Excerpt from A Pilgrim Maid: A Story of Plymouth Colony in 1620 This story is like those we hear of our neighbours to-day: it is a mixture of fact and fancy.

The aim in telling it has been to present Plymouth Colony as it was in its first three years of existence; to keep to possibilities, even while inventing inci dents.

Actual events have been transferred from a later to an earlier year when they could be made useful, to bring them within the story’s compass, and to develop it.

For instance, John Billington was lost for five days and died early, but not as early as in the story. Stephen Hopkins was fined for allowing his servants to play shovelboard, but this did not happen till some time later than 1622. Stephen Hopkins was twice married; records show that there was dissen sion; that the second Wife tried to get an inheritance for her own children, to the injury of the son and daughter of the first Wife. Facts of this sort are used, enlarged upon, construed to cause, or altered to suit, certain results.

But there is fidelity to the general trend of events, above all to the spirit of Plymouth in its beginnings.

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