The Pilgrim Fathers: Their Debt to Us

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB.

THE Pilgrim Fathers. What words these are to conjure with, and how the modern conjurers, historic, literary, and social, have exercised that privilege ! From the first epoch of our youth when we are saddened by the recital of that poem which pictures their landing amid “ breaking waves” upon a “rock - bound shore" (from which all rocks save one have strangely disappeared), through the times when we are harassed by text-books telling of the forefathers’ stay in Holland, and why they failed to do it longer, and on through all the entire Pilgrim’s Progress, we are reluctantly conveyed. In after years we focus our attention upon their social, educational, and ethical conditions, and our declining days are punctuated by books regarding them, memorials to them, societies commemorating them under all phases and circumstances.

“Posthumous glory ” has been defined as “ a revenue payable to our ghosts,” and such a revenue we have paid gladly and abundantly to those grim Pilgrim ghosts. We have awarded them a wealth of fame beyond the wildest dreams that their imaginations might have formulated.

We hear much of our debt to these hardy and conscientious pioneers. We have been trained to estimate our present blessings, our country’s vast possessions, the land’s prosperity, and then to give thanks to Heaven and to the Pilgrim Fathers.

What is our debt to them ?

In the first place, they came here to suit themselves. They were dissatisfied with their surroundings and wanted a land where they could follow their own sweet wills, and be quite free to order others about and make them attend meeting for as many hours at a time as they saw fit. They did not come on our account. If any thought of us entered their minds, it must have been formed upon apologetic lines. They must have realized the problems and perplexities they were bequeathing us, helpless posterity. In place of “ merry England,” arranged, mapped out, and in good running order, we had a wilderness, peopled with savage tribes, in which to demonstrate our right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Gratitude is most fittingly bestowed on those who intentionally benefit their kind, and not on those who do it incidentally or accidentally.

What did the Pilgrim Fathers give us intentionally ? Little compared with that which they relinquished for us; even the admirable traits of character which they bestowed were cultivated not on our account, but rather as a kind of fire insurance against an equatorial atmosphere in the hereafter; and then the other traits which formed our small inheritance, they were not much to be desired. That stern intolerance, that torturing New England conscience, that self-repression, that jealous mistrust of simple joy for its own sake ; all those and similar possessions were our unasked-for legacy. Is the debt vast or not, on our side ?

And how is it on theirs?

What have we done for them ? We, who had power to consign them to total oblivion. We have immortalized them ; glorified their aims and endeavors. In song and story, in bronze and marble, we have commemorated their most minute concerns. We have erected innumerable monuments to their memory. Our art and literature are permeated with appreciative tributes to these first comers. No modern cruiser, or ocean greyhound, may ever hope to vie with the fame of that little boat that landed its valuable cargo on Plymouth Rock. We may “ remember the Maine ” for a brief season only, but we can never forget the Mayflower.

It were too difficult a task to enumerate what we have done for these our Pilgrim ancestors, we whom they introduced to a rough country and then deserted, with small thought of our welfare, leaving us to work out our own salvation through very troublous times. We have done them much credit, and have amply bestowed the same upon them. We have done all that any grateful posterity may do in this free country, where we have not the Chinese prerogative of ennobling our forefathers.

Each year a splendid gathering of members of the New England Society meets in the city of New York to celebrate that chilly and auspicious day which brought the Pilgrim Fathers to these shores. At every such assembly eloquent tones voice our indebtedness to those first immigrants. Is it not time some voices were lifted to proclaim the vastness of the debt which has accumulated upon the Pilgrim Fathers’ side ?