"I should hate to see it carted around like the Liberty Bell, although we were glad enough to have it in Chicago."
"So you are from Chicago," said Mr. Stacy; "then I must try to make you think that Plymouth is the centre of the earth. From your being with George I thought you were one of Priscilla's Boston friends. By the way, perhaps you may recall the lines in Miles Standish, where John Alden and others went down to the seashore:
"'Down to the Plymouth Rock, that had been to their feet as a door,
Into a world unknown—the cornerstone of a nation!'
I always thought that a fine line, though it isn't quoted as often as it might be; 'the cornerstone of a nation,'" repeated Mr. Stacy. "Well, Priscilla and I always have a pretty little quarrel over this particular doorstep. You know she is very proud of her descent from Priscilla and John Alden."
"So am I," piped up little George.
"Of course, my boy, just as I am of descending from Mary Chilton. Well, traditions are somewhat confused as to who stepped first on Plymouth Rock—providing anyone of the Mayflower people really stepped on it at all. The honors are divided apparently between Mary Chilton and John Alden. I'd like to give them to a lady—Priscilla, for example, but in that case I should have to slight another lady, my ancestress, Mary Chilton; so there you have the two horns of a dilemma."
"Oh, I know better than that," cried George; "Mary Chilton wasn't in it, of course she wasn't."
"In what, my child? or are you merely indulging in slang?"
"Oh, you know, Mr. Stacy, she wasn't in that first shallop that went ashore from Clark's Island. Of course a woman wouldn't come out in a little boat, when they were trying to find a landing-place. No, of course it was John Alden."
"Your reasoning is pretty reasonable—for a little boy," said Mr. Stacy. "But, my dear Miss Chicago," he continued, "if you are on a sight-seeing walk, let me go with you. I need not say to an up-to-date young lady that none of the houses of the original Pilgrims are here, though as we walk along we shall pass near the sites of many of them. The old Plymouth was chiefly down here near the water, not so very far from the rock. This is the first street, close to the brook that ran down from Billington Sea."