1132 
HOPE FARM NOTES 
My daughter and I had finally worked 
our way through the great crowd which 
packed North Street and (he waterside 
at Plymouth. It was a struggle to make 
headway through that jam of humanity. 
Plymouth was never built for such a 
crowd. The town occupies a narrow strip 
around the bay. Walk west except in two 
or three places, and in a few minutes you 
are among the hills of scrub oak and pine 
where the country is, even now. just 
about as the Pilgrims found it. Practi¬ 
cally all the original farms seem to have 
been laid out so that one end touched the 
water. Fish, seaweed and kelp were the 
chief fertilizers at that time, and every 
farmer had a boat for plowing the water 
long before he had a team for plowing 
the land. The town brook runs back 
through a narrow valley to a large fresh 
water lake or pond, and the first inland 
settlements seem to have been up along 
this stream. At several other places the 
hills break away, and through these val¬ 
leys there are farms and homes, but the 
main part of Plymouth lies in a long nar¬ 
row curve along the water. It is hard 
for a town of this shape to handle a great 
crowd, for there are few parking places 
for cars. On the “big day,” when Presi¬ 
dent Ilarding came to town, there were 
over To,000 people packed into this nar¬ 
row strip and its outlets. It was a 
mighty crowd for the available space, yet 
there was not an accident, a single arrest 
or, so far as known, a single theft. I 
doubt if any more orderly or serious- 
minded crowds ever gathered at any other 
American celebration. 
* * * * * 
We felt something of this as we made 
our way through th c packed streets on 
that beautiful evening in August. Some¬ 
one has said that you cannot successfully 
gather an American crowd without pro¬ 
viding light or foolish entertainment, for 
without it the crowd will become a mob 
of some sort. Whoever said it was 
wrong. This vast throng of earnest peo¬ 
ple had come together not for entertain¬ 
ment, but more like pilgrims come to wit¬ 
ness what was essentially a religious 
ceremony, a pageant entitled “The Pil¬ 
grim Spirit.” We finally found our seats 
on “Coles Hill.” This is a hill or steep 
bluff rising sharply from the water di¬ 
rectly back of where the Pilgrims landed. 
When I was a boy this hill was sadly 
neglected. I used to play there ; the rag¬ 
weeds and burdocks were so thick and high 
that we boys could hide among them and 
play Indian with great success. The hill 
was now covered with wooden seats, one 
Ale of a vast amphitheater circling about 
Plymouth Rock. We sat right over the place 
wh< e the Pilgrims buried the dead who 
passed on durng that first terrible Win¬ 
ter. When Spring came -half of their 
number lay here on the hillshle, and they 
1 veled the graves and seeded barley and 
wheat so that the Indians might not know 
how many had died. Back of us, at the 
crest of the hill, standing on a rock, is 
the magnificent, gigantic bronze statue 
of Massasoit, “the Friend of the White 
Men.” This Indian was what you may 
< ill the first edition of an American gen¬ 
tleman hound in red ! He made a peace 
1 unity with the white men and respected 
it. It was no “scrap of paper,” though 
he could not read a word of it and only 
scratched his sign at the bottom. But 
he respected it! As the light faded away 
that night I sat wondering what would 
have been the real history of New Eng¬ 
land if that gentlemanly savage had 
“cleaned up” the colony, as he might 
easily have done! It would have held 
hack the settlement of this section for 50 
years or more, and Plymouth would have 
represented no more in American history 
than Hicksville or Jason’s Corners. Who 
can translate the curious expression on 
the face of that bronze Indian as he 
stands looking out over Plymouth Bay? 
I wonder if he is foolish enough to imag¬ 
ine that if he had killed the half hundred 
left of the Mayflower’s passengers he 
would have swept back forever the. great 
human flood which was to burst out of 
the Old World and spread over this con¬ 
tinent! Men of all colors in all the ages 
through which the world has grown along 
have tried to stamp out or wipe out in 
Hood the germ of truth and the hunger 
of the heart for better conditions. They 
may have delayed its growth, but they 
never have stopped it. 
