Brenda's Ward Part 22

Mrs. Danforth, indeed, seemed to Martine more like some one she had always known, and she soon felt completely at home with her. The evening pa.s.sed quickly away, as they sat around the open fire, and the children were allowed to extend their bed-hour an hour beyond the usual time.

"Who is going to be my guide?" asked Martine, before they separated for the night.

"That depends on what you want to see," responded Marcus, cautiously.

"You are not very gallant," protested Mrs. Danforth. "You should be very proud to guide a young lady from the city wherever she wishes to go."

"I _am_ proud," interposed George. "I'll go anywhere."

"Well," said the cautious Marcus, "I only meant that I don't want to go up on Burial Hill. It's very stupid looking at those old gravestones, and there aren't any real Pilgrims there, at least not any worth mentioning."

"But there's a lovely view," said Priscilla, "and the first fort stood up there, and some people like old gravestones."

"To be perfectly frank," said Martine, "I don't care so very much for them, unless the inscriptions are entertaining. Don't look shocked, Prissie, epitaphs can be very amusing sometimes. But what would you like to show me, Marcus?"

"Oh, I'd like to take you out into the woods for mayflowers, for one thing, and over to Duxbury to see the Standish monument for another; but I just hate poking about the town, looking for old houses and ruins the way some people do; for we haven't any ruins here."

"Then I suppose you wouldn't condescend to show me Plymouth Rock? For that, of course, is one of the things I _must_ see."

"Oh, I'll take you there!" interrupted George; "let's go right after breakfast."

"Very well, I'll be ready; and thank you for your invitation."

And Martine, bending toward the little fellow, kissed him good-night. As she turned away, George reddened with delight; it was pleasant to be treated as if he were as old as Marcus; for Marcus, his elder by two years, had a brotherly habit of making him feel himself to be of the slightest consequence in the estimation of strangers.

Promptly after breakfast Martine set out with George.

"I know you won't mind my leaving you, Priscilla," she said. "You and your mother must have so many things to talk over."

"Thank you; a little later I will go join you, but I know that George will show you just what you wish to see;" and Priscilla kissed Martine good-bye.

At her first sight of the rock, the Plymouth Rock of history and poetry, Martine gave a gasp of surprise. It was so much smaller than she had expected. The little guide-book that Mrs. Danforth had put in her hands told her that from 1775 to 1880 the rock had been in two pieces, and that one piece was for a long time exhibited in Pilgrim Hall; but at last a generous son of Plymouth, feeling that the rock deserved greater honor, had had the two pieces put together on a spot that was probably very near the place that it occupied in 1620, and had had it protected by granite canopy and an iron fence.

"Why, it looks as though I could almost carry it away myself; it's hardly large enough for a good-sized man to stand on."

"Oh, two or three men could stand on it," said the literal George, who thereupon began to make calculations to convince Martine of her error.

Martine, somewhat amused by George's earnestness, began to tease the little fellow.

"Do you really believe that this rock was here in the time of the Pilgrim Fathers?"

"Why, yes, where else could it have been?"

To this question Martine had no answer ready, and before she had made a second attempt to puzzle George, an old gentleman who had been standing near them stepped up.

"You are not skeptical, young lady, about the famous rock?"

"Oh, no," replied Martine; "I don't know enough about it to be skeptical."

The old gentleman glanced at her quizzically.

"There is more philosophy in that remark than you perhaps realize, young lady. But this is really _the_ rock, the only one to be found the whole length of this sandy sh.o.r.e. So it must be the rock on which the Mayflower's pa.s.sengers landed."

"I wonder why they didn't just step out on the beach," persisted Martine. "I should think that would have been ever so much more comfortable than hopping down on this rock."

"Others besides you have intimated the same thing," persisted the old gentleman; "but you must admit that a rock is a better foundation for the sentiment of a nation to base itself on than a sandy beach. Even our foreign-born children pin much of their patriotism to Plymouth Rock."

"Do you believe--?"

"My dear young lady, in George's presence, at least, you must not intimate that it is possible to believe anything about Plymouth Rock except what is usually taught in school histories."

Martine looked earnestly at the old gentleman. She could not tell whether he was in jest or in earnest, but there was something in his face that she liked. She felt as if she had always known him. He seemed really like an old friend.

