And now—for the fulness of time is come—let us go up, in imagination to yonder hill, and look out upon the November scene. That single dark speck, just discernible through the perspective glass, on the waste of waters, is the fated vessel. The storm moans through her tattered canvas, as she creeps, almost sinking, to her anchorage in Provincetown harbor; and there she lies, with all her treasures, not of silver and gold (for of these she has none), but of courage, of patience, of zeal, of high spiritual daring.
So often as I dwell in imagination on this scene; when I consider the condition of the Mayflower, utterly incapable, as she was, of living through another gale; when I survey the terrible front presented by our coast to the navigator who, unacquainted with its channels and roadsteads, should approach it in the stormy season, I dare not call it a mere piece of good fortune, that the general north and south wall of the shore of New England should be broken by this extraordinary projection of the cape, running out into the ocean a hundred miles, as if on purpose to receive and encircle the precious vessel.
As I now see her, freighted with the destinies of a continent, barely escaped from the perils of the deep, approaching the shore precisely where the broad sweep of this most remarkable headland presents almost the only point at which, for hundreds of miles, she could, with any ease, have made a harbor, and this, perhaps, the very best on the seaboard, I feel my spirit raised above the sphere of mere natural agencies.
I see the mountains of New England rising from their rocky thrones. They rush forward into the ocean, settling down as they advance; and there they range themselves, as a mighty bulwark around the heaven-directed vessel. Yes, the everlasting God himself stretches out the arm of his mercy and his power, in substantial manifestation, and gathers the meek company of his worshipers as in the hollow of his hand.
Edward Everett.
MARCH—Our Naval Cadets.
(Twelve or more boys dressed in naval costume and carrying flags.)
SINGING—TUNE: Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean.
