50 
CAPE COD. 
just and pertinent character of all is that which appears 
to be given to the Bev. Ephraim Briggs, of Chatham, 
in the language of the later Romans, “ Seip, sepoese, 
sepoemese, wechekum^^ — which not being interpreted, 
we know not what it means, though we have no doubt 
it occurs somewhere in the Scriptures, probably in the 
Apostle Eliot’s Epistle to the Nipmucks. 
Let no one think that I do not love the old ministers. 
They were, probably, the best men of their generation, 
and they deserve that their biographies should fill the 
pages of the town histories. If I could but hear the 
glad tidings ” of which they tell, and which, perchance, 
they heard, I might write in a worthier strain than 
this. 
There was no better way to make the reader realize 
how wide and peculiar that plain was, and how long 
it took to traverse it, than by inserting these extracts 
in the midst of my narrative. 
