their wit and sagacity, prevented the landing of the enemy
at this point.[29] Congress, during its session of 1880, nearly
seventy years afterward, granted them pensions, just as from extreme
age they were about to drop into the grave.

Though it is not considered important to celebrate the virtues of the
Pilgrim Mothers in gala days, grand dinners, toasts, and speeches, yet
a little retrospection would enable us to exhume from the past, many
of their achievements worth recording. More facts than we have space
to reproduce, testify to the heroism, religious zeal, and literary
industry of the women who helped to build up the early civilization of
New England. Their writings, for some presumed on authorship, are
quaint and cumbrous; but in those days, when few men published books,
it required marked courage for women to appear in print at all. They
imitated the style popular among men, and received much attention for
their literary ability. Charles T. Congdon, as the result of his
explorations through old book-stores, has brought to light some of
these early writers.

In 1630, Mrs. Anne Bradstreet, known as quite a pretentious writer,
came to Boston with her husband, Simon Bradstreet, Governor of
Massachusetts. Her first work was entitled "The Tenth Muse lately
sprung up in America." The first edition was published in London in
1650, and the first Boston edition was published in 1678. If Mrs.
Bradstreet loved praise, she was fortunate in her time and position.
It would have been in bad taste, as it would have been bad policy, not
to eulogize the poems of the Governor's wife. She was frequently
complimented in verse as bad as her own. Her next great epic was
entitled "A Complete Discourse and Description of the Four Elements,
Constitutions, Ages of Man, Seasons of the Year, together with an
exact epitome of the Four Monarchies, viz: the Assyrian, Persian,
Grecian, and Roman." "Glad as we were," says the owner, "to obtain
this book at a considerable price, we are still gladder of the
privilege of closing it." Although this lady had eight children, about
whom she wrote some amusing rhymes, she found time in the wilds of
America to perpetuate also these ponderous-titled poems.

Phillis Wheatly, a colored girl, also wrote poetry in Colonial Boston,
years before our Declaration of Independence startled the world. She
was brought from Africa, and sold in the slave market of Boston, when
only six years old. Mr. Sparks, the bi