. _day_ ye winde came faire, and they arrived safe in this harbor.
And after wards tooke better view of ye place, and resolved wher to
pitch their dwelling; and ye 25. _day_ begane to erecte ye first house
for comone use to receive them and their goods."

You see, dear reader, that when on any 21st or 22d of December you give
the children parched corn, and let them pull candy and swim candles in
nut-shells in honor of the "landing of the Forefathers"--if by good luck
you be of Yankee blood, and do either of these praiseworthy things--you
are not celebrating the anniversary of the day when the women and
children landed, wrapped up in water-proofs, with the dog and John
Carver in headpiece, and morion, as you have seen in many pictures. That
all came afterward. Be cool and self-possessed, and I will guide you
through the whole chronology safely--Old Style and New Style, first
landing and second landing, Sabbaths and Sundays, Carver's landing and
Mary Chilton's landing, so that you shall know as much as if you had
fifteen ancestors, a cradle, a tankard, and an oak chest in the
Mayflower, and you shall come out safely and happily at the first
Christmas day.

Know then, that when the poor Mayflower at last got across the Atlantic,
Massachusetts stretched out her right arm to welcome her, and she came
to anchor as early as the 11th of November in Provincetown Harbor. This
was the day when the compact of the cabin of the Mayflower was signed,
when the fiction of the "social compact" was first made real. Here they
fitted their shallop, and in this shallop, on the sixth of December, ten
of the Pilgrims and six of the ship's crew sailed on their exploration.
They came into Plymouth harbor on the tenth, rested on Watson's island
on the eleventh,--which was Sunday,--and on Monday, the twelfth, landed
on the mainland, stepping on Plymouth rock and marching inland to
explore the country. Add now nine days to this date for the difference
then existing between Old Style and New Style, and you come upon the
twenty-first of December, which is the day you ought to celebrate as
Forefathers' Day. On that day give the children parched corn in token of
the new provant, the English walnut in token of the old, and send them
to bed with Elder Brewster's name, Mary Chilton's, Edward Winslow's, and
John Billington's, to dream upon. Observe still that only these ten men
have landed. All the women and children and the other men are over in
Province