XXIV 



of his children. But the times are greatly changed since the 

 dark and troubled days of the Pilgrims. There is now, hap- 

 pily, no need of ceaseless vigilance and the most sensitive jeal- 

 ousy in guarding a tender faith from the two-fold danger of 

 relapsing into error or being contaminated by new and specious 

 fallacies. Around our morals, our faith, our liberties, as their 

 great bulwark of safety, modern science has thrown a network 

 of invulnerable truths till old besetting evils have lost their 

 power of harm forever. 



No prejudices, then, based on the experience of an age 

 remote and quite unlike the present, should be suffered to 

 interfere with the celebration of the pleasant and pure festivities 

 which of late years are beginning to be observed on May-day, 

 in some parts of New England. It is to be hoped, rather, that 

 we shall add some day in May to the list of legal .holidays, and 

 that, from the St. Croix to where " Mine Host of Ma-re Mount" 

 sleeps under the brow of Agamenticus, and thence to Mount 

 Wollaston, where he held his revels, and so along the entire 

 boundary of our Union, May morning will evermore be held 

 sacred to the celebration of the sun's return, the bursting of 

 green buds and the birth of the flowers. 



The wild flowers exhibited at the meeting, by those who went 

 a-maying, were described by G. D. Phippen in the following 

 manner : 



Hepatica triloba, which differs but slightly from an ane- 

 mone, is one of the earliest plants that has any pretensions to 

 beauty, and is found in oaken woods, peeping up among the 

 dried leaves, in close proximity with drifts of snow. It was 

 mentioned by Higginson in 1629, and described by Josselyn in 

 his New England Rarities printed in 1672, as " Noble Liver- 

 wort, one sort with white flowers and the other with blew." The 

 Rev. Dr. Cutler mentions it in 1784, and Collinson writes to 

 Bartram of Philadelphia in 1739, that "out of some mould 

 sent with other plants has come up your Hepatica." 



Anemone nemorosa, or Wind Flower. This little flower or 



