all," said the man, gruffly, " and I won't drink to



THE MAY SEARCH. 103

that. Who are you, to talk of Puritan ancestry,
when you are all as drunk as a fiddler's dog, and
slobber and swill like anything but Puritans?
What rights did the Puritans give you or anybody
else in this town, but to go to the meeting-house
and sing psalms through your nose, and then go and
get drunk privately in a tavern ? What religion
have you got, with all your catechisms and hymn-
books? They took all the life out of men with
their eternal mumbling about Divine Providence
and their ' Five Points ; ' and made men curs,
afraid to wag their tails on Sundays, or against the
parson's sermon and the Church of the Elect. I
hate the Puritans for an unmerciful set of Lord
Bishops, that lorded it without stole or mitre over
better men than themselves. They stole the In-
dians' land from them, and cut their throats when
they refused to give up their own. They called
King Philip, in every pulpit, a red-devil and son of
Satan, when he was one of the truest martyrs that
ever fell in defence of justice for the weak against
the strong ; and they quartered his dead body as
though he were a dog, as it lay in the swamp by
Mount Hope, where he had fled in famine, and be-
cause his friends were cowards, to die, where he had
always lived, a king ; and they sold his little son,
nine years old, in slavery, though the brave Church,
who was a poor Puritan, and all true men, begged
against it, and wept for it ; — and I say they stole
and murdered, and then whined and prayed over the



104 TBE MAY SEARCH.
