ments in truly regal style, while
their followers to the number of about ninety men with a few women
remained modestly in the background.

Presently when the village was well afoot, and a big fire started
between the elder's house and the brook for cooking purposes, the roll
of the drum announced the morning prayers, with which the Pilgrims began
every day, and more especially this Feast of Thanksgiving. The Indians
stood reverently around, Massasoit explaining in low gutturals to a
chieftain who had never visited Plymouth before, that the white men thus
propitiated the Great Spirit, and engaged Him both to prosper them and
kill their enemies.

Prayers ended, Priscilla with her attendants flew back to the fire, and
presently a long table spread in the open air for the men was covered
with great wooden bowls full of what a later generation named
hasty-pudding, to be eaten with butter and treacle, for milk was not to
be had for more than one year to come. Other bowls contained an
excellent clam chowder with plenty of sea biscuit swimming in the savory
broth, while great pieces of cold boiled beef with mustard, flanked by
dishes of turnips, offered solid resistance to those who so joyfully
attacked them.

Another table in the Common house offered somewhat more delicate food to
the women and children, chief among it a great pewter bowl of
plum-porridge with bits of toasted cracker floating upon it.

The meal was a rude one looked upon with the dainty eyes and languid
appetites of to-day, but to those sturdy and heroic men and women it was
a veritable feast, and at its close Quadequina with an amiable smile
nodded to one of his attendants, who produced and poured upon the table
something like a bushel of popped corn,--a dainty hitherto unseen and
unknown by most of the Pilgrims.

All tasted, and John Howland hastily gathering up a portion upon a
wooden plate carried it to the Common house for the delectation of the
women, that is to say, for Elizabeth Tilley, whose firm young teeth
craunched it with much gusto.

Breakfast over, with a grace after meat that amounted to another
service, the governor announced that some military exercises under the
direction of Captain Standish would now take place, and the guests were
invited to seat themselves in the vicinity of a fire kindled on the
ground at the northerly part of the village about at the head of Middle
Street, and designed more as a common centre and social feature t