In the _Mayflower_, nineteen wives accompanied their husbands to a
waste land and uninhabited, save by the wily and vengeful savage. On the
unfloored hut, she who had been nurtured amid the rich carpets and curtains
of the mother-land, rocked her new-born babe, and complained not. She, who
in the home of her youth had arranged the gorgeous shades of embroidery,
or, perchance, had compounded the rich venison pasty, as her share in the
housekeeping, now pounded the coarse Indian corn for her children's bread,
and bade them ask God's blessing, ere they took their scanty portion. When
the snows sifted through the miserable roof-tree upon her little ones, she
gathered them closer to her bosom; she taught them the Bible, and the
catechism, and the holy hymn, though the war-whoop of the Indian rang
through the wild. Amid the untold hardships of colonial life she infused
new strength into her husband by her firmness, and solaced his weary hours
by her love. She was to him,

"----an undergoing spirit, to bear up
Against whate'er ensued."

The names of these nineteen pioneer-matrons should be engraved in letters
of gold on the pillars of American history:

The Wives of the Pilgrims.

Mrs. Catharine Carver.
Mrs. Dorothy Bradford.
Mrs. Elizabeth Winslow.
Mrs. Mary Brewster.
Mrs. Mary Allerton.
Mrs. Elizabeth Hopkins.