In this Billerica solid men must have lived, select from year to
year; a series of town clerks, at least; and there are old
records that you may search. Some spring the white man came,
built him a house, and made a clearing here, letting in the sun,
dried up a farm, piled up the old gray stones in fences, cut down
the pines around his dwelling, planted orchard seeds brought from
the old country, and persuaded the civil apple-tree to blossom
next to the wild pine and the juniper, shedding its perfume in
the wilderness. Their old stocks still remain. He culled the
graceful elm from out the woods and from the river-side, and so
refined and smoothed his village plot. He rudely bridged the
stream, and drove his team afield into the river meadows, cut the
wild grass, and laid bare the homes of beaver, otter, muskrat,
and with the whetting of his scythe scared off the deer and bear.
He set up a mill, and fields of English grain sprang in the
virgin soil. And with his grain he scattered the seeds of the
dandelion and the wild trefoil over the meadows, mingling his
English flowers with the wild native ones. The bristling
burdock, the sweet-scented catnip, and the humble yarrow planted
themselves along his woodland road, they too seeking "freedom to
worship God" in their way. And thus he plants a town. The white
man's mullein soon reigned in Indian cornfields, and
sweet-scented English grasses clothed the new soil. Where, then,
could the Red Man set his foot? The honey-bee hummed through the
Massachusetts woods, and sipped the wild-flowers round the
Indian's wigwam, perchance unnoticed, when, with prophetic
warning, it stung the Red child's hand, forerunner of that
industrious tribe that was to come and pluck the wild-flower of
his race up by the root.