It was on November 11, 1620, that the Pilgrim Fathers, as they have come to be known to history, united in an agreement which was the foundation of constitutional government in America. They had been brought, rather as it seemed by Divine Providence than by their own guidance, to a more northern shore than that to which they had intended voyaging, and they had determined to make that place their colonial abode. Tradition records that the first to step on the famous Plymouth Rock was a woman, Mary Chilton by name, and the circumstance has brought her name down to us of this day. It would not seem a difficult manner of attaining immortality, that of stepping from a boat to a rock; most women, being gifted with the ordinary means of locomotion, could do as much; but circumstances decide the value of every action, and so Mary Chilton achieved fame by one of the simplest and most natural acts of her whole existence. There are those who deny the very existence of Mary Chilton and sneer at the tradition that makes a woman lead the way to the florescence of American nationality; and it must be confessed that Mary Chilton, having taken the step which was to preserve her from forgetfulness, disappears as completely as if she had never lived. But we like to think the legend true, for it was most appropriate that a woman should head the march to that land where women were destined to be such a controlling force and where, as in no other country, women were to lead in many of the greatest movements that have crowned the civilization of our own day. One likes to believe in Mary Chilton; and it is something in favor of the story that the name of James Chilton is found attached to the document which has already been referred to and that it would be quite in keeping with Puritan superstition to send a young and pure maiden before them as their advance guard into the unknown land which was to be won by strength of soul as well as of arm.