Mayflower

“ For days at a time the Mayflower lay to, stripped of all sail, floating in currents, thrown up on high, driven nose down into an apparently bottomless pit, the least of man's work cut off from man's natural life, left to herself in the desert of waters, packed with the humanity that crowded her. ”

“ The very year in which that Dutch ship arrived with its freight of slaves at Jamestown, the Mayflower sailed with its freight of freemen for Plymouth.
Let us pause a moment and consider the prospects and opportunities which opened before the two bands of pilgrim. How hard and bleak were the shores that received the Mayflower pilgrims! Winter seemed the only season of the land to which they had come; when the snow disappeared, it was only to reveal a landscape of sand and rock. To have soil they must pulverize rock. ”

“ Do you often come here, Miss Churchill?”
“Yes, very often; it’s a nice walk from home.”
“And you read here. May I ask what you were reading when I interrupted you?”
“A novel, of course,” answered the Mayflower, with a blush.
“Yes, of course; that is only natural.”
The Mayflower looked quickly down at the good-looking brown face raised to hers, as John Temple said this, for something in his tone made her think he was amusing himself at her expense.
“Yes, it is only natural,” she answered, with a spirit; “I like to read of lives that I suppose are very often drawn from life.” ”

“ And yet this small people,—so obscure and outcast in condition,—so slender in numbers and in means,—so entirely unknown to the proud and great,—so absolutely without name in contemporary records,—whose departure from the Old World took little more than the breath of their bodies,—are now illustrious beyond the lot of men; and the Mayflower is immortal beyond the Grecian Argo, or the stately ship of any victorious admiral. ”

“ Warmer shines the sun, and April comes. All the people—all whom death has left—are in the houses now, and the Mayflower is ready for the home voyage. They gather at the shore to see the last of her, and send last messages back to the dear home land. Back goes the ship, straight to Old England; yet, with that fearful winter freezing in their memories, scarce fifty of them left to found the lonely settlement, weak yet and worn, not one returns to the easier life at home. The Mayflower disappears on the eastern horizon; the last watcher by the shore is satisfied that she is gone ”

“ He is familiar with the story of the Mayflower, and her burden of strange folk destined to a barren shore is impressed vividly upon his imagination, but of the Welcome which sailed over the same sea, bearing a purer people to a better land, he has never heard a whisper. ”

“ It is always known as the Mayflower throughout New England and the old story of its being Flora’s first offering to the ocean-tossed pilgrims as they landed at Plymouth, in appreciation of which they named it the Mayflower in memory of their vessel, has endeared the beautiful plant to every New England heart and has caused it to be placed in Cupid’s keeping, along with the Scotch blue bell, the German corn flower and the Swiss edelweiss. ”

“ Here was the first rude break in their weary worldly progress, a journey which was to continue with affliction into Holland, thence back to Plymouth, and, after a last adieu there to English soil, on in the little Mayflower to New Plymouth and a New England.
Alone in a Pilgrim cell! What thoughts the situation kindles; how eagerly the imagination shapes and clothes them; what scenes this mouldy atmosphere unfolds. The very solitude is eloquent with pious reminiscence; the void is filled again, peopled with those spectres of an imperishable past ”

“ On the 5th of April the Mayflower weighed anchor and set sail on her return voyage to England. She had but one-half of the crew with which she had sailed from Old Plymouth. The rest had fallen victims to the winter’s sickness. It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the hardships to which the Pilgrims128 were exposed, not one was disposed to abandon the enterprise and return in the ship. When the Mayflower left, there remained in the colony but fifty-five persons. Of these, nineteen only were men. The remaining thirty-six were women, children and servants. ”

“ Of the forty-one who signed the “solemn compact” before-mentioned on board the Mayflower, twenty alone survived; the living were scarcely sufficient to bury the dead; the hale to attend to the sick. Among those who died thus early, were some of the most distinguished men; the excellent John Carver, whom they had by mutual consent appointed to be their governor, had on his first landing lost a son, and soon after the Mayflower took her departure for England, he himself was carried off suddenly, and his wife, broken-hearted, did not long survive. ”

