FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST BOOKS BY * Waller THE WOOD-CARVER OF LYMPUS A DAUGHTER OF THE RICH THE LITTLE CITIZEN SANNA OF THE ISLAND TOWN A YEAR OUT OF LIFE FLAMSTED QUARRIES A CRY IN THE WILDERNESS FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST MY RAGPICKER THROUGH THE GATES OF THE NETHERLANDS OUR BENNY FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST BY MARY E. WALLER AUTHOR OF "THE WOOD-CARVER OF LYMPUS," "A CRY IN THE WILDERNESS," " FLAMSTED QUARRIES," ETC. BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1914 Copyright, 1914, BY MARY E. WALLER. All rights reserved Published, April, 1914 Set up and electrotyped by J . S. Cushing Co., Norwood, Mass. , U.S.A. Presswork by S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, Mass., U.S.A. DR. JOHN SHACKFORD GROUARD OF THE ISLAND OUTPOST M159985 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. ARRIVAL i II. BY WIRELESS n III. BEACH PLUM JELLY AND SOME PRACTICAL DEDUCTIONS 26 IV. ROOTS, SUBSOIL, AND LANDED ESTATES . 34 V. THE "PASS" 59 VI. OUTLOOK 71 VII. CERTAIN MOODS OF THE MOORS ... 91 VIII. MY MAIL 102 IX. A LITERARY MOLOKAI 127 X. BY WAY OF CONTRAST 142 XL AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD .... 157 XII. A PRIVATE VIEW 165 XIII. THE WINDS 176 XIV. LITTLE GARDENS BY THE SEA . . . . 188 XV. Low TIDES 206 XVI. HIGH TIDES 231 XVII. SEARCHLIGHTS 249 XVIII. THE GULLS AND AVIATION 269 XIX. DEEP-SEA SOUNDINGS 274 XX. BEACONS 295 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST ARRIVAL As work interpreting life has taught me, as life sus tained by work has given me. I. SEPTEMBER, 1909. MY first breathing spell in nine years ; and during these nine years I have worked steadily, like a dray-horse, in the harness of necessity. Not once in all these years has that necessity loosened so much as a check-rein, and there has been much uphill work, to ease me mercifully till to-day. No wonder I am sitting here in the kitchen of this island home, half-dazed, partly numb, and wholly dumb save for the sound of this pencil moving over the paper. I look out against a 2 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST blank of dense, white fog that curtains the one window. What is beyond it ? The boat on which we came was late. The weather was so thick she was forced to feel her way into the harbor. The wharf was ghostly ; the small crowd of people on it mere phantoms ; the streets apparently deserted, and the border ing trees loomed fantastic in the mist. What a night to arrive, unknowing and unknown, on this Island Outpost in the Atlantic ! 2. I have been getting my bearings this first morning. The fog has lifted. To the south, west, north, are billowing moors. They lie uniformly dun beneath the unbroken gray of low-hanging skies and, undefined in outline, blend with them at the horizon. 3- I was up early and away to the moors just beyond the house. I found I was in a world of strange and wonderful perspective, for I looked out on a gently undulating sea of varied ARRIVAL 3 green and brown grasses, flecked here and there with the foam of the wild carrot blossoms. In the foreground a flock of small, gray, white- breasted birds was flying restlessly and songless from green crest to brown crest, rising at inter vals with a curiously uncertain swing to soar into the brooding gray depths above them. I recognize their mood, that of ante-migra tion : restless, songless, transiently homeless. Many humans experience this. I know that I have more than once. i 4- On this third day the sun is shining. I have been out on the moors again this afternoon and I find myself in another world, a world of spa cious light and marvellous nuance of neutral tints : soft grays, warm browns, dark greens underflushed with a hint of red in the huckle berry patches. As I stood on one of the higher swells, the spirit of me suddenly felt untram melled, free to breathe great breaths in the spa cious lightness of the softly moving air. Below me the crooked moorland road, rutted deep in 4 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST sand, led to the town. The huddle of gray roofs and stacks of gray, deep-throated chimneys shone silver gray in the clear sunshine. 5- One of the untranslatable September days. It is impossible to render its effect on body, mind, and soul, either in words, colors, or tones. For the time being one may absorb infinity in the intersecting planes of thought, tone, color; but the word that would translate, the land scape that would picture, the harmony that would reveal, are mere circumscribed instru mentation for its expression. Still, circum scribed as are our powers, we can reach certain interpretations. I find suggestions of such a day as this in one of Homer Martin s landscapes, in two lines from Lanier s " Hymns of the Marshes", in an adaptation, or rather, I should say, in an interpretation by Tschaikowsky of a "Prayer" by Mozart. 6. I have taken my first drive this afternoon. I went about five miles towards the one-time ARRIVAL 5 fishing hamlet of Sconset. The perspective of the long, yellowish white road was lost in haze. To the right the moors darkened into an expanse of dwarfed pines ; to the left the dull red of the cranberry bogs filled a great hollow, hundreds of acres in extent. On its farthermost edge the blue-gray smoke from burning peat-stacks trailed with scarcely per ceptible motion out to sea. As I looked, I was aware of a sudden blur ring of the daylight; without warning, a tidal wave of fog rolled in from the Atlantic. In a moment everything loomed gigantic; all dimensions were indeterminate. Then I felt a cool, refreshing moisture on my face, and all around and above was blotted out save for a strip of the yellowish white road before me. I turned homewards and faced a blank ; only the road, like the straight line of duty, was visible a little way ahead. 7- This old house, gray and weather-beaten, is an architectural freak. One half of the first 6 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST floor is only one room deep, but that depth is fully forty feet, or rather, I may say, it is seven miles deep ! For from its four eastern windows there is a harbor extension of miles to the "haulover". As I sit at the dining- table I look out and down over gray roofs, huge, square, gray chimneys, over marshy meadows bordered by a line of young willows, and between bites I may see the trim yachts at anchor, the old collier-schooners making slow sail to the wharves, the daily steamer rounding the Point, or the fleet of fishing boats tacking irregularly across the Upper Harbor. 8. Sometimes I find myself wondering where I am. Not in America, I say to myself. There is more than a hint of some of the fishing vil lages of the Scotch coast of the North Sea Newhaven, for instance. It needs only the appearance of those transplanted Scandinavian fishwives, with their amplitude of short skirts, their bare arms akimbo, their creels of fish, to convince me I am far more than thirty miles ARRIVAL 7 away from the continent of America. What a swing they have, those fishwives of Newhaven ! What a superb carriage : head erect, shoulders and back flat, lithe hips, sturdy calves, and a stride of thirty inches ! I can hear their reso nant voices crying, "Caller herring". 9- I went down town to-day to hire a carpenter, buy some provisions, make acquaintance with the trades-people, and try to begin to feel at home. And what a town it is, with its glint of bright harbor waters down the vista of the elm- shaded main street that slopes to the east, and its magical moorland glimpses from every sur prising turn and twist of lane and alley, of high way, cliff, and shore ! I must set about making my old house com fortable, wholly livable-in, and as lovable as I can for the long winter before us. 10. It was well for me that a series of south west rain-storms set in last week, otherwise 8 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST this house would not have been settled for two months. My ample, forty-foot living-and-dining-room in one is satisfactory. I have lighted the fire on the hearth this evening and drawn the cur tains close. The room has the look of a white- painted cabin of a ship. Near the door that opens into the narrow hall the ceiling is sup ported by a curious eight-sided pillar with a Byzantine capital ! Now, however did that thought find its way to this particular house on this particular island ? It looked familiar. I knew I had seen it somewhere long before in my mind s eye; it took about the ten-thousandth part of a second to place it. Elizabeth of German Garden fame reports one like it in her home. I have utilized it by having a few octagonal shelves built around it for my books. I unpacked them to-day and put them in their wonted places. They make a brave showing and add both cheer and color. I say "wonted" because I always give my books congenial companions. This particular post-bookrack is filled with ARRIVAL 9 what appears to be a hodge-podge of lives, autobiographies, poems, memorials, letters, dramas, books of travel yet what good fel lowship is among them ! Ferns fill a western window; and here and there in a window hanging, a chair cushion, in my writing-pad, I have added a touch of color : fine Venetian red. All about are the things our New England word for special posses sions with which I have lived ever since I knew the meaning of " things". There is little space on the low walls for my pictures, for the great room has eleven windows looking to the east, north, west, and four doors, one of which opens on a large porch facing the harbor. However, I have hung in the vacant places some old engravings which have become a part of my life, have, indeed, influenced it largely in certain directions be cause I have lived with them since my child hood. One, above the narrow mantel over the fireplace, is the "Boston and its Harbor", the proof, from the drawing by Hill. It has the true Turnerian atmospheric effects in its io FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST skies. I can recall no painting of town or city in foreign lands one half as beautiful to me as this picture, not even Vermeer s "View of Delft" in the Mauritshuis at the Hague; for, beyond the harbor, it shows me the city of my birth, the familiar spires of Park Street and the Old South, of the Old North Church and, across the Charles, the shaft of Bunker Hill. It is all my own, my Boston ; therefore I love it. Beneath it on the same narrow mantel are my "Carlyle ivies". And here I sit in the lamplight and firelight, thirty miles at sea, happily idle for a time, listening to the rush of rain against the windows and to the beneficent winds from the Atlantic, moisture-laden, that, bearing in from their wide ocean haunts, seem to cut great swaths of sound in their sweep over the moors. II BY WIRELESS * IT clears tardily after the week of rain and fog. From an old churchyard on the moors I watched to-night for the setting of the sun. An unbroken wall of slate-colored cloud rounded the horizon and extended nearly to the zenith. The moors lay dark beneath it; no shifting line of light, no ray of brightness anywhere visible. There was no wind. Suddenly, with out the herald of a change, in the horizon s west, the dark gray cloud-postern burned as with the incandescent head of a huge battering- ram, and the sun, vastly dilated, distorted, glowed rayless in the breach for the space of ten seconds as it sank. That cloud-wall reflected no more light than if it had been made of asphalt. I could but ii 12 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST wonder if its breadth extended halfway to the Bahamas, if its depth touched the rarefied regions of the upper air. The dusk fell ; it seemed only the engulfing of day in that cloud. In the moorland bury- ing-ground the ancient headstones, aslant, showed ghostly gray. As I turned homewards I caught a wireless message from over the ocean. Clear and definite it was, for in the darkness the trans mission is better than by daylight. I inter preted and visualized it. The time, the place, started the current ; in the fractional part of a second I am afar in Italy ; in Florence, on the hill overlooking it, by the church of San Miniato, just at sunset, among the many graves in the long grass. Beneath me lies the beloved City deep in the chalice of the surrounding hills touched at the moment with amethyst ; its dome, turrets, bell-towers, upreaching from the purple mists of Arno like the exquisite pistil and stamens of a flower. The old church and the hill whereon it stands BY WIRELESS 13 are still radiant in the light of the sun just sink ing below the horizon. The graves are half hidden among the long grass that undulates softly in the gentle but steady wind. On each grave is a tiny lantern. I wait there till they are lighted, a few minutes after sundown. Oh, those many, many little grave-lights on the hill of San Miniato ! How they twinkle and flash from their lowly quiet among the waving grass as the breeze swings them to and fro ! To me, they are like the happy greetings of earth- revisiting souls. I know they will twinkle there till Mount Morello shall herald the coming dawn. The sudden clash and clang of a hundred bells breaks the evening quiet, up-pealing so insouciantly there is no other word for the manner of their ringing to the darkening heights. Those garrulous brazen tongues never let us forget where we are : in Italy. . . . Their echoes had scarcely ceased as I entered the town again and heard the old Portuguese bell in the tower of the South Church on Orange Street striking seven and calling me home. Yes; Italy is one of the great passions of 14 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST life. It is full of effulgent heights, mist-filled depths, ecstasy of unrest, subduing charm, all- abandoning devotion. Its spell is binding even in absence. And what a contrast is this little gray town afar on the island outpost of our United States ! Its windows overlook the billowing moors and the infinite-reaching wastes of the Atlantic. How it draws, draws quietly, insistently, irre sistibly to the low hearthstones and open fires in its homes both humble and stately. How it attracts with the enduring power of a lifelong wedded love that finds at the fireside of home its necessary sustenance; seeks there its refuge ; finds there sanctuary. Now, at nine, even while I am writing, the old Portuguese bell is ringing curfew. I ll match its tone against the best in Europe. . . . I have just been out on the porch to listen and watch in the blackness of this dark night. I heard the continuous tolling of the bell on the buoy beyond the jetties. I watched the con tinuous wax and wane of the great beacon light miles away across the moors on Sankaty Head. BY WIRELESS 15 2. I ve been thinking about those "earth-revisit ing souls" and their "happy greetings" I men tioned. I certainly did not write that as a figure of speech. They really seemed such to me at that time. I recall, however, one special visit to the Medici Chapel, where my thought was quite otherwise in the presence of the Master s works : the titanic Twilight, Dawn, Night, and the unfinished Day. And I wonder, recalling that visit I wonder, and I wonder ; and, with all my wondering, being no nearer to any satis faction, I have imagined Michael Angelo revis iting that same Medici Chapel three hundred years after his death to see his unfinished work. And now I find myself wondering again if by any possibility I may have imagined rightly ? IN THE MEDICI CHAPEL AT TWILIGHT Michael Angelo loquitur. What ! Sleeping still, Mute, pallid offspring of my art ? The Chapel s dim, I scarce know them apart ; but, by the turn of limb, 16 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST I m sure the Night is here and over there the Dawn. (My marble poppies potent charm !) Three centuries gone And Italy, they say, reborn ! Still waking, Day, As ever and for always to new greed for gain ? To strife for rights ? Chimera of a dullard s brain ! We both mark well have wrestled with the thing called Fame As Jacob with the angel till it shall I tell ? Had like to prove a blessed curse that smacked of hell. Imprisoned Day, thou rt still in thine unfinished strength ; As yet no master s hand hath given these limbs repose. Can it be true that after me be humble, Heart ! Not one has dared to shape this rugged, rough-hewn length ? And does this prove that only he may reap who sows, Though centuries intervene ? I speak as one who knows. Earth-memories stir within me but to bring earth-pain. Yea, Heaven is Heaven ; alas, I know that all full well ; But earth, my earth, and life and love, and art, my art O God, that I might live again ! No solution this. 3- I am reading the "Memorials of Edward Burne- Jones". I like group reading. Some books induce it. I know I shall reach out BY WIRELESS 17 through this to so many of his time Morris, Rossetti, Carlyle and Ruskin, dear old Ben- venuto Cellini, Malory and Fiona Macleod. This book, for instance, is like the central sun of some great nebula ; the central thought surrounds itself at once with groups of associated beauty as it is conceived in all the arts, in life, and letters. I have laid the book aside for a few minutes, taken my writing-pad, and am jotting down, just as a matter of curiosity, the readings from the waves of my wireless, induced by a half hour spent with this book. Thomas Carlyle is mentioned with loving reference, Carlyle, for many years my priest and prophet. I look at his ivies in their clay pots on the narrow shelf above the fireplace. They are as green and thrifty as if they had never been transplanted from their native soil in that small backyard it is nothing more pretentious than that of a certain old house in Cheyne Row in Chelsea Town. Carlyle s ivies, their roots mulched and watered, perhaps, by the Sage when he and Tennyson, those two Niagaras i8 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST of prose and poetry, sat speechless, pipe in mouth, in that same backyard one summer night, and at parting congratulated themselves on the pleasant evening they had passed together ! Yes, they are thriving here on this island in the Atlantic. They have suffered no sea change ; every leaf recalls the unpretentious house and my pilgrimage to it. I went as to a Mecca. There is mention, also, of the portrait of Gladstone s baby grandchild; and again my wireless is at work. I am in Hawarden Church, looking at the Burne- Jones memorial window. Some laborers are digging in the churchyard ; a mason is at work resetting some stones in the chancel. The sky is overcast. I see the sign of the old hostelry, the Glynn Arms, swinging in the high wind. I see the curving, gray, village street, typical of Wales, and, as I take my stand at its farther end, by the ancient pump beneath an ivy-draped garden wall, I see a girl swing past on her bicycle. She is bareheaded; the long, bright curls are tossed on the wind. Her face is like those of which the Pre-Raphaelite Brother- BY WIRELESS 19 hood dreamed in order to visualize and im mortalize. Afterwards I find it reproduced in one of the tiny shop windows hard by the inn, and I know it to be that of the Master of Hawarden s granddaughter a face which, had Burne- Jones known it in its blossoming womanhood, would have enriched the world of art through the medium of another of his incomparable angels. I am in the Glynn Arms, ordering tea and toast and the inn s best jam. I shall never taste its like again ; I have tried in vain to imitate it here at home. It was, rather, a plum conserve and delectable with crisp, hot toast. I am sitting in the low, dark-ceiled front room, listening to the scurrying wind till the light begins to fade through the low case ment. . . . I am thinking now of that late afternoon, the ancient, gray Welsh village, the fading light, the clouded sky; and I see but one ray of brightness in all of it the wholly radiant face of that girl. 20 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST OCTOBER. I like to explore this old town when it is en wrapped in light mists. There is no fog. The water is visible, but softly veiled. Every out line of hull and rigging, of wharf and ware house, of shore and lighthouse is softened. Of angles there are none. Every lane has its dim perspective; every road its charmingly indefi nite limitations of turning. Either nothing leaves off where everything begins, or all objects are mere suggestions where they should be defi nite somethings. Everywhere there is pleas ing vagueness, but never vacuity. 5- I was walking in an unexplored south quarter of the town when I came upon a road that, apparently, ended on an upland of the moors, and crowning the grass slope was the old wind mill in the mist, gray in gray. There was no movement about or above me, on the ground or in the air; neither bird nor beast was abroad at that moment, in that place. There was BY WIRELESS 21 only the mist, and the mill, and the climbing moorland road and I alone in it. I held my breath for an instant that the silent charm might not be broken ; that another vision, which the sensitive brain films had kept intact for this hour, this minute, this infini tesimal part of a second, might materialize in thought. Oh, the marvellous law of associa tion and its results ! On my retina was the image of the old Nantucket windmill in the mist that and the climbing road. And simul taneously with the striking of the waves of reflected light on the sensitive nerves, the message went forth through the million intricate brain cells, and lo ! I am aware of another windmill in the mist, but afar on the coast of France, on the shores of Boulogne. I see it between two dim uplands, and it crowns the whitish gray road that climbs between them. So I saw it seven years ago. 6. Heigh-ho for the salt island-marshes ! Heigh-ho for the salt winds that are sweeping 22 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST over them ! And hey for the salt-hay-laden wains and the horses straining to their task ! I have been on the point all this afternoon, on a level with the sea and the wondrous- tinted marshes that it feeds. I have been watching the hay-making on the salt meadows ; watching the incoming tide slowly fill the little creeks till they gleamed all rounded, sinuous, jewelled as with chrysoprase, jasper, topaz, in their deep setting of reeds. Wireless again. For at sight of the eel grass and the slowly filling creeks, I am a child once more and dis covering the wonderland of Cape Cod. } 7- On a lift of the moors just beyond the old windmill are some ancient thorn trees. This evening, after the sun set clear, cloudless, and before the earth shadow fell, the horizon where the moors seam it with purple was defined by a broad zone of red gold, flawless as the ancient priceless lacquer of Japan. Against it my three thorn trees, gnarled, wind-bent, every branch and twig weirdly reticulated, stood out- BY WIRELESS 23 lined in black. Why do I need to see Japan after this ? 8. There is no use in my attempting to finish settling the house in such weather. Yesterday an old trustworthy horse and I rambled over eastwards ; rambled is the word, for we wandered hither and thither, through and around, and, finally, over Saul s Hills the section of the island lying between the harbor and Sankaty Head. Hills, moors, ocean lay open to the October sun. A pond gleamed like an opal in the deep hollow of the moors, the motionless waters reflecting the brilliant red of huckleberry bushes, the brown-green of the bayberry, the deep blue of the sky, and one tiny cloud-plume. As I came out on Sankaty Head I faced Eternity. The sunshine was that bottled vintage of mid-summer which nature lays aside for three months, only to pour out in libation as a mellow golden cordial on just such an October day. The sun had wheeled a degree from the meridian. 24 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST In the south the ocean lay pale, blue, clear, to the horizon s rim ; but eastwards and before me what was before me ? I cannot tell. It seemed to me as if I were having one long, long look into that Mystery of Mysteries in which all life lives, moves, and has its being; into which we humans gaze with straining eyes, mutely questioning; through which we, the Unknowing, pass with faltering sight into the Unknown. I stood on the very edge of the high head and gazed long into the fathomless, translucent mist of tenderest blue that lay upon an ocean of constantly changing, but veiled cerulean. This marvellous mist veiled yet revealed, was pene trable but baffling; it secreted, yet divulged. There was no dividing line of color to mark sea, atmosphere, or sky. Mist, water, and firma ment blended with such ethereal gradations of tints and to such wonderful depths above, beneath, and before me, that the mere physical reception of the reflected light-waves, in their soft intensity, produced a sensuous joy as well as a spiritual exaltation. BY WIRELESS 25 And here again the wireless of the brain was at work. As I marvelled at that color, I saw in it the wondrous blue of the Alpine gentian I picked years ago from beside the snows on the pass of the Simplon. I heard the surging elemental waves of harmony in the overture to Wagner s "Rhinegold". I caught one chord, distinctly, from MacDowelPs "Mid-Ocean" and I saw the reed-measured sapphire of the foundation of the new City of God. And that which lay before me symbolized to me the creative power that has made these five things possible. Oh, what are words ! Mere blasphemies for such an experience, for such a day. . . . Ill BEACH PLUM JELLY AND SOME PRACTICAL DEDUCTIONS I. I MADE some beach plum jelly this morning; it is the thing to do at this season in Nantucket. It was a failure. Although it was firm and clear the taste was not right. I must try again. I wonder how women get on who have not these common things of life to interest them ? Making jellies and jams, preserving and pic kling, is a process always stimulating to me I ought to add when it does not prove dishearten ing as in the present case. There is always the delightful factor of chance in it; the "turn ing out well" is a real cause for rejoicing; the failure is, of course, a proportionate dis appointment, and failure with things that are of the "earth earthy" is so deadening to the spirit ! 26 BEACH PLUM JELLY AND DEDUCTIONS 27 It is really remarkable the total depravity, at times, of concurrent circumstance when I am preserving peaches, for instance. Now putting up peaches looks on the surface to be an ordinary and one-sided operation, voted pro saic by a host of women ; but viewed from the various points of the weather status, of growth, quality, distance from orchards, venalities of marketmen and shippers (oh, that deceptive red netting !), express companies, and one s own mood at the time of preserving, it becomes a curiously complex aifair. Sometimes when a guest sits at my table in mid-winter, enjoying those same peaches with a "topping" our New England word of whipped cream and expressing satisfaction with the dish, I think to myself : "Little you are realizing what goes to the mak ing of these delectables ! sun, rain, the dropped kernel, the earth-mother with her will to yield , the tending by human hands, the watching by human eyes for cloud or clearing and the fore cast of weather bureau; the kindling of bon fires if the frost fall ; the careful picking, selec- 28 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST tion, packing, shipping; the sea voyage to this distant island ; the sorting and paring ; the making of syrup from the largess of the fields of Louisiana, Hawaii, or the distant Philippines ; the testing, doing, tasting; the sterilizing of jars, and, at last, the sealing!" All these processes are the factors in the making of my two dozen jars of peach preserve plus the day s mood of the woman who is "doing them up" and the state of the weather. With all this interweaving of elements and mechanics, there is always the possibility of an infinitesimal mould-growth enfant du diable for us housekeepers to ruin all my first at tempt, and the woful prospect of my having to "do them over", a very penance for my house wife s soul. Well, if my guest, man or woman, say five months afterwards, "How delicious!" I have my reward. 2. Ah, these common things of life ! What balance, what poise they give us when we are forced to breast alone the overwhelming flood of adverse circumstance ! Who shall say what BEACH PLUM JELLY AND DEDUCTIONS 29 thoughts, what high resolves, what memories, what dogged persistence in undertaking, what courage of the pour-on-I-will-endure kind, what undaunted valor of soul that endures the gnawing and tearing of physical pain at the very vitals, are component parts of these myriad common things of life that go to the making of the normal whole ? How many indignant protests against tyranny in the home and injustice from the world in general have women kneaded into bread ? How many sorrows, how many joys, are set with every stitch of a mother s sewing ? How many curses, solid if harmless, are nailed fast upon some unsuspecting offender with every tack a house keeper puts into an old "turned" carpet? How many cobwebs of the brain are cleared away with the sweeping of a room ? Only women can tell, and preeminently those women who know from experience the everlasting sal vation latent in just the common things of life. , And of the women who do not know them, or, knowing, ignore their existence, ignore the fact that they have been, are, and always will be living 30 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST daily benefactions, physical, moral, spiritual ? There is little to be said, for the result is ever before our eyes. Nature s law of compensation works through these common things of life ; to ignore them, to cease to make ourselves one with them, is to invite disaster. "Occupation treatment" whereby men and women are set to work that the lost balance may be, if possible, restored this obtains every where in our present times. That which in the following of a great natural law keeps life at the normal is now artificially reproduced, in order to induce the same result in the abnormal cases that are multiplying because of the igno rance of just these common things of life. Yes, set to work ; and we find men and women weaving on hand-looms as of old; we find men and women chopping wood, like the pioneers of old; we see men and women working in clay, making pottery like all primitive peoples. If this be not a signpost for future generations then he who runs and does not read is blind. They are a part of our commonwealth, this wealth which you and I and all those who have BEACH PLUM JELLY AND DEDUCTIONS 31 two eyes with which to see, two ears with which to hear, who have smell, touch, taste, hold in common. Through each sense we own a world, a wonder-world. Yet men and women, un heeding the richness of such possessions, dare call themselves "poor" because, forsooth, they have no strong box filled with gilt-edged securi ties ! There is need for a readjustment of the terms of life, not philosophy, in this our generation. There is need for a readjustment of values ; for a spiritual as well as a physical revaluation of our possessions in this America of ours. We are met at every turn, in every phase of our national life, with the material fact of "riches versus wealth" and the consequent confusion of standards. We need standards that shall be recognized by every eye and, what is more, we need standard-bearers. This is the great spiritual need of our times. 