Excerpt from The Contributor, Vol. 13: A Monthly Magazine; November 1891

After a few hours' pleasant pastime we reached the waters of Cape Cod Bay, and with an imaginary vision lingering on days of yore we are carried back to ear lier and prophetic scenes. We have all come to honor those sturdy exiles. Who were they? They were pilgrims we know from their unsettled lives and wandering career which terminated in a wild and fanciful world. We have said they were Puritans, but history now'says not. Not Puritans! No, they were not only not Puritans, but they had been the object of Puritan persecution. Then all these years the time-honored sentiment of the Puritan fathers of Plymouth has been more poetic than true! And so our school books which aimed to be true were not exact And what of the great Macaulay and our own Bancroft, the sources of historic inspiration for lesser luminaries? We must now listen to the voice of modern research and learn the new story of a better Pilgrim lore. We pause and are doubtful. We would fain destroy one cherished sentiment, or dim a glorious light, a light hallowed by a noble ancestry whose deeds of valor and lives of devotion are emblematic of a new world. This new light we admit with reluctance. We must know first whether it will diminish the lustre of our forefathers' fame. We always want to know what we would love to know You may question our knowledge but touch not our ideals. We are less sensi tive about what we think than about what we feel. If we can receive the as surance that these shrines of our patri otic devotion will not be diminished, but glow by the new light, then let it in. We are open to receive it. Let us lift our eyes from that imaginary Viewwherein we behold the Mayflower rocked on the waves of a wintry wind, and be hold the rolling hills clothed in autumn's faded foliage; let us not question the rock of modern pilgrimage till we listen to the story of those whose names are the wondering and admiring theme at the hearth stones of a great nation. Let us bid patience to the curiosity that would hurry us on to gaze upon the relics and land-marks of an historic past. Let us know more about these Pilgrims. If they were not Puritans who were they? \ve know the story of them and their mother country.

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