. Pilgrim trails : a Plymouth-to-Provincetown sketchbook . all-paper is, of course,not as old as the house, but it is old-fashionedenough to be interesting. We threaded our way in single file around thedoor, into the hallway, and our host invited us firstto go upstairs. The stairs go straight up beside the great chim-ney, very steep and narrow, each stair twice as tallas a modern stair and half as deep. At the top, wewent around the slope of the chimney and into therooms above. Here, in these low square rooms,with the supporting beams still showing the marksof the broad-axe, and the wide board
. Pilgrim trails : a Plymouth-to-Provincetown sketchbook . all-paper is, of course,not as old as the house, but it is old-fashionedenough to be interesting. We threaded our way in single file around thedoor, into the hallway, and our host invited us firstto go upstairs. The stairs go straight up beside the great chim-ney, very steep and narrow, each stair twice as tallas a modern stair and half as deep. At the top, wewent around the slope of the chimney and into therooms above. Here, in these low square rooms,with the supporting beams still showing the marksof the broad-axe, and the wide boards of the floorattesting the size of timber-growth in the earlydays, we found a perfect paradise of old-time fur-niture stored away. We were allowed to stop andprowl among the old possessions. None of thethings used by Priscilla are here, of course; theseare the accumulations of generations that fol-lowed her. In the corner by the chimney, we saw a smallwooden cradle, with its wooden roof sloping in threesections over the top. On the wall hung an old Ian-. s ^ ^o ALDEN AND STANDISH 23 tern made to hold a candle, the kind of Ianthornthat might have been used by Moon in A Mid-summer Nights Dream. We were looking at the churn and the yarn-winder, when one of the ladies called us to look atthe strap-hinges on the door. These hinges, hand-made of iron, long and narrow and pennant-shaped,run out almost a third of the way across the iron latch, also hand-wrought, is worn wherethe bar slips into the hasp, and the downward curveof the lift of the latch is bent into a thin twistedshape. One of the doors, a curious, three-paneledaffair, is supposed to have been saved from a formerhouse of John Aldens. The present house, built in 1653, was the placewhere John Alden spent his later years. Here helived to the age of eighty-nine, holding importantoffices in Plymouth Colony up to the time of hisdeath. He was one of the eight Purchasers whobought from the Merchant Adventurers their inte
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, bookidpilgrimtrail, bookyear1921