3- My beach plum jelly having proved a dismal failure, I betook myself this afternoon westward 32 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST to Maddequet where, I am told, they grow abundantly. Westward to Maddequet with the sun still high in the heavens ! And how far toward Maddequet did I get in this shining October weather ? I wandered hither and thither and yon and, at last, mounted a swell of the moors to look about me Were you ever on the coast of Sicily beyond Messina ? On my right was the pond, Wannacomet, a sparkling pale blue, like the Montana sapphire. Before me lay Capaum among the low dunes splotched with masses of bayberry and gray moss ; by some trick of reflected light its color at that moment was amethyst. The long irregular line of coast, white with bleached hummock grass, gleamed sharply against the dark blue waters of the Sound. No picking of beach plums to-day ! Through my two eyes of what unexpected wealth have I recently come into possession : this billowing moorland sea lying soundless beneath the brilliant sunshine of late October ! BEACH PLUM JELLY AND DEDUCTIONS 33 They fascinate me these moors. They are unlike any I have seen : the Liineburg Heath, the dunes of Holland, or Cape Cod, the country west of Cleve, the Scotch moors ; these have undeniable charm, but not that of the Nan- tucket moorlands. IV ROOTS, SUBSOIL, AND LANDED ESTATES I. A CHARMING woman of seventy-six, a gentle woman of the old school (the "new school" will produce what at seventy-six ? I can but wonder), was one of the first to call on me and bid me welcome to her island. I write "her" advisedly, for she was born here as were her father and father s fathers to the sixth genera tion. She was as much a part of the island as are its moors. I met her afterwards in her own house, one of the island s stately homes, a fit setting for its mistress. She spoke of her father and mother and showed me their portraits ; then she brought to my notice a large photograph of an old English house in one of the Channel coast counties. "I was born at Z ," she 34 ROOTS, SUBSOIL, AND LANDED ESTATES 35 said, mentioning one of the old island families, "and I trace my descent in a straight line for a thousand years from the original owners of this manor." The statement was an astounding one to me. A thousand years ! I made no answer. I was not capable of a fitting one at that moment. I was prepared for a Revolutionary ancestry, for one dating from the Mayflower, the old Colony days, or from Huguenot, Dutch, or Spaniard, what you will among our heteroge neous pioneers but a thousand years ! Why, Norman William had not then set foot on that other island across the ocean, Leif Ericsson made no voyage to Vinland. The sequoias of the Sierras were still in their first prime and standing sentinel over an undis covered continent. The great Saxon Alfred was a contemporary of her many times removed grandfathers ! And here before me in the flesh, on a bit of terminal moraine of the last great ice-sheet, the island of Nantucket, left like a footprint of the aeons on half-sub merged shoals, stood loyal and sincere, this 36 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked, seventy-six-year-old descendant of the Anglo-Saxons, confronting me of To-day with her thousand years of ancestry ! For the space of a minute, Columbus seemed of recent birth ; then I was aware that she was speaking again : "Do you wonder that I am proud of such a lineage ?" "Indeed I do not," I answered heartily. She deserved indulgence, as do all of us when we are given insight that, in a way, we are what we are by reason of what untold genera tions once were. 2. I laughed a little under my breath at this harmless ancestor worship as I walked slowly homewards in the November twilight, a twilight entirely at variance with our accepted New England standard of the drear, dull closing of late November days. A golden afterglow was lingering beyond the moors, and against it my "Corot" trees so I call the four noble elms on the upland slope of lawn at the head ROOTS, SUBSOIL, AND LANDED ESTATES 37 of Liberty Street were etched in intricate, interlacing curves. All about me were lawns as fresh as in June, hedges as sturdily green, rich banks of dark glossy ivy and high brick garden walls behung thickly with it. Here and there a rose blossomed over a trellised porch. The wind was from the south ; it brought to me the sound of the surf breaking on the South Shore. 3- If I laughed to myself while walking home in the luminous twilight, I was laughing at myself and my own need of indulgence along certain ancestral lines. It is not generally known, even among my intimates, that I am an extensive landed pro prietor. My estates are many, of great in trinsic value. jTheir revenues, although fluctu ating at certain periods, are enormous. In these days of the new income tax inquisition, when that which is secret shall be laid bare under oath, it may be well to antedate official inquiry and make here and now semi-official statement 38 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST of their value. I am wondering how my Gov ernment will deal with the revenues from my landed properties ? One of my estates is duly entered in the town registry; a fourth of an acre, rather "less" than "more", in reality it is nothing more than a "back yard", on this windswept island. But this record is misleading for I am a large landed proprietor in the true meaning of that term. I never knew I had so many grandfathers, so many grandmothers, so many uncles and aunts as collaterals, until I was invited to in vestigate myself in detail through my forbears in order that I might be eligible to the "Colonial Dames", for which society, by the way, I have never qualified. Of course, I knew in a general way that to the fourth and fifth generation I had had grandfathers ; in fact, knew their names. An inheritance of nearly three centuries in the soil of Massachusetts to be exact, three hundred years in 1923 is productive naturally of a large crop of ancestors. Behind that there are six centuries of English ancestry ROOTS, SUBSOIL, AND LANDED ESTATES 39 as, of course, there are for every one of our many millions of English descent. I confess the mere thought of these thousands of grandfathers is overwhelming, and were it not for the tangibility of some of their estates it would be unbearable and not conducive to lucidity. Think of them as they stand in written record : tanners, fishermen, mill-owners, men of landed estates, "gentlemen" so called, lawyers, farmers, doctors, warriors of high degree, servants, sheriffs, governors, soldiers, "goodmen", "misters", yeomen, and sailors. This is a prototype of the ancestry of millions who now inherit our America : men good, bad, indifferent, in the usual proportion ; poor, rich, or in that blessed class that has neither too much nor too little. Each man filled his little space of time in this world with whatsoever he had of sufficient backbone to produce, whether of good or ill to his fellow-men. And all, to day, are an integral part of the earth-mother which undeniable fact establishes once for all our common heritage. With this fact hourly in evidence, it seems a 40 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST pity to lose two thirds of the satisfaction of actual living by attempting to confine our in dividual humanness within prescribed ancestral lines. Life is not long enough to stand on ceremony with ourselves and other humans on account of ancestors. There are so many of them for each of us ! I hold my estates from these ancestors in fee simple. They are mine by reason of the work ings of that wonderful law : the primogeniture of the imagination which blessed inheritance the thousands of dead ancestors have contrived, by a combining, selecting, refining, eliminating process, to hand down here to me very much alive in this twentieth century. These small, gray, shingled houses, on this island, for instance; the wells, pumps, latch- strings, circular cellars ; the salt marshes, wil lows, eels, eel-grass, clams, quahaugs, even the windmill they are as familiar to me as if I had lived with them all my life ; for they recall that other ancestral life on the queer, physical con figuration of the south coast of my native state, that wonderful "sand-spit": short upper arm, ROOTS, SUBSOIL, AND LANDED ESTATES 41 sharp elbow, long forearm, and fist doubled with downward pointing thumb like the Roman thumb at the combat in the arena eighteen hun dred years ago the wonderland of Cape Cod. The device above the great seal of Massa chusetts is Cape Cod in outline, only reversed and with sword in fist. This side of the funny bone of the Cape s elbow, at present Chatham, there is an inden tation of the coast : Lewis Bay. Just here on this bay, which did not escape the keen eye of Samuel de Champlain on one of his many voy ages, lies Hyannis ; "over eastward" Barn- stable and Yarmouth; and, trending north along the coast, Sandwich, Plymouth, Duxbury, Scituate, Cambridge, Watertown, Lynn, and Nahant. Here, along the curve of Massa chusetts Bay, from the sands of Barnstable to the rocks of Nahant, which unproductive penin sula a far-removed grandfather bought of an Indian sachem for a suit of clothes, and proceeded thriftily to make tar from its pine trees, are to be found many of the roots of my special life in the New World. 42 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST Not for a modern fortune would I exchange what the estates of these various ancestors have yielded me in impressions alone those impressions that are "more lasting than bronze". 4- To a child city born, the journey down the Cape in one of the slow-going, infrequent trains of the Old Colony line was a long, long road to Paradise. With the first breath from the salt marshes I was blissful, for I was entering a new world. The train shackled along over the rough roadbed. Now and then a branch of the scrub oak coppice brushed the side of the car. The sands stretched away north and south to the rippling blue. After a long wait at the "Nar rows", the train started again in the twilight on its last leisurely lap for Yarmouth and Hyannis. Wonderful fragrances drew in through the car windows that were as a rule open : the spice of marsh pinks, the strong, salty breathings of an incoming tide, the resinous pungency escaping from pines in the cool of ROOTS, SUBSOIL, AND LANDED ESTATES 43 the evening after their hot sun bath. At times I get it here, but never of quite the same commingled perfumes. Last summer I was sitting at one of the windows that look harbor- wards, and as the tide turned the sea seemed to breathe once, deeply ; then it sent its life-giving ozone over the masses of roses and honeysuckle in full bloom below our bank. The fragrance of it opened wide the sense portal of smell for memories of those home-goings to my grand mother on the Cape. S- One of the seventeenth century Cape grand fathers on the maternal side was born rich, inherited riches, married riches, accumulated riches, and died rich; yet of true wealth he possessed nothing and, more is the pity, knew nothing of its meaning. He was just "a stingy old screw". Yet I am his debtor, for among his many investments in land he made one of a thousand acres in what is now Hartford County in Connecticut, on the Connecticut River, the same being, according to description, "the fifth lot at the crotch of the river". 44 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST It is by virtue of those thousand acres at "the crotch of the river" and of another thou sand near and on the Connecticut s largest branch, the White River in Vermont, six hundred of which were deeded to a great-great grandfather on the paternal side, and designated on the parchment as "his pitch", and four hundred more belonging to his son, that I inherit all the beauty of the Connecticut Valley, that wonderful valley which lies at our doors yet is sought for its beauty by comparatively few. How many realize that this great New Eng land artery has a course of nearly four hundred and fifty miles ? How many have ever jour neyed, just for the sake of its exquisite scenery, as thousands seek the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania, from Lyme to Lyndon, we will say, on its Passumpsic branch in northern Vermont, or to Littleton in the White Hills ? The scenery is not spectacular, but from mouth to source there is constant variety and the charm of contrast : the gradual transition from low sandstone banks, populous with cities and towns, ROOTS, SUBSOIL, AND LANDED ESTATES 45 to the gateway of the hills and the turn of in numerable mill-wheels ; from the slow, sea going flood, bearing on its sluggish current sloop and schooner and tug from Long Island Sound, to rapids and falls and sharp twisting curves where the White and the Lower Ammonoosuc wind among the mountains on the slopes and heights of which are still to be found lonely trails, primeval forests, miles of green solitude, and a silence unbroken save for hoot of owl and laugh of loon. What more charming than the approach to Hartford and its canal that mirrors tower and bridges ? Where will you find two such independent young mountain scouts as Tom and Holyoke ? Where more gracious watery pleasances than the Connecticut s broad sweep between still broader meadows, from North- field to Claremont and Windsor ? Who has had the pleasure of seeing the sentinel outposts of the White and Green mountains, Monadnock and Ascutney, loom vast and shadowy blue through the September haze ? And who, fol lowing the Lower Ammonoosuc and the White 46 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST through the overlapping foothills into the heart of both ranges, has not felt his breath quicken at the sudden eclipse of all sunshine and scenery as the train rushes into and through an old, covered, wooden bridge, few of which remain, and out again along precipitous banks below which the swiftly flowing water runs, for a brief moment, burnished silver ? All this beauty is mine by virtue of that in heritance of two thousand acres. I know this valley in all seasons, nor can I say in which it most entrances. At which " crotch of the river ", or on which "heaven-kissing hill" those acres are spread, whose they are that is all one to me ; my inheritance remains ; it cannot be taken from me. 6. I should like to dwell on some of the special preserves on this, my largest landed property, the Valley of the Connecticut, but it would be to the exclusion of an inventory of my many lesser, far humbler estates. However, in my pride of possession, I may be permitted to sug gest to him who has never journeyed four ROOTS, SUBSOIL, AND LANDED ESTATES 47 hundred miles up this valley in mid-winter, to make good that omission without waiting many years. He will be my debtor. Of course, one should choose the time. I recall that I made the journey in January, 1898. After leaving the Sound and following for miles the steely gray river under an ominous, clouded sky, we entered, at Springfield, the region of snow. At Brattleboro the river flowed darkly beneath ice floes. As we followed it northward it became ice-bound. Still farther on, the newly fallen snow lay thick upon it and what was river and what was field it was hard to distinguish. There had been a heavy snow storm a few days before ; it added a foot to the usual winter depth. Twenty-four hours of thawing had followed closely upon that, and, directly, more snow, wet and clinging. In the night before I made this journey, the mercury in the more northern latitudes had dropped sufficiently to fix solidly, as part ice, every flake that had fallen on roof, fence, bush, and coppice, on every branch of hemlock, spruce, and pine. 48 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST The gray skies were with us during the whole day; they deepened in the east to a bluish slate and against them the New Hampshire mountains, snow covered from base to summit, showed indefinite and ghostly. The hemlocks, black against the gray of sky and white of hill side, were weighted with snow, their lower branches broken. The spruce looked thin, for every tiny twig and branchlet bent beneath its icy load. The pines towering into the gray held their own, but looked like squads of con victs, for each trunk on the northeast side, whence came the last storm, was coated with snow and ice ; here and there a heavy over laden lower branch swept the ground. But there was no monotony in the ever- changing mountain-sides, overlapping hills, in tervales where the watercourses could be traced only by the fringe of willows, in the roadside coppice of wondrously interlaced and spraying bushes. Everywhere was bewildering grace of outline : intricate anatomy of forest trees and underbrush, curving riverbanks, soft swells of meadow lands, flowing, upward reaches of foot- ROOTS, SUBSOIL, AND LANDED ESTATES 49 hill slopes leading the eye to mountain profile, rounded summit, or sharpened peak. Only once, as the train approached Ascutney, the sun, being about an hour and a half to its setting, broke through the clouded west and, for a moment, transformed that noble plain of approach, with its adjacent semicircle of hills, into a resplendent amphitheatre of prismatic colors. It was but for a moment; then the gray- white of snow and ice on river and plain, the white and black of hemlock woods, the soft purple gray of our long steam pennon relieved the dazzled sight. 7- I can but contrast the autumnal effects of color here on the island with those among the hills and peaks of the Green and White moun tains. Here, over the low moorland, the coloring is laid on slowly. I have watched its perfecting for two weeks. There are acres of low-running, wide-spreading scarlet in monotone; acres of browns and yellows ; acres of dull, dark red 50 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST like the lees of wine, all accented by the blackish green of dwarfed pine plantations. There is no necromancer frost at work here; it is late November before that blight falls. It is sun shine and sea winds, salt-impregnated soil, root-seeking sap and natural decay that are at work on these moors, painting them with large impressionist stroke in broad masses of color. It is then I look from my eastern windows across the harbor, the blue of which at times is the blue of Maggiore beneath the terraced, garden walls of Isola Bella, or that glimpse of the open Adriatic beyond the Giudecca at Venice, over miles of moorland so rich in such subdued perfection of coloring that the eye feasts on it, as does the imagination on the iteration and reiteration of those old taber nacle colors : "blue, and purple, and scarlet and (white) fine twined linen". Somehow that special color scheme never seems complete unless I add the coverings, "of rams skins dyed red". This is autumn on our island. ROOTS, SUBSOIL, AND LANDED ESTATES 51 8. I do not know how many, many times be tween the ages of six and twelve I read that formula of color for the tabernacle furnishings (my father gave me fifty cents a year for reading the Bible through annually. I accomplished this task for love of him, stimulated by the reward. To what extent am I not his debtor !) ; but I do know that the constant reiteration, the insistence on that special combination of colors, set for me then, and thereafter for my life, the standard of color combination that most fully satisfies me. Never an incomparable moorland sunset, of which I am witness, that I do not see the cloud- tabernacle curtains of purple and scarlet. Never a glimpse of the harbor waters faintly white at sunset under the rising of the pale full moon, and of the purple-red of the moors beyond, never the sight of the fall of foam on the bar and the blue of the Sound behind it, that I do not experience that elation from gratified color- sense, fostered by the ancient artificers formula : 52 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST "blue, and purple, and scarlet and fine twined linen". 9- But in October, among my mountains and hills, the slopes of which feed the Connecticut, the crimson flame of maples leaps higher and higher up hill and mountain-side. It darts unexpectedly from out some dark hemlock bush; it flaunts a branch, a saucy Mephisto- phelian feather, above a russet oak. The wood land roads, thickly canopied with birch, beech, elm, and now and then a giant butternut, are long arcades of varied golds dull gold, antique gold, red and Roman golds, light, California virgin gold, with now and then a mass of road side, frost-touched sumach like jacinth in ancient Etruscan setting. In these northern hills and mountains, three hundred miles from this island, the hot mid day sun of October, warm rain, and a sharp, hard frost closely following it, are the miracle workers. Twenty-four hours may transform the mountain world. Curious ! Here all the natural and artificial ROOTS, SUBSOIL, AND LANDED ESTATES 53 lines are low, earth-seeking, as if adjusting them selves to sea level ; whereas among the moun tains of New Hampshire and Vermont the lines tend to the perpendicular, slope-angles of every degree leading the eye upward or downward. I find as I live longer here that all these natural lines lead the vision outward ; they run to every point of the compass. I gain a broader outlook upon what I may call the levelling pro cesses of life. Among the mountains of our North Country I catch the inspiration of life from both its heights and depths an insight into it rather than an outlook upon it. 10. A complete inventory of my estates would fill this page. I need only indicate a few; they are not confined by any means to this side of the ocean. I have several in Kent. One of the Old Colony grandfathers was a clothier from East Greenwich in that county and, migrating hither, lived for a time on Kent Street, so called because of the "men of Kent" who settled there, in Scituate. 54 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST Whenever I have been in London I have intended to make that water journey down the Thames from Battersea to Greenwich, not only to verify the mist and smoke effects of Whistler s etching of the Tower Bridge, but to see something of London on the Kentish side which is far from reminding one of the much besung hopfields and cherry orchards of that noted English county. Unfortunately this has always remained an intention. Had I carried it out, East Greenwich, where my clothier- grandfather lived, would have claimed my interest ; and, after that, a leisurely, looking- up-estates excursion into southern Kent, as well as Sussex, would have rewarded me satis factorily. What concern is it of mine if decades or cen turies ago others purchased, others inherited those fine estates of Groombridge, Spedhurst, Hockerton, Laundale ? Half their charm lies in their names. The present owners cannot deprive me of my special brand of inheritance. And having feed lodge-keepers, and importuned gardeners over Kentish hedges, it is just possible ROOTS, SUBSOIL, AND LANDED ESTATES 55 I might have been permitted to set foot on one of my many over-seas landed properties. Shades of my ancestors ! How well you fought, and delved, and loved, and hated; grasped with one hand and gave with the other ! And now how thickly lie your bones as dust in those old churches and graveyards ; how well your mortal bodies have enriched the soil of Kent! All these good intentions are not confined to my English right of domain, for sometime ah, that " sometime "! I mean to take a day for Duxbury and there seek out the land where stood the old homestead of the Aldens. That poor-rich old grandfather s sister, Abigail, married the captain-son of John and Priscilla Alden. I am ever grateful to her for favoring him; it gives me a live collateral interest, as niece, in her father-in-law s love story. II. But I must enlarge no longer the category of my landed properties. Their real value to me consists in the fact that, during my life, I $6 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST have always felt at home in farmhouse, fisher man s cottage, in workshop, or mill, in mansion, hall, or manor. I can account for this feeling of "at homeness" in these varied environments : it is an inheritance from those thousands of ancestors who were sheltered under such varied roof-trees ; who worked fighting Indians, fish ing, tanning hides, making tar from the pine trees of Nahant, weaving cloth, building mills, weirs, causeways for the benefit of the com munity and governing it, in that first half- century of the Old Colony s life; or, in Eng land, fighting Saxon, French, and brother Eng lishman, cultivating the Kentish land as hind or yeoman, adding to great landed estates by diplomatic marriage with heiresses, no little work of a certain kind, this, hobnobbing with Chaucer and actually breathing the same air with William Shakespeare. I have an ancestral grudge of long standing against some of those worthies for not handing down to me some record of those two Englishmen ! Why did not David de Waller, Master of the Rolls for thirty years to Edward III., tell us of Chaucer? ROOTS, SUBSOIL, AND LANDED ESTATES 57 12. As I have already stated, my one piece of duly registered estate, what I actually own under the law of the land, is a mere back yard here on this island. But I assure you it is no ordinary back yard. Although its superficial contents are registered as something over six thousand square feet, its outlook is so far-reaching that it enlarges daily to thousands of acres in my mind s eye, and I think I dare assert, and with truth, to my natural eye as well. Its only back gate is the gate of every new day beyond harbor and moors ; and not for Golconda s riches would I exchange the privilege of seeing the sun rise from over those moors in winter, and in summer from the ocean haunts beyond the "haulover". At such times the back gate becomes the lodge gates to a royal demesne. At night, in that far east, the lodge gates of day being closed, there shine forth two lights to mark those portals. One can be seen only when the tide is at the flood, and the night is both clear and dark. Then one can glimpse 58 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST the irregular rise and fall of the mast-lanterns on the lightship moored twelve miles seawards on Great Round Shoal. The other, except in times of fog, may always be seen at the eastern point of the compass. It is the brilliant flash and gleam of Sankaty beacon seven miles away across the moors. Night after night, season after season, with a regularity that allays all fret of present exist ence, that brings calm into the fevered life of To-day, those great gates, defined by those two lights, open invisibly for the pass and re-pass of the full moon, a planet, a constellation. Watch ing their serene entrance, I feel that I own some thing both of earth and heaven. No wonder that the little back yard here on this island outpost in the Atlantic dwarfs all those ancestral estates. THE "PASS" I. THIS is the island word for what may be seen from one s windows, front or back, as it may chance, of the local life of the town. My front windows are directly on Orange Street which is a thoroughfare. They are flush with the sidewalk as are many in this old town. Looking from them I am never con scious of the fact that Nantucket is an island. I might be in some town in Scotland except that the houses are shingled instead of being laid in stone; or in some large village of the English Channel coast counties ; yet there is not the slightest hint of imitation. It is unique. Those unacquainted with the winter popula tion might conceive of the town as an American 59 60 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST edition of Cranford ; but it is nothing of the kind. It is literally running over with chil dren whom, in my experience of three years, I have rarely heard cry, so rarely, that at the first wail I usually rush to the window to see if any thing untoward has happened. Like the chil dren of foreign lands they play in troops on the roadbed of the streets, whether it be of sand, asphalt, or cobbles. Their parents also walk thereon ; in fact, the whole population, whether summer or winter, preempt the roadway rather than use the narrow sidewalks where many of the protruding flights of front steps, planted solidly on the inner half, threaten to knock the breath out of an unwary and conventional foot-passenger. They remind me of those so- called "kneeling windows" on the Florentine palaces. I recall that a member of my family while taking a walk in that city was, in a mo ment of abstraction, brought up short and breathless against the unyielding stone. Yes, there are literally troops of children to be seen at any hour not occupied in school. The majority of them are children of Irish, THE "PASS" 61 Portuguese, Brava, English-American parent age. It is on account of these varied nation alities that I applied the word "marvel" to the winter population. The disintegration of the old underlying English-American stratum is rapidly taking place. There is already amal gamation of various nationalities, and I doubt not in another generation or two there will result renewed vitality through cross-breeding. It is not necessary to be a student of sociol ogy and to seek, for the purpose of observing this process of amalgamation or assimilation, the cities that are congested by the influx of other nationalities. The process can be ob served and studied by any one of clear vision in a mountain hamlet, in a village of the coast, or on this island. When beneath my living-room windows there can be heard from the "pass" Portuguese, Brava a dialect of the same Greek, French, or English, I realize that I am in no backwater, no side eddy of the great stream of the migrations of the nations, but in the full current, in midstream, as it were. A recognition of this, and what it means nation- 62 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST ally, precludes any considerable feeling of insu lar isolation. This "day pass" is, in consequence, more intensely interesting to me than a well-staged and acted play; for the stage is a real one, and those that figure on it, passing and re-pass ing daily, are not simulating the various roles that belong to comedy, to joyous vaudeville, to melodrama, misery or tragedy it is all real, but the language is polyglot. 