The second Stunt was the renowned race for the Forefathers’ Rock, Kitty Corwin as Mary Chilton, and Fred Tyson as the slow-footed John Alden. A spinning contest followed, the fair spinners being colonial dames from Plymouth town, New Amsterdam, Boston, and Jamestown. The fair maiden of Plymouth, Priscilla, spun with such deftness and skill that she not only won the plaudits of those assembled, but the prize. As she gracefully bowed her acknowledgment to her friends’ loud clapping, she backed hastily off the platform. Alas, she backed into John Alden, who at this opportune moment had appeared on the stage, with such terrific force that she almost bowled him over. John, however, to prove that he was not as slow as the name he had gained, adroitly caught the falling maiden in his arms and then led the blushing damsel, Jessie Ford, forward as his captured prize.
Barbara Worth proved quite a heroine in her single-act comedy on Pioneer craft, the plucking of a live goose. Mistress Goose, however, not understanding her part of silent acquiescence, being a twentieth-century goose and not a pioneer one, mutinied, and as Barbara came to the end of the couplet,
“Twice a year depluméd may they be,
In spryngen tyme and harvest tyme,”
she escaped from her captor’s clutch and with a loud, “Quack! quack!” of disapproval flew across the stage.
Barbara, dumb with fright for fear the goose would fly down among the spectators, gave chase, and then ensued a regular “movie” as amid loud calls urging her on in the race, and protestations voiced by the goose in a clamorous quacking, she chased it about the platform. Just as Barbara was about to capture her prey she tripped on a rug and measured her five feet two on the floor. But Barbara was game, Fred Tyson declared to Nathalie as they watched her, and jumping to her feet she soon captured her featherless fowl, which, after being shown in its deplumed condition, was borne from the scene of its torments by the victor.
The curtain now rose on “The First American Wash Day,” a little playlet representing the women of the Pilgrim colony, with arms bared to the elbows, rubbing and scrubbing in tubs of foamy soap-suds, washing clothes, for the noble sires of our nation.
Nathalie gave a quick start and her eyes leaped wide open as she convulsively clutched Grace by the arm, and then she grew strangely still as she watched the actors on the stage. The scene was a distinctive one, as the children of the Mayflower ran hither and thither gathering boughs, make-believe sweet-smelling juniper, to place under the tripod from which kettles of water were suspended over a small fire that simulated a cheery blaze.
As these pioneer mothers washed, and then wrung out their clothes, slashing them about in true washer woman’s fashion, some one in the rear of the stage recited in a loud, clear voice:
The applause of the spectators testified to the merit of the performance, and as the curtain dropped, Nathalie, whose eyes were ashine with a strange fire, hastened out into the hall. “Oh, it was mean of her! It is the same as stealing, she knew she had no right to use it!” were the thoughts that flashed at white heat through her brain, for the playlet that had just been enacted was the one she had lost in the library!