Saugus Town (part 2 of 2)

Meantime, Papasiquineo, who is reputed to have had the gift of prophecy, takes his tomtom and asks the Great Spirit to reveal to him his daughter's future wel- fare. The visions that come to him are trap:ic. He sees the maid neglected and unloved, he sees her alone and in peril in the snowy woods, he hears the war cry of the Taratines, and thoroughly alarmed, he leaps up and begs his daughter not to depart with Montowampate. But it is too late and the maid has chosen. She follows her husband down the river, and her father, mounting to a great rock, waves her a last farewell.

Thomas Dexter, who, in 1657, owns and operates the first Iron Works in America, has been secretly apprised that if manacles and chains are left in a certain place, they will be taken away and silver left in their place. He immediately comes to the conclusion that the secret purchasers are the pirates known to be in hiding in the woods, and whose capture is desired by the British Government. A group of Colonial ]\Ien, guided by Dexter, come up the river, using the pirate flag as a decoy, and the unhappy men are captured and sent to London - there being no law in the Colony at that time to punish piracy. But Thomas Veal, one of the pirates, makes his escape, and for years afterwards lives in the woods as a recluse, till, one day, while secretly visiting his treasure cave, an earthquake occurs, and forever seals the doomed corsair in his rocky tomb. According to Samuel Adams Drake, "the pirates mistress, who is described as very beautiful, having sickened and died, is buried here in an unknown grave."

Episode Iii

The children are out in the field, playing very happily at ''Oats, Peas, Beans and Barley Grow," one of the old English games which hold sway over children even to the present day. The townspeople are coming down the road, greatly agitated over Governor Andros and his latest acts of tyranny. Major Samuel Appleton is with them, and because he has always been a leader in Town, because he commanded Saugus troops in the Indian War two years before, they appeal to him, and he leaps upon the rock which is to bear his name through later centuries, and makes the first speech for Liberty ever made in America. The tradition is that here, for the first time, separation from England, the principles of liberty, and a representative government are proclaimed.

History Of Saugus, Massachusetts

townsman in SauRus durinp: this period who was loyal to the Andros rule of tyranny. As the people go off, greatly stirred by Major Appleton's words, the children fall to playing another time-honored game, ''London Bridge is Falling Down."

Episode Iv

"Pompey," says Hon. Nathan Mortimer Hawkes, "is said to have been a king in Africa." He has been freed by the will of Daniel Mansfield and has a home in the forest on the side of the Saugus River. According to custom, the slaves of Saugus have been given their annual holiday to visit King Pompey and crown him again with song and dance, as they crowned him once on the banks of the Gambia. The ceremony following is adapted from old African coronation rites, with shouting, dancing and beating upon the ground and the processional. Each youth is said to have gathered leaves and flowers while on his way to the ceremonial, and these form the crown to place on Pompey's head, and as the day wore to its close, and the colonists began to pass on their homeward way, the king left his throne and the courtiers their sovereign. All depart in plaintive silence, and, saving their king, go back to slavery once more.

Captain Parker's is the first company to march from Lynn, of which, in 1775, Saugus is still a part. The time is very early in the morning of April 19. The rumor has spread, no one knows how, that riders are hurrying from Medford with news, and Captain Parker, his men and their wives, are waiting to see what may come. The Rev. Joseph Roby, called The Fighting Parson because he had served on the committee for defense, is also out to watch and wait. The group of colonists, to keep up their spirits and to while away the anxious waiting time, start to sing the old Massachusetts Song of Liberty, so popular just before the Revolution. It runs,

They have scarcely finished their song when a sound of flying hoofs is heard and three horsemen come galloping down the field, shouting, ''Arm! Arm and up! The regulars are coming!" They rein in their horses and give directions to General Parker to join Colonel Barrett at JMenotomy, and then dash off to the next village. The men fall into line, the good parson offers a prayer, and the Minute Men march away to join in the battle of Lexington and Concord.