2. There goes Tommy ! a ward of the town and one of God s "hidden ones". I do not know in all my acquaintance a more dead-in-earnest, contented, peaceable when not tormented worker than he. He loves his pushcart and his profession of collecting rubbish. He is a young fellow now, and will always remain young of heart. He can never "grow up" although he is strong, tall, able to do and does according to his ability. Delighted with any small gift, he cherishes it. Many a time during the last three years I have heard him pass the house playing THE "PASS" 63 "Home, Sweet Home" perfectly on his har monica, a Christmas gift. On that first Christ mas when he came into possession of this treasure, as he passed beneath the window in the early twilight on his way to his only home, the poorhouse, I heard him playing that tune softly and sweetly. Hearing it, I could but ac knowledge that all earthly joys are relative. I should miss Tommy from the "pass". Now and then a quahaug fisherman tramps by with a huge burlap sack of that succulent bivalve on his back. Joyous parties of young people on horseback canter gayly through the street on their way to the state road or the moors. Smart private traps, old shays, queer, primitive-looking Quaker carts, loads of seaweed coming in from the South Shore to be used for fertilizing, carts laden with clam shells, fruit, or vegetables all join Orange Street s lively procession. The bells on the baker s cart may be heard at any time of day. They jingle as loudly and merrily as if there were two feet of snow, and the gay cart on runners ; at least, they hint of 64 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST winter as I understand the expression of that season, but it seems to be wanting very gener ally here. The powerful blast of the fisherman s horn announces that there is a prospect of mackerel, cod, white-bait, scup, flounders, or swordfish from the shoals or deep sea. There is a very special knife-grinder a glimpse of whom is worth much to the eye that de lights in the pure Italian type. His matched stationary bells on his little machine are so perfect in tone that I, for one, would gladly follow him down the street for the sake of pro longing the pleasure they give me. I have had less at many a Boston Symphony. Sometimes there is other music, crude in its way but contributing to round out musically the daily "pass". Down the long vista of this foreign-looking street I can see the procession of the "Carrying of the Crown". There are scores of children whose parents only a few years ago were celebrating this feast in the same way in Lisbon, mayhap, or on one of the islands of the Azores. For a moment a queer THE "PASS" 65 little feeling of homesickness for what I can not say possesses me wholly. I feel that I am in a foreign land. Again, on Corpus Christi Day, as I watch from an upper balcony the approach of the long bright procession, it seems as if I had lost my grip on my own nationality. The street is filled from side to side with scores of children, girls, and youths, all in gala dress. The air is filled with the fragrance of flowers, although the little wreaths are artificial. They are march ing to the strong blare of trumpet and beat of drum beneath the gleam of silken churchly banners and ah ! there they are, glorified in the sunshine (I feel again at home), three of those old tabernacle colors "blue and scarlet and the white of fine twined linen" Our Colors ! They, too, are a symbol of sanctuary to these peoples. 3- As for the "night pass", and there is one, I not only cannot see it, I should not care to see it if I could. I know perfectly well what is 66 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST passing along the famous South Channel be yond Great Point and the "hau.lover". I see in imagination the passing of sloop, barge, steamer, and schooner three-masted, five-masted their sails and smoke pennons faintly white against the clear dark, or reful- gently opaline in the light of the moon. I see with the inner eye as plainly as if the outer vision could compass it, what is nightly passing out there beyond the moors, beyond the forty miles of shoals, on the Atlantic main. On the nights of terrific wind I see the surf- men the coast . patrols on that long sand dune of Coskata, out by Great Point ; I see them at Maddequet, on lone Muskeget, or on the wild South Shore. They are leaning forward, head down and on to the fearful force that beats them backwards, beats the breath from their bodies till they are forced to lie flat to regain it. Stung by sleet, lashed by rain, blinded by driv ing snow, they stagger forward on their awful beat towards their goal where, facing about, they race before the fury of the wind to their shelter in the station. THE "PASS" 67 I see in the north and east the pass of barge and schooner bewildered in snow squall, lost in fog, helpless among the maze of slues, bars, shoals, and rips. I see them caught in the sudden gale, dragging anchors, blown from under the lee of Great Point, or parting hawsers and stranded on one of the numberless shoals a toy for breaking seas. I see the crew taking to the rigging, mast and spar and marline sleet-coated, or putting off, a forlorn hope, in open boats. I see the crew of some sinking barge trying in vain to signal to the tow ; and, in the fury of the storm, the black ness of the night, I see the surfmen waiting, watching, ready at the first break of dawn with surfboat and breeches buoy. I know that those men lashed in the rigging are freezing, the men in the open, drifting boat already frozen ; that in the first light of dawn the noble surfmen, who risk their lives for their fellow-men, will bring them in, frozen, some of them, in the open boat, freezing, many of them, from the ice-coated rigging. I know that on the South Shoals, forty miles 68 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST from this island, the flashing beacons of the lightship rise and fall as the vessel heaves and tosses, plunges and rolls in the shallow, tumul tuous waters lashed white by the gale. Inaction is the duty of the crew when all about is in chaotic movement. They can afford no active help; they must simply "stand by" the hardest task for a man. They must keep the lights trimmed and burning while their unwieldy anchored craft pitches from the crests and rolls in the troughs. I know that there are other tragedies of the sea worse than death ; for, sometimes on those ever-anchored but ever-moving ships, the brain gives way and when opportunity offers the man is taken off insane from the monotony of movement, from the monotony of prolonged inaction, constant monotony of sea and sky, sky and sea, rising and falling, falling only to rise again with inexorable sequence. And farther, still farther beyond the South Shoals, I see forging ahead, unheeding the storm, despite wind, snow, fog, or ice, the huge ocean liners. I see their myriad lights, the THE "PASS" 69 brilliant saloon, the warmth of open fires, the comfort of library and smoking-room, the lux urious staterooms on the upper decks, the cozy cells of the lower ones, the comfortable second cabin saloon without the gayety and luxury of the first. I see the immigrants crowded quar ters, the rows of low bunks, the little steerage hospital, confined at best. And still beneath I see the engines, the coal-bunkers, the bulk heads. And in and through all I see that humanity two thousand five hundred souls afloat on the unstable element of the sea. Above in the saloons, the billiard room, the grills, there is feasting, laughter, dancing, sing ing, gambling, drinking, debauch. Below, anguish of maternity and a new-born babe in the steerage hospital, or an old life suddenly snuffed out like a candle in one of the immi grants bunks. And still below there is the perfect working of ponderous machinery, the withering flame of furnace fires, and men, half naked, shovelling with might and main, the steamer is off South Shoals Lightship and the record must be broken, shovelling as for dear 70 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST life, all through the night shift in their sweat and their grime. I thank God I may not actually see the "night pass" from this Island Outpost in the Atlantic. It suffices me to know that through the varying seasons, night after night, passing and re-pass ing, it is always there. VI OUTLOOK I, INSULARITY does not necessarily tend to restrict outlook on men and affairs. On the contrary the field of vision may be enlarged although the angle of the point of view may shift. At least this has been my personal experience here. At first I was surprised when in answer to my question if the oak wood I was purchasing for my fireplaces was well seasoned, the dealer replied : "Yes, I ve just filled an order from some place up the Nile for three cords of the same lot, and Mr. ", mentioning the pur chaser s name, "is always particular on that point. " It certainly extends the boundary of mundane affairs, at least of the town, when the honor able selectmen are petitioned on ambassadorial 71 72 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST paper, from far away Japan, to lay an asphalt covering on a noisy, cobble-paved street of this little, antipodal sister-island. That my Nantucket neighbors may winter in California, Bermuda, Algiers, Canton, or on the Riviera, is no longer a matter of comment on my part; it was until I understood that this bit of terminal moraine, three miles wide and fifteen long, is considered and is, in reality a kind of social, international clearing house. As I have said, the natural lines of the island and its environment tend to lead vision out ward and beyond ; and not only is that vision unrestricted, except for the limitation of sight, but through it there is a stimulation for the inner imaginative eye that looks beyond the miles of moorland, beyond the ocean horizon line, far, far along the waterway of the nations to southern seas, to tropics and palms ; and ever beyond to antarctic ice and towering moun tain range buried beneath snow and scourged by Polar winds the cradle of continental glaciers. OUTLOOK 73 I venture to assert that I think thrice to every other American woman s once of Shackleton, Scott, and Amundsen, just because my eyes can look abroad southward on that ocean the Polar seas of which, in the ultimate South, wash the shores of the continent they have made known to us. This breadth of outlook is the island s inheri tance. Its seafaring men, captains, mates, sailors before the mast, knew the Seven Seas a century before Kipling sang of them. Last summer an aged woman gave as her contribution to a local charity a basket of shells brought by her father from the shores of the Pacific ; they were both rare and beautiful. Not long ago one of the local carpenters lent me an old ship s ledger in which was written his great-uncle s account of his nine cast-away years among the South Sea islands. It is a straightforward, manly narrative of his strange life and how, as sole survivor of the crew, he adapted himself under necessity to the new environment. It is nearly a century old. Men of marked business capability and fine 74 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST intelligence were the owners of merchant-ships that carried our flag into the ports of England, France, Russia, Sweden, China, and India. And now in these interesting homes I may find the flotsam of a century, as rare chinas old Chel sea, Lowestoft, French of the First Empire, or a piece of carved teakwood furniture, a shawl from the handlooms of Cashmere. One dear lady showed me her sixty-seven pitchers direct heirlooms, collateral heirlooms, gifts, many of them a collector might envy and in addi tion twelve dozen infinitesimal silver spoons in a carved and polished cherry stone. I judged them to be something less than an eighth of an inch in length ; a magnifying glass was needed to see them properly. They were a wedding gift bought in London for her grandmother at the time of her marriage there in 1812. The island remains true to its cosmopolitan inheritance. The Rocky Mountain States, the states of the Mississippi Valley, the South, the North, moun tain and plain, even the Atlantic coast, all contribute their quota to the summer popu- OUTLOOK 75 lation. As for the winter population that is a marvel. The second great stream of continental immi gration, setting so powerfully the last twenty years to our shores, has not left this little island untouched. Just as the Gulf Stream tempers these waters, warming them on the shoals that extend forty miles to the south, and makes for a climate more equable than any on the Atlantic coast north of Charleston, so this island feels the influence of foreign influx. As a result, I observe on this Atlantic outpost of our United States, in this era of rapid tran sition, something of the remaking of all America for all Americans. It is well to meet the Inevi table halfway. 2. Removed as I have been for the past few years from what I may call the tension of ex istence the attempt, with millions of other bread-winners, to make headway against the overpowering and adverse current of metro politan life, I find that this abstraction from the rush, the unease, and what, perhaps, I may 76 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST best designate as the discontinuity of life in the rapids of those great centers where for years I have made my home New York and Chi cago, and the minor cities of Boston and Wash ington has relaxed certain strained attitudes towards all life. The outlook has become nor mal. The inner vision has cleared. There is no surcharge of excitement to overstrain heart or brain. As a result, affairs on the continent, the Islanders always speak of the mainland, and with right, as u the continent", national con ditions, sectional changes, flux of new ideas, influx of new inventions, reflux of satiety en gendered by too much of both, recover balance in my thought of them; assume normal pro portions. The interplay of forces in the devel opment of our new national life does not threaten, does not alarm. These forces show themselves as following the natural law of change, the corollary of which is, and ever will be, unrest visible or invisible. Disintegration is taking place in sections of our nation, and men find themselves at loss, OUTLOOK 77 unable to account for the results of it that are daily in bewildering conditions before their eyes. 3- Take, for instance, our own New England. As it is my home, I suppose I may say without undue egotism that I love it as well as any other New Englander; that I am as anxious for its well-being, for its prosperity along industrial lines; and yet, and yet ! The phrase "the passing of New England" is no idle one, nor uncertain of sound. Several years ago while I was living among the Green Mountains, the Grand Trunk Railroad purchased the Central Vermont. We, who saw daily before our eyes evidences of that change in ownership, said : "This is one great wedge that will, in time, split the solidarity of New England." My grandfather had as helper at odd times an old French Canadian ; his family and two others settled in that Green Mountain village ; were industrious ; prospered in their way ; reared their children whose children were educated in 78 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST the common school, and drew others of their nationality to them a local tannery proving the industrial attraction. I have wondered often who would have worked that tannery if not they ? In time, there came to be a large contingent of French Canadians among whom I have acquaintance. These children s children are now Americans to the marrow. I was making purchases last spring at a large shop in Boston, one of our old reliables, and a pleasant sales woman, in taking my address, said : "Oh, I know of you so well ; my aunt is ", men tioning one of that third generation of French Canadians in the mountain hamlet ; it was but little more than that when the first French immigrant entered it. Within a few years, I have seen the tops of the high hills surrounding this same village laid bare to sun and storm ; their granite masses quarried, hewn, drilled, sculptured, by French, Hungarians, Poles, Italians, Lithuanians, Scotch, and Germans. I have heard the polyglot of languages on the village streets. Seeing all OUTLOOK 79 this, living with it for a time, I have realized something of the great forces at work in the dis integration of the foundation racial strata of our New England life, as well as of the effect of wedge and cleavage. I hold it a privilege to have been permitted to see at close range the actual working of this process of the remaking of America.^ 4- After these quarries had been worked a few years, being then in Washington for the winter of 1907-1908, I went down one Sunday morn ing to the wholly informal opening of the new Washington Station, from the entrance of which you may look straight uphill to the Capitol. As I stood there among the thousands gath ered to admire the nobly proportioned building and the beauty of the stone, purest white gran ite, I said to myself, "I believe I am the only one among these thousands who has seen this granite in situ, six hundred miles to the north among the mountains of Vermont." I recalled that day when I drove from my 8o FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST home over the intervening hills to visit those recently opened quarries. There, as yet undis turbed, bared of its thin layer of sod, I saw the granite that was to materialize in the Wash ington Station through the great portal of which the rulers of our country, millions of its citizens and school children, its men of science, the representatives of foreign lands, were to pass and re-pass for who can say how many centuries ? It gave me food for thought. And the forgotten quarrymen, the Poles, Hungarians, Lithuanians, Italians, Scotch, Ger mans, and French who made this possible ? I realized as I, too, passed out through that high- arched entrance, that without them to dig, to hoist, to drill, to hew and smooth and sculp ture, it would not have been possible. And I knew, moreover, that within a generation many of the children of these various nationalities would pass and re-pass through that same por tal as American born citizens, their patriotism stimulated by the thought : "Our fathers helped to make this. " OUTLOOK 8 1 They will recognize their ownership and be justly proud. 5- Surely those third and fourth generations will feel toward their fathers, the makers of Amer ica in what I may call "under the surface" work, as I feel toward the New England pioneers. One hundred and fifty years ago, a pioneer grandfather on my father s side migrated from New Milford into the northern wilderness, work ing his way up the Connecticut Valley, and settled on those six hundred acres, "his pitch", near its White branch. There he made roads, felled trees, built first the log house and after wards the substantial farmhouse of big pine from "his pitch"; cleared, broke, and tilled his land; begot sons and daughters; upheld his feeble church as "deacon", in fact, obeyed the supreme command : "Acquit yourself like a man", and was in due time "gathered to his fathers". His simple history is the history of thousands of New England born, and his work the great work of the New England pioneers. All honor to their unrecorded lives. 82 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 6. But the New England is now old. In seven years it will have been settled for three cen turies. The work of its pioneers has long been finished. Even its industrialism is aging. Its industrial initiative is diminishing. Its lines of traffic are not the lines of great national food supply and never will be because of its isolation. It is a small, cold, northeast corner of the United States. It would take but little to render it insular so far as its physical con figuration is concerned. Maine is three fourths wilderness. New Hampshire is at a standstill in population. After one hundred and twenty- three years of statehood, Vermont s utmost is approximately three hundred and fifty thou sand. Massachusetts still has thousands of acres of waste land ; its commerce is not holding its own ; its traffic along railroad lines is grad ually being "side-tracked"; its fisheries are being rivalled. The New England that our forefathers opened up, the New England that our fathers devel- OUTLOOK 83 oped has, in a sense, had its day. It is subject, as is every enterprise of settlement, manufac tures, mining, agriculture, to the law of dimin ishing results ; and no building of enormous docks, no extension of railroads, no forcing of mill industries, will aggrandize, enrich her, or tempt to settlement. Certain sections of our own country, because of the rapid development of the whole during the last seventy-five years, must fall by their own weight. The balance of sectional development, owing to the pace at which this continent has been tracked with railroads, nerved with telegraph and telephone, quarried and mined, has been unsettled. 7- The history of this island will be, I believe, an epitome of the history of New England. Thomas Macy, one of its original purchasers and one of the first three settlers, left Salisbury, not that he was persecuted, but because in his own words, "he could not in justice to his con science longer submit to the tyranny of the clergy and those in authority." This is an echo 84 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST of the Pilgrim Fathers and, heard as early as 1659, indicates the tyranny of the Puritan theocracy. There followed slow development, slow in coming of others who sought this refuge for other reasons, perhaps as potent. In the course of a century the whale fisheries made known the island to the world, and its merchant-ships and whalers were found in every port. The popu lation increased rapidly because of prosperity. Prosperity, dependent on the demand for a world supply of its commodity, waxed because of that demand for the island s particular prod uct. In the middle of the last century sperm oil gave place to crude petroleum ; the opening of the first oil well wrote "the end" for Nan- tucket s extensive maritime interests. Business stagnation followed. Its people migrated. Grass grew in the cobble-paved streets. As a child, I came once to it from the Cape, and for one night. There has remained with me the impression of foggy drowsiness, of the absence of life in the streets and little lanes, of the salt marshes at low tide, and of a quaint OUTLOOK 85 home in an alley where my mother, aunt, and I were made welcome. I recall the mustiness of the tiny rooms, the oily smell from a kerosene lamp, the all-pervasive air of another-world- ness than that to which I was accustomed. Now, after these many years I am here again at home. The streets are lively with a life foreign to me. The bay is dotted with the boats of scallop and quahaug fishermen. One winter day three years ago I counted twenty- one sail coming down from the upper harbor. Now, after so short a time, I rarely see a fisher man s sail ; only power boats are at work with drag and rake and dredge. The quaint houses, the quiet, picturesque lanes are still here, but every house available seems to have been bought by the "off-islanders". The spring, summer, autumn, see another life, and the population exceeds by thousands that of the island in its most prosperous days. This is the redintegration of this Island Out post. In the century to come I foresee some thing of the same process for our old New England. 86 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 8. One must have lived away from this section of the country for some years to realize this. One must have lived in the great centre of the Mississippi Valley, that enormous granary of a continent, to understand the significance of Cobden s words: "Here will one day be the headquarters of agriculture and manufacturing industry ; here will one day centre the civiliza tion, the wealth, the power of the entire world." 9- We need, also, to saturate our minds with national facts, economic, climatic, racial, and historical, as well as acquaint ourselves with the ideals of those three great states on the Pacific Coast and of that empire on the divide and slopes of the Rockies Montana. Its eastern foothills, alone, will yield in the future sustenance for millions. We need to look farther in order to see more clearly and deeper into our national life and its mainsprings; to remind ourselves oftener that OUTLOOK 87 although New Englanders, we are something more and all the time something more, not merely at elections or in national crises ; that we are citizens of a great republic which seeks its sources of vitality among all sorts and con ditions of men who find themselves in a won derful country of possibilities, known as yet to comparatively few among the working mil lions. Homogeneity, the old racial status of New England, works intensely in one direction and in the interest of the special race. Hetero geneity, the present racial status of our entire country, works diversely, more slowly, but none the less powerfully towards the common interest of the Race. We shall come to recognize and without such great periodical discouragement, without such spasmodic despair when we fail in reaching the special local goal we have in view that in the course of historical development which, in the end, is economic development, for a grow ing nation s history follows the lines of its food supplies, that we are getting out of the current, 88 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST not crowded out, a condition which would permit us with desperate struggle to get in again, but that, sectionally, we are economically and, I dare assert, educationally devolving. 10. I wish I had a little influence with the Board of Overseers of Harvard ! If I had, I would urge them to appropriate the interest of some of their available millions to the founding of travelling scholarships exclusively in our own country. The students obtaining them should visit the universities of the states, the mines, mills, plantations, agricultural schools, reservoirs, dams, docks. They should acquaint them selves with the country s watersheds, with the methods of irrigation. They should know the forest slopes of the Sierras and Cascades, as well as the muskeg and black spruce of Minne sota. They should know the Great Lakes, and their traffic undreamed of by Easterners. They should know the great civic centres and the loggers camps of north and south, east and OUTLOOK 89 west. They should note the direction of the great streams of immigration, their diversion and distribution along certain lines that can but be affected now that the great Canal is about to divert some of the over-seas humanity to the Pacific Coast. Nor should they be content with noting the direction of the greater affluents of this immi gration stream. They should note carefully the little rills of immigrant labor with their tiny irrigation gates in mountain village, prairie settlement, or sea-coast hamlet; they should take note even of the "seep". Then this old New England, into the heritage of which some of them may have been born, will assume in their eyes its rightful proportions in the scheme of "things as they are" in our United States. With no less loyalty to her three hundred years of history, her traditions, her accomplishments in the past, but with in creased power to understand the accurate di mensions of the part she is to play in the future of the nation s life, its councils, its economics, its perils, and prosperity, they will enter into 90 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST her service equipped in a measure to avoid for themselves and their children disheartening illu sions ; to interpret to another generation her waning powers and to determine the lines of her redintegration. That man who has studied at first hand his country s racial necessities, and her natural endowments for the supply of those necessities, will render better service as a citizen, will be better prepared to direct New England s energy, into what channels soever it shall be diverted, through understanding and accepting the fact that the New England of the past three cen turies, the standard-bearer for the colonies, many times voice and guide for a young nation, breeder of sons that colonized in the west, pioneer in industrialism, is now, in all truth, an old New England that is but a small part of a great National Whole the ideals for which are to be sought and found among its youth in the Great West. And this is as it should be. VII CERTAIN MOODS OF THE MOORS I. THEY are so wide-reaching that even the sea, bounding them on the east, west, and south, seems not to confine but to enlarge them. One is apt to think them stable of aspect until one has lived with them intimately; then one real izes that they have many moods and tenses. During the four years of my residence here they have acquired, in my thought at least, the charm of a strong personality that, as yet, has not wholly revealed itself to me nor, it may be, ever will. This is one of the sources of their charm. They allure, yet baffle ; they take you into their confidence but always with reserve and a hint of "more if they would". It has its secrets, this moorland which is the creation primarily of a continental ice-sheet, and it with holds them from all who have not the fine hear ing ear, the seeing eye, the understanding heart 91 92 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST for this special expression of nature. It will reveal itself, and then but in part, only to its lovers, and even to them in unexpected moods. You wander out a mile or two over their seemingly monotonous stretches, and suddenly you are aware that there is buoyancy in your walk; the closely matted surface of the meal- plum vines, that cover them, fairly springs beneath your feet. You mount one of the many soft, rounded breasts those innumerable swells of the moorland to look about you on an afternoon in July. There may be no wind which is an exceptional condition here of the air at all seasons. Then there is a quiet abroad that is the distilled spirit of calm ; not even the hum of a bee is heard, not the stirring of an insect s wing. The sunshine filters through a light haze that amplifies the distance, and the great moor- mother basks in it, offering her warm breasts to those of the earth-children who seek her. A natural peace broods both body and soul. It is well to let nature work her will with us on such a day, in such a place. CERTAIN MOODS OF THE MOORS 93 2. Over westwards there is a tiny house hunched against one of these moorland swells. It is protected on the north by this rise of land. The west and south lie wholly open to it. I should like to own it that I might see from its windows the approach of those wondrous storm-clouds from the southwest that in huge, riven masses, their dark edges frayed, bear rapidly continent- wards. They cloak the firmament with their voluminous swinging folds. Their trailing skirts efface the dun-colored, low-lying moors, levelling and blotting out. They sweep unendingly, so it appears to one watching, at the rate of thirty miles an hour, out of the watery wastes and over this island toward the mainland. At such times I am permitted to see the storm clouds at work between the vast of the deep and the vast of the sky. I see the strain and the travail for they are heavy with rain, the tortuous upward twist of the gigantic, wind-driven masses in their onward rush landwards. This great natural arena for this elemental 94 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST wrestling match is best seen, I believe, from the Nantucket moors. 3- They hold constant surprises for those who frequent them. One may come unexpectedly on a tiny cup-like hollow among the soft, moorland breasts. It is filled with clear water that floats dark green, leathery lily pads, and white lilies open wide to the August sun. Sur rounding it is a low irregular coppice of wild roses in bloom. Incense of water lilies, the spicy fragrance of the wild rose, and, for an added sensuous delight, the breeze coming in from the near-by ocean and stirring a petal ,here and there. 