for they
wanted to force everybody else into their way. Some Quakers who came to
Boston were treated very badly because they had different ways from the
Puritans. And one young minister named Roger Williams, who thought every
man should have the right to worship as he pleased, and said that the
Indians had not been treated justly, had to flee into the woods for
safety.

It was winter time. The trees were bare of leaves and the ground was
white with snow. Poor Roger had to wander through the cold woods, making
a fire at night with his flint and steel, or sometimes creeping into a
hollow tree to sleep.

Thus he went on, half frozen and half starved, for eighty long miles, to
the house of Massasoit, an Indian chief who was his friend. The good
chief treated him well, for he knew, like all the Indians, what Roger
Williams had tried to do for them. When spring time came, Massasoit gave
his guest a canoe and told him where to go. So Roger paddled away till
he found a good place to stop. This place he called Providence. A large
city now stands there, and is still called Providence.

Roger Williams had some friends with him, and others soon came, and
after a few years he had quite a settlement of his own. It was called
Rhode Island. Such a settlement as that at Plymouth, at Boston, and at
Providence, was called "a colony."

He took care that the Indians should be treated well, and that no one
should do them any harm, so they grew to love the good white man. And he
said that every man in his colony should worship God in the way he liked
best, and no one should suffer on account of his manner of worship.

It was a wonderful thing in those days, when there were wars going on in
Europe about religion or the manner of worship, and everybody was
punished who did not believe in the religion of the state.

Do you not think that Roger Williams was as brave a man as John Smith or
Miles Standish, and as much of a hero? He did not kill any one. He was
not that kind of a hero. But he did much to make men happy and good and
to do justice to all men, and I think that is the best kind of a hero.

CHAPTER IV

THE DUTCH AND THE QUAKERS COME TO AMERICA

I WONDER how many of my readers have ever seen the great city of New
York. I wonder still more how many of them knew that it is the largest
city in the world except London. But we must remember that London is ten
times as old, so it can well afford to be larger.

Why, if you s