warn the Indians that they were blameless of the new comers' deeds, and scarcely less vain would it have proved for the elders of New Plymouth to strive to guard the rising generation, the hope and life of the colony, from their contaminating influence. But as

the season of harvest drew near, the colonists were once more threatened with a renewal of privations which had sorely tried them in the earlier months of the year. Heedless of the stinted and hard-won stores which they had obtained when seemingly on the verge of want, they had generously shared them with their unwelcome guests. Added to this, their crop proved scanty, partly by reason of the weakness of its planters, through want, and partly owing to the base ingratitude and dishonesty of the new emigrants, who had plucked much of it while the ear was still green.

It seemed as if the greed of the dishonest adventurers was destined to involve the entire scheme of colonization in speedy ruin, and the whole colonists in destruction. In due season, however, the Christian Pilgrims reaped their reward. After the unprincipled agents of Weston had involved the colonists in a war with the Indians, and had nearly reduced them to absolute want, they were themselves nearly all massacred by the Indians whom they had roused against their generous precursors. Their employer and head, Weston, was himself indebted for charity, and

almost for life, to their forgiving kindness, and while his new plantation utterly failed, and nearly all its agents miserably perished, the New Englanders of America still look back with pride on the Pilgrim colonists who landed from the Mayflower as the chief founders, not of New England only, but of the great American Republic.

We may select, from the incidents belonging to the infant history of another American state, an equally powerful illustration of the motives to kindness, forgiveness, and generosity, instead of the spirit of enmity and revenge. The state of Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn, the son of an English Admiral, but himself a Quaker, and prepared to carry out in the new colony which he founded, and which still bears his name, the principles of charity and kindness, and the doctrine of non-resistance, or of overcoming evil with good, which so practically and effectually begets the spirit and the fruits of the Christian maxims we have referred to at the commencement of this chapter. When William Penn visited America, he carried with him no arms or ammunition with which to withstand the savage Indians of the wilderness, but resolved to oppose them solely with the weapons of integrity and kindness. He bought their land and paid them; he made a treaty with them and observed it; and he always treated them as men As a specimen of the manner in

which he met the Indians, the following instance affords a very striking example :

"There were some fertile and excellent lands, which, in 1698, Penn ascertained were excluded from his first purchase, and as he was very desirous of obtaining them he made the proposal to the Indians that he would buy those lands if they were willing. They returned for answer, that they had no desire to sell the spot where their fathers were deposited, but to 'please their father Onas,' as they named Penn, they said that he should have some of the lands. This being decided, they concluded the bargain that Penn might have as much land as a young man could travel round in one day, beginning at the great river Cosquanco, now Kingston, and ending at the great river Kallapingo, now Bristol, and, as an equivalent, they were to receive a certain amount of English goods. Though this plan of measuring the land was of their own selection, yet they were greatly dissatisfied with it after it had been tried, for the young Englishman chosen to walk off the tract of land walked so fast and far as to greatly astonish and mortify them. The governor observed this dissatisfaction, and asked the cause. 'The walker cheated us,' said the Indians. 'Ah, how can that be?' said Penn; 'did you not choose yourself to have the land measured in this way?' 'True,' replied the Indians, but white brother make a big walk.'

"Some of Penn's commissioners, waxing warm, said