4- But oh, the marshes on their borders, where the shy wild life lives for a while and feeds ! Wild land about pond and pool peat-bog, and hummock, marsh and reedy inlet filled from the largess of the adjoining sea ; wild November skies and the hoarse kruk of coot, the scream of gulls flying high over the island ! CERTAIN MOODS OF THE MOORS 95 5- On ordinary starlight nights the moors are never dark. There is a curious atmospheric luminosity about them that gives the impres sion of great enclosed space the unbroken arch of the sky is responsible for that illu mined dimly from beneath. Something of the same effect can be seen across the dunes of Hol land. I suppose it is a matter of refracted light from the circumambient waters of the ocean. Those are nights to be remembered when in the early evening the new moon and Venus, apparently within its curve, are setting together in the clear dark beyond the line of the moors where the ocean bounds them. I keep certain joys for myself in anticipation ; it is one of my life s best assets. Sometime in the April of 1914, I mean to see Orion wheel slowly down the dark expanse of moorland and sink at last, star by star flash of Rigel, gleam of Betelgeux into the Atlantic. As for nights of full moon, there is enough light focussed on this island to supply an 96 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST archipelago. Then even the moors partake of the glamour of the silvered sea. 6. "What must it be like in such a soft dark night out there on the moors where, westwards, never a beacon shines from home or lighthouse tower ?" This I ask myself when I stand at the open door and listen to the unbroken, heavy undertone of seas pounding on the south shore. On such a dark night, for instance, as I last stood in the open doorway listening to that marvellously deep basal note, with which was mingled from time to time strange overtones, and wondering that the impetus of those heavy seas, the after math of some terrific storm far, far away on the Atlantic, did not carry them across the isl and to mingle with the quiet harbor waters. This low, far-away booming of surf is seldom heard in the town ; the conditions for it are rarely combined. To produce it there must have been a severe storm somewhere to the south of us on the Atlantic ; the night must be CERTAIN MOODS OF THE MOORS 97 practically windless, or with a gentle steady breeze from the same point of compass. At such times, in the soft dark, under clouded skies, the moors must reveal another world to him who seeks them. The eye must first of all accustom itself to the impenetrable dark ness. The ear must wont itself to the constant terrific roar and boom of surf breaking along fifteen miles of sand beach ; the mind adjust itself subjectively, of necessity. Thoughts crowd the consciousness in such an hour, in such a place. There is a blind groping, a vain Jsearch- ing of the spirit, a realization of its impotence in that universal dark. What a beacon to our very soul if on the benighted sight the glowing twinkle of one firefly should break suddenly against the sur rounding blackness ! 7- There is but one perfect epic for such a dark ness, for such a night ; one perfect expression of the thoughts such an environment must en gender : Hellen Keller s "Chant of Dark ness" 98 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST "Out of the uncharted and unthinkable dark we come, And in a little while we shall return again Into the vast, unanswering dark." This would be the moorland s hymn on such a night, and its accompaniment the deep diapa son of breaking seas. 8. I confess I find a certain satisfaction in materializing anticipated joys, or good inten tions, by writing them out ; it is a process of anticipatory realization. I find I am saved many disenchantments thereby. Now I know perfectly well that were I to go out alone into the darkness on the moors, provided I could gain courage to get beyond the town, I should find it infinitely "poky" in that dark ; and I have a woman s horror of finding myself alone in a "dark poky place ". Nor do I doubt that if, by a supreme effort of will and groping along that rutted sand-road, I could place myself well for observing the effect of such surroundings on my consciousness, for, of course, there would be nothing to see objectively, I should promptly relight the CERTAIN MOODS OF THE MOORS 99 lantern I had but just extinguished and, with out making many particular thoughts on eter nity, infinity, or various conceptions of the universe, turn my steps homeward with an alacrity wholly inconsistent with certain cherished ideals. This confession must be made if section 7 is allowed to stand ; and stand it shall because of that wonderful chant by a woman who, born into physical darkness, has attained never theless to such dazzling illumination of soul that to us, marvelling, her whole existence seems at times "dark through excess of light ". 9- FEBRUARY, 1910. I have been out on the moors for two of the morning hours. During the night there was a fine fall of snow over the island. It fell quietly, without heavy wind to drift it. At sunrise I was introduced to another world. It is a fact that because the winds are so strong and constant here at all times, much of the snow is blown over and off the island. ioo FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST This statement was made to me when I came, and left me sceptical. I have since verified it. The storms that leave even a little depth of snow, and for only a day or two, can be counted on the fingers of one hand. On this particular morning, at nine o clock, the sun, although not high, was both brilliant and warm, the sky a more intense blue than I have ever seen it except in January in Italy. From a swell of the moors, beyond the forking of the western end of the long main street, I could see to south and west for miles across the undulating white expanse. In the south a line of deep indigo defined the ocean bound of the besnowed island. To the west stretched a magic land all sparkle and gleam and glitter, its white swells catching every beam of high light. The hollows between them were filled with a myriad soft shadowy hints of every nuance of violet and purple. Below me, in the lee of the little hill, a small herd of cows was nipping at the tips of the dried grass pricking through the light covering of snow. Evaporation had begun already, for CERTAIN MOODS OF THE MOORS ita* here and there the air ran quivering to and fro over certain sun-beshone lowlands. The gray walls of the great water-tower in the foreground accented the dazzling whiteness. Oh, the charm of all this in its lowly way ! VIII MY MAIL I. WE have a really delightful little steamer, a propeller, that in the winter months braves almost any weather to keep us in touch with the mainland. It is one of the island s best assets but, unfortunately, not always available owing to heavy storms and stress of high winds com bined with tides. At first I used to please myself with the thought that the daily arrival of the boat would keep me posted concerning affairs on our con tinent and the interests of my special friends. I was fond of quoting to myself naturally as I watched the boat make its way into the harbor : "Every day brings a ship, Every ship brings a word ; Well for those who have no fear, Looking seaward well assured, That the word the vessel brings Is the word they wish to hear." 102 MY MAIL 103 This was satisfying as a bit of pure sentiment, but I soon found that it was a sentimental fallacy. The word about town, "No boat for Nantucket to-day", quenches both hope and sentiment in regard to a dependable daily mail. I have seen the time when if we were so fortunate as to receive it once in seven days, I was de voutly thankful. In justice I must add that this state of things has obtained but once during my four years of residence. But what added zest it gives to read the letters that have been delayed in transmission, if only for one day ! What a goodly pile I am apt to find in the mail basket, followed next morning by the second delivery books, news papers, magazines, and delightful remembrances from various quarters of the globe. Why, only the other day, all Norway came over in the Sankaty, the boat at present in service. Ever since I knew that country to be a geo graphical fact, I have dreamed of it ; hoped to visit it ; delighted myself with imaginative pictures of it the winters in particular : its snow-covered mountains, crystal fjords, pine 104 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST forests ice and snow laden, the strange light of its partially sunless days, the long twilights, the ethereal dawns. By way of contrast, I like to imagine the midnight sun shining on the peaks of the northern islands, the high light on mountain pastures, the deep shadows in the valleys, and behold ! here they are in the mail, having crossed the North Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, and Nantucket Sound to reach me from Christiania. There are fifty-four im pressions from large photographs : among them the midnight sun on the Lyngen fjord, the Lofoten islands, the august Saldul Gate, Gausta, the Isterdel Peaks, Romsdalshorn yes, and Gjende, the mountain tarn in Jotunheim, and the ridge of the same name along which Peer Gynt sped on the reindeer s back ! In addition I possess a letter of sixteen pages from the sender of the gift, a Norwegian lady an English letter, perfect as to script, grammar, phrasing, and expression. She writes : "I am fifty years old, and since I was fourteen, I have taken the greatest interest in English literature and of late in the American also. I know both MY MAIL 105 Emerson and Thoreau, and some of the new novelists. Of poets, I know chiefly Longfellow, Whittier, and Whitman." Reading this I feel as if I knew not one iden tical thing about anything ! Why haven t I learned Norwegian in all these years ? Why have I contented myself with translations either in English or German of Frithjof s Saga, of Bjornson and Ibsen ? Why haven t / five Norwegian authors read in the vernacular to my credit ? Possibly, only possibly, if I had really liked Ibsen as I like Goethe, I might have been tempted to acquire a reading knowledge of the Norse for the sake of the richness of rhyme and the lightness of rhythm in his poetic master pieces. But I did not like him, do not like him, and never shall like him. I think I have good reason for these various tenses of negative dislike, but I dare not tell this to the lady in Christiania not yet ! 2. It is a reproach against us in general that, because we are women, it is difficult for us to be io6 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST "fair", as the children say. By which is meant, presumably, that our emotional natures, our quicker if less firmly grounded sympathies, our strong advocacy of a cause without intensive working over the reasons for our advocacy, our transient, indiscriminate adoption of new ideas and, to the masculine mind, our inconse quent action in grave affairs without so much as a "buffer" of reason between us and calamity, pervert the judgment and dethrone justice. I suppose it is all true indeed, I do not quite see how we should be women at all without these inconsistencies. To make my personal con fession, I do find it difficult to be "fair", but that does not prevent my wanting to be oh, so fair ! And I really struggle, desperately at times, to appear so whether I am or not. Having confessed this much, it would seem that a further confidence might be in place. I have a "corrective" for all my "unfairnesses": I wait, simply wait. After expressing myself in what I call my "sputter", a harmless enough diatribe in regard to persons and things, I feel I can wait, wait patiently a month, a MY MAIL 107 year, a decade, a quarter of a century if neces sary, to be shown where I am at fault, where I have not been "fair". Life s experience is my "corrective" for all unfairness. I know that, despite any will of mine, it must modify if there be anything in my pronunciamento to be modi fied ; that it will clear my mental atmosphere of the mists of prejudice the result of environment, heredity, or training ; that it will force me to see that what is heterodox to me is orthodox to another. I wait and Life turns a corner, suddenly perhaps, and I see as suddenly from another point of view. It gains a height, and I get an inspiration that gives me insight into the depths. It adjusts a different lens to my eyes by which I may discern the right, detect the wrong; by which I mean I am enabled to see deep enough into the verities and insincerities that underlie all the attempts of us humans to express our selves in this world whether by daily living, in what way soever attainable, or along certain lines as in the arts : painting, sculpture, by the written thoughts as literature. io8 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST In the end, I am made to do justice to effort, not the result of that effort ; to motives, not to movements along certain unexpected lines of action ; to accept not so much the manifestations of genius as the intent behind their expression. "Just wait awhile," I say to myself, "and despite all your sputterings you will be fair in your final judgment. You can t help being fair in the end, for Life s experience tills your soul whether you will or no ; ploughs and harrows, and sows many seeds that in due season ripen, many of them, to a harvest of tolerance." After writing that decided statement, "I never liked Ibsen, do not like him, and never shall like him," I held my pen suspended for a moment, questioning: "Am I fair in saying that ? Am I not allowing the prejudice of fifteen years standing to bias that statement ? Is not the disdain with which I re-read his works four years ago distorting my point of view, discoloring what is seen from it ?" 3- I took out a note-book, like all my intended note-books four fifths of the pages are blank and MY MAIL 109 the notes on the remaining fifth disjointed in the extreme, and am copying some of my "sput- terings" about Ibsen s works which in the winter of 1909-1910 I re-read to get an idea of his powers. Here they are. They show pretty conclusively how I felt towards them after a "wait" of eleven years. Evidently that length of time had not cleared the atmosphere for me. And I do so want to be fair ! "Ibsen the spectacle ! The freedom ( ?) of Nietzsche become here an obsession. "Compare sanity of Meredith, of Stevenson. "What healthy work there is in Genesis compared with this ! "The ideal holds the truth in suspension. With Ibsen it seems to be ideals versus truth. The trouble seems to be that he has laid his foundation stones in wrong relation to the super structure en delit, as is said of the quarried stratified rocks when placed in the walls con trary to their manner of lying in the stratum. "Realism, or anything else, to the zero power equals one the I , one-self, of Ibsen and Co., the sick ego. no FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST "Look at this ! Ghosts (morphia insanity, heredity), The Wild Duck (pistol), The Doll s House (threatened suicide), Rosmers- holm (foot-bridge), Hedda Gabler (pistol), Emperor and Galilean (insanity). " We thrive in the sunshine, not in the rainbow- hued scum of putrescence. True, the sunshine may be broken by a medium into its elemental colors (oh, the unsavory misuse of that word * elemental and its meaning !), but the rainbow colors are not those in which we grow and thrive and develop, oh no ! One-thoughted men, obsessed men, are apt to see through the medium of green, red, blue, or yellow, and the readers of their works see life-facts as they present them colored by this broken prismatic mentality. Hence the morbid tendencies (morbidus, morbus, diseased, unwholesome, threatening decay) of Ibsen ; hence the seeing red like Nietzsche ; hence yellow like "Oh, the sunlit clarity of a Goethe, the whole some sunshine of Shakespeare ! Oh, the crystal sunniness of the order of life lived by the God- Man of Galilee ! No wonder that so many of MY MAIL in these modern writers creations cry out The sun the sun Helios Helios ! They are crying for what humanity cannot do with out. That cry, at least, shows common sense. "In the prose dramas, Ibsen s people seem to be presented as if suddenly seized with cramps whether mental, moral, or physical it is for the audience to determine. "There is a perverted dreaming that gives us Peer Gynt. There is another dreaming that gives us the imagination of a Newton and the law of gravitation." 4- Re-reading these notes after four years, I say to myself: "Now, you are not wholly fair. Read something of his again ; find out what Life has taught you in these forty-eight months. " I took Peer Gynt and read it straight through at one sitting. With the lovely Norwegian scenes before my eyes, I interpreted that wonder ful first act very differently. Among the photo graphs was one of Lake Gjende in Jotunheim. There was the very ridge, the arete, of those mountains along which sped the reindeer buck on H2 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST his mad course, carrying Peer Gynt on his back, held there by the powerful backward thrust of the horns. And there the lake, the mountain tarn, into which both rider and buck plunged to meet their double in the clear dark of its waters ! I began to live with Peer and his mother Ase ; and when we begin to live in the experience of another s narrative, whether real or imagined, we become necessarily one of it and with it. We no longer see it with our eyes, but through those of the actors in it. Not until then can we in the least degree judge of the intention of the creator. When we live, even in sympathetic imagination, through the experience of another, whether that life-experience be fiction or truth, then for the first time we are freed from prejudice, are ready to do justice to effort irrespective of result. " Have you ever Chanced to see the Gendin-Edge ? Nigh on four miles long it stretches Sharp before you like a scythe. Down o er glaciers, landslips, screes, Down the toppling gray moraines, MY MAIL 113 You can see, both right and left, Straight into the tarns that slumber, Black and sluggish, more than seven Hundred fathoms deep below you. Right along the edge we two Clove our passage through the air." And reading on and on I live the experience of this strange Peer Gynt. I understand his poorly equipped temperament, the rich but flighty imagination a will-o -the-wisp for the shifting desires the weakness of his will, the purposelessness of a life begotten on the one hand in drunkenness and on the other fos tered by the pathetic, imaginative nature of his poor, peasant mother. Ah, that mother s death ! Never have I read a more heart-rending scene. I see the miserable, despoiled hut on the mountain, the boards for couch, the fur robe, and the son, but just returned from his wanderings, drawing upon his most vivid and powerful fancies to help tide her over that last mortal hour ! I have seen Faust given on the Dresden stage by the best talent in Germany, but the prison scene cannot compare with this, nor can ii4 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST those last words, "She is saved", ring more true than the simple words of the peasant wife, Solveig, who, waiting years for Peer s return, answers to his cry : Hast thou doom for a sinner, then speak it forth ! SOLVEIG He is here ! He is here ! Oh, to God be the praise ! (Stretches out her arms as though groping for him.) PEER Cry out all my sins and trespasses. SOLVEIG In nought hast thou sinned, oh, my only boy. (Gropes for him, and finds him.) ******* PEER Canst thou tell where Peer Gynt has been since we parted ? SOLVEIG Been? PEER With his destiny s seal on his brow ; Been, as in God s thought he first sprang forth ! Canst thou tell me ? If not, I must get me home, Go down to the mist-shrouded regions. MY MAIL 115 SOLVEIG (Smiling) Oh, that riddle is easy. PEER Then tell what thou knowest ! Where was I, as myself, as the whole man, the true man ? Where was I, with God s sigil on my brow ? SOLVEIG In my faith, in my hope, in my love. ******* PEER My mother, my wife ; oh, thou innocent woman ! In thy love oh, there hide me, hide me ! (Clings to her and hides his face in her lap.) SOLVEIG (Singing softly) Sleep thou, dearest boy of mine ! I will cradle thee, I will watch thee Yes, Life has taught me in these last four years. I understand Peer Gynt ; and in nothing he has written has Ibsen seen more deeply and more "musically" into life than in this reading of a woman s love. When deepest ii6 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST and truest, there is in it always something of the maternal. Yet Mr. Shaw affirms : " No man will ever write a better . . . comedy than . . . Peer Gynt." The italics are mine. In the prose dramas I still see the "cramps" certain men and women galvanized into a semblance of life. Doubtless this is artistry; but I see the wires that are manipulated to produce the convulsive movements and, in consequence, I find no true art. I believe that Ibsen s enduring fame will rest on "The Pretenders" and "Peer Gynt". / 6. But to my mail. Here is a package from far away India ; there are only a few words with it, but a whole "travelogue" in the fifty postal cards. For this evening I am there the breadth of two continents distant from Norway. I have to laugh at myself and our strictly up-to-date Bostonians over the manner in which MY MAIL 117 we "tackled" India in the time of Mozoomdar ! In my youth, after the true Bostonese manner, I proceeded to ransack Bates Hall for works on India. I wonder now how in that young youth, with a vivacity of temperament and keen joy in life that forbade any introspection, I absorbed, or seemed to, those works. At the finish I think this special cult lasted with me about five months it is no matter for wonder ment that I did not know (I must use a slang phrase just here, for no other expresses the con dition of mind) "where I was at" ! Goodness, what a list for youth ! Had I not found last year another of those note books in the attic of our mountain home, I should never have remembered that I had so much as touched India "esoterically". I find I accomplished "Esoteric Buddhism", a clear waste of precious youth, and through Max Muller, something of the Vedas, the Zendavesta and the Mahabharata, and "India, What Can It Teach Us?", "The Oriental Christ", and "Faith and Progress of the Brahmo Somaj", and what more I have not listed. ii8 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST Although I have forgotten all this, I feel that I know India through two books, one poem, one Tale, a statue, and a woman. A "Life of Buddha", in German, a marvel lous record of a marvellous life, interpretive in a way of that most wonderful Life of the New Testament. One poem by Goethe, "Der Gott und die Bayadere". All India s martyrdom of woman hood is in it ; all the glory of its sacrificial love, and its divine reward even to the outcast. My third is, of course, "Kim"; and the one Tale, "The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney". I read in some paper the other day the New York Post, I think a conversation with Kipling in which he said that Mulvaney was dead. He must have been mistaken. Mul vaney is one of the Immortals ; there is no death for such as he. This is the India I know. I am very grateful to the German author, to Goethe and Kipling for having made me acquainted with it. Before me on my writing table is a Buddha ; it is about eight inches high and sculptured from MY MAIL 119 a hard red stone it looks to be a kind of porphyry. This is overlaid with solid beaten silver. When I was a small child of eight, a mis sionary, who had been many years in Burmah, was for a few days a guest in our home. She was a charming woman, with an abundance of little, brown side-curls that bobbed about, merry eyes, and a sweet comfortable voice. She told me legends of India and stories of Indian children, of the natives rich and poor, of elephants and their wonderful memory ; of her being awakened one morning by what seemed to be the effect of a prolonged earthquake. The ground continuing to shake, she looked out of the window and saw forty elephants coming toward the house. Each elephant carried a log for building purposes in his trunk. The natives were about to present her with the Christmas gift of a new house of worship, the first having been destroyed by fire. She brought with her this Buddha before me. It was a gift to my father. It is an old house hold god of a rich family who abjured their 120 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST ancient faith for the new, and gave the symbol of the old to the missionary of the new. It has a curious effect the study of it. The eyelids are half closed. But if you examine the statue closely, looking up under those full lids, you may see something startling : the god is watching ; he is mindful of all that transpires, externally, internally. Gaze at those eyes steadily for a minute and you become convinced that he knows your inmost thought. There is an inscrutable smile on the silver lips, not an unpleasant one, and a quiet and repose of feature and of hands, those telltale members of god or human, that seem far, oh, so far away from trolleys, for instance, from automobiles, aeroplanes, and submarines. I have lived in his presence all these years, and I frankly admit it is a beneficial one. The old gods are to be revered whether Norse or Indian. They are forever a symbol of the long ing of the human soul to express a spiritual ideal. Perhaps I need not say after this that I felt at home with all those postal-card scenes from India, MY MAIL .- 121 7- It would seem as if this island acted as a centripetal force on the mail from other islands, for it comes to me from Australia, New Zealand, from England, Japan, or Newport, from Ber muda or Cuba, and spurs me to make myself less ignorant, at least of these antipodal islands. And yet and yet I have to confess that never, never by any forced process of memorizing, or by long gazing at the map of Australia can I remember to name properly the divisions and their capitals ! But that emigrant ship from England carrying to that land of promise dear old Peggotty, Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, all the blessed contrari ness of Mrs. Gummidge, all of little Emily s broken heart and broken life, takes me forth with to that island continent. When I was a child I learned by heart those paragraphs which include the description of the sailing of that emigrant ship. It is one of the best things ever written by Charles Dickens s always busy pen. 122 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST And then Australia is very real to me through one of her voices. Australia means Melba and all the hours she has made golden for me with her golden voice. Somehow, I always hear the whole Australian land singing with that voice, singing its way up from a life begun in wretchedness into the light of a golden day. On the contrary, I never think of Mrs. Humphry Ward as born in that land. Rather she seems a product of some Westminster- Catechism-bounded, Church-of-England-over- shadowed, Puseyism, Newmanism, Matthew Arnoldism irrigated desert country where there are no heights or depths, but just the long parallel irrigation ditches of a two-ideaed doc trinaire : a man s soul versus the strait jacket of the Church, a man s soul versus the political labyrinth of the State. Not that I find no enjoyment in Mrs. Ward s work. I do in spots ; but I wonder how she can harp so long on those two strings without wearing them thin. When I go through those works in thought, I can but marvel that so many pages should be MY MAIL 123 read, yes and re-read, by the reading public when from the first page to the tenth or twelfth thousandth there is not a line of redeeming humor. I never could see much beauty in an irrigation ditch, but I know that it is most useful and productive of much good to humanity in general. And even on this point I feel that I should not find fault. She is as she is, and to ask her to be otherwise is asking the impossible. I really want to be fair in this matter. Curiously enough I feel that I know the dis tinctive feature of the Australian land of wonder and mystery, the Australian "bush"; for I read quite recently a story of "Billy" the biography of a little kangaroo that was partially tamed. Through Billy s bright little eyes I have seen the "bush". For this I am deeply indebted to Billy s biographer. 8. It is interesting this mail from these dis tant lands ; but the home letters are those that refresh and strengthen me ; to them I look forward with an eagerness not to be known 124 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST except by those who really live the year found on an island. There is always a bit of romance attending the arrival of the boat. I look out over the harbor and watch for her to round the Point. There she is ! My temperature rises a little with each arrival. What will she bring to me ? Love and friendly greetings, news and a good wholesome bit of gossip from an intimate woman friend, or some royally hearten ing words from a masculine one. The other day there came in quite unex pectedly an Indian five-act drama from a fine boy in a northern state. He wants to know if it gives sufficient promise for him to choose literature for his career. Ah, poor laddie ! You are only seventeen, and I must write and tell you the truth : " Litera ture is a good staff, but a poor crutch ", and I would far rather, in these times, that you should take plus your college training in " litera ture" a full course in practical agriculture; that you should know how to till, and plant, and sow and reap a harvest ; that you should take your scholarships, gained by steady effort, and invest MY MAIL 125 in two acres of land that you can call your very own and, after college is over, proceed to cultivate them to the best of your ability rather this than to devote your young idealism wholly to a literary career. I shall say to him : "If this desire be in you, if you are both equipped and endowed to work along this line, then work you will and no demon of chance and no hoeing of potatoes, no digging of the same, no sorting them over, no barrelling and marketing them can hinder you of your providence in the profession of literature. No ; if that special gift be yours, you will compose better, indeed, while you are sorting over potatoes than if you were placed in surroundings supposed to be ideally perfect for such production. I could substantiate this truth by a cloud of witnesses, for it is well known." For all these letters and the many, many more that come to me here thanks to their senders, one and all. It is always a delightful feeling, this of being remembered by those whose faces we may not see. And if these many, many letters most of them remain unanswered 126 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST for a year, two years, three, even ten, perhaps during an indefinite lifetime, lay not the sin of forgetfulness at my door. Remembrance is my penance. I do not like to write letters, only to receive them; and here again I realize I am not "playing fair". IX A LITERARY MOLOKAI I. IN the southwest corner of the square on the map that is bounded by latitude 41 north and 71 west of Greenwich, there is a tiny, insignifi cant island known as No Man s Land. At times it is uninhabited ; at present there is but one family on it. It looks across intervening waters and one of the Elizabeth Islands to Penikese, the island colony for lepers. I should like to ship to this island of No Man s Land every copy of a book that may be classed as leprous literature, as well as all those that show the slightest symptom of that disease send them thither and destroy the plates. I say "literature", and do not include dime novels and matter forbidden transportation through the mails. It is not necessary to go into particulars of 127 128 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST this special disease according to the manner of some litterateurs now writing. I will refer any one who may desire to study analogous symp toms to read of the condition existing in the Hawaiian Islands only a few years ago, or to Leviticus XIV. I think he will find all the details necessary. This special, forced migration is intended only for the literary offspring of those men who, to-day, for want of better expositors of what is true literature, are classed as authors of some of the best modern work. As up to the present time no cure has been discovered for this special disease in letters, it would seem wise to remove these books from the body politic pro bono publico by segrega tion. This class of literature infects the mind, a process of corruption that in these days of learned psychiatry is affirmed to be more danger ous than mere bodily infection. Were it in my power I would ship every book every novel, every play, every club report, every printed lecture and discussion (all these written for and discussed by the laity, be it A LITERARY MOLOKAI 129 understood) that, whether in English, German, Swedish, Norse, French, Italian, or Russian, exploits in any fashion the so-called "sex- problem" of to-day. I write the word "ex ploits" intentionally. Against the authors personally I have nothing. I do not know them personally and what I know of them is generally to their credit as men. What I say here is in regard to their works ; they are held responsible for the in fluence of what they produce. 