f her front door; and at 3:22 she discovered what was wrong with
Plymouth and the pilgrims.

Main Street. Straight and narrow. A Puritan thoroughfare in a Puritan
town.

The church. A centre of Puritan worship. The shrine of a narrow theology
which persistently repressed beauty and joy and life.

The Miles Standish house. The house of a Puritan. A squat, unlovely
symbol of repression. Beauty crushed by Morality.

Plymouth Rock. Hard, unyielding--like the Puritan moral code. A huge
tombstone on the grave of Pan.

She fled home. She flung herself, sobbing, on the bed. She cried,
"They're all Puritans that's what they are, Puritans!"

After a while she slept, her cheeks flushed, her heart beating
unnaturally.

VII

Late that night.

She opened her eyes; she heard men's voices; she felt her heart still
pounding within her at an alarming rate.

"And I told them then that it would come to no good end. Truly, the Lord
does not countenance such joking."

She recognized the voices of Miles Standish and Elder Brewster.

"Well--what happened then?" This from Kennicott.

"Well, you see, Henry Haydock got some of this Mencken's medicine from
one of the Indians. And he thought it would be a good joke to put it in
the broth at the church supper this evening."

"Yes?"

"Well--he did it, the fool. And when the broth was served, hell on
earth broke loose. Everyone started calling his neighbor a Puritan, and
cursing him for having banished Beauty from the earth. The Lord knows
what they meant by that; I don't. Old friends fought like wildcats,
shrieking 'Puritan' at each other. Luckily it only got to one table--but
there are ten raving lunatics in the lockup tonight.

"It's an awful thing. But thanks to the Lord, some good has come out of
this evil: that medicine man, Mencken, was standing outside looking in
at the rumpus, smiling to himself I guess. Well, somebody saw him and
yelled, 'There's another of those damned Puritans!' and before he could
get away five of them had jumped on him and beaten him to death. He
deserved it, and it's a good joke on him that they killed him for being
a Puritan."

Priscilla could stand no more. She rose from her bed, rushed into the
room, and faced the three Puritans. In the voice of Priscilla Kennicott
but with the words of the medicine man she scourged them.

"A good joke?" she began. "And that is what you Puritan gentlemen of God
and volcanoes of Correct Thought snuffle over as