Chapter 40. "Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow"

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_ CHAPTER XL. "PARTING IS SUCH SWEET SORROW"

And so, tenderly, reluctantly, lingeringly we leave them, these dear ones whose memory we cherish so lovingly, and in the sober reality of whose lives lies a charm no romance can ever reach.

Would you know more of them, for there are, as the Sultana promised morning by morning, stranger and better things to come than these that have been told, go read the annals of the Pilgrims, those precious fragments left to us by Bradford and by Winslow, and a letter written by De Rasieres, Secretary of the Dutch Colony at Manhattan, who, visiting Plymouth upon a diplomatic errand in 1627, wrote to his superiors a letter preserved in the Royal Library of Holland wherein he draws this little picture of the town we have tried to reproduce, and mentions some of these dear friends whose lives we know so much better than he did.

"New Plymouth lies on the slope of a hill, stretching east toward the sea-coast with a broad street about a cannon shot long, leading down the hill with a cross street in the middle going southward to the rivulet, and northward to the land. The houses are constructed of hewn planks, with gardens also enclosed behind, and at the sides, with hewn planks, so that their houses and court-yards are arranged in very good order, with a stockade against a sudden attack; and at the ends of the streets there are three wooden gates. In the centre on the cross street stands the Governor's house, before which is a square erection upon which four patereros are mounted so as to flank along the streets.

"Upon the hill they have a large square house, with a flat roof made of thick sawn planks stayed with oak beams, upon the top of which they have six cannons which shoot iron balls of four or five pounds and command the surrounding country. The lower part they use for their church, where they preach on Sundays and the usual holidays. They assemble by beat of drum, each with his musket or firelock, in front of the Captain's door; they have their cloaks on, and place themselves in order three abreast, and are led by a sergeant without beat of drum. Behind comes the Governor in a long robe; beside him on the right hand comes the preacher with his cloak on, and on the left hand the Captain with his side-arms and cloak on, and with a small cane in his hand; and so they march in good order, and each sets his arms down near him. Thus they are constantly on their guard night and day."

But after all, glad as we are of this little loophole pierced through the mists of antiquity, the fashion of our friends' houses and court-yards, their cloaks and muskets and quaint Sunday procession are not as valuable to us as the story of their individual lives: the story of Priscilla and John Alden and their children; of Myles, military power of the colony, beyond his threescore years and ten; of Barbara, called his "dear wife" in the dignified Last Will, wherein he bequeaths "Ormistic, Bousconge, Wrightington, Maudesley" and the rest, to Alexander his "son and heir," sturdily proclaiming with as it were his last breath, that these fair domains were "surreptitiously detained" from him. And Lora Standish, fair sweet shadow upon the mirror of the past; and Mary Dingley, beloved of the grand old warrior; and Alice Bradford, of whom at the last Morton wrote,--

"Adoe my loving friend, my aunt, my mother,
Of those that's left I have not such another."

And Bradford himself, and Brewster, and Winslow, and Howland, each one of whom hath left behind him enough of achievement to fill a dozen of the degenerate lives of a butterfly of to-day; and the women they loved, and the young men and maidens who rose up around them: ah, how can we leave them, how can we say good-by! Shall we not the rather cherish them and study them more than we ever yet have done, feeling in our hearts that those virtues, that courage, and that nobility of life may be ours as well as theirs, may illustrate the easy life of to-day, and make it less unworthy to be the fruit of the Tree of Liberty, planted in the blood and watered by the tears of our Fathers.

[THE END]
Jane Goodwin Austin's Novel: Standish of Standish

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