The Real America in Romance, Volume 6 | Page 2

HISTORICAL INDEX
CHRONOLOGY

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS:
His tired child was at his side uncomplainingly

Ducking stool
"I'll scratch your eyes out!"
Once more he bent over the sleeping children
Kieft from the ramparts watched the burning wigwams
Stuyvesant
The squaw, with a yell of fear, wheeled to fly for her life
Blanche could not utter a word of consolation
Oliver Cromwell
"Peter the Headstrong," unable to control his passion, tore the letter into
pieces
Tomb of Stuyvesant
The door was thrown open, and the boy Robert entered to take a part in
the scene
His temper flamed out in word
"Are you ready?"
Sir Henry Vane
"Our journey is not one half over!"
"You are not lost, if you follow me!"
He fell upon his face in the mud and water with his gun under him
He flung him down the front steps where he lay in a heap on the ground
"Here! Shoot me! 'Fore God, a fair mark!"

Ruins of Jamestown
The ball struck four or five feet to Robert's left, and in front of him,
splashing up a jet of water
Map of the period

A CENTURY TOO SOON.
CHAPTER I.
THE DUCKING-STOOL.
Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts and
hurricanes, spout Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the
cocks! You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt couriers to
oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking
thunder, Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world. --SHAKESPEARE.
[Illustration: ducking stool]
A crowd of bearded men, some in the sad-colored clothes and
steeple-crowned hats of Puritans, others in loose top-boots, scarlet
coats, lace and periwigs of the cavaliers of the Cromwellian period,
intermixed with women, some wearing hoods and others bareheaded,
was assembled on the banks of a deep pond within sight of Jamestown,
Va. A curious machine, one which at the present day would puzzle the
beholder to guess its use, had been constructed near the edge of the
water. It was a simple contrivance and rude in structure; but the freshly
hewn timbers were proof of its virgin newness. This machine was a
long pole fastened upon an upright post, almost at the water's edge, so
that it could revolve or dip at the will of the manipulators. On the heavy
end of the pole was a seat or chair fastened, with a rest for the feet, and
straps and buckles so arranged that when one was buckled down escape
was impossible. On the opposite end of the pole a rope was tied, the
end hanging down to the ground. This contrivance, to-day unknown,

was once quite familiar to English civilization, and was called the
"ducking-stool." The founders of the American, colonies, whatever
may have been their original designs for the promotion of universal
happiness, found it necessary very soon to allot a portion of the virgin
soil to the humiliation, punishment and degradation of their fellow
creatures.
Thus we find, in addition to the prison, the whipping-post and the
pillory, the ducking-stool. From the vast throng assembled about the
pond on that mild June day in 1653, one might suppose that the entire
colony had turned out to witness some great event. Nearly four years
before the opening of our story, Cromwell had established the
"Commonwealth" in England; but it was not until 1653 that the
Parliament party, or "Roundheads," as they were contemptuously
termed, conquered the colony of Virginia. Many of the royalists were
still elected to the House of Burgesses, and the cavaliers in boots and
lace, with riding-whips in hand, predominated in the throng we have
just described. The continual neighing of horses in the woods told of
the arrival of fresh troops of planters and fox-hunting cavaliers.
The merry cavalier was easily distinguished from the sedate Puritan.
The latter gazed solemnly on the instrument of torture as a thing
essential to the performance of a duty, while the cavaliers seemed to
have come more for the enjoyment of some rare sport, than to witness
an execution of the law. Occasionally a snake-eyed aborigine mingled
with the throng, gazing in wonder on the scene, or a negro, granted a
half-holiday, stood grinning with barbarous delight on what was more
sport than punishment in his eyes.
There is something hideous about the ducking-stool in the present age
of reason and enlightenment, more especially as it was designed to
punish the weaker sex and usually those advanced in years. Before the
ugly machine and between it and the road which ran past the pond to
the village was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pigweed,
plantain and such unsightly vegetation, which seemed to find
something congenial in the soil that bore an instrument for the torture
of the gentler sex; but on one side of the post and leaning against