2. There is a humorous side to these moderns "output". Reading their plays and novels one would receive the impression that their creators are hardly yet fully awake to the fact that this earth has been peopled for many thousands of years. Scientists differ as to the time, but this is a matter of no moment; the main fact being that this world has been very generally peopled, to what extent we, with our small amount of actual knowledge, as yet cannot affirm. Recorded history is so very 130 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST recent, and recording strata also young com pared with the age of the world. And before that who knows what "before that" ? These writers seem not to be aware of the fact that the cave man, the cave woman must have been as acutely conscious of sex as the men and women of to-day. True, they did not write about it, throw a glamour over it, halo it about with rays of attempted enlightenment for the cave public; nor did they conceive that they were on a level with their contemporary beasts and trust to the "unerring instinct of the brute". They accepted the fact that they were created men and women as natural, not unnatural, and made no literary attempt, so far as we have discovered, to denaturalize that fact. To read some works by certain authors of the present one might be led easily to believe that To-day is the first day of the first man, the first woman, the first bird, the first beast of the field. One is forced to ask : "Where is their insight into Life?" Not London life, not Parisian life, not the similitude of life on the stage of the Adelphi, but Life as a whole. A LITERARY MOLOKAI 131 What they offer to you, to me, to the reading public in general, appears to be a simulacrum of Life galvanized by artificial instinct. It reminds me of the muscles of a frog s leg severed from the body, twitching in a semblance of life from the application of the electric current. The frog is real ; the leg is real ; the twitching is very real but there is nothing animate in the experiment. I concede Life is not easily "seen into". But one fact has established itself without ex traneous help of author or playwright : this earth of ours has been abundantly peopled for, as yet, uncalculated time, and in the long course of the ages has proved an abiding-place, such as it is, for countless millions and billions of human beings, at least from their birth till their death. 3- I believe if one could question those countless millions individually concerning their life- experience, that those would be in the minority who would dare to deny that Life meant to them, at some time, some kind of hope I 3 2 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST whether of food, improved circumstances, of joy of mating, of loyalty to some ideal, if that ideal were only the artistic ideal of the cave man who drew with sharpened flint on the wall of his cave ; that, having had that hope, that ideal, they experienced something that made life not only endurable but desirable, at least for a time. I believe they would admit and my be lief rests on the evidences in my contemporaries about me, on the evidences, also, in the revela tion on stone, papyrus, parchment, or paper, in pigment, marble, or bronze, of generations of men and women for more than three thousand years that, crushed by adverse circumstances, buried by earthquake, overwhelmed by tidal wave, subject to cataclysms induced by the play of great natural forces ; often hungry, cold, miserable, worn in the devious ways of life, broken by toil ; many times starved by famine in the land, or swept out of existence by war and pestilence, their bodies tortured, imprisoned, or left on the field like broken, discarded gourds, they, too, mulct of living by Life nevertheless A LITERARY MOLOKAI 133 could say, "I lived if only for a day, an hour. I played the man and not the coward. I had moments of bliss. I can honestly say that I would rather have lived than not to have known existence with all its handicaps, its dis appointments, its misery, its long-continued, bitter toil for scant rations, its fighting struggle for mere existence. For, so long as I had a spirit within me that made me the man, and not wholly the animal, I had some hope, some ideal : once a woman loved me ; a child called me father ; once I was fed full ; once a man or woman spoke a friendly word to me. I made one song and the singing filled my soul with joy, although afterward the remembrance was as ashes in my mouth. I wrought one statue and rejoiced, discontentedly content in my work. Once I asked for bread and was given a stone and, starving, I wrought from that stone a masterpiece. " 4- Looked at from the right angle, through a normal medium, there is no such problem as the "sex-problem". The facts in evidence do 134 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST not constitute a "problem" to be solved. There is no solution. What is termed "sex" is a force, and like gravitation it solves itself. New ton formulated a law; but gravitation existed before the law; worked securely without the law ; and no formulating of that law has changed by a hair line the ellipse of the ecliptic nor ever will. It is true we can calculate disaster but not avert it. We may not put to rout aeons of the work of evolution, much misused word, with any discussion of this so-called "sex-problem", or by any formulating of laws for the same, or by its exploitation in novels and plays. What windy nothings seem words, appeals, attempts, suggestions, attempted solutions, over against this miraculous force ! it is the attempt of the ant to fill the living crater of Kilauea. 5- What astonishes me most in connection with this subject is the colossal narrowness of these writers outlook on life, not to speak of their want of insight. Love, faith, joy, hope, sacri- A LITERARY MOLOKAI 135 fice, duty, "respectability", which spells for certain of them Puritanism, Philistinism, and Hypocrisy, are anathema ; romance, ditto ; poetry tinged with romance, ditto ; sentiment, ditto. They believe all these to be manifesta tions of untruth. Well, that is their point of view. Their world is a "charnel house"; their humanity is "worm-eaten"; life to be life as they conceive it should follow the "unreasoning instinct of the brute"; womanhood but I won t write that for the sake of my own woman hood. Shakespeare is "crude" in his interpre tation of life he indulges in "sentiment"; Thackeray makes of its end a "sentimental lie". O gentlemen, gentlemen ! Were what you affirm in so many, many words that one is almost hypnotized by them into belief, this humanity of ours could not exist, for the main spring of life would suddenly stop short. 6. A complete statement in a few words of the process by which this leprous literature has been and is being evolved is contained in one sen- 136 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST tence that was written with no reference to this subject. Indeed, to apply it, I have re versed the quotation. An author of this class of literature " simply puts an emphasis on the facts that constitute his body rather than on the facts that make him a man." (The quota tion, taken from one of the Ingersoll Lectures, "On the Hope of Immortality", by Mr. Charles Fletcher Dole, to whom I am indebted for the sentiment that, reversed, applies to this ap parently antipodal subject, is as follows: "He simply puts his emphasis upon the facts that make him a man, rather than upon the facts that constitute his body.") Take a few of these English-writing authors of To-day, it is not possible in a few pages to open up the subject through German, French, or other foreign language ; that would be a task for months. One writes with "distinction" of this so- called problem, but with a caul over his soul. A second, with an excursiveness that reminds me of Mr. Barrett Wendell s phrase, "the elusive swirl of thin verbiage", plays about the A LITERARY MOLOKAI 137 subject with a cloying cleverness that no longer deceives and in a little while will hardly amuse. A third writes with real craftsmanship, but There may be seen in the Dresden Green Vaults a work that also shows "real craftsman ship" a production in wax of the "Visita tion of the Plague", from life. With the help of this most careful workmanship the matter presented is true in every detail ; nothing is omitted. There may be seen the beginning, progress, waste, discolorations, contortions, death agonies, not in one specimen but in several. No one denies the craftsmanship, but! 7- We might like to ask at this point, "What does make the man ?" Surely the time has come to ask this in all earnest. We know pretty thoroughly what constitutes the body. This body has been analyzed, sub jected to chemical test; we know its elements, what makes its ash. And by the bye the thing that animates this body eludes all analysis, escapes from the retort, is wanting in the ash, 138 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST is not found in any combination of chemicals, cannot be captured or coaxed to revivify the combined elements that go to the making even of one grain of corn. There is but one conclusion : the mere aggre gation of elements chemically combined into the body of a man does not constitute him a man. It constitutes him an animal of which Darwin says : "The structure of man is the final form in physiology." What is it makes the man as we know him, as we see him daily before our eyes, if not honest labor of whatever kind, honesty of pur pose, word, and deed ? The endeavor to fulfil as best he may in the circumstances the law of existence, to marry, found the family, clothe and feed his children until they are able to clothe and feed themselves ? What is it but to set before those children an example of work, work, and always work, and to teach them that a life lived without it is no life ? To acknowledge that man sins because he is human ; that he fights because he is wronged ; that he creates for himself his own heaven and hell and that A LITERARY MOLOKAI 139 he must be a tenant of one or the other on this earth, or, paradoxically on account of the spirit warring with the flesh a tenant of both ? To set before his children a standard of decency in living because he is a man and not wholly a brute ; to cultivate loyalty to his friends, loyalty to his special country, reverence for his creation I may not define here con cretely because I do not know how ; that he be willing, not forced to be willing, to recognize men as his brothers, and, recognizing them in common brotherhood because they are human, be logical enough and brave enough and generous enough to admit with every breath he draws that he has a Father to whom he is responsible for the spirit of man that is in him ? 8. This may seem easy to write; it is not. When certain men sitting in their snug study, or comfortable library, dip their pens into their inkstands and draw a line through the words Creator, spiritually created, sin, forgiveness, logical result of sin, hope, faith, repentance, 140 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST salvation of one s self by work in this world, and then proceed to enlighten us on the subject, for instance, of the "Puritans", it becomes a spectacle to make a man who is a man weep or laugh ! All that is easily written by them with one line they erase the hope, the life of mankind. 9- I could wish, even, that not only the "touched" books of these present day writers not all their works I am thankful to say ; some of them are delightful and really give promise of more wholesome diet might be shipped to the little island of No Man s Land, but that a few of the authors themselves might be induced to make a sojourn there for a year or two, depen dent wholly on their manual labor for their livelihood. Surely the world would be no poorer and No Man s Land might be enriched by the fruit of their labors. They should be obliged to plough, harrow, till, plant, and harvest. They should learn in furtherance of their livelihood to fish with line and trawl ; to dig clams, rake in A LITERARY MOLOKAI 141 scallops, dredge for quahaugs, spear eels, and in so doing have the benefit of lungfuls of uncon- taminated air. The Atlantic winds might free them from all intellectual miasma ; give the true man s spirit, half asphyxiated by their present intellectual environment, freedom to expand ; the salt spume sting their eyes until they watered themselves clear of the humors engendered of their abnormal and astigmatic outlook on life. They might experience on that little island, in this air, what it means to earn their living literally by the sweat of their brows, a whole some process, not by the perspiration that is apt to gather thereon when, leaning over a desk beneath a lamp, they wrestle with the so- called "sex-problem". If these men could live for one season on that island, dependent on their own efforts for their livelihood, and see daily before their eyes the life of the one family that finds its maintenance there, I believe they would write another kind of book a whole- somer. In the end they might learn a lesson, also, from the clams they would dig. I respect the clam ; it has certain reserves. BY WAY OF CONTRAST I. "I will lift up my eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help." I knew a woman whose story I have been tempted again and again to write. It is com monplace. She lived in an old, weather-beaten house on a remote hill in Vermont. She was married early, perhaps as a matter of making one less in a none too well provided for household. She had her one child, a girl, just before her hus band died. She went back to the old home on the hill to work for herself and child, caring, meanwhile, for her father and mother. She told me that because, after the death of her parents, she could not take her child with her into the mill, and as she had no one with whom to leave her, she was allowed to take 142 BY WAY OF CONTRAST 143 certain work home; and so spun and wrought till the brothers were old enough to care for themselves. There were three of them. One enlisted and lost his life in the Civil War. She mortgaged the old house, the home of her parents, and with the money went on to Balti more and brought his body home. The second brother was drafted, and there was no money to be had to pay the bounty in order that he might remain at home to help her. He went ; and was sent back invalided for life. The third was drafted also. She was enabled to borrow money to pay the bounty. He was necessary in the home; he helped a little by "teaming" for the mill, but he was the kind that never "got on". Finding she could not work in the mill, care for the home and support herself, child, and invalid brother, she mortgaged her little home once more for a hundred dollars I think that was the sum and opened a shop in the small, front room. She set to work to feed four, clothe three, and educate her child. In due time one brother married, the other 144 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST died ; but not before she had buried her only child, a girl who had grown to young woman hood ; had worked in the mill, fighting against inherited weakness of constitution, and finally succeeding in earning something for herself and mother by the use of her voice, a rarely beautiful one. That happiness was of short duration a year ; then she, too, was carried from the little house on the lonely hill and slept beside her father. As a child of twelve I idealized work where- ever and whenever I saw it ; I imagined how delightful it must be to earn for oneself like Kate, this one daughter of the rare voice. One day, I was on a visit to my grandparents, I begged her to take me with her that I might work beside her in the mill. She indulged me. For three hours I sat on a stool by her side trying to do awkwardly what she did so skil fully. It was a hot day. The sun shone into the room through the many bare windows be neath which the water roared over the dam shaking the mill to its foundations, as well as a small girl perched on a high stool before a bench BY WAY OF CONTRAST 145 at which some twenty girls and women were at work, their fingers flying at a rate that made me dizzy. And what with the dizzying fingers, the dizzying of the rushing waters, the hot sun shining on them and sending the glaring reflec tion quivering along the ceiling, and the con tinual shaking and trembling of stool and floor beneath her, it was a sea-sick small girl who was taken down to the door of the mill and sent up the hill to the little house for comfort and refreshment. I never idealized any kind of work after that. This daughterless woman was left at last with the care of an old, old woman who lived to be a hundred and one years lacking a few months. She was a relation, and her humble home was across the road on that hilltop. The two lived apart as was best ; but day after day, season after season, year after year as the old dame grew more feeble, this undaunted woman carried in summer heat and arctic cold a tray well-filled from her hard-earned store across to her poorer neighbor and relation. She tended her, at ninety, through what was supposed to 146 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST be her last illness. She lived eleven years after that. In time the old woman died. She, also, was brave, strong of spirit, poor but she, also, was glad to have lived. "Don t have me on your mind nights, Susan," she used to say; "remember it is for me just now as if I were crossing that threshold. Don t mind there being no light in my bedroom it makes no difference." When she was gone her poor home on the hill became the woman s who had cared for her. It let, off and on, with its small garden for thirty dollars a year. But it was only "off and on". "If I could have that thirty dollars income regular from that house of Aunt L. s," she used to say, "I should feel rich yes, rich y " she added with emphasis. Poor she always was, but rich in spirit so rich that people sought her out in that home on the hill for inspiration, for jollification, for the pure pleasure of hearing something of her marked originality, of her good thoughts on many sub jects, of sharpening their wits on hers. BY WAY OF CONTRAST 147 She kept her independence, working almost to the last. Twice a year she went to Boston to buy goods for her little shop. These were gala times for her. Nothing from Bunker Hill Monument to the latest play at the theatre es caped her keen eyes. All the city life for that one week yielded her a wealth of enjoyment, and the relation of that enjoyment gave genuine pleasure to many others in that remote North Country village. She was merry. She was no Puritan, no Philistine; yet she was eminently "respec table" ; honored for her dignified and sacrificial womanhood ; loved for her hospitality, her cheeriness, her friendliness, by the hundreds who sought her acquaintance. She never spoke of her troubles, living or dead, unless to those who knew her well enough to speak first of them to her, and then never with a note of despair. "How can you be so cheerful now that you have lost all ?" I asked her one day when I was paying her a visit. We were sitting at the immaculate table on which stood at meal-time, in winter and summer, i 4 8 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST in the places where her brother and daughter were accustomed to sit, two old-fashioned cus tard glasses filled with such flowers as the season offered : in winter geranium and its leaves ; in summer any little flower from the hillside or from her small old-fashioned garden. With a deli cacy I must record, she never when entertain ing a passing guest, and they were many, allowed the custard glasses to be on the table. They were for her alone a pleasant companionship for her on that hill, but never intended to remind others of any sadness of loss. I used to ask that they might remain when I was with her, for as a child I knew her daughter and brother. She looked at me across the table and smiled. "My dear," she said, "as sorrow after sorrow came and my heart broke after Kate s death, I learned a lesson : never to carry my grief into another s home or intrude my tears on pleasant companionship. I soon saw that I should not be welcome to my friends if I went among them with a sorrowful face or with tears and my friends are all I have left. I cannot do with out them." BY WAY OF CONTRAST 149 She looked out of the window with eyes that saw nothing of the roadway, the bank, or the setting sun, and added : " I have cried buckets- ful as I have sat here alone but that is no concern of anybody s." I, too, learned my lesson then and there. My only hope is that I may have profited by it, and may continue to. 2. Many a time I have sat on the steep, dark, narrow stair that led to her garret and browsed in her library, the light falling on the page from the open garret door just above me. Her library ! this she called the three book-filled shelves that were set, recessed, into what was an old window. Instead of boarding it up, she had made it into a book closet in the wall of the steep stair. Across it was drawn an immacu late white curtain of coarse, starched linen. As girl and woman I always had a thrill when I drew aside that curtain and sitting down on the narrow stair took out a book. They were curious, some of them ! Books that had been given to her daughter; books that had been 150 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST presented to the hostess herself ; books the summer friends, visiting or boarding in the mountain hamlet, had left there on the settle in the old-fashioned kitchen ; books the minister had discarded when he changed his parish ; magazines dating from the time of the Civil War, given to her by some city friend ; novels in paper covers an olla podrida of literature. The library in the wall of the garret stair in the little weather-beaten house on that hill gave to me "Dora Thorne"(!) and "Spinoza" in translation ! ! These two suffice to show the range of its literary gamut. 3- She died eight years ago. She had a serious heart trouble when I knew it I recalled her words, "My heart broke after Kate s death." As she lived alone, some one had given her a telephone which hung by her bedside. Every night at bedtime she rang up her nearest neigh bor and said, "Good night, I m all right", that they might not have her "on their mind". One night in mid-winter, when the mercury BY WAY OF CONTRAST 151 registered twenty-eight below zero, that tele phone rang at midnight. The neighbors, roused from sleep, answered at once; but there came no sound. Summoning the doc tor, they hurried down to her. They found her on the old settle in the kitchen which was the living-room of the house. She had made up a fire and tried to do for herself. After an hour s struggle during which, with a brave smile, she assured them she thought she would " come through" she "went out". She was as brave a woman as I have ever known. She was the prototype in some things only of "Aunt Lize" in "The Wood-carver of Lympus", and the incident of the praying colporteur is an episode in her own life on that hilltop. Commenting on my version of it, she said : "You didn t make it half strong enough ;" then, laughing merrily, for she had a keen sense of humor I believe that was her mainstay in life she added with much impressiveness : "Yes, I let him pray right along and I kept on kneading. I knew it wouldn t do me any harm, 152 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST and it was doing him a lot of good to pray for me poor soul !" But the "poor soul" was not for her. Would you ask that woman if she was thank ful to have lived ? 4- This is not an hypothesis, a theory of life; it is a fact of life, although a meagre enough sketch of what was so rich in spirit that to think of it is an inspiration. There are many mil lions of such facts among those who toil. Pon der a moment this fact : that the spirit of man may be rich, is so divinely constituted that it calls itself rich, when the body that is its mechanical expression is overwhelmed with care, burdened with over-work, starved in part, cold, miserable, suffering. 5- As I have gathered strength through this woman s life lived among the hills, I can also affirm I have been enlightened by the words : "If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there." That hell is about us, around us, with us; BY WAY OF CONTRAST 153 we have not far to seek it in prison, in slum, in the luxury bought with a woman s honor, in the thought of man, in his deeds. We may find it without much seeking; sometimes we have only to "look at home". I was reading only the other day in Scribner s Magazine the second paper, by Miss Taylor, of the series, "The Man Behind the Bars". "Alfred" was a waif. Until he was thirteen he knew no helping hand, sleeping anywhere, eating when he could find a morsel, struggling at that growing age just to get the strength to struggle to exist. Then a professional burglar held out a helping hand. He literally "took him in hand" and his education landed him at an early age in prison. Miss Taylor writes: "His fate seemed such a cruel waste of a piece of humanity of fine fibre, with a brain that would have made a brilliant record at any university. But the moral and physical deprivations from which his boyhood had suffered had wrought havoc with his health and undermined his constitution." Thereupon followed the prison term. Hard labor and con- 154 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST finement sowed the seed of disease in the weak ened constitution. He wrote to Miss Taylor : " Even in this horrid old shop I have some very happy times thinking of your friendship and building castles in the air." After his release he had another long row to hoe in his struggle to reestablish himself on a footing of existence. Why did he not end it all ? What was there in his life to induce him to live ? A friend, perhaps, and an encouraging word and surely the spirit of a man. He writes again : " Strong as is my love for woman, much as I long for some one to share my life, I don t see how I can ever ask any woman to take into her life half that blackened and crime-stained page of my past. I must try to find happiness in helping others." But the one woman crossed his path ; and when he told her all that past she said: "And so you were afraid I would think less of you ? Not a bit. It only hurts me to think of all that you have been through." He lived to hear a little boy try to call him BY WAY OF CONTRAST 155 "Father", and a short while after that to lay him away. Then Life proved too hard for him for the mechanism of him, not for his undaunted spirit. He wrote that he hoped "to be able to work again". Miss Taylor calls him "a good soldier . . . a valiant spirit." What would "Alfred s" answer be to the question, "Would you rather have existed on this earth or not ?" Having read some of his letters, I believe we know the answer. 6. Over against that woman s life lived among the hills, over against this man s life one of thousands lived for a time in hell this "Al fred", this created thing, part mechanics, part spirit, the spiritual part of whom remained undaunted when his mechanism failed him, place the exposition of what life is by some of the present-day writers of fiction a matter of lust, greed, hypocrisy, dulness of the senses to all objective beauty, the indifference of the beast in man. 156 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST It is this deadliness of infection, the precursor of pestilence in the mentality of our human race, that calls for a literary Molokai like No Man s Land. I may be mistaken, I trust I am. I may lay too much weight on the influence of these pres ent-day productions. It may be food for a certain coterie appetite only. Let us hope so, if only for the sake of the children of To-day and those yet unborn. XI AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD I. THIS is the South Shore. Two miles walk or drive from town and one comes to this ultima thule of New England s coasts. It was my good fortune to find myself there one warm October morning. The ocean lay open to the sun shining through a light haze. The surface water rose and fell in long, long swells each one of which, with a marked con tinuity of gentle motion, broke in exquisite involute curves along the seemingly unending stretch of sand eastward to Tom Never s Head and westward to Maddequet. A narrow edge of foam outlined on the sands this involute movement of the waters. The crisping rustle of the slow wave was the only sound audible. Not a gull, not a cloud flecked the arching sky. There was no sea- is; 158 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST weed, not a shell on the yellow sands, not a white sail on the horizon. The low bank be hind me shut off all view of the silent moors. Before me lay the Ocean to the horizon line, and ever beyond it southward was that Ocean and still southward, ever beyond. Sitting there, I believe the soul of me for a space of unrecorded time, it might have been a minute, it might have been but ten seconds, sloughed off its earthly trappings. I lost for that indefinite portion of time the personality that so often encumbers ; so often hinders us in accomplishment ; so often hampers us in our relations with others ; so seldom shows itself as a perfect medium of expression for "one s self". I saw that personality for what it is in its relation to the natural world : some thing less than a grain of the sands at my feet. Life s worries, its anxieties, burdens, tasks, were no part of me for that infinitesimal portion of the round of eternity. Its joys, hopes, an ticipations, disappointments were as though they had never been. The soul of me stood aside and looked on. I realized that what AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD 159 that personality might say or do, how it might act, how it might not act at a given time, in given circumstances, could not affect the soul that has its dwelling apart. This realization was but for that space of unrecorded time. I do not hold much with dreams, and I dream but seldom ; but one remains with me : I was standing on the shore of a great sea, in the shadow of one of the pyramids. The sun was low in the west, and that shadow was prodi giously projected far, far out across the waters to the horizon line. The sense of physical isolation was appalling; it was a feeling of loneliness I have never in waking hours supposed possible. I experienced something of this isolation of spirit for that moment if moment it were at the Edge of the World. 