“ In the modest language of William Bradford used in his day, "As one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone to many, yea, in some sort to our whole nation," a truth which has a far wider application now than it had in Bradford's time.
Such is the story of the Mayflower Pilgrims, romantic, heroic, idyllic, based also upon the principles which have molded and maintained a mighty free nation. Its place in the life of to-day is honoured and conspicuous, and rests upon the rock of a people's gratitude. ”

“ Then from their houses in haste came forth the Pilgrims of Plymouth,
Men and women and children, all hurrying down to the sea-shore,
Eager, with tearful eyes, to say farewell to the Mayflower,
Homeward bound o'er the sea, and leaving them here in the desert. ”

“ Out from among these the blossoms seem to peer shyly, like sweet little Pilgrim children, ready to draw back behind their [142] mother’s aprons if they do not like the appearance of the coming stranger. Perhaps they do withdraw at discretion, and this is very likely why some people who come from far to hunt find many mayflowers, while others get few or none.
Just as the Mayflower in which the Pilgrims sailed to Plymouth seems to have been but one of many English ships of that name, so the trailing arbutus is not the only flower to be called mayflower in New England. ”

“ After the Pilgrims had secured financial aid the little band (July 1620) left Leyden and sailed from Delfts-haven in Holland in the Speedwell, which they had bought for the purpose, to Southampton where the Mayflower was awaiting them with friends. Two weeks later the Mayflower and the Speedwell left Southampton for America. The Mayflower of one hundred and eighty tons burden (the Queen [26] Mary of today is over eighty-three thousand tons) had been chartered to transport a part of the Leyden congregation to America. ”

“ We do not remember many men, but there is ever in the mind the thought of English valor and persistence, and the clear judgment which backed the valor by land and sea.
"But we need not go abroad; our own land has examples enough. Not many can call over the names of those who came in the 'Mayflower,' or those who made up the colonies up and down the Atlantic coast. But the spectacle of the 'Mayflower' band kneeling, on their arrival, in the snow and singing a triumphal song, is a picture the tints of which will deepen in splendor with the ages. ”

“ If history as some one has said is in its unchangeable essence a tale, then this particular history is a tale that cannot be too often told or heard, not merely to hold our attention to the past but by its light to look forward with a thrill to the future, to the tasks and service for civilization, under the Providence by which the women of the Mayflower and the women of Plymouth were upheld. This will be the best memorial we can give these women all through the years; the remembrance that cannot fade. ”

“ Whole families embarked on board the Mayflower, the Fortune, the Ann, the Mary and John, and other ships that brought their precious freight in safety to a New World. Of the one hundred and one persons who came in the Mayflower, in 1620, twenty-eight were females, and eighteen were wives and mothers. ”

“ A wintry storm, with its angry billows, still swept the bay. The day opened upon the Pilgrims cold, cloudy and dreary. The long and anxiously looked for hour had now come, when the Mayflower,76 the only material tie which bound them to the Old World, was to be abandoned, and these bold men were to be left three thousand miles from their native shores, to struggle with all the known and unknown perils and hardships of the wilderness. ”

“ Borne on the sand of the sea, and the swelling hearts of the pilgrims.
Longfellow, Courtship of Miles Standish, v. (1858) .
[18] Men of the Mayflower, the Pilgrim Fathers, who went out in the Mayflower to North America in 1620.
Mayflower (Phœbe) , servant at Sir Henry Lee’s lodge.—Sir W. Scott, Woodstock (time, commonwealth) .
Maylie (Mrs.) , the lady of the house attacked burglariously by Bill Sykes and others. Mrs. Maylie is mother of Harry Maylie, and aunt of Rose Fleming, who lives with her. ”

“ Gilbert Winslow, another subscriber to the compact in the Mayflower's cabin, returned subsequently to England and died in 1650.
Apart from the events of their after lives, the spirit which possessed the Mayflower Pilgrims and guided their leaders in exile is well expressed by Mrs. Hemans when she says, in her stirring lines—
They sought a faith's pure shrine! ”

