Mercy, the sister of James Otis, married James Warren, a native of Plymouth. He succeeded General Joseph Warren as president of the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts, but is better known as the author of the celebrated "Committee of Correspondence," which he proposed to Samuel Adams while the latter was at his house. Mrs. Warren, at the age of seventy, was visited by the Duke De Liancourt. "She then retained," he says, "the activity of mind which distinguished her as a sister of James Otis; nor had she lost the graces of person or conversational powers, which made her still a charming companion." For reasons apparent to the reader, she resolved not to send her "History of the Revolution" to the press during her husband's lifetime. [Illustration: THE JOANNA DAVIS HOUSE, COLE'S HILL.] Going beyond the church, we come upon the open space of greensward, intersected by foot-paths, known as Cole's Hill. Some defensive works were erected on this bank in 1742, in the Revolution, and again in 1814. I have already traversed it in imagination, when standing on the summit of Burial Hill. It is no longer a place of graves, nor does it in the least suggest, by any monumental symbol, the tragedy of the Pilgrims' first winter here, when, as Bradford touchingly says, "Ye well were not in any measure sufficient to tend ye sicke; nor the living scarce able to burie the dead." Their greatest strait was in May and June, when there were no wild fowl. Winslow says they were without good tackle or seines to take the fish that swam so abundantly in the harbor and creeks. We may not disguise the fact. The least attractive object is the Rock of the Forefathers. The stranger who comes prepared to do homage to the spot the Pilgrims' feet first pressed, finds his sensibility stricken in a vital place. The insignificant appearance of the rock itself, buried out of sight beneath a shrine made with hands, and the separation of the sacred ledge into two fragments, each of which claims a divided regard, give a death-blow to the emotions of awe and reverence with which he approaches this corner-stone of American history. Plymouth Rock, or rather what is left of it in its original position, is reached by following Water Street, which, as its name indicates, skirts the shore, conducting you through a region once devoted to commerce, now apparently consigned to irretrievable decay. Near Hedge's Wharf, and in close vicinity to the old Town Dock, is the object of our present search. A canopy, designed by Billings, has been built above it. I entered. In the stone pavement is a cavity of perhaps two feet square, and underneath the uneven surface the rock appears. I had often wished to stand here, but now all enthusiasm was gone out of me. I had rather have contented myself with the small piece so long treasured, and with the loom of the rock as my imagination had beheld it, than to stand in the actual presence of it. [Illustration: PLYMOUTH ROCK IN 1850.]