2. I took up a handful of the sands and let them run through my fingers. Just so small, so ap parently valueless, so insignificant seemed all my petty criticisms, my tempest-in-a-teapot 160 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST indignations, my senseless diatribes against this thing, that thing, or the other. I doubt at that moment if I could have found a single act of my life under the most powerful micro scope, so infinitesimal did all connected with this "self" seem out on the South Shore, under the arch of that serene sky, in the light of those sun-filled waters on the shoals. Indeed, the things themselves seemed more than trivial. A man s view of the universe, a telescope s revelation of another portion of it these seemed but infinitesimal attempts to enlarge Infinity. From Infinity to Infinity that is all the best and most eloquent expositor of the universe, physical and spiritual, can show us, the only road. Why not accept this without question ? Why waste a portion of our strength, physical and spiritual, in wrestling with the Infinite ? It is well to hark back to Goethe s words : "Man is not born to solve the problem of the universe, but to find out what he has to do ; and to restrain himself within the limits of his comprehension." These words bring comfort. AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD 161 3- Feeling so very small, so utterly insignificant, so wholly useless out there on the sands cast up from the shoals, I began to regret what I had felt about the work of men who write not ac cording to my way of thinking, narrow as this must seem and sound. For a few minutes such was my feeling of unworthiness to think a thought, much less utter a word, about any living human being s accomplishment in this world, that I was minded to retract what I had thought and said of it. I was even for allowing poor Ibsen, Nietzsche, Strindberg and Company to thrive like green bay trees in their attempts to present certain problems of this universe for solution but I caught myself up in time. No ! Nirvana is not for me any more than it was and is for them. They, and I, and all of us humans must stand the test, "What is excellent by God s will is permanent". So I dare mis quote. What they give of excellence will live, what they yield of unworthiness will perish. Wait only wait. 162 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 4- As for me, I am here to-day, of To-day ; that is enough. I recalled my father s word to me when my small six-year-old world suffered transient eclipse through some fancied woe: "Come out into the sunshine." "Yes," I exhorted myself, "come away from all that leads you into the realm of the anni hilated individuality. Stick to your sure trot. Keep your house as best you can ; cook, dust, sew, and between whiles manage to earn your livelihood in a legitimate way. Care for those you love ; try hard to care a little for those you do not love who may need you even if you think you have no need of them. Keep your friends an art in itself. Be a friend. Live out each day in the recognition that another day on this earth having been yours, you are the richer in many opportunities to aid, to comfort, to enjoy, and help enjoy. Remember that you have five perfect senses with which to enjoy; that you need not seek diversion so long as you are blest with these. Remember that woman s life on AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD 163 the remote hilltop, and act according to that remembrance. " Ah, if I could ! And thereupon I rose, freed myself from sand, shook myself together soul and body ; they needed a thorough mixing, as they would not amalgamate, after that moment of separation at the Edge of the World. Then I drove over to Tom Never s Head and so straight over the moors homewards. 5- When the little town came into view, so glad was I to see it that I was seized with an absurd, unreasoning desire to approach a gray shingled cottage on the road with the intention of at tempting to hug it; I did in spirit. Had I been for two years in exile on the steppes of Tartary, home could not have been more wel come to me. Every clam-shell path, every sandy lane on that homeward drive looked to be an avenue of approach to my earthly para dise. I wanted to greet every scallop fisher man who passed me with "Good-day, brother". I wanted to wave my hand to all the school children solely to express my joy in their heed- 164 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST less youth; to promise every old woman who passed me in the roadway a birthday cake; to kiss every fat, fair baby that peered at me from beneath the hood of its carriage. No ! Nirvana, and all that tends to it, is not for me. My spirit is gregarious, how aloof soever it might have held itself for that lonely moment on the South Shore. It is no abiding- place for the spirit of us humans that Edge of the World ! XII A PRIVATE VIEW I. THERE is one small room I keep for my private picture gallery. It is a quiet room with a good light. The dozen or more water-colors and a few choice etchings show to advantage on its walls. My friends are always at liberty to view it privately. Here is Number One : A close in an old wynd in the ancient quarter of Edinburgh, the Cowgate. A bit of clear, cold sky shows high between the stone houses blackened by time, weather, and smoke. At the right of the narrow irregular entrance is an early eighteenth cen tury doorway with wide, recessed triple arch and heavy jambs. Sculptured on the stone in beautiful Old English lettering you may read : Pax intrantibus Salus exeuntibus. 165 i66 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST The painting is true in detail and exquisite in color. It might be taken anywhere for a Drummond. But most significantly beautiful to me is the inscription, pathetic, also, for this royal welcome is found in what is now a slum of Scotland s capital. Peace to those enter ing Health to those departing. I wish I had just such a fine, old stone doorway here in Nantucket ! Then I would have carved above it : Pax intrantibus Solus exeuntibus, as a "hail" and " health-to-you-in-leaving " for my special friends. Indeed, I ought not to limit this sentiment of the old Latin inscription to the privilegies. I could wish that all who should cross our threshold might partake of its good will. This Number One is a favorite of mine ; I saw the original in Edinburgh many years ago. 2. I often turn from a minute study of this picture to a painting of Mount Mansfield in the Green Mountains. I can conceive of no greater contrast in color scheme, subject, treat- A PRIVATE VIEW 167 ment, and sentiment, than is this to the confined, narrow, centuries-darkened close in the old Cow- gate wynd. The season is October. Across miles of yellowish brown grass and stubble lands, the mountain looms against an eastern sky of in definite blue-gray. It is seen in the low light of a sunfilled afternoon. In the nearly level rays of that strong sun, a third of its height, where the maple-forest belts it, glows transfused crimson, subdued here and there by the intrusive irregular masses of evergreens. From this mag nificent foundation of transcendent color, the mountain s remaining height mantled in newly fallen snow gleams with a wondrous purity of tint against that indefinite east. This work belongs of necessity to the Impres sionist School because of the subject and masses of color. 3- Perhaps I ought to say, that there may be no unnecessary deception by which any one might be led to believe that I am the possessor of Corots, Drummonds, Meryons, or Millets, that 1 68 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST my little quiet room is only one of my chambers of memory and these pictures on its walls are a few, very few, among the many of my lasting impressions. I have only to enter this little room by day or night, it makes no mate rial difference, the light is always good and there they hang unspoiled in any way by time, as fresh in coloring as when the impression was first made on the delicate brain-films. It was in October, 1905, that I saw Mansfield in such glory. 4- We lived for one summer in Switzerland on the Lake of Thun. I brought away with me several paintings water-colors, of course. I call them the "Lake of Thun Series". From our room-balcony, overlooking the lake, the three monarchs faced us : the Eiger, Moench, and Jungfrau a summer s vision of rose- gleam at eventide, purple and white at dawn, of undulating violet and blue in the mists that, at times, half hid, half revealed them, of cold gray-white under cloudy skies, and the ethereal gradations of rose, violet, purple, and gray at A PRIVATE VIEW 169 the departure of the afterglow, in the rising of the pale, full moon. Across the lake, only two miles distant, the Niessen rose seven thousand feet, seemingly from the water s edge ; in reality there is a plain of approach. Day after day an artist in the house attempted to catch and render permanent in color something of the transient beauty of that mountain. It became a matter for despair ; a second, and a new combination of colors was necessary; a minute, and the trans formation was complete proportion, shape even, must be altered. There were sketch suicides by the dozen during that summer; but the Niessen was not to be captured. Oh, that marvellous, unbelievable play of color in the diaphanous mists that trailed across it, wreathed its summit, lay on its flanks ; that half veiled it; that rose and fell like a tide from the lake about its base; that banded its green with purple; subdued its purple with gray; tinted its gray with violet, touched its smoke-topaz with bronze ! Oh, the clouds that swept across, over, around, and above it ! They 170 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST were "shepherded" on its green slopes, or cap ping its summit were tinged now and then by the palest rose, a reflection from the evening- glow on snow-crowns of the monarchs at the head of the lake. At times, the seven thousand feet of mountain nobility those who know the Niessen will recognize the truth of that word "nobility" were blotted out in dense rain-clouds. There is another I have named my "tout- ensemble-multum-in-parvo" sketch. It recalls what we saw daily from our balcony, weather permitting : in the foreground are the heavy- timbered, brown roofs of the village houses; beyond, the little chateau beneath the cypress, and its walled gardens extending into the lake across which the Niessen shadows the waters beneath it till they gleam translucent, a pave ment of pure beryl. And beyond lake and intervening mountains, whose alps show emer ald in the sunlight, loom the three white giants filling all the eastern sky. I have only to look at this, and I hear the moving tinkle of herd-bells. A PRIVATE VIEW 171 5- My home in the Green Mountains stands at the meeting place of three roads or, better perhaps, the triple forking of the highway from the village. The main one slopes northwards and down wards to the bridge and the river. Another looks eastwards up a steep slope between high grass-hills upland pastures for sheep and cattle ; the vista is closed by the skyline resting on the road at the top ! The third curves southwards up a long, hard rise. One side of the road is set, by nature, with butternut, maple, elm, and roadside " brush". The other is fenced ; and below the fence broad hill-pastures slope to the river beyond which the hills, broken, overlapping, follow the course of the "White" branch of the Connecticut into the heart of the mountains. This third road was constantly changing in aspect with the seasons. It was at all times a delight. A sketch of it, as I saw it in November a few years ago, hangs on the walls of my private gallery : The snow is falling thickly. The 172 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST ground is covered. The anatomy of the trees shows dimly dark in the storm. The day is windless. Down the curving white hill-road, beneath the indefinite, overhanging branches, a large flock of sheep is being driven to the village. Their fleece shows a dun, yellowish gray in the universal white. The man who is driving them is suggested merely, for the snow is falling so thickly. 6. A really choice etching shows the Chicago River near its entrance into the lake : The blackened warehouses, the dark sluggish water, the cobweb of mast and rigging; and out in the lake a glimpse of a leviathan whaleback, all seen as I have seen it so many times through smoke of tugs, under lowering, smoke- filled skies. 7- Another is of Birmingham, England; just a glimpse such as one might obtain from a car window as the train draws to a standstill : An overlook on black chimney-pots, soot-black ened houses, dark back yards filled with un- A PRIVATE VIEW 173 namable refuse in an all-pervading atmosphere of smoke and grime. In the yard directly beneath the track, from that vantage ground I received the impression, two men are locked savagely in a brute struggle ; women lean from the narrow black casements above them. 8. Far away in Scotland there is another lake I love Loch Earn and its clachan of St. Fillans. This impression also will remain with me to the end. The Earn rushes from the lake at the "lug o the loch". The surrounding heights are purple and rose, for the heather is in full bloom. The lintels of the low, stone houses, mere huts, are covered with the great yellow disks of Gloire de Dijon roses. The mountains outline the shore so closely that they leave but one narrow space for a roadway between the lake and the gray houses hunched against the heights. Beneath some lindens on the level river bank three lassies are beating their linen white on large, flat stones. 174 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 9- There are so many lovely works on the walls of memory ! But in this little special room there is space for only a few more. Their titles will give a hint of their beauties. Bass Rock off the Scotch coast in a September gale and thousands of gulls seeking refuge on it. A funeral procession in Venice. I saw it from a gondola as we were passing beneath the Bridge of Sighs : white gondola, white cata falque covered with white roses, priests in white robes suddenly rounding a dark turning of the narrow canal. A shaft of yellow sunshine falls athwart the procession and lights the dark green waters. Two etchings. One of the Ghetto in Frank furt, when Ghetto signified, in truth, as to city districts, "separation". The other is the Mer- cato Vecchio in Florence before modern im provements had in part despoiled it. I may not describe them all. But the Kana- wha Valley has one to its credit; and Altoona among the mountains of Pennsylvania, as I A PRIVATE VIEW 175 saw it at midnight, in deep snow, and the fierce glare of the coke furnaces staining the whiteness blood red. Nantucket, of course, has already several. One shall suffice; it is so homely, and insular, and cozy, and Nantuckety ! A tiny lane, cob ble-paved. The gable of a small barn takes up a part of one side ; it is overrun with the vines of the wild grape. A load of hay fills the lane from side to side, and beyond it, down the short, steep slope are the blue waters of the harbor and the white sail of a catboat closing the vista. XIII THE WINDS I. Eheu eheu eheu ! No, I have never known before that the wind had a gamut of its own basal note, overtones, undertones, octaves, sharps and flats ; that it can drone like a bagpipe, shrill like a police man s burglar alarm, howl in three keys, roar with the noise of a thousand blast furnaces, screech like a Brobdignagian Banshee, squeak like a troll, thunder as well as croon in the chimneys, find a crack in a seemingly tight window frame and issue through it into one s bedroom in the crescendo-diminuendo tremulo of a screech-owl. I never knew before that it could "confuse one s head", deafen one to all noises but its own, even drown thought in its mad chaos of sound. 176 THE WINDS 177 Yes, it can do all this and do it thoroughly, with a whole-heartedness that would be admi rable if exerted in another cause. 2. The great winds in Dante s Inferno have always been to me very impressive, very poet ical, but they are in print; they are not the winds that sweep over this island. ^Eolus, also, has some notable winds that he let loose in the ^Eneid ; they, too, are poetical, but arti ficial. We rarely have that kind here. Now and then in summer we have a gentle ten-mile-an-hour breeze that cajoles us for a time into thinking it is going to continue, and that for the rest of the season we are safe from any rude force. But generally it races over the moors at the rate of twenty miles hourly, increas ing to thirty-five out of sheer caprice and set tling down to a forty-mile pace to which we have become accustomed ; we find no fault with it. At times, with due warning, it increases its steady-going pace to fifty, fifty-five, and sixty miles an hour. There is apparently no wrath 178 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST manifest in this ; it merely shows what it can do when something out of the ordinary is ex pected of it. On such occasions, the "out-of- the-ordinary" is "no boat leaving Nantucket". 3- Unexpectedly, at intervals, it arises in sudden wrath wherefore I have not the faintest idea. Weather-bureau "areas of high-pressure and low-pressure" have nothing to do with these particular ebullitions of ours ; no storm signals are displayed by any order from Washington. The wind simply arises in its wrath and per forms one of its offices on this earth : that of blowing at the rate of seventy miles for every sixty minutes. I wonder sometimes if it has itself got wind via some wireless of its own of a young hurricane s birth in the West Indies, and is determined not to be outdone by such a pygmy ; or has it heard from some bird of pas sage that a cyclone is contemplating the devas tation of a large tract in Kansas and, believing in competition, starts in to compete ? How ever that may be, blow it does I might say THE WINDS 179 for all it is worth, but that would not be accord ing to evidence, for it has yet greater "stunts" to show us. My young girl friends laugh at me good- naturedly on account of my misuse of a phrase of modern slang. They assert it is orthodox to say a "corking stunt". I, on the other hand, insist on reversing that phrase and hold that nothing less than a "stunting corker" can express certain meanings. I feel convinced that if they lived here at those rare times when the wind from the southwest is blowing at the rate of seventy-two miles an hour, with an extra puff of ninety, they would understand that my slang is much more to the point than theirs. That wind of the twenty-second of February, 1912, was most emphatically a "stunting corker". But at this rate of seventy miles, I look to see if the window frames show any sign of blow ing in, or if a passing carriage when it issues from the lee of the house will turn turtle in the street. Nothing of the kind happens. All sorts of vehicles pursue their way undisturbed. I have i8o FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST noticed that even the horses tails do not blow sideways under the nearly eighty pounds pres sure to the square inch, and the drivers caps never make a motion to leave the heads beneath them. The window frames and panes are intact. The wind subsides as quickly as it arose and resumes its steady jog. i I 4- I understand now why these old town houses stand four-square, without additions of any kind save a small lean-to, to the winds that blow. Even the steady nerves of the pioneers might have been a little shaken if the wind, in its wild sweep over this island, had caught under wide, overhanging eaves or beneath any ex traneous roof over an open space. These houses, one and all, shake under the impact of the heavy wind, shake and give a little. Doubtless they were built loose-jointed, like the wooden hull of bark or schooner or brig- antine, in order to yield a little to the strain. (It would be well for us humans to consider ourselves built a little that way; we should THE WINDS 181 yield more gracefully under strain and pressure of circumstance; there would be less danger of collapse after resistance.) I feel sure if these houses were not pliable to some slight degree in their joints and joists, rafters and uprights, they would capsize in some of these gales, or, at least, be blown from their foundations. But no; there they stand, staunch, and square, and squat most of them and solid. I look anxiously to see the shingles ruffed on the roofs like the hooks of a teazle. Not at all. Not even a loose one has blown into the street in all its length and breadth ! I marvel that an old hunched chimney here and there does not succumb, at least lose a brick from the top layer; that the numberless scuttles in the garrets are not lifted from their hinges; that numerous "Captain s Walks" the balustraded open promenade on the roof, a kind of ridge-pole balcony peculiar to this town are not sailing off into the street or harbor. Nothing happens. The town after a heavy gale is in statu quo ante. In the harbor, to be 182 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST sure, a catboat or rowboat, left to breast the storm as best it can, may sink. The low dikes on the Point may be overridden by the waves, a thousand feet of lumber be floated off the wharf ; the beach at Sconset or the South Shore be eaten away for twenty feet by the force of the seas. But, apart from this, there seems to be only the terror of the element itself that has any effect ; nerves suffer most. It is impos sible to sleep on these rare nights of terrific storm I mean when the gale rages at seventy miles an hour for eight hours, with gusts of ninety to its discredit. There is one thing in favor of these winds here : they may blow sometimes with hurricane force, but it is a steady hurricane movement. There is nothing cyclonic about it. If there were 5- It is curious to study the effect of the strong persistent winds on the growths of the moors. The pine plantations have had a fearful struggle to maintain their foothold. Each individual tree makes a good fight, but the result, in time, THE WINDS 183 as with us humans when circumstances of envi ronment are too adverse, is dwarfed growth, slow development, ofttimes distortion in some form. We see these gnarled trunks indicative apparently of great age, in height but six or ten feet ; yet by good pine rights they should be in their sturdy prime. The wind beats them down as seedlings, keeps them down ; yet they, persistently vigorous, willing to live in their natural piney way, live despite their windy environment, but in the struggle for existence become stunted, twisted. There is no evidence of youth in them, although these plantations date from a few decades only. Compare with these my two white pines on the slope of the hill below my mountain home ! They have had the benefit of right environment sunshine, space, a north exposure to toughen ; and there they stand, seventy feet of beauty, fifty feet of soft, blue-green pine boughs, and a straight shaft of a trunk that sends the thought to every pillar of strength in Egyptian temple or cathedral nave. 1 84 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 6. The bayberry, also, has its struggle for exist ence. I know a spot on the coast of Penobscot Bay, near Camden, where I have walked along paths that the bayberry overarched. The leaves were long, glossy, rich in aromatic scent a fragrance that creates in me a wild longing for the sea whenever I catch something akin to its pungency from slowly ascending incense in an inland church or cathedral. Here the bayberry is a lowly, humble thing. Beaten down by wind, sustained only on sandy soil, it nevertheless makes its own way in time and reaches the height of two or, at most, three feet. Like the pines it is misshapen ; it has turned and twisted in vain endeavor to aspire to a greater height. And look at its berries, as if they were contemporary with the cave men ! They are wrinkled as if with the passing of the ages, and hoar as if with the frosts of seons. They are positively uncanny at times. But when a bayberry branch, loaded with its irregu- THE WINDS 185 lar swarms of little, wrinkled, gray berries, the size of allspice, is laid on the hearth and lighted ah, then they are no longer uncanny in our eyes ! They crisp and exude and sizzle as they burn with flame of wax and flash of leaf ! Their fragrance rises into the nostrils, and all the con centrated essence of the lowly moorland plant- life seems to ascend as in incense from the home- hearth. 7- Last Christmas evening I made a bayberry fire, feeding the first large branch on the hearth with another and yet another and far away in the West there were three lovers of these moors who, with a precious tiny branch, did the same for two households. In the west of the Empire State there was still another hearth from which a little branch of that same bay- berry sent its incense-smoke up chimney. And one there was, a lover of the moorland in all its moods and tenses, but without a home- hearth on which to burn so much as one wee, wizened, waxen, gray berry who, nevertheless, enjoyed the flaming hearthfire in spirit. And 1 86 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST who shall say that that enjoyment yields less than does the material ? 8. The wind was rising as I laid the last branch on the hearth, rising in its might as we were well aware by midnight. Then it was that we of the island looked to our fires, covered carefully the embers on the hearth with ashes ; ran the furnace as low as consistent with a decent amount of comfort. Then it was that windows were wedged before we "turned in" ; doors well fastened ; all things made tight and close-hauled to outride the increasing gale. All that night it howled across the moors from the eastern main. Hour after hour its force increased. Again and again I rose and looked out into the blackness of the night, just for the sake of seeing the gleam and flash of my trusty Sankaty beacon. I listened to a veritable chaos of sound. It was wind alone just wind ; no snow, no rattling of wires, no jiggling of blinds, no loose board, no rumbling under the shallow eaves. No, it was just one THE WINDS 187 steady, roaring howl in which it was hard to think collectedly so rilled were the ears with the steady pressure of sound-waves. But Sankaty was there shining fairly brightly throughout the night although the spindrift obscured its brilliancy and the seas were gnaw ing at the beach below the bluff. In the street, the watch the men who in shifts patrol the town on nights of terrific storm as a precaution in case of fire held hardily on their way, although a footstep could no more be heard in that stupendous onrush of air than could the sound of a tiny pebble dropped into the depths of the Canyon of the Colorado. I have always been amused at the nautical expression "the roaring forties". I do not find it a subject for much mirth now that I am here on this island outpost, for I am experiencing what it is to live in them. XIV LITTLE GARDENS BY THE SEA I. ANY flower that grows for me, grows, I am convinced, solely by the grace of God. Through no tending, no care, no watchful ness of mine will they flourish and bloom. If now and then a blossom shows itself in an apolo getic manner, if a sudden blooming of dahlias surprises me after I have given up hope even for a few, if a belated rose puts forth from a leafless stock, I am joyfully and profoundly grateful to the processes of nature that have produced them ; but there remains an humble recognition on my part of my limitations in floriculture. I can raise puppies, kittens, if absolutely necessary, and chickens whether necessary or otherwise I really think unendingly. I never "keep poultry", but I have raised dozens, 188 LITTLE GARDENS BY THE SEA 189 yes, hundreds of chickens by the natural method simply for the pure enjoyment of browbeating obsessed hens into "staying put", of conquer ing and, I must confess, being conquered. Somehow it is never humiliating for me to be outwitted by a hen. She is of my own sex and her wiles are known to me ; we are well mated when we strive for the mastery. There was always method in my to the household seeming madness. About the first of March I visited certain neighbors and asked if they had a good, sitting-inclined hen to sell. I generally found six ancient dames of whose torment their owners were glad to be rid. One, I remember, was a spasmodic producer and always laid on the top of a box, in a cold shed. In winter if the egg by chance remained on the top of the box, it was frozen ; otherwise it rolled to the shed floor and was useless. After the laying period was over, this worthy con tinued to sit on the bare box-top trying to hatch, so far as any one could see, merely splinters. It was a simple charity to provide her with a clean tomato box, sweet hay, a warm nest and 190 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST thirteen eggs of Black Orpingtons that cost me two dollars for the dozen and one. I merely gave to her the desired work and tried to enable her to fulfil her mission of hatching out chickens. But my intentions were not accepted in that light by this special hen. She wished to sit on a bare box-top and indulge in imaginative hatching. It seemed to me, as I watched her manceuvrings to get rid of all that sweet hay, shoving it to one side of the tomato box, working the eggs carefully from under her into the same corner with the hay, and deliberately make a business of sitting on the bare bottom of that box, that I had seen something of these traits of character in human beings. I had not so very far to seek. It used always to be for me far easier to imagine a thing done than to make an attempt to do it in the regulation manner. If I did it at all, I wanted to do it my own way. Recognizing my own shortcomings, I made it a matter of fellowship, as well as patience, in dealing with this special hen. I patiently filled hot-water bottles and kept the ignored eggs LITTLE GARDENS BY THE SEA 191 warm until such time as the old dame could be put back on them and tied down to her task. At this point, she unaccountably developed an extra set of muscles by which she could raise herself one inch from those costly eggs and, remaining in that position, allow a cooling draft to play continually over them. I tried starving her into sitting on them. I tried overfeeding her to make her heavy. I tried allowing her to range as far as fifteen feet of clothes-line tied around her right leg, pro tected by a bit of flannel, would permit I meanwhile seeing to it that the eggs did not get too cool. She chose to remain off the nest sometimes one hour, sometimes six. When she returned to the small box, I had to substitute a starch-box as it allowed no freedom of move ment, she invariably stepped on those eggs as if she weighed fifteen pounds. Of course I had to give it up. I was dealing with a natural force, and my pygmy efforts to counterbalance it could end only in disaster. But she was only one of so many ! There were some who insisted upon remaining on the 192 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST nest from morning till night and from night till dewy dawn for nearly the entire period of incu bation. The poor eggs never had a chance to cool off as they should in a natural way. There was nothing to be done with these but let them sit, grow thin, their combs white, their eyes ditto, and count the days for their deliverance from such obsession. I tried forcible feeding, but it seemed to me that the obsession had culminated in lockjaw. But I enjoyed all this true sport keenly and raised chickens by the fifties. I remember that I lost but one chicken after hatching. I played various roles and I do not flatter myself when I assert that I played them well during the process. I acted as midwife to several unfortu nates who, closely confined in a Plymouth Rock shell, as hard, apparently, as the proverbial New World threshold of the Pilgrim Fathers, peeped continuously within those walls to be set at liberty. I have improvised incubation in the hour after midnight, I confess to the disgruntle- ment and distraction of the household, with LITTLE GARDENS BY THE SEA 193 a clothes-line across the attic, a kettle, flannels, and a judiciously placed kerosene lamp. I have taken advantage of the power of the sun s rays, remembering certain proceedings in far away Africa, and when the thermometer indicated 101 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade of a July day, at four in