When the General Society of Mayflower Descendants was organized, it adopted a declaration of purpose, the most important part of which is to commemorate and honor the Pilgrims, to defend the principle of civil and religious liberty, as set forth in the Mayflower Compact, to discover and publish original matter pertaining to the Pilgrims, and to authenticate, preserve, and mark spots of Pilgrim association. These things the historian, orator, and poet have helped do. In our libraries are carefully prepared writings on the subject by Fiske, Dexter, John Quincy Adams and Daniel Webster, Choate, Everett and Sumner, and so on down to Henry Cabot Lodge, Calvin Coolidge, and the third Governor Bradford. So diligent have writers and speakers been, it is difficult to find and add new facts. There are those who say, “It’s not what my ancestors did, it’s what I’ve done. I live in the present, not the past.” One must make good, but statistics prove those most successful are the first to preserve the best of the past. It is fitting and proper that the descendants of the Pilgrims should gather in Plymouth from time to time and give expression to the respect, gratitude and admiration they feel for the Pilgrims. To express sympathy for them for the terrible months they spent crossing the stormy Atlantic, and the added months on shipboard while shelters were being erected on shore for the first winter in a foreign land, when nearly half the company died of scurvy and ship fever, in spite of which not one member gave up and returned to England when the _Mayflower_ sailed. The Pilgrims believed in the equality of all men before God; they, therefore, made all men equal before the Law. On the Sarcophagus, which contains the remains of some of the Pilgrims, is this inscription: “This monument marks the first burying-ground in Plymouth of the Passengers of the Mayflower. Here, under cover of darkness, the fast dwindling Company laid their dead; levelling the earth above them lest the Indians should learn how many were the graves. _READER_, History records no nobler venture for Faith and Freedom than that of this Pilgrim band. In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and cold they laid the foundations of a State wherein every man, through countless ages, should have liberty to worship God in his own way. May their example inspire thee to do thy part in perpetuating and spreading throughout the World the lofty Ideals of our Republic.” We must admire the Pilgrims for their courage and piety, for their attachment to civil rights and religious liberty in exile, under unhappy conditions. There was a famine the first year, but no actual starvation as there were wild fowl, shellfish, and berries in abundance, but there was cold and snow, and there were Indians and sickness to cope with.