Near the tomb is a skull leaning
against a dead shrub.
"Here lies buried the body of Mr. Nath Jackson who died July ye
14th, 1743, in ye 79th year of his age."
With the Baltimore oriole piping his cheery recitative in the
top of an elm; chickadees uttering their minor strains, and
mourning doves soothing our ears with their meditative cooing,
we left the sacred spot, to visit Plymouth Rock. We loved to
listen to the purling undertones of Town Brook and wondered what
its liquid music might not tell, if we could interpret its
story. Shakespeare was right when he said we could find sermons
in stones, and here if we read aright is a sermon that made the
Old World monarchs tremble. And still to us it tells of that
mighty force that brought it here in the dim past - to be the
corner stone of our republic. Its ringing text is still sounding
from shore to shore.
"Tradition has kept the memory of the rock on which the Pilgrims
first set foot, and which lay on the foot of the hill. It has
become an historic spot, to which the name Forefathers' Rock has
been given. No other in America possesses such hallowed
associations or has so often been celebrated in song and story."
"Here," said De Toqueville, "is a stone which the feet of a few
outcasts pressed for an instant, and the stone became famous.