“ MAYFLOWER SOCIETY HOUSE A NOTABLE accomplishment of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants was the purchase in 1941 of the Edward Winslow House in Plymouth, Massachusetts, a house of great beauty and dignity, with history and atmosphere, perfectly located on North Street, one of the five streets laid out by the Pilgrims, overlooking Plymouth Rock and Cole’s Hill, where lie the bones of many of the Pilgrims. ”

“ They bury their dead with bitter tears, but raise no stones above them. A crop of corn is sown over the graves, that the Indians may not know how few are left alive.
And, now that spring has come, “The Mayflower” must go back to England. Will none return by this only chance? Is there not even one feeble woman who would rather go home and live an easy life? No. For freedom’s sake they came, and for freedom’s sake [Pg 194] they will remain. Not one goes back in “The Mayflower.”
They climb the hill, this very hill, and watch her as she sails away,—this very hill! I see them standing around me ”

“ When the Mayflower left them to return home in the spring, the settlers must have felt they were desolate indeed, for their nearest civilised neighbours were five hundred miles to the north and south of them, the French at Nova Scotia and the English in Virginia. Seven months later, in November, came the Fortune, bringing thirty-five new emigrants, including William Brewster's eldest son; John Winslow, a brother of Edward; and Robert Cushman, who had turned back the year before at Old Plymouth. ”

“ Tradition has ascribed several spinning-wheels and looms to the women who came in The Mayflower, but we can scarcely believe that such comforts were generously bestowed. There could have been little material or time for their use. Much skilful weaving and spinning of linen, flax, and wool came in later Colonial history. The women must have been taxed to keep the clothes mended for their families as protection against the cold and storms. The quantity on hand, after the stress of the two years, would vary according to the supplies which each brought from Holland or England ”

“ The Northern Colony had known strange chances also, but every circumstance and accident of its life fostered the literary spirit and made the student the most honored member of the community. The Mayflower brought a larger proportion of men with literary antecedents and tendencies than had landed on the Virginia coast; and though every detail of life was fuller of hard work, privation and danger—climate being even more against them than Indians or any other misery of the early years—the proportion remained much the same. ”

“ In fact, the world is old in spots—in Memphis and Boston and Damascus and Salem and Ephesus. Some of these places are venerable in traditions, and some of them are actually worn out and taking a rest from too much civilization—lying fallow, as the saying is. But age is so entirely relative that to many persons the landing of the Mayflower seems more remote than the voyage of Jason, and a Mayflower chest a more antique piece of furniture than the timbers of the Ark, which some believe can still be seen on top of Mount Ararat. ”

“ THE MAYFLOWERS The trailing arbutus, or mayflower, grows abundantly in the vicinity of Plymouth, and was the first flower that greeted the Pilgrims after their fearful winter. The name mayflower was familiar in England, as the application of it to the historic vessel shows, but it was applied by the English, and still is, to the hawthorn. Its use in New England in connection with _Epigma repens _dates from a very early day, some claiming that the first Pilgrims so used it, in affectionate memory of the vessel and its English flower association. ”

“ Many women had come; numerous children were there; the men’s families were forming new households; strangers getting accustomed to one another and surroundings; friends renewing old ties—the newcomers feeling a bit lost, nevertheless.
The life, such as it had been, for the Mayflower passengers was over. That time, within the three years from their departure on the Speedwell from Delfshaven, to their welcome of the Anne, at Plymouth, was a thing apart. ”

“ On Monday the 23rd a landing was made, the men to make repairs to the shallop and the women to wash, thus establishing Monday as the generally accepted “Washday.”
The Mayflower Compact was drawn up and signed in all probability before Mayflower dropped anchor in Provincetown Harbor. This document was partly the result of friction that had arisen during the voyage and the intimation that some among them might exercise their individual liberty without restraint and against the peace and welfare of the community as a whole. ”