***** 
John Fiske says that shortly after the 
Pilgrims landed the Indians, after watch¬ 
ing the white men carefully, held a great 
meeting in the woods and debated as to 
whether they should fall upon this feeble 
band and destroy it. I have no doubt 
that right where this great figure of 
Massasoit now stands these sharp-eyed 
savages watched the newcomers and tried 
to decide what to do. They might easily 
have killed them all, for at one time 
there were but six men able to be about 
and nurse the others. And the reason 
why Massasoit today stands so proudly 
•P* RURAL h 
or- Coles Hill is not due to thc qualities 
which earned th e title of “noble red man.” 
The Indians believed that the white men 
controlled the “plague” which had wiped 
out the tribe that formerly lived at Ply¬ 
mouth. They thought these strange white 
beings still held that disease hidden in the 
ground, ready to set it free if they were 
disturbed. Thus it was this fear of some 
strange, supernatural power, which held 
the Indians back until when Philip, the 
.son of Massasoit, tried to drive them into 
the ocean he found them too strong! I 
wonder if in the “happy hunting grounds” 
to which, the old Indian has gone it is 
given him to know how science has really 
given the white men power over disease 
—the power to overcome it and the power 
to spread it abroad! I wonder if he is 
capable of knowing how the development, 
of science has come upon humanity too 
rapidly! It has been too much for the 
feeble human mind. It has taken the 
mystery and reverence out of supernatural 
things, turned them to common mud and 
weakened the world’s hold upon true re¬ 
ligion, with its splendid discipline and 
conservatism. _ It seems to me that J o 
great corporations and monopolies might 
well erect at Washington the gigantic 
figure of a farmer and name it “The 
Friend of Monopoly,” for it must be said 
that the American farmer, like the Indian, 
stood still and let the great monopolies 
grow from “infant industries” to gigantic 
power. The Indian could not hold back 
civilization. The farmer let “industry” 
run over him when he should have har¬ 
nessed it and made it work for him. 
***** 
All these things ran through the mind 
as we sat and watched the light fade out 
over Plymouth Harbor. It was only pos¬ 
sible to hold this pageant at high tide, 
end darkness is needed for Tts full effect. 
On the night we saw it the tide was full 
at about nine o’clock, and it made the 
background of the performance ideal. We 
were facing the east. Off to the right 
Manomet reared its blue head like a wall. 
To the left Captain’s Hill rose out of the 
Duxbury Marsh. The harbor was pro¬ 
tected by Plymouth Beach, and far out in 
the distance Duxbury Beach stood off the 
ocean, with Saquish and the Gurnet ris¬ 
ing out of it like green lumps or beads on 
a long white string. There was just 
enough wind to raise a ripple on the blue 
water. _ The coloring on the clouds was 
all behind us; in front the clear sky 
seemed to dip into the water. The light 
slowly faded away, and one by one the 
stars appeared as if some wonderful fin¬ 
ger were punching little holes in the blue 
covering and letting in tiny gleams from 
IEW-YORKER 
the marvelous light which flashed behind 
it. Just in front of us, perhaps a quarter 
of a mile off, there lay an exact copy of 
the Mayflower at anchor. It was a little 
three-masted vessel with blunt bow and a 
stern built up like a balcony. It did not 
seem possible that 100 men and women 
in addition to the crew and food and 
water for all could ever have spent three 
months packed into that sardine box with 
a keel. They surely must have become 
‘ acquainted” during the voyage. In 
front of'us a great level space of ground 
stretched out to the water’s edge. It was 
the stage upon which the pageant is pre- 
sented. In my. boyhood this was “Water 
Street,” which in all seaport towns means 
a collection of junk and old buildings— 
fully characteristic of the decay into 
which the loss of fishing and coast trade 
had left the town. Right here I used to 
go in swimming off a rotting and broken 
wharf. I wonder what has become of the 
old cannon that was once mounted there. 
