like to know whether this was the first case of
female rebellion in Massachusetts against the common-law right of a man
to correct a woman with a stick not thicker than his little finger--a
rebellion which has resulted in the position of man as the tourists saw
him where the New Hampshire Amazon gave them a meal of victuals; and
whether the girl married the man who planted the twig, and, if so,
whether he did not regret that he had not kept it by him.

This is a world of illusions. By daylight, when the tide was out, the
pretty silver bay of the night before was a mud flat, and the tourists,
looking over it from Monument Hill, lost some of their respect for the
Pilgrim sagacity in selecting a landing-place. They had ascended the
hill for a nearer view of the monument, King with a reverent wish to read
the name of his Mayflower ancestor on the tablet, the others in a spirit
of cold, New York criticism, for they thought the structure, which is
still unfinished, would look uglier near at hand than at a distance. And
it does. It is a pile of granite masonry surmounted by symbolic figures.

"It is such an unsympathetic, tasteless-looking thing!" said Miss Lamont.

"Do you think it is the worst in the country?"

"I wouldn't like to say that," replied the artist, "when the competition
in this direction is so lively. But just look at the drawing" (holding
up his pencil with which he had intended to sketch it). "If it were
quaint, now, or rude, or archaic, it might be in keeping, but bad drawing
is just vulgar. I should think it had been designed by a carpenter, and
executed by a stone-mason."

"Yes," said the little Lamont, who always fell in with the most
abominable opinions the artist expressed; "it ought to have been made of
wood, and painted and sanded."

"You will please remember," mildly suggested King, who had found the name
he was in search of, "that you are trampling on my ancestral
sensibilities, as might be expected of those who have no ancestors who
ever landed or ever were buried anywhere in particular. I look at the
commemorative spirit rather than the execution of the monument."

"So do I," retorted the girl; "and if the Pilgrims landed in such a
vulgar, ostentatious spirit as this, I'm glad my name is not on the
tablet."

The party were in a better mood when they had climbed up Burial Hill,
back of the meeting-house, and sat down on one of the convenient benches
amid the ancient gravestones, and looked