The child shall live.
Titus Andronicus.
Here are two pilgrims,
And neither knows one footstep of the way.
Heyword’s Duchess of Suffolk.
With equal virtue formed, and equal grace,
The same, distinguished by their sex alone.
Thompson.
A short gap in this narrative places the present action of our story in America. It is needless here to narrate the first settlement of the New England Colonies. The landing of the Pilgrim Fathers has been immortalised both in prose and verse until it has become as familiar to each American as any household word. We will not, therefore, ask the reader’s detention at the perusal of a thrice-told tale. It is likewise known that that landing was but the herald of a succession of immigrations, and the establishment of numerous colonies. Owing to the talent and liberal education, not less than the enterprise of the early settlers, this wilderness was not long, in spite of repeated obstacles, ere it grew up into flourishing villages and towns, some of them fairer than had ever graced the stalwort ground of Old England.
We introduce the reader into one of those villages, situated some twenty miles distant from New Haven. It might somewhat surprise him when we say, were it not for the frequent instances of the rapid growth of cities in our western wilds, which we would remind him have sprung up within his own recollection, that the latter place was, even at the period to which we refer, a flourishing and important town. Yet, notwithstanding the superior size and consequence of New Haven, the village of L—— was the place in which the governor of the colony chose to reside.