SO I do now offer my excuses, and leave a generous public to the decision whether this book may be regarded as the one of all the twenty, or shall be counted among the unhappy nineteen. Very many there are who never hear a story but they must at once know if it be true; and if it be but partly true, they fain would know just how much is fact and how much fancy. It is to satisfy such curious folk, so far as relates to three New England heroines, that these true histories have been written. The proverb runs that “Truth is stranger than fiction;” and true it is that truth is ofttimes more romantic, and does little violence, withal, to our delight in a tale.
He who reads “The Courtship of Miles Standish,” and, later, learns something of the true lives of its characters, must confess to a slight shock in the discovery that the scholarly John Alden, of Longfellow’s lines, was but a cooper at Southampton. Then, too, the romance that surrounds the martial Miles Standish is somewhat dulled, when one reads of his parley with the Indians and of his killing of some of them. And so, though we must confess that the tale is not wholly true, we may adopt the Italian saying, “So much the worse for truth.”
Sharp eyes might see, even were it not here confessed, that Priscilla alone bears not the dignity of her full name on the half-titles of this book. Despite the eloquence of Juliet, one cannot feel the need of Mullins.
Yet, after all is said, we cannot love the poem less, but love the poet more. His genius the brighter shines, the while our curiosity is satisfied. Curiosity is a quality denied to few, and it is pleasant to satisfy; and so three New England girls have written these three true histories, while I, the artist, have wandered here and there, with an eye to such picturesque bits as may have escaped calamity and progress. This the excuse for the book, and now the story of the artist’s quest.
First to Hopkinton, from Winchester, by bicycle,—a way which lay by the “Wayside Inn.” Nothing is more disappointing than such a search for oldtime scenes, but yet it is a joy, for one sees so much that is delightful, if not closely related to the object of the quest. The road wound always to new beauties. The way led by old houses and picturesque barns, shaded by lofty trees, past fertile farms and modern dwellings, bristling with gables and rising among green, smooth-shaven lawns. A season earlier I had spent in England; and when Weston was reached, with its quaint stone church, the thought arose of those village churches of Old England with their ivy-covered towers, and, all about, God’s acre.
But here no manor-house rose proudly above the trees, no coat-of-arms was sculptured over the cottage doors. Indeed, the picturesque cottages themselves were missed, and in their stead were the plainest of dwellings; but upon the green rose something far prouder than a coat of arms, the flag-staff, and, at its head, the flag streaming in the breeze.
