London traders who owned the Pilgrims' labor; and
braving both heavy debt and the possibility of censure, bought out the
traders' rights in the name of his associates.

[Illustration: Departure of the Mayflower.]

The personal descriptions of this remarkable man that have come down
to us, show him as a man of small stature, quick-tempered, choleric,
sturdy and bluff. "As a little chimney is soon fired," wrote the
Puritan historian Hubbard, "so was the Plymouth captain, a man of
very little stature, yet of a very hot and angry temper." And yet his
relations with such men as the noble Bradford, the blameless Brewster,
the politic Winslow, were so close and of so personal a character that
one can hardly accept unquestioningly the story of his hot and
unreasoning temper. He was a soldier and a fighter; but he loved peace
and quiet, and his life was full of friendly offices and of kindly
deeds. On Nantasket Beach he built the first "house of refuge" and
life-saving station in America. He was a gentle nurse in the winter of
sickness, a friend and adviser to those in trouble or distress, a
loving father in the days when parents were not unfrequently tyrants,
and a forgiving spirit, as the old story of his famous "courtship"
(with sufficient foundation to warrant its acceptance) amply proves.

The communism of the early Pilgrim days gave place in time to personal
possession and, as the colony grew, certain of those who had been
leaders desired more extended holdings. Captain Standish was one of
these, and despite his friend Bradford's protests, he moved across the
bay and in 1632 occupied a large and fertile stretch north of
Plymouth, to which, still clinging to his old claim of a stolen
heritage, he gave the name of Duxbury. Here in the midst of peaceful
pursuits, but ever ready to obey the colony's call for counsel or for
leadership, he lived for over twenty years, dying October 3, 1656, at
the age of seventy-two.

A notable figure in American history, Miles Standish is a type of that
mingled spirit of adventure, liberty, and distrust that impelled
emigration across the sea and, combined with the uncompromising stand
for freedom of conscience, founded and up-built the Pilgrim Colony of
Plymouth.

His existence among these Pilgrims is in itself an anomaly. But it is
one of those strange associations and unfaltering friendships that
have left their mark for good upon the world since the days when the
Roman fighting-man st