the afternoon, I have finished in a truly scientific manner a deserting hen s job. I have turned strike-breaker, and used the oven of the kitchen stove to bring success to a worthy cause. Somehow I succeeded ; the chickens were hatched; they* throve. I lost but one among those many. I never paid the slightest atten tion to any rules for up-to-date poultry "feed". I read about it as I found it in poultry books and Grange Weeklies. I invested in this literature until experience taught me that all poultry is not alike in its tastes. I fed the fluffy, downy balls, so soon as they had dried off, with a strictly grown-up diet : cracked corn and water. They throve on it, although I confess I had to introduce them forcibly to this special diet 194 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST because they were only a few hours old and needed to be helped to pick and swallow. But the digestion proved to be perfect, and, after all, that is the chief end in animal life. When they were about ten days old and scratching with a tenacity of purpose and energy worthy of aeons of scratching inheritance, I gave them to my neighbors, all of them : Black Orpingtons, Plymouth Rocks, Rhode Island Reds, and White Wyandottes. I used to present myself with twenty or more in my apron at a neighbor s back door. I always noticed that the man of the house showed real appreciation of my gift ; but the spindle side looked at me and the chicks askance. I once made bold to ask the reason, when I presented an autumn "hatching". I found that the spindle side had to prepare the "warm mash" a disagreeable task. I do not blame her for feeling aggrieved at my gift. There is a limit even to chicken raising. I should draw the line at making "warm mash" of a winter s morning when the mercury was near the bulb of the thermometer and the mash half LITTLE GARDENS BY THE SEA 195 frozen before it reached the hen house. I said nothing about the "cracked corn" diet. Each of us makes his own experiment with life. 2. As I have said I fear in a manner too prolix I can raise anything belonging to the animal kingdom, but with flowers, for which I really care, I fail ignominiously. I have no garden as yet. My back yard with its situation, capabilities, and possibilities would require a Frederick Law Olmsted to do it justice. It really has wonderful capabilities for some thing little less inferior to the sloping gardens of the Rhine those you may see just before you reach Bonn or those of the Borromean Islands, I see it as it might be, could I afford to "dike" it, terrace it, grade it, build a pergola for it through the vine-covered vistas of which would be seen the gray roofs, the great gray chimneys, the little, gray, fishermen s huts of that part of the town which lies below Orange Street Bank; and, beyond them, those harbor 196 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST waters changing, forever changing above shoals and channels indigo, ultramarine, sapphire blue, gentian blue, blue of peacock s rings, blue of lapis-lazuli, each and severally crossed with the pale whitish green of jade, green of Nile, green of Niagara above the cave of the winds, green of beryl and porphyry. I see it all as it can and should be ! Whether it will ever attain to such metamorphosis remains doubtful. Meanwhile I manage to enjoy it as it is. At present a portion of my back yard con sists of stubble from an experimental "vege table patch". Peas, beans, cucumbers, lettuce, thrive for me. I plant them and Nature is kind; she does the rest without much effort on my part. I can hoe a row of beans as well as any one and enjoy the exercise. But let me take between my thumb and forefinger a tiny, nickel-plated, up-to-date flower- weeder and within ten minutes I am in a state of exhaustion ; so are the flowers. Only the weeds seem to hold their own under the manipulation of my patent weeder. It is discouraging to plant yes, and to LITTLE GARDENS BY THE SEA 197 water, to hope and anticipate, "Another year and they will yield !" and, in the end, see no fruition. I turn to my peas and beans for con solation. They yield abundantly and, looked at carefully, a bean or pea blossom, though shy in blooming, is really charmingly decorative; but I cannot pick them to that end and so sacrifice future beans and peas ! Last year there was a seven weeks drought, and my courage waned in the third week. I gave over the garden to Fate. The dahlias little green nubs dried up and fell off. The nasturtiums were as if they had not been. The trumpet vine bore one superb blossom blew its own trumpet, in fact, to proclaim that it lived, and then lost every leaf. The wistaria attempted a wholly out of season blossoming, I have become accustomed to this freak blos soming in my garden, but the attempt proved abortive. The rose bushes, "warranted field- grown for two years", I found by the first of August as mere bare stocks among an enormous crop of Bouncing Bets, a legacy from a long- neglected, former ownership. They covered 198 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST the place I call a lawn, rioted in the vegetable garden, overflowed down the bank, and gave cheer to desolation till they, too, dried and showed nothing but a crop of little brown pompons. The tomato blossoms along a fifty-foot hedge of them I set out thirty-seven bushes for a small family fell off before a tomato could set. Some cosmos was lost in dry grass. It is hard to cultivate faith, hope, and charity, when contemplating such a garden ; to use a Western phrase it is a "proposition". Still I am always aware of the possibilities of this garden of mine under another owner. At least, there was one satisfaction for me at this crisis. Having accepted the drought, I gave up all care and thought of the garden and in consequence found I was accomplishing much that in other household directions was necessary. The truth is it was no longer on my mind. My neighbors have superlatively lovely gardens, and they, pitying me, were kind. My bowls and vases were filled from their largess. LITTLE GARDENS BY THE SEA 199 But the miracle happened ! right here in this desolate, little, back-yard garden. We had a few days of rain ; another week of it I had not thought to look at my kiln-dried flora and one morning when I went out to pick a ripened cucumber I found my dahlias a-bloom, my green tomatoes as big as thimbles, my Sweet Alyssum bed a mass of white fragrance. Some nasturtiums were as large as the entirely decep tive plates on garden-book covers. The cosmos was flourishing; a heliotrope in blossom, and one solitary tea rose trying to put forth on its leafless stock in fact, a resurrected garden ! I was happily enabled to fill my own bowls and vases with my own blooms until the first of November. 3- My neighbors gardens are a joy to me; as is every other garden except my own large and small, on this island. They are unique. There are no imitations. You find no dupli cates among them. The owner of a successful garden said quite recently to me : "You can make anything grow in Nantucket if you try." 200 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST I accepted this statement with one mental reservation pertaining to me and my efforts. Beneath the bank there is a garden, a corner of which I can overlook from my upper balcony. On a pleasant day in midsummer, the scene is like a Watteau fete or a Fragonard. Under a group of fine trees, little tables with snow-white cloths are set forth on the lawn. It is a gathering place for the afternoon-tea clans. The light, smart dresses, the gayly colored parasols, the coming and going, the abundance of bright flowers, are worth a journey across the Sound to see. The garden adjacent is a riot of color, but there is no attempt at formality or orderly arrangement. For this very reason I find it full of charming surprises. 4- On one of the longer streets, at the corner of a lane, stands an old, unpretentious little house, weather-beaten nearly black. In passing one would not give it a second glance. Turn the southeast lane-corner, however, and you invol untarily halt with your hand shading your eyes LITTLE GARDENS BY THE SEA 201 if the sun be shining. Poppies are there, thousands of them old-fashioned red poppies that have sown themselves year after year and fill the side yard, a space eighteen feet by thirty possibly, with a mass of glowing color. The delicate silk-like texture of the petals is trans lucent in the strong sunshine. 5- I have another garden in mind ; it belongs to a friend. Great trees shade the fine lawn, and in the background the ample, double-doored breadth of an old, gray-shingled barn is graced with vines and large clusters of shell-pink roses. In their season pink zinnias, pink asters just touch with color the surroundings of the stately, gray house. One lingers long at the tea table on the lawn to enjoy the color scheme. 6. Here and there are stately, old-fashioned, formal gardens behind ten-feet high brick walls nearly smothered in ivy of two generations growth. 202 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST I know a sunken orchard-garden in the very heart of the town. It is surrounded by old stone walls lichened with age. The trees are gnarled and wind-bent. The shade beneath them on a warm summer day is both deep and restful. Many a time have I leaned over the fence on the level of the street and feasted my eyes on the thrift, the beauty of these trees and their set ting, and the promise of an apple harvest on a side street ! Above the wall there is another fine garden : one large grass plat surrounded by a wide, con tinuous flower-bed that shows the blossoming procession of the seasons from the first crocus, daffodil, and tulip, through peony, rose, and lily, to aster and chrysanthemum. 7- Some of the larger gardens are surrounded by hedges of privet, of wild rose, or honeysuckle hundreds of feet of each. Tiny gardens, mere side yards, show fences covered with the last named. Every little home has its flower, or flowers. One, perhaps, may be graced with a LITTLE GARDENS BY THE SEA 203 wonderful climbing rose that covers the trellis over the door, the gable and eaves. Another ranks hollyhocks along its old, worn, side walls. Here is a small front garden space, ten by eight, filled with lilies; another with nasturtiums; a fourth with bachelor s buttons. Another tiny six-by-eight-feet plot at a side door, grows a marvellous blue hydrangea four feet high. A neighbor s garden down the street shows all the old-fashioned flowers in masses. When the sun is shining on this garden, I walk slowly by just for the sake of the cheeriness and color it adds to my day. In June the atmosphere is charged with the fragrance of this flower incense. The soft sea- breeze coming in over the marshes, over these gardens large and small, adds an indescribable tang to olfactory delight. No wonder ! for there are gardens everywhere in the town : gardens of yellow broom on the cliff -slope above the sea; gardens of purple lilacs all adown the high banks ; gardens of quince and grape that seem almost indigenous to this island, they thrive so well and with so 204 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST little care. And in May, on the moors, there is one great garden of pink and white arbutus, extraordinarily large and rich in fragrance, acres of purple and blue violets, acres of bluets ! and later a carpet of the tiny blossom of the meal-plum vine. 8. But there is one garden to which I give my love. I have named it the Iris Garden. You may pass into it through a high white gate. Close that behind you and you shut out a thoroughfare. In part it is a sunken garden ; at your left is a large bed of Japanese iris, pale blue, white, and yellow, and purple. They stand there in a royal grace all their own. When, in the moonlight, you leave them to follow the stepping-stones laid in the soft thick turf, you mount three broad, old, stone steps and linger a moment by the ivy-wreathed marble sundial gleaming white in the refulgent night. Then you pass under a vine-covered arch ; and here your feet would gladly stay for an hour, for across the lawn, beyond arch and hedge and climbing grape, there lies the silvered surface LITTLE GARDENS BY THE SEA 205 of the harbor waters seen over the flattened, full-leaved tops of a group of great trees grow ing at the foot of the steep, high bank. I have a small engraving of one of Turner s most beautiful works. It shows a lake among high hills ; into it juts a small rocky peninsula which is covered by a wonderful chapel. The moon s glory touches the lake along a wide path way, and its light shining through the chapel s high, oriel windows transfuses the interior. Beneath this is written : Datur hora Quieti. In the moon-lighted Iris Garden overlooking the sea, one of those "quiet hours" may be experienced. XV LOW TIDES I. IN the economy of nature I know they are necessary, but I do not like them. So often on Penobscot Bay I have watched the tide-pools at the half ebb and marvelled at the lowly life that is dependent for existence on that ebb. Personally, I, too, have low tides, but to what economical purpose I fail to understand. It may be possible that I get some sort of nutrition from them. I wonder ? Why or how I invariably associate a low tide on the seashore with a slum I cannot say, unless it be that as a small child the sight of Dorchester flats at low tide on a warm day, and the unsightli- ness and unwholesomeness of a portion of the Back Bay in my native city a lagoon that was subject to a sluggish ebb and flow which 206 LOW TIDES 207 rendered the adjacent streets and the railroad tracks parallel with the Mill-dam an abomina tion made an impression on me that has never been effaced. These flats were always to be seen from the car window when I was going to Cape Cod or to New York, to which latter city I was taken by my parents sometimes thrice a year between the ages of four and eight. It is interesting to trace the workings of associated ideas and impressions from which the law of association is formulated. I can say with perfect truth that I felt it a disgrace to be obliged to walk through Beach or Albany Street, the approach at that time to the station. They were not only thorough fares of approach, they were affluents of South Cove, one of the notorious slum districts of Boston. Somehow, I cannot say how, I knew all this. I recall the row of deep, dingy basements entered by steep flights of steps, the besmudged window panes thick with dirt, cobwebs, flies ; the black bottles placed on the sill for lure; 208 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST the spotted, black greasiness of the steps; the blotched, swollen, discolored faces I used to see appear suddenly above the top step, so near to me, I was at that age not over three feet above the curb, and the indescribable and sickening odor of liquors, smoke, and foul air that came out against me in a tepid puff as I passed them. Through this purlieu people drove or walked to the station. If it chanced that the train, after running out a half a mile through mouldy, clothes-behung brick walls and the sickening sights of South Cove s crowded tenement life, came upon Dorchester flats lying slimy-green, fetid in the hot sun, baring to the unaccus tomed eye tin cans and city refuse, showing boats on their beam ends, and I heard the words "low tide", or if the car window was shut quite against my desire as the train skirted the deadly lagoon, I naturally associated low tides with slums, unsightly flats, and the Back Bay abominations. I recall, also, that once when a child I was taken with one of my cousins by an uncle-in-law LOW TIDES 209 for the first time to the region of the wharves. Some friend of his was a passenger on a merchant ship. The ship was to sail the next day for South America ; she lay a little way out in the stream. We were rowed out to her. The night was dark. I remember the long, quivering gleams of yellow light on the water ; they were the cabin, mast, and stern lights of the great ship. On our return we came up through North Street, at that time another notorious slum district of the city. I remember the uncle hurried us on at a pace not suited to our shorter legs. There was music of a kind all about us, a glare of red lamps, here and there a blazing gas jet, the sight of men and women dancing in basement or upper hall, and the sound of singing, laughing, shrieking from above and below and from the saloons around us. Above the con fusion I could hear the "fiddle", the sharp click of "clappers", and the chink of what I know now to have been "castanets". "The pains of hell never gat hold upon me" after my childish eyes had once looked on that 210 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST limbo ; for, somehow, I knew then as well as I know now that what my too young eyes had looked on that night was "hell", and that the home which sheltered my little life, fostered in love, was "heaven", and that both were made on this earth. I doubt if any theology that intimated there might be a "better place" or a "worse place" than these two of which I had become cognizant, could have made the slightest impression on me in after years. I only know that all my life I have been free from such theological concep tion. At that time there were several years of Bible-reading impressions behind me. Nothing said in that book about " hell " had any terrors for me; but those lovely words containing the great truth : " The kingdom of heaven is within you", I managed to interpret in my own way. They meant to me that my home was the kingdom of heaven, and I was within it. I was too young to interpret those words dif ferently. And looking back over these many years, I find no reason to change that point of view LOW TIDES 211 although it has enlarged with the experience of things material and spiritual. If the home where love reigns be not the nearest thing to heaven, be not heaven itself in one of its many manifestations, then I do not know it ; and not knowing I cannot define it. What satisfaction that little story by Tolstoy gives me, "Where Love is there God is also." 2. I experience a low tide of feeling when I am aware of any marked tendency, whatever its expression, that makes for the undoing of the home; that makes for the loosening of the ties between father, mother, and children. I am not ignorant of the pain, the confusion of standards, the miserable inefficiency of law and custom that tend to the dissolution of such ties. I know something of all three the man s, the woman s, and the child s, for all three have told me. In the end, it is to the child my heart goes out, the child that came into this world through no will of its own, for whom and to whom father and mother are responsible. 212 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST It is this effect on the child that, in the long run, tells sociologically ; for the child s im pressions are "more lasting than bronze" 3- Childhood s opportunity is the guaranty of good citizenship. Citizenship in its highest interpretation is the consciousness of power to promote and the will to promote the welfare of all. And the welfare of all, considered not as an abstract phrase but as a living possibility, rests first, last, and always on the welfare of the child as the unit of the race. Just in proportion to my tidal lowness of mind when I am aware of the tendency to dis solution of family ties and consequent dep rivation of the child of its natural right, am I rejoiced, refreshed in spirit and strengthened in faith when I see a powerful tendency apparent to champion first and foremost the cause of the child. All child-labor laws, although those at present are inadequate and many times a misfit, all attempts to win the child from the lure of the streets at night, all settlement ex- LOW TIDES 213 periments that include children, all the wonderful work of the Barnardo Homes, all legislation of whatever kind that has for the end in view the giving to childhood its opportunity, are manifestations of this tendency. It gives one courage ; for behind any marked world-wide tendency there is a living truth as motive power. Whenever a home is provided for a child, there we find this tendency working along lines that need be subject to no deviation, no ex perimentation, no fluctuation of basis. The child, in such case, has come into his own. 4- I must have been about eight years old when I went with my father and mother they not caring to leave me at home that evening with a new maid to a large hall where were gathered many hundreds of the best citizens, men and women of the city, to hear something of child- life in the slums of New York and its contribu tion to humanity. I remember nothing of what was said by the various speakers on the platform. I was ab- 214 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST sorbed, alive, and wide awake, although it was long past bedtime, in watching the one, to me, existing fact in that hall : the little children, boys and girls, ranged on a low bench behind the speakers. . Just what these children were, who they were, whence they came, whither they were bound, occupied all my thoughts. My father whispered to me, when I questioned him, that they were orphans. As a matter of fact they were waifs of the slums, children without parents, without homes and knowing nothing of either, rescued from their surroundings and awaiting what ? At the close of the addresses, during which I was kept wide awake watching the children two or three of whom were sleepy, my young eyes saw a marvellous sight ; I know now that it was the kingdom of heaven a-making on this earth. The gentleman who had the children in charge came forward to the front of the platform and holding up a little girl in his arms, in a silence I shall always, paradoxically, hear, asked if there were any in that audience who would take that child for their own. LOW TIDES 215 In that silence which impressed me, which I can hear now, I looked up into my father s face and saw the tears rolling down his cheek. I heard a sob from some one behind us ; then a man and woman rose and came .down the main aisle, the man with arms outstretched. He took that child to be his and hers hence forth. r Again and again in that profound silence this little scene in the great Life-Drama was enacted before my eyes, until all those children were provided with what alone could nourish their starved affections a home. { Remembering this, it happens now that when I know of a man and woman who, childless, take unto themselves as their own one such waif, realizing the effort, the labor, the watchful care necessitated for body and soul, the many sacri fices of time and inclination, sometimes of per sonal comfort entailed, a high tide of faith and hope floods heart and soul because I realize I am witnessing now, as years ago, something of the kingdom of heaven a-making on this earth. 216 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 5- But when I see the flotsam of humanity left stranded, broken, fainting, despairing on the bared flats of life, I feel in my heart the ebb of hope, joy, enthusiasm sometimes even of faith. I was once in the presence of seven hundred criminals in the State Prison at Charlestown bolted in with them and their custodians in the assembly hall for an hour of " Thanksgiving" services. Perhaps I need not add that to me that hour seemed a travesty on "thanksgiving" of any kind. The purlieus of Edinburgh and Leith are not unknown to me worse than what White- chapel used to be, so a Londoner who knew both assured me. I went out in search of the histori cal-picturesque, and found the Unbelievable. On our second visit to Edinburgh we took lodgings. Our landlady was a widow. A few weeks before our arrival she had lost through burglary a fine old watch which was her hus band s. It had been traced to a pawnbroker s LOW TIDES 217 shop in Leith. She asked me if I would like to go with her to see that seaport. She was a most interesting woman and worked among the wretched and outcast in the closes and wynds of the Cowgate and High Street. I knew I should have a pleasant and instructive hour or two in her company, and was glad to accept the invitation. I was young, about twenty- three, and the tide of joy and hope and enthu siasm was at its height. I remember we found ourselves in Leith Walk a seaport slum. She led the way into a narrow close ; from there into a dark, small wynd into which it seemed the sun could never penetrate except in mid-summer. We climbed a dark, narrow, winding, stone stair to a small pawnshop ; the dimensions must have been something like six feet by eight ex clusive of the counter. I have seen the Ghetto in Frankfurt and its accumulations of ap parent generations of dirt, refuse, and cast- off clothing; but that was cleanly, fresh-aired in comparison with this stifling den. As I stood by the counter waiting for my land- 218 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST lady to redeem the watch, a woman came in from the stairway and stood beside me. I suppose it was a woman. She had on a soiled chemise and a ragged skirt and about her naked shoulders an old shawl. Dissipation of all kinds had rendered her features almost unrecognizable as a woman s coarsened, inflamed, discolored them. She might have been thirty-five. Then and there, as she stood close beside me, she pawned to an attendant, who made his appear ance from behind an old faded curtain strung behind the counter, the chemise from off her back and for a mere pittance. The horror of that transaction, opening my eyes to bottomless depths of degradation of the human, produced for a time an ebb tide of all hope and faith. But now I know that that which stood beside me that August morning in the stifling pawnshop in the Leith wynd was but the broken machine, a wreck of the human that should be the ex pression of the divine. I have come into the knowledge that the soul of that woman was some thing apart from that wretched body that LOW TIDES 219 in touching her, as I stood beside her at that counter, I no more touched her soul than the utter abandonment of that body to debauch had touched it. This faith sustains me now. I have had many such unexpected object lessons, and I have learned them all the more thoroughly because I have been unprepared for what I was to learn. There was never a preparatory "slumming" in my life as an ave nue of approach to any work of philanthropy. I have come upon facts that showed themselves to me stark naked with not so much as a wisp of philanthropy, of sociology, of civic work, to hide their nakedness in my conception of them. 6. In Chicago during the winter of 1893-1894, I saw hundreds of men lined up in deep snow and biting wind each waiting his turn for the work that should keep him and his alive. From personal knowledge I know what a great work was accomplished that winter in just keeping human beings from freezing, from starvation. Through a Captain of the Salva- 220 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST tion Army I kept in touch with a corner of "Hell s Acre". Those who knew Chicago at that time will recognize the place as a portion of Polk Street. In a small room in that vicinity men, irrespective of criminal record, were fed seventeen of them at a time but, alas, not often enough ! In that same winter, an acquaintance and I were coming homewards down the Lake Shore Drive from a reception at a mansion facing the lake. It was about six. The heavy wind was off shore and the ice-floes in the lake advanced grind ing against the sea-wall only to recede after each advance a little farther from it. The snow was drifted two feet deep against the coping. Apparently we were the only ones on the Drive. We were hurrying on, our faces pressed into our muffs on account of the biting wind, when suddenly there came from over that waste of ice-floe and water a faint, strange cry. We stopped ; listened. That same cry was repeated, but louder, nearer: "Help help!" That in its hoarseness it was scarcely humanly articulate need not be emphasized. LOW TIDES 221 We ran across to the coping; leaned to look out on the heaving waters held down by the ice-floes. We could see the head of a man in the lake perhaps thirty feet from the coping. His hands were clinging to a small floe. "I ll run back to the house for help," said my companion. I remained to try to "keep up his courage". Easily said, but with what ? I tried my puny strength on one of the park seats ; it was riveted. There was nothing in sight of any avail. I bethought me of the long trailing skirt of my reception gown. It was off and over the coping before the thought had wholly formulated itself. In that eighteen feet depth of coping and wall every stone was laid so perfectly that on all that surface not a crack was left wherein a man might insert his finger nails. That thought sickened me. In that intensified moment of living I saw every detail connected with the surroundings. There was nothing ponderable by which I might en courage. In the powerful rays of the nearby arc-light, 222 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST I knew the long trailing skirt could be seen by that man. "Hold on," I cried, "hold on, help is coming." Whether it would get there in time to save I could not know, but still I cried, "Hold on!" How many times I encouraged against all hope I do not know, for in a moment, some men thirteen of them came running with rope and stepladder from the laundry ; they were bareheaded, in their dress suits straight from the reception, to which my companion had gone for help, to the rescue. It was quick, hard work a rope, the step- ladder at the end, and both lowered over the coping with a man on the lower step and another on the upper, a crunch of ice a hand over hand a pulling all together and the man, be numbed, exhausted, half frozen, was saved. He was a carpenter; a Swede. Want of work; a three months fruitless search; three mouths to feed and nothing with which to feed them ; then despair and the lake. That he was deserting he knew when he flung himself over the coping, and he cried out in LOW TIDES 223 hope to be saved and make good, somehow, to the children he had left. He was given work. Since then, when men and women, sitting in their comfortable homes, evolve sporadic econom ical theories and attempt to promulgate them, when the periodical philanthropic frenzies are in evidence they seem to me so empty, so ineffective over against the living fact : The man wanted work ; was willing to work ; anxious for work and he could obtain none. Our present system of economics finds itself in an impasse when confronted with this fact. When I think of this I experience a dead low politico-economic tide. I have wished many times that the contrast that night had not been quite so great, so sharp, that it had not been bitten into my memory as with an acid. For since then, it has happened that at a reception, in the midst of the glitter, the gayety, the frothy nothings, the frou-frou of rich robes, the empty laughter, the passing complaisance of men and women, I have heard an echo of that night and, hearing it, I have 224 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST gone out quietly and very early and no one has been the wiser for my going. 