town harbor. These ten, liking the country well enough, go
across the bay to Provincetown where they find poor Bradford's wife
drowned in their absence, and bring the ship across into Plymouth harbor
on the sixteenth. Now you will say of course that they were so glad to
get here that they began to build at once; but you are entirely
mistaken, for they did not do any such thing. There was a little of the
John Bull about them and a little of the Dutchman. The seventeenth was
Sunday. Of course they could not build a city on Sunday. Monday they
explored, and Tuesday they explored more. Wednesday,

"After we had called on God for direction, we came to this resolution,
to go presently ashore again, and to take a better view of two places,
which we thought most fitting for us; for we could not now take time for
further search or consideration, our victuals being much spent,
especially our beer."

Observe, this is the Pilgrims' or Forefathers' beer, and not the beer of
the ship, of which there was still some store. Acting on this resolution
they went ashore again, and concluded by "most voices" to build Plymouth
where Plymouth now is. One recommendation seems to have been that there
was a good deal of land already clear. But this brought with it the
counter difficulty that they had to go half a quarter of a mile for
their wood. So there they left twenty people on shore, resolving the
next day to come and build their houses. But the next day it stormed,
and the people on shore had to come back to the ship, and Richard
Britteridge died. And Friday it stormed so that they could not land, and
the people on the shallop who had gone ashore the day before could not
get back to the ship. Saturday was the twenty-third, as they counted,
and some of them got ashore and cut timber and carried it to be ready
for building. But they reserved their forces still, and Sunday, the
twenty-fourth, no one worked of course. So that when Christmas day came,
the day which every man, woman and child of them had been trained to
regard as a holy day--as a day specially given to festivity and
specially exempted from work, all who could went on shore and joined
those who had landed already. So that William Bradford was able to close
the first book of his history by saying: "Ye 25. _day_ begane to erect
ye first house for comone use to receive them and their goods."

Now, this all may have been accidental. I do not say it was not. But
when I come to the re