rcely gather round
this engaging incident attractions surpassing in its own simple and
impressive interest. Doubtless Clarkson has given a fair
representation of it, if we merely disconnect from his account the
statement that the Indians were armed, and all that confounds the
treaty of friendship with the purchase of lands. Penn wore a sky-blue
sash of silk around his waist, as the most simple badge. The pledges
there given were to hold their sanctity "while the creeks and rivers
run, and while the sun, moon, and stars endure."

While the whites preserved in written records the memory of such
covenants, the Indians had their methods for perpetuating in safe
channels their own relations. They cherished in grateful regard, they
repeated to their children and to the whites, the terms of the Great
Treaty. The Delawares called William Penn _Miquon_, in their own
language, though they seem to have adopted the name given him by the
Iroquois, _Onas_; both which terms signify a quill or pen. Benjamin
West's picture of the treaty is too imaginative for a historical
piece. He makes Penn of a figure and aspect which would become twice
the years that had passed over his head. The elm-tree was spared in
the war of the American Revolution, when there was distress for
firewood, the British officer, Simcoe, having placed a sentinel
beneath it for protection. It was prostrated by the wind on the night
of Saturday, March 3, 1810. It was of gigantic size, and the circles
around its heart indicated an age of nearly three centuries. A piece
of it was sent to the Penn mansion at Stoke Poges, in England, where
it is properly commemorated. A marble monument, with suitable
inscription was "placed by the Penn Society A.D. 1827 to mark the site
of the Great Elm Tree."

[1] Mr. Ellis was a Unitarian clergyman, long pastor of a church
at Charlestown, Mass.

[2] Kensington is now a part of Philadelphia, being the northeastern
section. It lies on the Delaware River, about two miles distant
from the City Hall, and is a center of the ship-building industry.

THE CHARTER OAK AFFAIR IN CONNECTICUT

(1682)

BY ALEXANDER JOHNSTON[1]

In December, 1686, the Hartford authorities were called upon to
measure their strength again with their old antagonist. Andros had
landed at Boston, commissioned as governor of all New England, and
bent on abrogating the charters. Following Dudley's lead, he wrote to
Treat, suggesting that