The long, curved sand-spit-which was heavily wooded when the Pilgrims
landed-was silvery also, and upon its northern tip glowed the white
sparkle in the lighthouse like the evening-star. To the north, over
the smooth pink water speckled with white sails, rose Captain Hill, in
Duxbury, bearing the monument to Miles Standish. Clarke's Island (where
the Pilgrims heard a sermon on the first Sunday), Saguish Point, and
Gurnett Headland (showing now twin white lights) appear like a long
island intersected by thin lines of blue water. The effect of these
ribbons of alternate sand and water, of the lights and the ocean (or
Great Bay) beyond, was exquisite.

Even the unobtrusive tavern at the rear of the esplanade, ancient,
feebly lighted, and inviting, added something to the picturesqueness of
the scene. The old tree by the gate--an English linden--illuminated
by the street lamps and the moon, had a mysterious appearance, and the
tourists were not surprised to learn that it has a romantic history. The
story is that the twig or sapling from which it grew was brought over
from England by a lover as a present to his mistress, that the lovers
quarreled almost immediately, that the girl in a pet threw it out of
the window when she sent her lover out of the door, and that another man
picked it up and planted it where it now grows. The legend provokes a
good many questions. One would like to know whether this was the first
case of female rebellion in Massachusetts against the common-law right
of a man to correct a woman with a stick not thicker than his little
finger--a rebellion which has resulted in the position of man as the
tourists saw him where the New Hampshire Amazon gave them a meal of
victuals; and whether the girl married the man who planted the twig,
and, if so, whether he did not regret that he had not kept it by him.

This is a world of illusions. By daylight, when the tide was out, the
pretty silver bay of the night before was a mud flat, and the tourists,
looking over it from Monument Hill, lost some of their respect for the
Pilgrim sagacity in selecting a landing-place. They had ascended the
hill for a nearer view of the monument, King with a reverent wish to
read the name of his Mayflower ancestor on the tablet, the others in
a spirit of cold, New York criticism, for they thought the structure,
which is still unfinished, would look uglier near at hand than at a
distance. And it does. It is a pile of granite masonry s