“Poor Indian! Do you know, Jack, one of those Englishmen that came from Boston to see the Rock where our fathers first landed was at the governor’s to dinner, and father was there, and Master Bradford said he must have some more Indian ground, and the man made great eyes and said,—
“‘But does your excellency chastise the savages in such fashion as that?’ He thought, poor gentleman, that we ground up the Indians!”
“And doubtless he feared our governor next would roar,—
‘Fee, fie, faw, fum!
I smell the blood of an Englishman!
And be he alive, or be he dead,
I’ll grind his bones to make my bread!’”
And John Howland junior put his great hands upon his sister’s shoulders to draw her back, saying, “But we won’t have you ground this grist, Hope; so don’t tumble in. Mother wouldn’t like it.”
“Oh, John, how you tease!” cried Hope, pouting, yet clinging to the arm of her stalwart brother, a fine young fellow, who at a later date calmly incurred judicial censure and a heavy fine for the sake of warning some Quakers, in whose belief he had no share, that they were about to be arrested and imprisoned. And from that day to our own the stout Howland blood has held its own, foremost in that Army of Occupation which the departing Pilgrims left to hold the land their prowess had won.