ons at one time...
as might entangle or breed scruples in their consciences, should for
such their offense either undergo corporal correction or be punished by
fine or otherwise, according to the quality of the person so offending."

Such a regulation would not be popular nowadays; but coquetry seems to
have been of more serious moment then. That flirtation should threaten
the government itself suggests a singular state of affairs indeed.

It is now time to turn to a consideration of another settlement--the
only one that rivalled that of Virginia in effectiveness of result and
continuity. For the settlements in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
and others--with one exception, to be reserved for later brief
consideration--did not continue the civilization which they established,
but took their later culture, that which survives, from the more
prepotent colonies of Virginia and New England. Therefore they do not
enter into our present inquiry, since they produced no feminine type or
even individual of note; it is to the more northern and southern
settlements that we must look for the foundations and matrices of
American femininity. We have glanced at that of the South; let us glean
what we may of the story of women in that of the North.

It was on November 11, 1620, that the Pilgrim Fathers, as they have come
to be known to history, united in an agreement which was the foundation
of constitutional government in America. They had been brought, rather
as it seemed by Divine Providence than by their own guidance, to a more
northern shore than that to which they had intended voyaging, and they
had determined to make that place their colonial abode. Tradition
records that the first to step on the famous Plymouth Rock was a woman,
Mary Chilton by name, and the circumstance has brought her name down to
us of this day. It would not seem a difficult manner of attaining
immortality, that of stepping from a boat to a rock; most women, being
gifted with the ordinary means of locomotion, could do as much; but
circumstances decide the value of every action, and so Mary Chilton
achieved fame by one of the simplest and most natural acts of her whole
existence. There are those who deny the very existence of Mary Chilton
and sneer at the tradition that makes a woman lead the way to the
florescence of American nationality; and it must be confessed that Mary
Chilton, having taken the step which was to preserve her from
forgetfulness, dis