ry. It had
been entertaining under difficulties, and if the entertainers had hoped
for the "angels unawares," they had been decidedly disappointed.
Therefore it is easy to believe that they took fresh courage and sincere
delight when, in July, 1623, the Anne and the Little James arrived--no
strangers, for they brought with them additional stores, and best of
all, good friends and close kinsfolk from the church at Leyden. Yes, the
Pilgrims were delighted, but, alas, tradition has it that when they
pressed forward in glad greeting to their old acquaintances, these
latter started back, nonplussed--aghast! Like Mr. Boughton they had
fondly pictured an ideal rustic community, in which the happy, carefree
colonists reveled in all the beauty of picturesque and snowy collars and
cuffs in Arden-like freedom. Instead they saw a row of rough log cabins
and a group of work-worn, shabby men and women, men and women whose
faces were lined with exposure, and whose backs were bent with toil, and
who, for their most hospitable feast, had only a bit of shellfish and
water to offer. Many of the newcomers promptly burst into tears, and
begged to return to England immediately. Poor Pilgrims! Rebuffed--and so
unflatteringly--with each arriving maritime guest, who can doubt that
there was born in them at that moment the constitutional dislike for
unexpected company which has characterized New England ever since?

However, in a comparatively short time the colonists who had been
brought over in the Anne and the Little James--those who stayed, for
some did return at once--adjusted themselves to the new life. Many
married--both Myles Standish and Governor Bradford found wives among
them; and now the Plymouth Colony may be said to have fairly started.

Just as a trail which is first a mere thread leading to some
out-of-the-way cabin becomes a path and then a road, and in due time a
wide thoroughfare, so the way across the Atlantic from Old England to
New became more charted--more traveled. At first there was only one boat
and one net for fishing. In five years there was a fleet of fifty
fishing vessels. Ten years later we have note of ten foreign vessels in
the harbor in a single week. And to-day, if the Pilgrim man and maid
whom we joined at the beginning of our reminiscences could gaze out over
the harbor, they would see it as full of masts as a cornfield is of
stalks. Every kind of boat finds its way in and out; and not only
pleasure craft: P