It is hard to believe that the Mayflower came cruising over the Atlantic through just such winds. "In sundrie of these stormes," says Bradford, "the winds were so feirce & ye seas so high, as they could not beare a knote of sail, but were forced to hull, for diverce days togither." When we think how the sea can growl around an ocean-liner now, and then think how the little Mayflower went hulling for diverce days in "mighty storme," we wonder how it ever got here at all. And indeed, we are told that at one time in mid-ocean, when the main beam of the little craft buckled, there was nothing between the passengers and shipwreck except a certain "great iron scrue ye passengers brought from Holland which would raise ye beam to his place." They screwed up the scrue and calked the deck; and though they knew that "with the working of ye ship they would not long keep stanch," they hoped that she might weather the rest of the voyage if they did not overpress her with sails. "So," remarks the Governor with fine simplicity, "they comited them selves to ye will of God, & resolved to proseede." The whole story of that voyage has in it the vitality of the wind at sea. It has also the nobility always found when the human will goes somewhere and does something with the minimum of material equipment, alone, against odds, for the sake of a true conviction. Materially, the Pilgrims had the narrowest possible margin. A great iron screw to prop their beam; a great iron purpose to prop their souls. We do well to hold in honor those who voyage alone through "crosse winds and feirce stormes into desperat and inevitable perill," in the power of a noble thought. We erect our monuments to those who, with discouragement and danger and threatened shipwreck all around them, valiantly prop up their beam, calk their decks, commit themselves to the will of God--and "resolve to proseede." THE END McGrath-Sherrill Press Boston