beaver and otter, bear and elk, which they sell to Endicott for the wares
of England. And there is little John Massey, the son of Jeffrey Massey
and first-born of Naumkeag, playing beside his father's threshold, a
child of six or seven years old. Which is the better-grown infant,--the
town or the boy?

The red men have become aware that the street is no longer free to them,
save by the sufferance and permission of the settlers. Often, to impress
them with an awe of English power, there is a muster and training of the
town-forces, and a stately march of the mail-clad band, like this which
we now see advancing up the street. There they come, fifty of them, or
more; all with their iron breastplates and steel caps well burnished, and
glimmering bravely against the sun; their ponderous muskets on their
shoulders, their bandaliers about their waists, their lighted matches in
their hands, and the drum and fife playing cheerily before them. See! do
they not step like martial men? Do they not manoeuvre like soldiers who
have seen stricken fields? And well they may; for this band is composed
of precisely such materials as those with which Cromwell is preparing to
beat down the strength of a kingdom; and his famous regiment of Ironsides
might be recruited from just such men. In everything, at this period,
New England was the essential spirit and flower of that which was about
to become uppermost in the mother-country. Many a bold and wise man lost
the fame which would have accrued to him in English history, by crossing
the Atlantic with our forefathers. Many a valiant captain, who might
have been foremost at Marston Moor or Naseby, exhausted his martial ardor
in the command of a log-built fortress, like that which you observe on
the gently rising ground at the right of the pathway,--its banner
fluttering in the breeze, and the culverins and sakers showing their
deadly muzzles over the rampart.