on these simple blessings, which reminds one a little of the Marchioness in Dickens’s story, with her orange-peel-and-water beverage.  Still more does one feel the warmth of coloring,—­such as we expect from converts to a new faith, and settlers who want to entice others over to their clearings, when Winslow speaks, in 1621, of “abundance of roses, white, red, and damask; single, but very sweet indeed;” a most of all, however, when, in the same connection, he says, “Here are grapes white and red, and very sweet and strong also.”  This of our wild grape, a little vegetable Indian, which scalps a civilized man’s mouth, as his animal representative scalps his cranium.  But there is something quite charming in Winslow’s picture of the luxury in which they are living.  Lobsters, oysters, eels, mussels, fish and fowl, delicious fruit, including the grapes aforesaid,—­if they only had “kine, horses, and sheep,” he makes no question but men would live as contented here as in any part of the world.  We cannot help admiring the way in which they took their trials, and made the most of their blessings.

“And how Content they were,” says Cotton Mather, “when an Honest Man, as I have heard, inviting his Friends to a Dish of Clams, at the Table gave Thanks to Heaven, who had given them to suck the abundance of the Seas, and of the Treasures Aid in the Sands!”

Strangely enough, as it would seem, except for this buoyant determination to make the best of everything, they hardly appear to recognize the difference of the climate from that which they had left.  After almost three years’ experience, Winslow says, he can scarce distinguish New England from Old England, in respect of heat and cold, frost, snow, rain, winds, etc.  The winter, he thinks (if there is a difference), is sharper and longer; but yet he may be deceived by the want of the comforts he enjoyed at home.  He cannot conceive any climate to agree better with the constitution of the English, not being oppressed with extremity of heats, nor nipped by biting cold: 

“By which means, blessed be God, we enjoy our health, notwithstanding those difficulties we have undergone, in such a measure as would have been admired, if we had lived in England with the like means.”

Edward Johnson, after mentioning the shifts to which they were put for food, says,—­

“And yet, methinks, our children are as cheerful, fat, and lusty, with feeding upon those mussels, clams, and other fish, as they were in England with their fill of bread.”

Higginson, himself a dyspeptic, “continually in physic,” as he says, and accustomed to dress in thick clothing, and to comfort his stomach with drink that was “both strong and stale,”—­the “jolly good ale and old,” I suppose, of free and easy Bishop Still’s song,—­found that he both could and did oftentimes drink New England water very well,—­which he seems to look upon as a remarkable feat.  He could go as lightclad