"Mr. Stacy," interposed George, "I never know exactly what you mean, but I am sure that the school histories are true."

"Surely, my dear, but I can see that this young lady wishes to go back of the printed book. She would like to know why we think this is the rock of the Pilgrims. So, as there is no one else here to inform her, the duty seems to have fallen on me. We pin our faith to the rock," he continued, "on account of the testimony of Elder Faunce, a truthful man, who, in the first half of the eighteenth century--1743, I believe--made a vigorous protest when certain individuals began to build a wharf, which would have covered the rock. He said that this stone had been pointed out to him by his father as the one on which the founders of the colony had landed. It is true that John Faunce, the father, did not come over on the Mayflower, and what he knew of the landing he must have heard from others. But as he had arrived in Plymouth in 1623, he must have had his information on the best authority. Elder Faunce, the son of John Faunce, was forty years old when the last of the Mayflower pa.s.sengers died, and if the story of the rock was not true, doubtless he would have heard some one contradict it."

"Did they build the wharf?" asked Martine.

"I believe they did. But the rock was kept in sight, and eventually became the step of a warehouse. Later, as I dare say you have heard, it was broken in two pieces, and it is only since 1880 that we have had it restored here to a spot very near where the Mayflower landed--and protected," he concluded, with a smile, "so that the relic hunters can't carry it off bodily. It's a wonder that some one hasn't tried to get it for one of the World's Fairs now so prevalent in the country."

"I should hate to see it carted around like the Liberty Bell, although we were glad enough to have it in Chicago."

"So you are from Chicago," said Mr. Stacy; "then I must try to make you think that Plymouth is the centre of the earth. From your being with George I thought you were one of Priscilla's Boston friends. By the way, perhaps you may recall the lines in Miles Standish, where John Alden and others went down to the seash.o.r.e:

"'Down to the Plymouth Rock, that had been to their feet as a door, Into a world unknown--the cornerstone of a nation!'

I always thought that a fine line, though it isn't quoted as often as it might be; 'the cornerstone of a nation,'" repeated Mr. Stacy. "Well, Priscilla and I always have a pretty little quarrel over this particular doorstep. You know she is very proud of her descent from Priscilla and John Alden."

"So am I," piped up little George.

"Of course, my boy, just as I am of descending from Mary Chilton. Well, traditions are somewhat confused as to who stepped first on Plymouth Rock--providing anyone of the Mayflower people really stepped on it at all. The honors are divided apparently between Mary Chilton and John Alden. I'd like to give them to a lady--Priscilla, for example, but in that case I should have to slight another lady, my ancestress, Mary Chilton; so there you have the two horns of a dilemma."

"Oh, I know better than that," cried George; "Mary Chilton wasn't in it, of course she wasn't."

"In what, my child? or are you merely indulging in slang?"

"Oh, you know, Mr. Stacy, she wasn't in that first shallop that went ash.o.r.e from Clark's Island. Of course a woman wouldn't come out in a little boat, when they were trying to find a landing-place. No, of course it was John Alden."

"Your reasoning is pretty reasonable--for a little boy," said Mr. Stacy.

"But, my dear Miss Chicago," he continued, "if you are on a sight-seeing walk, let me go with you. I need not say to an up-to-date young lady that none of the houses of the original Pilgrims are here, though as we walk along we shall pa.s.s near the sites of many of them. The old Plymouth was chiefly down here near the water, not so very far from the rock. This is the first street, close to the brook that ran down from Billington Sea."

"It must be very pleasant in summer," and Martine glanced down the long tree-lined street. The trees were budding, but the leaves were not yet out.

"It is a calm, shady street," rejoined Mr. Stacy; "sometimes we wish the electric cars were not so near, but the curse has been partly taken off by the names they bear. Probably you have noticed 'Priscilla,'

'Pilgrim,' 'Samoset,' and the other historical names. Perhaps it is just as well there are none of the old houses left. The descendants of forefathers might have been ashamed of them, of the houses--I mean.

Perhaps you remember Holmes' lines on the subject. The Autocrat had the faculty of hitting the nail on the head and in speaking of the Pilgrim, he says:--

"'His home was a freezing cabin Too bare for a freezing rat, Its roof was thatched with ragged gra.s.s, And bald enough for that.