Atlantic Coast (U.S.) -- Description and travel -- Fiction
Possessed with the spirit of peace, our tourists, whose souls had been
vexed with the passions of many watering-places, walked down Leyden
Street (the first that was laid out), saw the site of the first house,
and turned round Carver Street, walking lingeringly, so as not to break
the spell, out upon the hill-Cole's Hill--where the dead during the
first fearful winter were buried. This has been converted into a
beautiful esplanade, grassed and graveled and furnished with seats, and
overlooks the old wharves, some coal schooners, and shabby buildings, on
one of which is a sign informing the reckless that they can obtain there
clam-chowder and ice-cream, and the ugly, heavy granite canopy erected
over the “Rock.” No reverent person can see this rock for the first time
without a thrill of excitement. It has the date of 1620 cut in it, and
it is a good deal cracked and patched up, as if it had been much landed
on, but there it is, and there it will remain a witness to a great
historic event, unless somebody takes a notion to cart it off uptown
again. It is said to rest on another rock, of which it formed a part
before its unfortunate journey, and that lower rock as everybody knows,
rests upon the immutable principle of self-government. The stone lies
too far from the water to enable anybody to land on it now, and it is
protected from vandalism by an iron grating. The sentiment of the hour
was disturbed by the advent of the members of a baseball nine, who
wondered why the Pilgrims did not land on the wharf, and, while
thrusting their feet through the grating in a commendable desire
to touch the sacred rock, expressed a doubt whether the feet of the
Pilgrims were small enough to slip through the grating and land on
the stone. It seems that there is nothing safe from the irreverence of
American youth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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