It was a “Long Tom,” which on an 
American privateer made short work of 
several British ships. And as I turned my 
head I could see right across the street 
the house from which my father went to 
the Civil TV ar. These and a hundred 
other things rushed through the mind as 
We sat there waiting for the shadows to 
deepen over the water. 
***** 
I suppose there were 25.000 people 
waitiug there with us. They were 
strangely silent, as if waiting for some¬ 
thing, they knew not what, to arise out 
of the shadows which darkened around 
Plymouth Rock. The blood of all the 
races which have been combined to make 
an-American were represented. At my 
side was a man who was clearly of Irish 
descent. In front of me was a German, 
off there a Frenchman. I know that 
dark-haired woman is of Spanish blood. 
That colored man—who can tell which 
of the many African races he sprang 
from ? There are the high cheek bones 
of the Swede, the solid jaw of the Eng¬ 
lishman, the flat face from Poland, the 
black eye and curly hair of the Italian. 
They were all there—Americans come 
back to the cornerstone not in any idle 
curiosity or spirit of fun, but perhaps 
unconsciously impelled by something 
which they could neither understand nor 
resist—just because tney are Americans. 
I wish that I could always be dignified 
and. solemn on such occasions, but it seems 
as if I am sure to have my mind drawn 
away from Main Street. So as the dark¬ 
ness gathered about us, instead of sitting 
as we.would at a religious service. I was 
watching the big fat mosquito deliber- 
September 17, 1921 
ately laying his plans to bore into the 
baid head of my German neighbor in 
front. He was a wonderful mosquito. 
If I could take him to New Jersey he 
would people our section with a more 
vigorous breed. It was remarkable bow 
deliberately he started operations on that 
bald bead.. He seemed to sharpen his 
auger on bis boot, and then spreading his 
wings to give greater power to his stroke 
lie started. Then the German woke up 
and made a slap at his head which missed 
the mosquito, but made a noise like a 
shingle hitting a barn. And then I re¬ 
membered reading in Bradford’s History 
how the enemies of Plymouth Colony 
made as one of their charges the assertion 
that the mosquitoes were so bad no man 
could live there. And the colonists came 
together and solemnly declared: 
"They are to delicate and unfittc to be- 
fjine new plantations and collonies that 
cannot enduer the biting of a muskeeto; 
ice would wish such to keepe at home till 
at least they be muskeeto proofe.” 
The German drove ’.s tormentor away 
—with a full stomach—and put his hat 
on for protection. And then suddenly 
out of the shadows around the rock a 
strong voice was heard and the pageant 
had starteu. 
“I, the Rock of Plymouth, speak to you, 
Americans. 
Here I rested in the ooze 
From ages primordial. 
Men came and went; Norsemen, 
Seamen of England, voyagers of France, Dutch 
adventurers; 
Over and round me 
The Indians worked, played, lived. 
I was a rock of millions along the shore. 
Waiting—for wliat? 
Came pestilence, sweeping the Indians from the 
land, 
Not one remaining here at Patnrot, Accomack. 
Cap St. Louis, New England, ns the Indian, the 
French, 
Prince Charles of England culled this spot. 
Around me the cleared fields.waiting, 
The bay swarming with fish. 
The woods full of game, all waiting. 
I, too, waiting, for what? 
In England, growing, the spirit of man. 
Freed by his Bible, read in his home, 
Studied with passion. 
Out of the Church of England—a Puritan. 
Out of' the Puritan, Separatists—of London, 
Of Scrooby, of Sturton, of England, 
Seeking freedom of thought, of living by truth. 
Out of the Separatists, driven from England, 
The Pilgrim. 
England, stern mother, refuses him. 
Holland, the foster mother, he leaves, still 
searching his freedom, 
Sails westward, and comes to me— 
By chance, by choice, who knows? 
To me the Pilgrims come, on me they stand. 
As one by one they land. 
Here they will work out. their salvation. 
For this have I been waiting, waiting. 
Of me, the roek in the ooze, they iiave made a 
cornerstone of the Republic.” 
H. W. C. 
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