Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/225

Rh as Separatists from the Church of England, but we go to practise the positive part of Church reformation and to propagate the Gospel in America. We esteem it an honour to call the Church of England our dear Mother &hellip; we wish our heads and hearts may be fountains of tears for your everlasting welfare, when we shall be in our poor cottage in the wilderness." Such were the Englishmen—statesmen, theologians, pioneers—who went forth into the waste lands to enjoy the freedom that they thought the old country had lost. English houses, English gardens, orchards, cornfields, all sprang up in these lands beyond the seas. Into the New World the Englishmen carried all that was dear to them at home, and the traditions of English endurance, of courage, perseverance, and dogged resolution carried thence have been large factors in the moulding of the American nation. For "truly they come of the Blood," and though some three hundred years have rolled away since our fathers left their English homes, and the little Puritan colonies have grown into a great and independent nation, yet their ancestors are our ancestors, and no width of stormy sea can wash out the old blood relationship which is a