and his men established the first colony on the North Atlantic shore of the United States. Raleigh had tried before him, on Roanoke Island, where Virginia Dare was born.

I think Gosnold's colony lasted seven weeks. The ruins of the storehouse are there to this day, with the monument which tells the tale. If you want to read the history, take down the "Tempest" and read of Caliban and mussels in the brooks and sassafras logs and seamews and quarrels between sailors and gentlemen. That is exactly the story of what happened in Gosnold's seven weeks.

And at the end of the seven weeks, no one would stay there, and they all went back to London. And they hustled up to the Earl of Southampton's palace and told their story of quarrel, of tempest, of seamews, and of logs.

And according to me, one William Shakespeare, who was the friend and companion of the Earl of Southampton, used to sit in the great hall of the palace and hear these stories. And according to me he was writing the "Tempest"

then and brought these stories in. So is it that the mise en scène of the "Tempest" is not that of the West Indies or of Bermuda where there are no brooks, nor flying squirrels, nor mussels in the brook nor sassafras logs, but is a copy of Cuttyhunk, as Gosnold and his sailors found it. So is it that Miranda, God bless her! is a Massachusetts girl.

Probably no one in the world accepts this criticism on Shakespeare excepting me. But I do accept it, and this reader had better accept it, for it will be the received comment in the year 1950.

It has been said already in these papers that if you want to know anything, you had better go and see it yourself. That is their text. Personal presence moves the world, as my dear old friend Eli Thayer either said or did not say. I have always referred the remark to him because he lived up to its principle. This is true, that you remember what you have seen as you do not remember so well what you hear, as I think Horace says before me.

So it is that I shall find myself advising this gentle reader to see Massachusetts as I have seen it. It is as a spider living on the hub of his wheel adventures out upon this spoke, upon that, or upon another. Here am I, born on the slope of Beacon Hill, if you please; or as old writers would have said, "as the roadway goes down from Sherburne's to the water." Now just above the place where I was born, not half a quarter of a mile away, is the State House of Massachusetts with a gold pineapple upon the top. This is what Dr. Holmes audaciously called the "hub of the Universe," and the Boston people to this hour chuckle because he said it, thinking in their own hearts, dear souls, that it is true.

What is curious is that by great good fortune the Capitol of Massachusetts is so placed that within five miles of this pineapple is the statistical centre, census after census, of the population of the state. There are so many more people in those great manufacturing towns which have to keep in close touch with the seaboard that when the statistical people do their best to find

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