This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1921 edition. Excerpt: ... THE PILGRIMS OF PLYMOUTH1 We meet here to-day because the calendar tells us that three hundred years have elapsed since a small band of English men and women landed at this spot and set themselves to work to conquer the wilderness and found a state. Three centuries are but an indistinguishable point in the vast tracts of time dimly marked by geologic periods in the history of our planet. They are a negligible space in the thousands of years which have passed since man first appeared on the earth. Even within the narrow limits of recorded history they fill but a trifling place if we are concerned only with chronology. We live, however, in a comparative world. Geologically and even racially three centuries are not worth computing, but to the men and nations who have been concerned in the making of what is called modern history, dating from the beginning of the Renaissance in Italy, they extend very nearly to the visible horizon. If we go a step further and measure by man's own life and by the brief existence of jhe doers of the historic deed as well as of those who now try to recall the great event, our three centuries as we glance backward, like Shelley's "lone and level sands," stretch far away. In the familiar fable of the insects, whose term of life is but a day and whose most aged members are those who totter on to sunset, twelve hours is the test of time, and to them three hundred years would seem like the seons through which the earth has passed during its unresting journey in stellar space. After all, our only measure must be the lives of the men who acted and of the men who celebrate, and to us the Pilgrims seem remote indeed. The solemn dignity of the past is as much theirs as if they had been those of the human race who drew the...