Ginger was sold there in dust-heaps like a Vesuvius, not gingerbread in the amorphous penny idol; aromatic cinnamon by the ceroons of a plundered forest, not by the chewing-stick for dull Sabbath afternoons; tea by the barricade of chests, product of a province, not by the tin shoeful, as the old-time Waddys had sold it for a century before the Tea Party. And Ira Waddy owned these buildings, which he had never seen. It is not necessary that I should speculate to discover where the traits that distinguished Ira Waddy from his ancestors had their origin. Of this I have accurate information. My wonder is at the delay in a development of character certain to arrive. But late springs bring scorching summers. Fires battened long below hatches gather strength for one swift leap to the main-truck. Whitegift Waddy, cook of the _Mayflower_, was meek. How he came to be a Puritan, on the _Mayflower_, in its caboose and a cook,--out of his element in religion, in space, in place, and in profession,--I cannot say; these are questions that the Massachusetts Historical Society will probably investigate, now that the Waddys are rich and can hire cooks to give society dinners. At all events, there he was, and there he daily made a porridge for Miles Standish, and there he peppered the same. Now as to pepper in cream tarts there is question; in porridge none: I do not, therefore, blame Miles, peppery himself and loving pepper, for wrath when, one day, a bowl of pepperless insipidity was placed before him. He sent for the cook and thus addressed him: “Milksop! Thou hast the pepper forgot. I will teach thy caitiff life a lesson. Ho, trencherman! Bring pepper!” It was brought. He poured it all into the porridge, and, standing by, compelled Waddy to swallow spoonful after spoonful. At the screams of the victim, the Pilgrim Grandfathers, Governor Carver, Father Winslow, and Elder Brewster, rushed from on deck into the cabin and besought the infuriated hero to desist as he valued the life of Mrs. Susanna White, who was soon to add a little Pilgrim to their colony. “Enough!” said Standish. “The pepper hath entered into his soul.” It had, indeed! Nothing was cooked on the _Mayflower_ for six days. On the seventh, Whitegift Waddy re-entered the caboose. He had always been a meek, he was now a crushed man. Yet there seemed to have grown within him, as we sometimes see in those the world has wronged, a quiet confidence in a redressing future.