"All ready, Helen--" The "little lady" appears. She is somewhat over six feet six in height and built like a boilermaker. She is dressed in pink tights. "Six Minutes of Beauty" begins when Helen picks up three large iron cannon balls and juggles them. She tosses them in the air and catches them cleverly on the back of her neck. The six minutes are brought to a successful conclusion when Helen, hanging head downward by one foot from a trapeze, balances lighted lamp on the other foot and plays Beethoven's Fifth Symphony on the slide trombone. The announcer then begins his lecture. Priscilla has by this time gotten used to the overpowering roar of his voice and she discovers that once this difficulty is overcome she is tremendously impressed by his words. She becomes more and more attracted to the man. She listens, fascinated, as his lecture draws to a close and he offers his medicine for sale. She presses forward through the crowd of Indians surrounding the stand. She reaches the tent. She gives her coin and receives in return a bottle. She hides it in her cape and hurries home. She slips in the back way; she pours some of the medicine into a glass; she drinks it. V A terrible overwhelming nausea. Vomiting, which lasts for agonizing minutes, leaving her helpless on the floor. Then cessation. Then light--blinding light. VI At 3:10 Priscilla drank the Mencken medicine; at 3:12 she was lying in agony on the floor; at 3:20 she opened her eyes; at 3:21 she walked out of her front door; and at 3:22 she discovered what was wrong with Plymouth and the pilgrims. Main Street. Straight and narrow. A Puritan thoroughfare in a Puritan town. The church. A centre of Puritan worship. The shrine of a narrow theology which persistently repressed beauty and joy and life. The Miles Standish house. The house of a Puritan. A squat, unlovely symbol of repression. Beauty crushed by Morality. Plymouth Rock. Hard, unyielding--like the Puritan moral code. A huge tombstone on the grave of Pan. She fled home. She flung herself, sobbing, on the bed. She cried, "They're all Puritans that's what they are, Puritans!" After a while she slept, her cheeks flushed, her heart beating unnaturally. VII Late that night. She opened her eyes; she heard men's voices; she felt her heart still pounding within her at an alarming rate. "And I told them then that it would come to no good end. Truly, the Lord does not countenance such joking." She recognized the voices of Miles Standish and Elder Brewster. "Well--what happened then?" This from Kennicott. "Well, you see, Henry Haydock got some of this Mencken's medicine from one of the Indians. And he thought it would be a good joke to put it in the broth at the church supper this evening." "Yes?"