made, unsuccessfully again; for their rulers neither granted them
freedom at home nor emigration abroad. But before that year of 1608
passed, the victims of persecution escaped one after another, by various
means, across the water to Amsterdam. Bradford's ship encountered a
seven days' storm and was driven out of its course hundreds of miles,
close to Norway, even the mariners giving up in despair. The Pilgrims
remained calm, though unused to the sea; and our hero was heard to
repeat in prayer, with his companions, "Yet, Lord, thou canst save."

On reaching Holland, an envious passenger accused him as having fled
from England as a culprit, and he was taken before the magistrates, who,
however, willingly released him when the truth was known.

Leyden was the Pilgrims' rendezvous. The place was congenial to the
ardent spirit of this youth, and he became a student at the University
there. He must have heard in England as a boy, how the martyr John
Bradford, chaplain to Edward VI and one of the most acceptable preachers
in the realm, because of his religious principles had been burned to
death, in the reign of Bloody Mary. And the people of Leyden could
recite for sympathetic ears, the tales of heroic and successful
resistance against King Philip of Spain only thirty years before these
Puritan refugees from intolerance arrived.

William now went about to earn a living. As an apprentice to a French
Protestant, he learned the trade of dying silk, and doubtless, beside
his Dutch, acquired here his thorough familiarity with the French
language so widely used even in those days.

II

THE PILGRIM

_The best inheritance they have left us is the New England
conscience. The Puritan's habit of self-examination and prayer
has left its impress on the habit of thought of the great nation
that has risen where he showed the way._

Governor Guild of Massachusetts, at the four hundredth
anniversary of the birth of Calvin, in Geneva, Switzerland,
July 9, 1909.

_Religious faith must ever be the motive power of humanity, and
whatever might become of despotism, with or without, it is
absolutely essential to democracy._

Governor Hughes of New York, at the Champlain Tercentenary,
Vermont, July 9, 1909.

_Religion is the only thing upon which to rest our salvation in
these times. It is religious principles to which our
Commonwealth owes its great