^ 



89 



a uniformity of religious belief our puritan fathers must have 

 known was a solecism as chimerical as it is absurd. 



Never in the entire annals of colonization is there an in- 

 stance of sacrifice for principle to be compared with that Avhich 

 was made by many among those who founded the settlement of 

 Massachusetts Bay. In these days of comfort and prosperity 

 there is little to remind us of the struggle of that forlorn hope 

 of humanity who first landed on these shores We can have 

 no realizing sense of it. From this very fact I fear their pos- 

 terity, who are now reaping the fruits of their principles and 

 sacrifices, are too apt to forget the debt of gratitude due to 

 their exalted virtues. " In our beginning," says Roger Clapp, 

 " many were in great straits for want of provision for them- 

 selves and their little ones — the then unsubdued wilderness 

 yielding little food — oh the hunger that many suffered, and 

 saw no hope, in the eye of reason, to be supplied, only by clams 

 and muscles and fish. But bread was with many a very scarce 

 thing, and flesh of all kinds as scarce. Sometimes I thought 

 the very crusts of my father's table would have been very sweet 

 to me. In those days God did cause his people to trust in him, 

 and to be contented with mean things. It was not accounted a 

 strange thing in those days to drink water, and to eat samp or 

 hominy without butter or milk — and when I could get meal 

 and water and salt boiled together, it was so good, who could 

 wish better ] If our provision be better now than it was then, 

 let us not, and do you, dear children, take heed that you do 

 not, forget the Lord our God.-' The experience of Roger 

 Clapp was the experience of all others. With them the strifes 

 of earth have passed away, and even their homes have crum- 

 bled, — but I trust their influence is still operating with us. 

 Successive generations of their descendants have arisen and 

 disappeared, and the objects familiar to their New England 

 homes have entirely changed. The aborigines are no longer 

 seen in our streets nor are they the tenants of our forests — and 

 the very forests themselves which sheltered them have disap- 

 peared before the advance of civilization. It is the pride of 

 England to trace its ancestry back to the Norman Conquest, to 

 the vassal chiefs, who follo\^ed in the train of the conqueror. 

 The •' Boll of Battle- Abbey" has been carefully preserved, 

 and consulted for family names, which bear some afiinity to 

 those of the j^-esent day. But New England sons trace their 

 origiti back to far more interesting Rolls than that of Battle- 

 Abbey, — to the lists of passengers by the emigrant ships for 

 New England, — and to far more noble conquests than the field 

 ESSEX INST. PROCEED. VOL. ii. 12. 



