are mounted so as to flank along the streets.

"Upon the hill they have a large square house, with a flat roof made of
thick sawn planks stayed with oak beams, upon the top of which they have
six cannons which shoot iron balls of four or five pounds and command
the surrounding country. The lower part they use for their church, where
they preach on Sundays and the usual holidays. They assemble by beat of
drum, each with his musket or firelock, in front of the Captain's door;
they have their cloaks on, and place themselves in order three abreast,
and are led by a sergeant without beat of drum. Behind comes the
Governor in a long robe; beside him on the right hand comes the preacher
with his cloak on, and on the left hand the Captain with his side-arms
and cloak on, and with a small cane in his hand; and so they march in
good order, and each sets his arms down near him. Thus they are
constantly on their guard night and day."

But after all, glad as we are of this little loophole pierced through
the mists of antiquity, the fashion of our friends' houses and
court-yards, their cloaks and muskets and quaint Sunday procession are
not as valuable to us as the story of their individual lives: the story
of Priscilla and John Alden and their children; of Myles, military power
of the colony, beyond his threescore years and ten; of Barbara, called
his "dear wife" in the dignified Last Will, wherein he bequeaths
"Ormistic, Bousconge, Wrightington, Maudesley" and the rest, to
Alexander his "son and heir," sturdily proclaiming with as it were his
last breath, that these fair domains were "surreptitiously detained"
from him. And Lora Standish, fair sweet shadow upon the mirror of the
past; and Mary Dingley, beloved of the grand old warrior; and Alice
Bradford, of whom at the last Morton wrote,--

"Adoe my loving friend, my aunt, my mother,
Of those that's left I have not such another."

And Bradford himself, and Brewster, and Winslow, and Howland, each one
of whom hath left behind him enough of achievement to fill a dozen of
the degenerate lives of a butterfly of to-day; and the women they loved,
and the young men and maidens who rose up around them: ah, how can we
leave them, how can we say good-by! Shall we not the rather cherish them
and study them more than we ever yet have done, feeling in our hearts
that those virtues, that courage, and that nobility of life may be ours
as well as theirs, may illustrate the easy life o