Episode Vi

This episode represents the separation of Lynn and Saugus. Lynn, the Mother, enters first, followed by an old man, the Past. She bears the Book of the Future with her, which she is to give to Saugus, for hereafter, her records will be separate. Saugus and her sisters, East Saugus and Cliftondale, come next, and Saugus bears the book of the Past, which she will give to Lynn in token of the traditions they have shared together. A maid, representing the Future, follows Saugus, and last of all come two little girls. Love and Loyalty. The books are given and the two towns promise fellowship, each with each, and the Past takes the two children. Love and Loyalty, and says that they shall no longer be Children of the Past, but henceforth Children of the Future. The farewells are said ; then the Future leads Saugus off in one direction, while Lynn, followed by the aged Past, goes off in the other. Another maid, representing the Future, however, comes to meet her, points the road, and leads her off.

Episode Vii

In the year 1822, Saugus has a flourishing school for girls known as the Saugus Female Seminary. It is under the direction of the Rev. Joseph Emerson, pastor of the Universalist Church, and its most distinguished pupil is Sarah Willis, known more widely as Fanny Fern, the author. The young ladies sing under the direction of their preceptress some of the songs of the period, "Oh, Who Will O'er the Downs with Me," by Robert De Pearsall, an old round, ''Sir Pray be so Good!" by Henry Purcell, and ''Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes," by Ben Jonson. The preceptress gives the young ladies a recess and retires, whereat they all fall to dancing some old English dances that one of their number has learned abroad. So absorbed do they become, they do not notice the return of the preceptress and they are promptly sent home in disgrace.

Episode Viii

When Company A returns from Virginia at the close of the Civil War, all the Town turns out to welcome it home with the ringing of bells, the volley of firecrackers, and the discharge of guns, and the Townspeople, men, women and children join joyously in

"When Johnny Comes Marchinjr Home Again." They reach the centre of the stage and the young people dance the Lancers in the square. They have just finished when the sound of drum and fife are heard, and Civil War Veterans come marching round the bend in the road. Instead of being young and strong as they were when they departed, they are haggard, sick, limping, here an arm lost, there a man with a crutch, and two or three still bandaged from their wounds. But for all that their exhaustion is apparent, they hold up their heads gallantly and march in regular formation onto the field. They halt, and in response to their captain's commands, break ranks. All is a hubbub of greeting, wives meeting husbands, friends and neighbors shaking hands, fathers seeing their children after a lapse of years. Then they begin to go irregularly off the field in groups, and after nearly all have gone, the boys get possession of their fathers' guns, form themselves into a mock company, and they go marching off last of all, whistling, 'When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again."

Episode Ix

Not only the descendants of the Puritans make up the inhabitants of Saugus, but the children of other Ic nds are coming across the water, and bringing with them their own customs and thoughts to enrich ours. We see the Norwegian, still with characteristic dress and dance, and the Hungarian, with the wild abandon of theirs. The Italians dance the Tarentelle to the music of the tambourine, the Dutch maids, in their wooden shoes, click out the windmill dance, and mimic the slow movement of the sails, and Irish girls dance the Lilt with as much spirit here as in their own island. The English newcomers bring us English ways which we may forget if they do not call them to our mind, and their folk dance is truly ours.

But be they Hungarian, Italian, Dutch, Irish, or English, in their ancestry and their traditions, they are all Americans now, and America is all theirs.

The historic episodes are over and the story of the Town is brought down to the present day. Before the pageant ends, and the actors scatter, the Community Spirit, who, in fantasy, has dwelt within the bounds of Saugus from the beginning, would fain reward the valiant, the true, the loyal, the gifted and the devout. And so the bugler calls them, one by one, and so the Spirit honors them.. Makers of Saugus, all. They come in stately processional, Montowampate, Sachem of Saup:us, and his friends and followers, Thomas Dexter, and his captive pirates, Major Appleton and the Colonists, King Pompey and the slaves. Captain Parker, Parson Roby, and the Minute Men, their wives, and their children, and the stately dancers of the minuet, Lynn, the mother and her daughters and their train of virtues, the preceptress of Saugus Female Seminary and her young ladies, the captain of Company A, those who danced the Lancers, the regiment and the townsfolk, the dancers of many races, Hungarian, Dutch, Irish, Italian, English, and, last of all, a symbolic figure walking on either side of him, comes the Saugus of the Future, riding horseback and carrying a banner. The roster is complete, save that the Spirit of America, The Goddess of Liberty, crowns the episode, and actors and audience join in singing, "My Country, Tis of Thee," and the pageant ends.