in 1777 a company under Captain Joseph Stebbins and Lieutenant John Bardwell marched for Bennington. They were too late for the battle at Walloomsack, and found the meeting-house filled with Stark’s Hessian prisoners. But they had their share in the work and glory of rounding up and capturing the proud soldiers of Burgoyne.

Deerfield had statesmen as well as soldiers. May 1, 1780, the town met to consider the new Constitution of Massachusetts; the clerk read the instrument “paragraph by paragraph with pauses between.” After due discussion, a committee was chosen to “peruse the Constitution ... and make such objections to it as they think ought to be made.” Three town-meetings were held, the committee reported, and finally a vote was passed “not to accept the third Article in the Declaration of Rights,” and that a candidate for governor must “Declare himself of the Protestant Religion” instead of “Christian Religion.” The term of eight years instead of fifteen was voted as the time when the Constitution should be revised. With these changes, our civic wisdom approved of this important State paper.

Deerfield did her full duty in furnishing her{437}

quota of men and supplies through the war. Occasionally, in the later years of the struggle, the Tories temporarily obstructed the necessary town legislation. Some of these soon found{438} themselves behind the bars, and others in enforced silence under penalty of like restraint. The minister, Mr. Ashley, who had been firm in his loyalty, died in 1780, and the Tories lost one of their strongest supports. Not until 1787 could the town unite upon his successor, when Rev. John Taylor was ordained. The uprising called Shays’ Rebellion did much to harmonize the warring factions, as all united to put it down. Three companies, under Captains Joseph Stebbins, Samuel Childs and Thomas W. Dickinson, were sent to the field of action.

From this time, harmony prevailed, and the career of the town was that of an industrious, hard-working, prosperous, intellectual people. Libraries and literary societies were established, which are still flourishing. Deerfield Academy was founded in 1797, and endowed largely through the liberality of the citizens. Its influence was felt for generations, as its pupils from far and wide were scions of leading families. Among its faculty and graduates may be named men of national reputation, in the scientific, the historical, the ecclesiastical, the military, the artistic and the industrial world.

Failing health obliged Mr. Taylor to resign;{439}

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and in 1807 the Rev. Samuel Willard succeeded him in the ministry, when, in the separation of the Congregational churches, Deerfield led the van on the liberal side.

The political storms of the first two decades of the century raged here with strength and vigor. In the War of 1812 a “Professor of the Art of War” was added to the faculty of the Deerfield Academy, and a Peace Party circulated their protesting publications.

Deerfield was early at the front in the antislavery agitation, and in the war lost some of her best blood. The names of her dead in that righteous war are carved on a fitting monument pointing aloft from the midst of her ancient training-field.

One great attraction in the old town is the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, chartered in 1870. It owns and occupies the old academy building, which it secured when the new Free Dickinson Academy was established in 1878. Its museum occupies the entire structure, and contains an exhaustive, characteristic collection of the implements, utensils and general household belongings of the colonial days; and also of the original lords of the valley, the Pocumtuck Indians.{441}

In the ante-railroad days, Cheapside, at the head of Pocumtuck River navigation, was a thriving business village, with large imports of foreign wet and dry goods, and large exports of lumber, woodenware and brooms; Deerfield was long famous for its stall-fed beef, as many a New York and Boston epicure did testify; but the advent of the iron horse soon brought about the departure of the fall boat, and the passing of the stall-fed ox. The old town is no longer a centre of political power, or of trade and manufactures. The generous additions of territory to her original Grant have been bestowed upon the children of her loins, now flourishing towns about her. The advent of factories has absorbed one by one her multifarious mechanical industries. Her young men and maidens are seeking elsewhere spheres of action in fields till now undreamed of.

But Old Deerfield still retains much of her best. Still, as of old, she is an intellectual centre. Still beautifully situated, she lies in the embrace of the broad green meadows, with here and there a gleam of silver from the sinuous Pocumtuck. Her ancient houses, shadowed by towering elms, hoary with age, her charming{442} wooded heights, her romantic gorges and tumbling brooks, her restful quiet, her famous past, all in harmony with the thought and feeling of her inhabitants, still attract alike men and women of letters, the artist and the historical student.{443}

THE Isle of Peace lies cradled in the wide arms of a noble bay. Fifteen miles long and from four to five miles in width, its shape is not unlike that of an heraldic dragon, laid at ease in the blue waters, with head pointed to the southwest. From this head to the jutting cape which does duty as the left claw of the beast, the shore is a succession of bold cliffs, broken by coves and stretches of rocky shingle, and in two places by magnificent curving beaches, upon which a perpetual surf foams and thunders. Parallel ridges of low hills run back from the sea. Between these lie ferny valleys, where wild roses grow in thickets, and such shy flowers as love solitude and a sheltered situation spread a carpet for the spring and early summer. On the farther{444} uplands are thrifty farms, set amid orchards of wind-blown trees. Ravines, each with its thread of brook, cut their way from these higher levels to the water-line. Fleets of lilies whiten the ponds, of which there are many on the island; and over all the scene, softening every outline, tingeing and changing the sunlight, and creating a thousand beautiful effects forever unexpected and forever renewed, hangs a thin veil of shifting mist. This the sea-wind, as it journeys to and fro, lifts and drops, and lifts again, as one raises a curtain to look in at the slumber of a child, and, having looked, noiselessly lets it fall.

The Indians, with that fine occasional instinct which is in such odd contrast to other of their characteristics, gave the place its pretty name. Aquidneck, the Isle of Peace, they called it. To modern men it is known as the island of Rhode Island, made famous the land over by the town built on its seaward extremity—the town of Newport.

It is an old town, and its history dates back to the early days of the New England colony. City, it calls itself, but one loves better to think of it as a town, just as the word “avenue,” now so popular, is in some minds{445}

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forever translated into the simpler equivalent, “street.” As the veiling mists gather and shift, and then, caught by the outgoing breeze, float seaward again, we catch glimpses, framed, as it were, between the centuries, quaint, oddly differing from each other, but full of interest. The earliest of these glimpses dates back to an April morning in 1524. There is the cliff-line, the surf, the grassy capes tinged with sun, and in the sheltered bay a strange little vessel is dropping her anchor. It is the caravel of Vezzerano, pioneer of French explorers in these northern waters, and first of that great tide of “summer visitors” which has since followed in his wake. How he was received, and by whom, Mr. Parkman tells us:

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