ranks, surrounded by companions, 'mid the accompaniments of beating drums, waving flags, and all the paraphernalia of war.
In the war of 1812 two young girls of Scituate, Rebecca and Abigail W. Bates, by their wit and sagacity, prevented the landing of the enemy at this point. [1] Congress, during its session of 1880, nearly seventy years afterward, granted them pensions, just as from extreme age they were about to drop into the grave.
Though it is not considered important to celebrate the virtues of the Pilgrim Mothers in gala days, grand dinners, toasts, and speeches, yet a little retrospection would enable us to exhume from the past, many of their achievements worth recording. More facts than we have space to reproduce, testify to the heroism, religious zeal, and literary industry of the women who helped to build up the early civilization of New England. Their writings, for some presumed on authorship, are quaint and cumbrous; but in those days, when few men published books, it required marked courage for women to appear in print at all. They imitated the style popular among men, and received much attention for their literary ability. Charles T. Congdon, as the result of his explorations through old book-stores, has brought to light some of these early writers.
In 1630, Mrs. Anne Bradstreet, known as quite a pretentious writer, came to Boston with her husband, Simon Bradstreet, Governor of Massachusetts. Her first work was entitled "The Tenth Muse lately sprung up in America." The first edition was published in London in 1650, and the first Boston edition was published in 1678. If Mrs. Bradstreet loved praise, she was fortunate in her time and position. It would have been in bad taste, as it would have been bad policy, not to eulogize the poems of the Governor's wife. She was frequently complimented in verse as bad as her own. Tier next great epic was entitled "A Complete Discourse and Description of the Four Elements, Constitutions, Ages of Man, Seasons of the Year, together with an exact epitome of the Four Monarchies, viz: the Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman." "Glad as we were," says the owner, "to obtain this book at a considerable price,
- ↑ These girls, then only about twelve and fourteen years of age, saw the enemy making preparations to land at an isolated point. No men were near to defend the place, or to whom warning could be given. A bright thought struck one of the girls. Accustomed to play the drum, she well knew how to beat the call to arms, and no sooner had this thought entered her mind, than she began a tattoo, calling her sister to take the fife as an accompaniment. Together they marched toward the shore, careful to keep hidden by the rocks, among whose intricacies they wound back and forth, the sound of their instruments falling upon the enemy's ears, now far, now near, as though a force of many hundred men was marching down upon them, and thoroughly frightened, they beat a retreat to their boats.
