Hingham typifies
what is quaintest and best in New England towns. Possibly the dappling
of the elms, possibly the shadow of the Old Ship Church, is a bit deeper
here than in the other South Shore towns. However it may seem to its
inhabitants, to the stranger everything in Hingham is tinctured by the
remembrance of the stern old ecclesiasticism. Even the number of
historic forts seems a proper part of those righteous days, for when did
religion and warfare not go hand in hand? During the trouble with King
Philip the town had three forts, one at Fort Hill, one at the Cemetery,
and one "on the plain about a mile from the harbor"; and the sites may
still be identified.

Not that Hingham history is exclusively religious or martial. Her little
harbor once held seventy sail of fishing vessels, and between 1815 and
1826, 165,000 barrels of mackerel were landed on their salty decks. For
fifty years (between 1811 and 1860) the Rapid sailed as a packet between
this town and Boston, making the trip on one memorable occasion in
sixty-seven minutes. We read that in the War of 1812 she was carried up
the Weymouth River and covered, masts and hull, with green bushes so
that the marauding British cruisers might not find her, and as we read
we find ourselves remembering that _camouflage_ is new only in name.

How entirely fitting it seems that a town of such venerable houses and
venerable legends should be presided over by a church which is the
oldest of its kind in the country!

Hingham changes. There is a Roman Catholic Church in the very heart of
that one-time Puritan stronghold: the New North is Unitarian, and
Episcopalians, Baptists, and Second Adventists have settled down
comfortably where once they would have been run out of town. Poor old
Puritans, how grieved and scandalized they would be to stand, as we are
standing now, and watch the procession of passing automobilists! Would
it seem all lost to them, we wonder, the religious ideal for which they
struggled, or would they realize that their sowing had brought forth
richer fruit than they could guess? It has all changed, since Puritan
days, and yet, perhaps, in no other place in New England does the hand
of the past lie so visibly upon the community. You cannot lift your eyes
but they rest upon some building raised two centuries and more ago; the
shade which ripples under your feet is cast by elms planted by that very
hand of the past. Even your voice repeats the words which t