Kingston seems amenable to this arrangement, just as she seems entirely willing that Plymouth should claim the first century of her career. When one is sure of one's heritage and beauty, one does not clamor for recognition; one does not even demand a printed history. It is quality, not quantity, that counts, and even if nothing more is ever written in or about this dear old town, Kingston will have made a distinguished contribution to American history and literature.
CHAPTER XI
PLYMOUTH
One of the favorite pictures of New Englanders, and one which hangs in innumerable dining-rooms and halls, is by Boughton, the popular American artist, and is named "The Return of the Mayflower." I suppose thousands of New England children have gazed wonderingly at this picture, which, contrary to the modern canons of art, "tells a story," and many of those naïve minds have puzzled as to how those poor Pilgrims, who had no tea or coffee or milk or starch, managed to appear so well fed and so contented, and so marvelously neat and clean. The inexhaustible bag which inevitably appeared at crucial moments in the career of "Swiss Family Robinson" is nowhere mentioned in the early chronicles of the Plymouth Plantation, and the precise manner in which a small vessel of a hundred and eighty tons, carrying a hundred passengers, and all the innumerable cradles, chairs, and highboys which have since flooded the museums as "genuine relics" of that first voyage, could also have brought sufficient washboards, soap, and flatirons to have kept the charming costumes so immaculate is a mystery which will probably never be solved—especially since the number of relics appears to increase instead of diminish with the passage of time.
However, that is a mere trifle. Mr. Boughton, in catching this touching and dramatic moment in the history of the Plymouth Colony, has rendered a graphic service to us all, and if we could stand upon the little plateau on which this man and maid are standing, and could look out with them—we should see—what should we see?
We may, indeed, stand upon the little plateau—possibly it is no other than the base of Cole's Hill, that pathetic spot on which the dead were buried those first sad months, the ground above being leveled and planted with corn lest the Indians should count the number of the lost—and look out upon that selfsame harbor, but the sight which meets our eyes will be a very different one from that which met theirs. Let us, if we can, for the space of half an hour or so, imagine that we are standing beside this Pilgrim man and maid, on the day on which Mr. Boughton portrayed them.