The second claimant is Mary Chilton, a maiden who subsequently became the wife of John Winslow of Plymouth, and the mother of a large family inheriting the most distinguished traits of the Pilgrims, with an honorable name. The husband of Mary Chilton removed after a time from the Old Colony to Boston, where the family tomb, with its arms, may be seen in King's Chapel Yard.

It is a somewhat curious fact that a precisely similar tradition exists with respect to the landing at Boston, which runs to the effect that, being then a romping girl, Anne Pollard declared that she would be the first person to jump on shore, and was as good as her word as soon as the boat's keel grounded upon the beach. But whoever may be entitled to the preference, and that question will probably remain unsettled, the simple act surrounds the statuesque figure of the eager youth or maiden with a glamour rendering it the foremost and striking object of the historical picture. There is still another point of view. A youth in the full vigor of manhood, whose posterity should inherit the virgin land, sets his nervous foot upon the cornerstone of a nation, and makes it an historic spot. A young girl in the first bloom of womanhood, the type of a coming maternity, boldly crosses the threshold of a wilderness which her children's children shall possess and inhabit, and transforms it into an Eden. Surely John Alden should have married Mary Chilton on the spot.

MARY CHILTON.

GEORGE BANCROFT GRIFFITH.

FAIR beams that kiss the sparkling bay,

Rest warmest o'er her tranquil sleep,

Sweet exile! love enticed away,

The first on Plymouth Rock to leap!

Among the timid flock she stood,

Rare figure, near the "Mayflower's" prow,

With heart of Christian fortitude,

And light heroic on her brow!

But besides being the renowned stepping-stone of history, the Forefathers' Rock has exerted in the course of time upon minds of men who stood in the presence of grave events, a secret, a talismanic influence. In the antique days of chivalry men seldom set out upon any doubtful or hazardous adventure

without first visiting some holy shrine, and imploring the aid or protection of their patron saint. In these later times men have repaired for inspiration to this rock as they would to a shrine, and they have not been ashamed to confess that they found it a Living Rock, nerving them to patriotic effort, or moving them to inspired utterances in behalf of mankind.

When in 1774 all the land was in a flame, the spirit of the Old Colony having risen to fever heat, it was determined

PLYMOUTH.

newly to consecrate the rock to the divine spirit of Liberty. On the appointed day all the roads leading into Plymouth were thronged. Four thousand freemen had assembled within the town by noonday on the 5th of October. They were met to pledge themselves to each other against the oppression of the mother country. All were animated by the consciousness of acting in a rightful cause that moved them as

one man; all were burning with patriotic zeal. They first required all the Tory partisans of the Crown to make a public recantation. This being done, they proceeded to the spot where their ancestors had landed, with the purpose of removing Forefathers' Rock to the public square in the centre of the village. But while it was being raised from its primitive bed, and as if to oppose the act of desecration, the rock suddenly split in two.

This accident, which to many seemed a warning, so dashed the spirit of the actors, that the proceedings were near coming to an abrupt end; but some quick-witted spectator having declared it to presage the violent sundering of the empire in twain, it was accepted as a good omen, the upper half was drawn in triumph to the open space in front of the meeting-house, and there deposited, at the foot of the liberty-pole, from which a flag bearing the legend, "Liberty or Death," was flung to the breeze. And thus the rock was made to play an active part in the great controversy.

This is the portion of Forefathers' Rock that so many thousand curious pilgrims have seen lying on the grass plat in front of Pilgrim Hall; while a monument, built in the form of a shrine, enclosed, at the edge of the beach, the original spot whence it was taken, the lower fragment of the rock, and the bones that a pious care had recovered from the earliest burialplace of the Pilgrims, hard by on Cole Hill. In 1881, after a separation of one hundred and six years, the upper half was replaced upon the lower. What God has joined together let no man put asunder!

THE COURTSHIP OF MYLES STANDISH.

OF

F all our New-England legends, one of the most popular, as well as one of the most picturesque, is the story of the courtship of Myles Standish, which is the subject of Longfellow's poem of that name.

The action centres in three persons. First there is the martial figure of the redoubted captain of Plymouth, the rude but tried soldier, the man of manly virtues, with all a soldier's contempt for courtly graces, the owner of a noble name which he had made more illustrious by his deeds, brusque, quick-tempered, brave to rashness, but wearing the heart of a lion in his

little, undersized body, though his head might sometimes be hot and unsteady in council, in short, a man to be admired, feared, trusted, but not, alas! always loved, nor born to woo. Such was Myles Standish, the Captain of Plymouth. Though disinherited by fraud, and self-exiled, this soldier of fortune yet possessed a title to distinction that elevates him upon a pedestal above the sober and industrious artisans with whom he had loyally cast his lot, although it is doubtful if he belonged to their communion.

To this hard Puritan soldier, whose wife had died during the

first dreadful winter of their pilgrimage, enters the stripling John Alden, who is asserted to be the same person that first leaped upon the world-renowned Rock when these exiles landed from the "Mayflower" on that December day. He was only twenty-two; but in the eyes of two persons, at least, this constituted no defect. These persons were Priscilla Mullins, the Puritan maiden, and Myles Standish. One looked upon the youth with a smile; the other with a sigh. Family tradition makes this youth one of Standish's household; for in this patriarchal community, over which the spirit of economy ruled