and, who
had the faculty of making himself generally useful, holding a baby on one
arm, and stirring something in a pot on the stove with the other. He
looked hot but resigned. There has been so much said about the position
of men in Massachusetts that the travelers were glad of this evidence
that husbands are beginning to be appreciated. Under proper training
they are acknowledged to be "better than girls."

It was late afternoon when they reached the quiet haven of Plymouth--a
place where it is apparently always afternoon, a place of memory and
reminiscences, where the whole effort of the population is to hear and to
tell some old thing. As the railway ends there, there is no danger of
being carried beyond, and the train slowly ceases motion, and stands
still in the midst of a great and welcome silence. Peace fell upon the
travelers like a garment, and although they had as much difficulty in
landing their baggage as the early Pilgrims had in getting theirs ashore,
the circumstance was not able to disquiet them much. It seemed natural
that their trunks should go astray on some of the inextricably
interlocked and branching railways, and they had no doubt that when they
had made the tour of the State they would be discharged, as they finally
were, into this cul-de-sac.

The Pilgrims have made so much noise in the world, and so powerfully
affected the continent, that our tourists were surprised to find they had
landed in such a quiet place, and that the spirit they have left behind
them is one of such tranquillity. The village has a charm all its own.
Many of the houses are old-fashioned and square, some with colonial doors
and porches, irregularly aligned on the main street, which is arched by
ancient and stately elms. In the spacious door-yards the lindens have
had room and time to expand, and in the beds of bloom the flowers, if not
the very ones that our grandmothers planted, are the sorts that they
loved. Showing that the town has grown in sympathy with human needs and
eccentricities, and is not the work of a surveyor, the streets are
irregular, forming picturesque angles and open spaces.

Nothing could be imagined in greater contrast to a Western town, and a
good part of the satisfaction our tourists experienced was in the absence
of anything Western or "Queen Anne" in the architecture.

In the Pilgrim Hall--a stone structure with an incongruous
wooden-pillared front--they came into the very presence of the early