Their foes were triumphant , their friends captive and abased , their home desolate , the benighted wilderness around them , and a rigorous destiny in the shape of the Puritan leader their only guide . Yet the deepening twilight could not altogether conceal that the iron man was softened . He smiled at the fair spectacle of early love ; he almost sighed for the inevitable blight of early hopes . `` The troubles of life have come hastily on this young couple , '' observed Endicott . `` We will see how they comport themselves under their present trials ere we burden them with greater . If among the spoil there be any garments of a more decent fashion , let them be put upon this May-lord and his Lady instead of their glistening vanities . Look to it , some of you . '' `` And shall not the youth 's hair be cut ? '' asked Peter Palfrey , looking with abhorrence at the lovelock and long glossy curls of the young man . `` Crop it forthwith , and that in the true pumpkin-shell fashion , '' answered the captain . `` Then bring them along with us , but more gently than their fellows . There be qualities in the youth which may make him valiant to fight and sober to toil and pious to pray , and in the maiden that may fit her to become a mother in our Israel , bringing up babes in better nurture than her own hath been . -- Nor think ye , young ones , that they are the happiest , even in our lifetime of a moment , who misspend it in dancing round a Maypole . '' And Endicott , the severest Puritan of all who laid the rock-foundation of New England , lifted the wreath of roses from the ruin of the Maypole and threw it with his own gauntleted hand over the heads of the Lord and Lady of the May . It was a deed of prophecy . As the moral gloom of the world overpowers all systematic gayety , even so was their home of wild mirth made desolate amid the sad forest . They returned to it no more . But as their flowery garland was wreathed of the brightest roses that had grown there , so in the tie that united them were intertwined all the purest and best of their early joys . They went heavenward supporting each other along the difficult path which it was their lot to tread , and never wasted one regretful thought on the vanities of Merry Mount . THE GENTLE BOY .
In the course of the year 1656 several XXXXX the people called Quakers -- led , as they professed , by the inward movement of the spirit -- made their appearance in New England .
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