That the _rôle_ played by her was a worthy one, the tablets about us
testify. Heroes of the expedition against Louisbourg, in 1745, lie here;
more than a score of Plymouth patriots who served in the Revolution, and
many a brave soldier who won his laurels in the War of 1861. Under this
stone, with its quaint urn and willow-branch, rests the famous naval
hero of the Revolutionary war, Captain Simeon Sampson, whose cousin
Deborah spun, dyed, and wove the cloth for the suit in which she left
home to serve as a soldier. Their story, and that of many another hero
and heroine now lying here, have been well told by Mrs. Jane Goodwin
Austin.
Beneath his symbolic scallop-shell we read the name of Elder Faunce, who
knew the Pilgrims, and, living for ninety-nine years, formed an
important link between two centuries. The stone consecrated to the
memory of the Rev. Chandler Robbins, who for nearly twoscore years
toward the close of the last century gave his faithful services to the
first parish, reminds us that at one time the town fathers found it
advisable to request him “not to have more horses grazing on Burial Hill
than shall be really necessary!”
Here, in old times, could be had a grand view of the shipping, come from
the West Indies and all parts of the world; from here the news of many
fatal shipwrecks had been spread through the town, to rouse willing help
for suffering sailors; here, too, no doubt, men’s souls were often
tempted to incur the fine of twenty shillings, the cost of “telling a
lie about seeing a whale,” in those strict days when a plain lie, if
“pernicious,” was taxed at half that price!
Old Father Time with his scythe and hour-glass--symbols of his
power--rules here over seven generations; but lingering while the
setting sun illumines the harbor and the surrounding hills with the same
radiance that rejoiced the first comers, while Manomet glows with a
deeper purple, and the twin lights of the Gurnet shine out, we may still
feel in very deed that
“The Pilgrim spirit has not fled.”
Turning from the story of Plymouth, as written on the lichen-covered
headstones on Burial Hill, let us wend our way under the shady elms of
Court Street to Pilgrim Hall, built in 1824 by the Pilgrim Society,
instituted four years earlier. Here we may trace, in the many treasured
reminders of their daily lives, the annals of those brave souls in whom
” ...persuasion and belief
Had ripened into faith, and faith become
A passionate intuition.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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