eacon fire was lighted to
alarm the town in case of invasion by the enemy.

Kingston is not without history, although its manuscripts lie long
untouched upon library shelves, and its historic soil is tramped over by
unheeding feet. That the famous manuscript which was its greatest
historical contribution has been taken away from it, is no loss in the
truest sense of the word, for this monumental work, which belongs to no
one place, but to the country as a whole, is properly preserved at the
State House.

Kingston seems amenable to this arrangement, just as she seems entirely
willing that Plymouth should claim the first century of her career. When
one is sure of one's heritage and beauty, one does not clamor for
recognition; one does not even demand a printed history. It is quality,
not quantity, that counts, and even if nothing more is ever written in
or about this dear old town, Kingston will have made a distinguished
contribution to American history and literature.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XI

PLYMOUTH

[Illustration]

One of the favorite pictures of New Englanders, and one which hangs in
innumerable dining-rooms and halls, is by Boughton, the popular American
artist, and is named "The Return of the Mayflower." I suppose thousands
of New England children have gazed wonderingly at this picture, which,
contrary to the modern canons of art, "tells a story," and many of those
naive minds have puzzled as to how those poor Pilgrims, who had no tea
or coffee or milk or starch, managed to appear so well fed and so
contented, and so marvelously neat and clean. The inexhaustible bag
which inevitably appeared at crucial moments in the career of "Swiss
Family Robinson" is nowhere mentioned in the early chronicles of the
Plymouth Plantation, and the precise manner in which a small vessel of a
hundred and eighty tons, carrying a hundred passengers, and all the
innumerable cradles, chairs, and highboys which have since flooded the
museums as "genuine relics" of that first voyage, could also have
brought sufficient washboards, soap, and flatirons to have kept the
charming costumes so immaculate is a mystery which will probably never
be solved--especially since the number of relics appears to increase
instead of diminish with the passage of time.

However, that is a mere trifle. Mr. Boughton, in catching this touching
and dramatic moment in the history of the Plymouth Colony, has rendered
a graphic service to us all