He then gives a dozen pages or so of hitherto unpublished church records, gathered from as many typical Massachusetts towns, which throw an undeniable and unflattering light on the social habits of that early period. As explicit and public confession before the church congregation was enforced, these church records contain startlingly graphic statements of drunkenness, blasphemy, stealing, and immorality in all its various phases.
There are countless church records which duplicate this one of the ordination of a Massachusetts pastor in 1729: "6 Barrels and a half of Cyder, 28 gallons of wine, 2 gallons of Brandy, and 4 of rum, loaf sugar, lime juice and pipes," all, presumably, consumed at the time and on the spot of the ordination. Even the most pessimistic must admit that long before our prohibition era we had traveled far beyond such practices.
The immorality seems to have been the natural reaction from morbid spiritual excitement induced by religious revivals. Poor Governor Bradford never grasped this, and we find him lamenting (1642): "Marvilous it may be to see and consider how some kind of wickedness did grow and break forth here in a land where the same was much witnessed against, and so narrowly looked on and severely punished when it was known."
We hear the same plaint from Jonathan Edwards a century later.
It is well to honor the Pilgrims for their many stanch and admirable qualities, but it is only fair to recall that the morbidity of their religion made them less healthy-minded than we, and that many of their practices, such as the well-recognized custom of "bundling," were indications of a people holding far lower moral standards than ours.
The old sermons, diaries, biographies, and records lie on dusty shelves now, and few pause to read them, and in Kingston no one yet has gathered them into a local history. There are other records traced, not in sand, but on the soil that may also be read by any who pass. Some remnants of the trenches and terraces dug by the quota of Arcadian refugees who fell to Kingston's share after the pathetic flight from Nova Scotia may still be seen—claimed by some to be the first irrigation attempt in America.
The old "Massachusetts Payth" which follows the road more or less closely beyond Kingston is traced with difficulty and uncertainty in Kingston itself, but there is another highway as clear to-day as it was three hundred years ago. And this is the lovely tidal river, named after the master of the Mayflower, up which used to come and go not only many ships of commerce, but, in the evenings after life had become less austere, boatloads of merry-makers from Plymouth and Duxbury to attend the balls given at what was originally the King's Town.
It has carried much traffic in its day, that river which now winds so gracefully down to the sea, and which we see so well from the yard of the old Bradford house. Down it floated the vessels made by Kingston men, and out of it was dug much bog iron for the use of Washington's artillery.
Monk's Hill—which the old records call Mont's Hill Chase, a name supposed to have been applied to a hunt in England—could tell a story too, if one had ears to hear. The highest land in Kingston, during the Revolution it was one of the points where a beacon fire was lighted to alarm the town in case of invasion by the enemy.
Kingston is not without history, although its manuscripts lie long untouched upon library shelves, and its historic soil is tramped over by unheeding feet. That the famous manuscript which was its greatest historical contribution has been taken away from it, is no loss in the truest sense of the word, for this monumental work, which belongs to no one place, but to the country as a whole, is properly preserved at the State House.