Cambridge sketches
Estelle M. H. Merrill, Ed.

[9] courage and faith. They had good books. Shakespeare died in 1616 and Bacon in 1626; their works were new and fresh, and there were other writers of great interest and worth. The Puritans did not spend much money on sports, but they spent money on schools, and they built a college. We commonly see their faces in repose and they look stern; but they had their glad hours when men smiled and children played. Home, love, marriage, and the joys which these terms suggest were here. The woods and streams gave the best of recreation to the boys when their tasks were finished. The girls had their own ways of amusing themselves, as ingenious as they are now.

It was not a time of devotion to small things. The men and women who left the land of their birth to make a new country had a very high intent, with much wisdom and devotion. They did the work they came to do, and it has lasted. We smile sometimes at their ways, as at other antiquities.. But we should be able to discern their bravery and patience and discretion, and to be grateful to them for their labors into which we have entered. It will be well for us and for the country if we do our work as wisely and faithfully as they did theirs.