hose old
patriarchs, well versed in Biblical lore, chose for their neighborhood
names. Accord Pond and Glad Tidings Plain might have been lifted from
some Pilgrim's Progress, while the near-by Sea of Galilee and Jerusalem
Road are from the Good Book itself.

"Which way to Egypt?" Is this an echo from that time when the Bible was
the corner-stone of Church and State, of home and school?

"What's the best road to Jericho Beach?" Surely it is some grave-faced
shade who calls: or is it a peal from the chimes in the Memorial Bell
Tower--chimes reminiscent of old Hingham, in England? No, it is only the
shouted question of the motorist, gay and prosperous, flying on his
Sunday holiday through ancient Hingham town.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER VI

COHASSET LEDGES AND MARSHES[1]

[Illustration]

A sickle-shaped shore--wild, superb! Tawny ledges tumbling out to sea,
rearing massive heads to search, across three thousand miles of water,
for another shore. For it is Spain and Portugal which lie directly
yonder, and the same tumultuous sea that crashes and swirls against
Cohasset's crags laps also on those sunnier, warmer sands.

Back inland, from the bold brown coast which gives Cohasset her
Riviera-like fame, lie marshes, liquefying into mirrors at high tide,
melting into lush green at low tide.

Between the ledges and the marshes winds Jerusalem Road, bearing a
continual stream of sight-seers and fringed with estates hidden from the
sight-seers; estates with terraces dashed by spindrift, with curving
stairways hewn in sheer rock down to the water, with wind-twisted
savins, and flowers whose bright bloom is heightened by the tang of
salt. For too many a passing traveler Cohasset is known only as the most
fashionable resort on the South Shore. But Cohasset's story is a longer
one than that, and far more profound.

Cohasset is founded upon a rock, and the making of that rock is so
honestly and minutely recorded by nature that even those who take alarm
at the word "geology" may read this record with ease. These rocky ledges
that stare so proudly across the sea underlie, also, every inch of soil,
and are of the same kind everywhere--granite. Granite is a rock which is
formed under immense pressure and in the presence of confined moisture,
needing a weight of fifteen thousand pounds upon every inch. Therefore,
wherever granite is found we know that it has not been formed by
deposit, like limestone and sandstone and sla