s the sun passed I saw
the cool steel of the bay catch the last rays in little dimples of
silver light. Manomet withdrew, blue and mysterious in the haze of
nightfall. Out over the Gurnet, beyond, the sky caught purples
from the colors in the west, and there, dropping below the horizon
line, east northeast toward England, I saw a sail vanish in the
soft haze as if it might be the first Mayflower, sailing away from
the heavy-hearted Pilgrims, toward England and home. The sun's
last ray touched it with a fleck of rose as it passed, a rose-like
that which tipped the petals of the mayflowers that I held in my
hand, mayflowers that sent tip to me in the coolness of the
gathering April night a fragrance as aromatic and beloved as is
the memory of the lives of the Pilgrims that slept all about me on
the brow of Burial Hill. Bradford wrote gravely and simply the
chronicles of these, and no more, yet the fervent faith and sturdy
love for fair play, unquenchable in the hearts of these men,
breathes from every page, a fragrance that shall go forth on the
winds of the world forevermore.

CHAPTER III

UNBUILDING A BUILDING

I tore down an old house recently, rent it part from part with my
own hands and a crowbar, piling it in its constituents, bricks
with bricks, timber on timber, boards with boards.

Any of us who dare love the iconoclast would be one if we dared
sufficiently, and in this work I surely was an image-breaker, for
the old house was more than it seemed. To the careless passer, it
was a gray, bald, doddering old structure that seemed trying to
shrink into the ground, untenanted, unsightly, and forlorn. I
know, having analyzed it, that it was an image of New England
village life of the two centuries just gone, a life even the
images of which are passing, never to return.

As I knocked the old place down, it seemed to grow up, more vivid
as it passed from the roadside of the visible to the realm of the
remembered. You may think you know a house by living in it, but
you do not; you need to unbuild it to get more than a passing
acquaintance. And to unbuild a building you need to be strong of
limb, heavy of hand, and sure of eye, lest the structure upon
which you have fallen fall upon you; nor do business mottoes
count, for you begin not at the bottom, but at the top, or near
it.

Up in the attic among the cobwebs, stooping beneath the ancient
rafters, dodging crumbly bunches of pennyroyal and hyssop, hung