Hard, this, on us poor six-footers. One need not turn to the biography after this, to guess that the philosopher was five feet four.
I think there was a breeze, and a cold one, all the time, between the embassy and the English courtiers. I could tell you a good many stories to show this, but I would give them all for one anecdote of what Edward Winslow said to Madam Carver on Christmas evening. They thought it all naught because they did not know what would come of it. We do know.
And I wish you to observe, all the time, beloved reader, whom I press to my heart for your steadiness in perusing so far, and to whom I would give a jewel had I one worthy to give, in token of my consideration (how you would like a Royalston beryl or an Attleboro topaz).[A] I wish you to observe, I say, that on the Christmas tide, when the Forefathers began New England, Charles and Henrietta were first proposed to each other for that fatal union. Charles, who was to be Charles the First, and Henrietta, who was to be mother of Charles the Second, and James the Second. So this was the time, when were first proposed all the precious intrigues and devisings, which led to Charles the Second, James the Second, James the Third, so called, and our poor friend the Pretender. Civil War—Revolution—1715—1745—Preston-Pans, Falkirk and Culloden—all are in the dispatches Cadenet carries ashore at Dover, while we are hewing our timbers at the side of the brook at Plymouth, and making our contribution to Protestant America.
On the one side Christmas is celebrated by fifty outcasts chopping wood for their fires—and out of the celebration springs an empire. On the other side it is celebrated by the noblesse of two nations and the pomp of two courts. And out of the celebration spring two civil wars, the execution of one king and the exile of another, the downfall twice repeated of the royal house, which came to the English throne under fairer auspices than ever. The whole as we look at it is the tale of ruin. Those are the only two Christmas celebrations of that year that I have found anywhere written down!
You will not misunderstand the moral, dear reader, if, indeed, you exist; if at this point there be any reader beside him who corrects the proof! Sublime thought of the solemn silence in which these words may be spoken! You will not misunderstand the moral. It is not that it is better to work on Christmas than to play. It is not that masques turn out ill, and that those who will not celebrate the great anniversaries turn out well. God forbid!
It is that these men builded better than they knew, because they did with all their heart and all their soul the best thing that they knew. They loved Christ and feared God, and on Christmas day did their best to express the love and the fear. And King James and Cadenet,—did they love Christ and fear God? I do not know. But I do not believe, nor do you, that the masque of the one, or the embassy of the other, expressed the love, or the hope, or the faith of either!
So it was that John Carver and his men, trying to avoid the celebration of the day, built better than they knew indeed, and, in their faith, laid a corner-stone for an empire.
And James and Cadenet trying to serve themselves—forgetful of the spirit of the day, as they pretended to honor it—were so successful that they destroyed a dynasty.
There is moral enough for our truer Christmas holidays as 1867 leads in the new-born sister.
[A] Mrs. Hemans says they did not seek "bright jewels of the mine," which was fortunate, as they would not have found them. Attleboro is near Plymouth Rock, but its jewels are not from mines. The beryls of Royalston are, but they are far away. Other good mined jewels, I think, New England has none. Her garnets are poor, and I have yet seen no good amethysts.