CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH .

for the Pilgrims, since otherwise they would have had to chop down trees to clear a field .

The Pilgrims landed on the 21st day of December, in our way of counting, or, as some say, the 22d . They built some rough houses , using paper dipped in oil in stead of window glass . But the bad food and lack of warm houses or clothing brought on a terrible sickness , so that here , as at Jamestown , one half of the people died in the first year. Cap tain Standish lost his wife , but he himself was well enough to be a kind nurse to the sick . Though he was born of a high family, he did not neglect to do the hardest and most dis agreeable work for his sick and dying neighbors. As there were not many houses, the people in Plym outh were divided into nineteen families, and the single men had to live with one or another of these families. A young man named John Alden [awl' den] was assigned to live in Captain Standish's house . Some time after Standish's wife died the captain thought he would like to marry a young woman named Priscilla Mullins . But as Standish was much older than Priscilla, and a rough - spoken soldier in his ways, he asked his young friend Alden to go to the Mullins house and try to secure Priscilla for him .

It seems that John Alden loved Priscilla , and she did not dislike him. But Standish did not know this , and poor Alden felt bound to do as the captain requested . In that day the father of the young lady was asked first . So Alden. went to Mr. Mullins and told him what a brave man Cap tain Standish was . Then he asked if Captain Standish might marry Priscilla .

I have no objection to Captain Standish , said Pris cilla's father, " but this is a matter she must decide .

So he called in his daughter , and told her in Alden's presence that the young man had come to ask her hand in marriage with the brave Captain Standish . Priscilla had no notion of marrying the captain. She looked at the young man a moment , and then said :

' Why don't you speak for yourself, John ? "

The result was that she married John Alden , and Cap tain Standish married another woman . You may read this story, a little changed, in Longfellow's poem called " The Courtship of Miles Standish . "

Per '-se-cu -ted , punished unjustly ; troubled on account of religion . Bar-ri- cade ' , something hastily thrown up for protection . War whoop , a cry by which the Indians try to frighten their enemies in battle . Vol ' - ley, a discharge of many small arms at once . Pes '-ti lence, any fatal sickness that spreads from one to another , so that a large number of people die of it in a short time . Re -quest ' -ed , asked .