FIFTT YEARS OF MUSEUM WORK 



5 



1852-1871 



To begin with, I was fortunate in my birthplace; sixty years ago 

 Plymouth was a most excellent place for a boy to live and learn and play. 

 It was unspoiled by the march of so-called improvements and not, as 

 now, overcrowded; the bulk of the population spoke English and was 

 American. 



Plymouth was then a town of about 7500 inhabitants, given over to a 

 variety of industries, none of which was large enough to change the 

 character of the population or affect natural conditions. Town Brook, 

 as in the days of the Pilgrims, was a stream of sweet water, habitable for 

 fishes from source to outlet; one could bathe in any part of the harbor 

 without emerging dirtier than when one went in, and the mechanics in 

 the various mills and factories were all Americans. 



The Cedar Swamp by Billington Sea had all the mystery of a tropical 

 jungle — and was almost as impenetrable — and the pine hills of Manomet 

 seemed distant and inaccessible. At "half tide " seals in numbers hauled 

 out on Seal Rocks, or at low water, lined the edge of White Flat or Goose 

 Point Channel, and piping plovers bred on the beach. 



All in all, Plymouth was a good place for a boy to learn to swim and 

 row and coast and skate and shoot and fish, and "in between times" the 

 public schools offered a very fair education which could be supplemented 

 by visits to factories and workshops. 



Today Plymouth bears all the unpleasant evidences of growth and 

 prosperity; mills and factories have multiplied; the workmen employed 

 therein speak any language save English; Town Brook is silted up in 

 places and in general so polluted that nothing can live in it, and on a 

 quiet day the waters of the harbor glisten with oil from power houses 

 and motor boats, and one has to wait for an off-shore wind to make bath- 

 ing pleasant. 



The swamps that harbored the luscious huckleberry have given 

 place to monotonous, and sometimes remunerative, cranberry bogs, 

 whose crops, when spared by drouth and frost and bugs, are gathered by 

 Bravas to whom English is an unknown tongue. 



Nevertheless, it is still a pretty good abiding place, and if one feels 

 dissatisfied, a few hours in a town like Fall River enables one to be 

 resigned if not content. 



Here, with exceptions to be noted, were passed eighteen pleasant 

 years. As a boy I had an easy time, a fact that strangely enough I 

 realized, and had no longing for the time when I should be "my own 

 master," an ironical term that usually means someone's servant. 