7- I read recently Alfred Noyes "The Wine press" an epic of War, the monster, a cross of the eight-armed octopus of Greed and hydra- headed Lust, enlived and engorged by human blood. The world shrank and shrivelled as I read. It seemed but a day s journey to that battle field, for a monster arm of that war-octopus had extended, relentlessly indrawing, across a continent, across an ocean, and grasped a human life on this peaceful island four thousand miles distant. There is a small fruit shop on the main street kept by Greeks. I have traded there and al ways with the one I called the "little Greek". It fed a certain vein of historical romance in me to buy my figs, dates, and various fruits from one who had trodden that soil which has yielded such rich satisfaction of enjoyment to mankind for the past twenty-five hundred years, LOW TIDES 225 from Homer and Sophocles, Phidias and Praxit eles to the small Corinthian grapes with which, as currants, to this day I may enrich my pound cake. The "little Greek" was requisitioned; he went home to fight as commanded. After the first war there was news of him and the expecta tion of an early return to his island home. With the second war of the former allies there was silence. . . . There is still silence. Now there is ebb tide in my heart at the thought, and Alfred Noyes "Winepress" is very real to me ; for I hear some of its drippings when I enter the fruit shop and no longer find the "little Greek" of whom I may purchase the baskets of grapes exposed for sale. 8. Fortunately my low tides are not regulated wholly by any system of political economy. I have various lesser tides that are disheartening at times. The high cost of living, for instance. I went out a year ago last autumn with one 226 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST dollar in my purse. I bought with those hundred cents one pound of butter, one dozen eggs, and two apples. This year for the same sum I should be minus the apples ! Then there is a real neap tide when I look at women in their present dress. It is fortunate for us all, I suppose, that we never can see ourselves with our own eyes. Why do women wish to make themselves look positively ugly ? In the pictures of another generation when hoops prevailed, there is to be seen an orderly doing up of the hair at least ; a decent appre ciation of the fact that a woman has a waist in a good location, and a pretty foot well shod at a proper distance beneath those voluminous petti coats. But now ! 9- I was thinking the other day how truly con sistent we are as a nation in this matter of dress. I had taken out a coin rare with me a twenty-dollar gold piece, and was examining the die after a design of Saint-Gaudens. "And is this my country s symbol ?" I said to myself : " is this menad with all the appear- LOW TIDES 227 ance of split, diaphanous skirt, high waist, floppy blouse effect and wild streaming hair the symbol of liberty and seal of approval to our present female apparel ? " For, in truth, we seem to copy this costume and woman of Saint-Gaudens designing very closely alack ! Compare this with the "Wingless Victory " of the Greeks. Compare it with an exquisite head of Demeter, a plaster cast of which I possess ; it was made from one of the few mar vellous cuttings of gems in intaglio in the Berlin Museum. Why can we not have as fine for our own mintage ? Taking out another coin, I made a close examination of that ; it induced one of my periodical low art-tides. It is a ten-dollar gold piece recently minted. I find on it the Indian s head with war bonnet. Across the band of the bonnet over the forehead is the word " Liberty" in relief. Liberty ? How much liberty have the Indians as a race received from us as a nation ? How much liberty have they had to pursue their own ways of life since the coming of the white 228 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST man ? Is it liberty to be moved, at the will . of a Power, from South to North, from North to South, from East to West ? I have come late to the reading of a most remarkable work : "The Indians Book", by Miss Curtis. It is both an historical docu ment and a racial monument. It is in truth the Indians book their Bible. In it we may read in their own words the story of their wanderings, we need not look to Egypt for an exodus, their endurance, their attitude over against their conquerors, their hopes, their songs, the expression of their ideals, their conception of the fructifying forces of life and their intense religious life. It is truly the Indians "scriptures". I even find in their self-colored drawings the ancient "blue and purple and scarlet" of the dwellers in another wilderness. Read this wonderful book, and when next you look at a gold "eagle", that comes into your hands fresh from the mint, draw your own con clusions in regard to our want of a national sense of proportion in art ! Liberty ? The LOW TIDES 229 Indian has not known it for nearly three centuries. No, liberty is not symbolized by our placing the word on an Indian s war bonnet. Neither is liberty the license of the menad. It is the restraint of controlled intelligence; and when we get controlled intelligence working in clay, marble, bronze, in painting and literature, we get true art. Art to be art must have a basis of truth ; it cannot be founded on a mockery of truth. If it be attempted, the result may be artistry, but never art. It would seem a thing of slight importance this of the symbols on our national coinage; but looked at closely it subjects us to criticism. The B as tile on a coin of the French Republic would be as appropriate for a symbol of liberty, as the designs on our present gold mintage. 10. I look at Rodin s "The Thinker", and ask myself : "Is this the plastic expression of my generation ? " At Whistler s charming color- schemes and ask again : "Is this an expression 230 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST in painting of certain tendencies of my genera tion ? Where in both are evidences of the deep sea soundings ? " This remembrance of Rodin calls to mind Mr. Shaw whose bust he has made; and Mr. Shaw reminds me of Galsworthy, and Gals worthy of Wells, and Wells of Bennett and all combined bring to remembrance the Henry James of the later period, Nietzsche, d Annun- zio, Strindberg, Post-Impressionist, Symbolist, Futurist, Cubist Dear me ! I find I am getting very low in my mind. It is really dead low tide ; the ebb has laid bare the rips and flats. But just this, contrary to what one might expect, gives me a feeling of buoyancy for I know it will soon turn ! XVI HIGH TIDES I. IT is high tide as I look from the window by which I am writing. The flats are covered ; storm clouds are drifting over the harbor; the air is soft; the wind is from the southwest. Cows are grazing in a marshy meadow below the bank. Some ducks are quacking with a truly Hans Andersen liveliness. Now and then I hear the scream of a gull inland, I think, for these scavengers prefer a half tide. I feel something of a scavenger myself after rescuing the flotsam of all those low tides of memories. 2. With a thankful heart I dare assert that, temperamentally, I am built on what may be called high tide lines. This is no boast of an egoist, nor can it be a matter of personal vain glory. It is a matter of inheritance ; I was born 231 232 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST so, and in the making of myself I was i not a factor. I like all that is fresh, wholesome, clean, whether of mind or matter. I adore courage whether moral or physical. I love honesty of purpose, purse, and word. I hate meanness ; despise cowardness ; loathe underhandedness which statement is by no means to be inter preted that I have not been guilty of petty meannesses, that I am not cowardly, at times, in the cause of truth. 3- People say : "It is a dull day." Now it never occurs to me that a day in which I can breathe, eat, work, enjoy, and there is always something to enjoy if only the gray, drifting slant of rain past the windows (the Japanese make so much of that in their art) is "dull". This is a matter of temperament on which has been engrafted a habit of finding pleasure in little things. I find exactly as much to enjoy in the great market in Washington, for instance, as in the HIGH TIDES 233 best theatre in New York. David Warfield s "Music Master" gives me pure delight of a certain kind. Some street-sweepers I was watching one day in Hanover, Germany, sud denly dropping their brooms and dancing to the merry tune of a passing itinerant musician gave me just as much of another kind. A luncheon in the Senate lunch-room at the Capitol was a delightful experience because I broke bread with both "stand-patters" and progressives and there was good masculine talk> well worth attention, on interesting, national subjects. None the less interesting and enter taining was a luncheon miraculously provided for an acquaintance and myself in a far away forsaken village in our North Country, on the border line between New Hampshire and Ver mont. 4- I shall never forget that day ! We found our selves stranded, so far as train connections were concerned, for six hours in as forsaken and depressing a place as ever has come within my travelling experience. 234 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST For once, I confess, things looked indeed "dull". It was an intensely hot, humid Sep tember day. The clouds were low, threatening rain and blanketing an already over-heated earth. It was a task to draw a full breath. To be sure there was the station, but it was no refuge dark, hot, uncleanly, it was filled with flies that "sensing" rain foregathered by thousands in the waiting-room. There was nothing up the street but tracks, dust, and a building called a "town hall" on which was the advertisement of a "show". These are the two hall marks of a North Country village. Down the street there was a vulgarly new, staring, red brick block, and farther along on the other side among grass and weeds was a lunch-wagon. Once it must have been white; now it was the acme of dingy, muddy, grimy, streaked forlornity. It was labelled in huge letters : White House Cafe ! And seeing that we smiled for the first time since our arrival and walked on an eighth of a mile to a toll bridge. I felt positively mediaeval when I paid one cent to cross it and another to HIGH TIDES 235 return from a vista of long, forsaken road, and a few trees and bushes powdered ash color with dust. It is needless to say that we did not patronize the "White House Cafe". We were hungry, tired, and a bit depressed when we returned to the station and asked the ticket agent if there were a place where we could get something to eat ; both of us were too cowardly to say "luncheon" in that special environment. "To be sure," he said right cheerily; "just across the road in that block is a cellar. They opened a restaurant there a few days ago." "Is it good ?" I asked. "Can t be beat in the state of New Hamp shire," he affirmed with such conviction that we smiled for the second time; "but", he added, " t ain t open till noon." We thanked him and went out on the railed platform for air. As we leaned on the railing, wondering just at that moment what life was really for, we heard the sudden blare of trumpet and beat of drum, and down the street from the town hall came a fine-looking band of men 236 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST gorgeous in corded sombrero, sheepskin "chaps", red and yellow neckerchiefs the Texas Rang ers. tf They made a brave show ! Our spirits rose. Halting in front of the station platform they played one popular tune after the other, fortis simo, agitando, accelerando furioso, French horns, trombone, clarinet, and drum, until we thought some vein must burst. Their cheeks were blown poppy red, their hands red, their eyes fixed and protruding. Never, never was musical notation written for such a pace ! Never had such inspiriting music filled my ears and my soul with such peculiar joy ! Strauss and his "Till Eulenspiegel " are mere by-prod ucts, in comparison, for noise and hearty resonance. How we enjoyed it ! How we applauded ! How we regretted that we could not stay over for the "show" ! How the few children shouted with delight and the one old horse attached to a lone farmer s wagon on the outside of the ring cavorted and snorted to the tune of the "Wash ington March" ! HIGH TIDES 237 Marine Band ? Senate lunch-room and five senatorial courses ? They never yielded quite the enjoyment of those Texas Rangers, and here is my public acknowledgment for the pleasure they gave me. At twelve, promptly, we went down the eight steep steps into the "cellar" and what did we find ? A full-fledged Rathskeller among the hills of our North Country ! It was clean, freshly painted in white and pale olive green. A white shelf around the entire room was filled with cheap steins of every species, stuffed squirrels, mugs of bright flowers. On the painted walls were some fairly good pictures one of Venice and the Piazzetta ! In addition there were clean tables, clean lunch-counter, clean dishes, a clean, smiling waitress pretty too. I found on the "dinner-card" egg-sandwiches. "The last touch of a perfected civilization," I said to myself as I ordered two, the other pro vision of hot pork and "fixings" not being to my taste in that temperature. When they came I found to my amazement that the hill-country Rathskeller idea of an egg- 238 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST sandwich was an egg fried hard in pork fat and placed hot between two huge slices of but tered bread ! The last aesthetic touch to our pleasant sur roundings was given by the entrance of the Texas Rangers who, divested of all their para phernalia, in becoming street dress, brown from exposure to sun and wind, healthy with fresh air, dark eyed, dark haired, and well mannered, filled the three remaining vacant tables in this foreign graft of a Rathskeller. This experience is one of my high tides on the border of a state that has no coast line. S- And then there are such spring tides of ap preciative recognition ! All of us must at some time experience them : recognition of what is best in painting, sculpture, literature, and, in consequence, rejoicing that some of the most wonderful thought of this great, perplexing humanity of ours may find its ablest interpreta tion through genius. Going over in my mind the other day the HIGH TIDES 239 examples of plastic art that have most influenced me, I was surprised to find how few they are. Our own country has two masterpieces through one of its sons, born an alien, and both belong to the world that genius enriches. 6. Time and again when I was living in Chicago, I walked to the entrance of Lincoln Park and stood before that marvellous statue of Abraham Lincoln so strong, tender, hopeful, brave. There is a prayer on those firm lips. He is looking toward the South and in his eyes there is the keen appreciation of the seer who reads the years and bids mankind further dare and do ! Surely Saint-Gaudens fixed here in bronze for the enlightenment of future generations the meaning of "The hour the man", as no one else has ever done. Perhaps his Adams statue in Rock Creek Cemetery, in Washington, may be said to be one of the very few masterpieces in sculpture that the world has produced for the last three hundred years. It belongs to the world, for it 240 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST embodies the deepest emotion, and the greatest unanswered thought of the human race : the grief of loss over against the want of the absolute assurance of immortality. On a wonderful April day a few years ago, I entered the natural, arbor-like enclosure formed by magnolias and one ancient, over shadowing, southern pine, and sitting down opposite this statue lived with it for half an hour. The natural setting is perfect. A quiet prevailed that reminded me of Saint John s expression: "There was silence in heaven for about the space of half an hour." The sun light falling through the interstices of the foliage brought out the exquisite ivory disks of the magnolia blooms and played about the head of the statue. The breeze stirring the branches of the pine shifted the shadows in its mantle. The Form sits alone with Grief. It is mantled from head to foot with despair; the shoul ders are slack, sorrow-weighted. Beneath the swollen, drooping lids the tears have furrowed deep their dry-run courses. The lips are com pressed, for theirs is silent speech. HIGH TIDES 241 There has been nothing like this since Michael Angelo. 7- In the Duomo of Florence there is an absence of ornamentation which is refreshing to eyes that throughout Italy and France have been accustomed to overelaboration of detail. I used to go in there frequently of a morning when on my way to the Mercato Vecchio which I fairly haunted during the winter we lived in the city of Saint Mary of the Flowers. As one enters from the brilliant sunshine, the eye has to accustom itself to the darkness ; then follows the relief of the wide-spaced, unen cumbered nave. Walking farther on towards the apse one comes suddenly or did then, I do not know if it be there now on a marvel lous group, an unfinished Pieta by Michael Angelo and, seeing that, one sees little else in the cathedral even if one visit it frequently. The mother leans over her son who lies partly across her knees. In that face we see the soul of a mother in anguish. The anguish is human, the Son is human, the mother is 242 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST human and the work makes its appeal to humans. To this group I owe much enlightenment as to the "soul of mothers". 8. There are two other mothers in art with whom I associate this unfinished work of Michael Angelo s ; we bridge three centuries to find them. One may be seen in that group by Constantin Meunier, "Le Grisou" (Firedamp), in Brussels. Here, also, the mother is leaning above her son, the dead miner. It is a plastic expression of the almost daily tragedy that goes on "under the crust" in this age of a monster Industrialism. Looking into that mother s face I feel her grief to be a factor of the elemental human. So have other mothers looked since maternity knew itself for motherhood felt, sorrowed over the man child born to a short toiling struggle and early death. She is the plastic embodiment of motherhood bereft of hope of immortality through offspring. u She expresses all the com passion of one who has borne and suffered, and HIGH TIDES 243 who watches, with no word left, the wrecking of a life and the nothingness of hope and youth." Here also I find a certain speech of silence to be interpreted by a future generation. The other is a myth-mother. In the Athe naeum in Helsingfors hangs a painting by Axel Gallen " Lemminkainen s Mother " from the Finnish epic of the Kalevala. I have seen only the photographic reproduc tion ; even in that its emotional appeal is almost overpowering. She, too, sits beside the dead body of her son, resting a hand on the lifeless form. Her face is raised in anguished protest against such intensity of suffering, yet it is patient with the knowledge that she must bear the Inevitable. That face is old, lined, worn, the corners of the mouth are drooping and slightly drawn. The appeal in those old, dry eyes is more heart-rending than the reddened, tear-swollen lids of youth, for her heart knows the flinty ways of life and her sad eyes may not blink the glaring fact that death pays no heed to the order of primogeniture. These two sculptured forms and faces, and 244 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST the one painting by Axel Gallen, permit us to see deeply into the mother-soul when the light of that soul is eclipsed by the death of what is very bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh and, ofttimes, spirit of her spirit. I have felt the in fluence of all three. 9- There must be a drop of pagan blood in my veins for, apart from these four great sculp tures that have influenced and continue to influence me, I am most indebted for an under standing of how plastic art may interpret life to the wonderful sculptures from the altar of Pergamos. They are in Berlin. Through them I understand something of the beginning of things on this earth : the titanic warring of ideals and elemental earth forces. These great forms, sometimes the relief is ten inches in depth, embody in my thought of them the present struggle of men, the half-gods, for the mastery of natural forces ; for the conquering of the air, the sea, the earth, the deadly bacillus their attempt to overcome even death. HIGH TIDES 245 One of Rodin s nudes beside any one of these living, struggling, wrestling, sculptured forms would show the inadequacy of his attempt to voice our generation. His "Thinker", for in stance, placed beside a warring Titan would show merely as a poseur; whereas Meunier s "Puddler" belongs in their midst, is one of them ; is something of each faction god and earth-born as are the men who "overcome" in mine or quarry, in the earth, on the sea, in the air. What Rodin desires to express in the "Thinker" is, doubtless, the awakening of thought in Mankind concerning the why and wherefore of existence on this earth that must be tilled and worked by man to produce him and sustain him. But the "Puddler" of Meunier thinks as he pants heavily with open mouth, resting from the horrible strain of his toil. Rodin s man seems to say, "I am, therefore I think"; Meunier s, "I work, therein I show myself a thinking man." In the latter s masterpieces we may test the worth of the Age of Industrialism. 246 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST IO. And what high tides of rejoicing in heart and mind and soul when I enumerate all the good that has been bestowed on the millions of our race, including my own small millionth, through John Bunyan, Israels, Hauptmann, Lessing, Goethe, Shakespeare, Carlyle, and Ruskin, Burne- Jones, Meunier, Balzac, Dickens, yes, and Rudyard Kipling and Finley Peter Dunne (our inimitable philosopher, Mr. Dooley) and Phillips Brooks and Jane Addams and Dr. Barnardo and the men of science but I need another book to enumerate all of those who have blessed, are blessing, and will continue to bless us and future generations. The good works " through all, in all, onward through all ". II. But there are two flood tides which, thank God, never ebb : the tide of love and the tide of friendship. I mean true love and true friend ship. They cannot ebb by their very nature, for they are of the essence of divinity and the primal source is always filling to the divine level. HIGH TIDES 247 If we may count our true friends on the two fingers of our right hand yes, on one we may dare to say we have known God. If once during a lifetime, whether long or short, we may assert that we have known the meaning of true love, we may consider ourselves of the Immortals. 12. JANUARY 26, 1914. It is sunset as I write. The tide is on the flood. Across the deep-blue harbor waters, roughened in the wind, the shores and moors of Monomoy, Shimmo, Pocamo curve to Wauwinet and the "haulover" a crescent of amethyst. I have seen this light at sunset on the hills of Fiesole near Florence, but in no other place until I found it here. The sky above is pale rose ; a line of clear, blue-green separates it from the amethystine moors. In the foreground the little creeks in the marshy brown meadow gleam faintly blue. A reach of quiet water in the lee of the old wharf is touched with deep rose. The shadows are falling on the black roofs, 248 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST the great, gray chimneys, the weather-worn fishermen s huts on the shore. The rose above is deepening, the blue beneath darkening. The waters are alive and the wind is freshening. I like this high tide ; but I am thankful just for to-night that the dusk is falling and I may not see its ebb. XVII SEARCHLIGHTS I. MY grandmother used to say : " I was born a hundred years too soon." That was her one great regret, so eager was her desire to know more of her country s mar vellous development, and the progress in inven tion that had its inception in her day. I wonder if the regret would be so keen if she were living in this century ? I doubt it ; yet, at times, I find myself wishing I might be permitted to turn a powerful twentieth century searchlight on the conditions of our race a hundred years from now. I should like to be able to "pick up" at least the buoys. 2. Here in our own waters the searchlight is used for excessively dark nights and in fog. 249 250 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST At times the fog is so thick ! Impenetrable to sight, baffling as to course, confusing as to sound, disheartening to all and the search light is practically useless. 3- The Age has not been quite fair with my generation; we have been experimented with and upon like no other since recorded history. That we have stood the pressure as we have makes for faith in our vitality as a race and warrants the assumption that spiritually we are "something more than we seem". The experiments are of such a varied nature and along so many lines ! They have come so thick and fast, like a sudden fog settling upon sea and land and blotting out direction, beacons, signposts, refuge, at one and the same time. One becomes confused, dazed in such an environ ment where sight and hearing are indeterminate. I permit myself to use the first person, for personal experience is apt to be more convincing and interesting than the statistical experi mentation of a generation. SEARCHLIGHTS 251 I have been classed with rabbits, guinea pigs, and monkeys. They have been experimented on for my sake that every deadly bacillus might be examined, every germ defined, every serum produced that can be marshalled to fight death on the one hand by producing germicide on the other. I am labelled scientifically like a tube of culture germs. I am classed with peas and beans and am subject to the Mendelian laws of heredity because they are subject to that law. I am said to be a descendant of simian ancestry because Darwin has lived to use that wonderful brain for the benefit and enlightenment of the race. No longer may I have any Bible, as I have always understood that word, because that book has been criticized, re-written, put under the exhaust air-pump glass of science, and declared to be a delusion and a snare. I may have no God because certain men, measuring the universe with their tape-measure of wisdom and investigation, decide that I have worshipped merely an ideal. Mr. William James tried to substitute "pragmatism" and failed. He led 252 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST men and women to the crossroads and said, "This way", but could not say "to what". Love is a matter of electricity; life enlived matter. The bounds of the universe are known. Haeckel conjugates matter throughout the entire universe and nothing but matter : I am matter, thou art matter, he, she, or it is matter. To conjugate otherwise is another delusion and snare. Submarines make acquaintance with the fast- diminishing whale and like that mammal come up to the surface to breathe. Aeroplanes defy all known laws of aerostatics and prove that there is no other element to conquer. Machines are made so delicately adjusted that they can pick up a needle or remove a block of granite. The North and South Poles are labelled United States and Norway ; soon we shall be able to whisper by wireless telephony from one to the other ; there is nothing left to discover. The result of all this sudden precipitation of ideas, inventions, discovery, is that my genera tion and I have found ourselves, at times, in what an old lighthouse keeper I knew on an SEARCHLIGHTS 253 island off the Maine coast used to say was "a teetotal dungeon fog". 4- There are three things you can do in a fog. If you are on a river and the laws of the land are practical, you will have to drop anchor till it lifts. This action saves both yourself and others. If you are on the high seas and there are no laws to command and guide you, either you can take the risk of going ahead at full steam to make a record run, or you can slow down, take soundings, and wait for it to lift. In the third place you can wander around, if you happen to be in London, see men, lamp posts, cabs, and drays "as trees walking", or not at all ; and if you are so fortunate as to find the Nelson Column in Trafalgar Square, you can sit down by the lions and wait, chilled and disheartened, until the fog disperses. All these methods of comporting oneself in a fog are mere attempts for the time at com promise with life. Meanwhile, it is not a matter 254 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST for wonderment that so many are bewildered, lost. 5. There is one fact about fog, the densest, blackest, most bewildering, most baffling that can form : it always lifts; certain natural laws preclude the possibility of its continuance. 6. I see signs that the fog which has bewildered and baffled my generation and the present one, which has obscured the spiritual vision and confused the listening spirit of man, is lifting. I look forward confidently to the time when it shall be lifted wholly in order that men and women shall see clearly their surroundings ; that they shall think clearly with unbefogged brains ; that they shall work in hope, shall live in faith. Meanwhile ah, meanwhile ! so many are lost. 7. There are various fogs that tend to obscure, to bewilder. We on this island, for instance, SEARCHLIGHTS 255 may see from our windows the sudden precipi tation of the snow fog that adds cold to the ele ment of great danger. We have the thin, vaporous, layer-fog which, allowing the sight to penetrate a little way in various directions, shuts off all view of the sky. We know the sun is there above, shining; but we may not see it, strain our eyes as we will ; nor at night can we see one star by which the mariner may steer. The so-called "black fog" is rarely seen on these waters ; but when it forms, earth and sea and sky are blotted out and the window panes are a blank. But they always lift. Meanwhile alas ! a schooner or bark is fast on rock or rip ; a steamer has grounded on the bar ; a derelict has threatened a five-master with disaster, and bell buoys, sirens, fog horns, searchlights, and the lighthouse keeper s dinner bell are at work in vain. 8. Perhaps no fog has been thicker and more bewildering to the men and women of my genera- 256 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST tion than that which, in Whitman s words, may be said to be "the darkening and dazing with books". When a great amount of stock is suddenly and without warning unloaded upon the market, a panic is precipitated. When within a genera tion a million ideas, accompanied by as many inventions and discoveries, are unloaded upon men and women who think, and see, and hear, taste, smell, and feel, human sensitive-plates, all of them, there is apt to be a world-wide panic of unreason, for reason itself is befogged. These ideas are precipitated so suddenly and in such masses along every known line of life, from every direction, that man as an entity stands for a time in their midst practically lost, bewildered, without guide or compass, or if he have a compass, it is of no use. Reason cannot effect a "way out" even if it will; objectively it has nothing upon which to work, for all objects are obscured or, at least, rendered disproportionate, distorted by refraction through the fog medium. No wonder so many suffer shipwreck, are SEARCHLIGHTS 257 lost in swamp, perish in the abyss, give over life because their poor human eyes fail to find a "way out" 9- This man promulgates his theory of the uni verse ; another proves it to be useless. A third advances a new hypothesis and a fourth cuts the ground from under it by one small fact discovered through a powerful telescope. Some other man makes a more powerful lens and the fact is shown to be a fact only in so far as it may be related to and coordinated with future discoveries. These discoveries may shake as tronomy to its foundation. And so on ad infinitum. All these ideas are printed, read and the world is dazed. Man not content with the power of his own eye increases its magnifying and searching power by the use of the microscope. What used to be an atom is no longer such. Division can take place infinitely. Every lens more powerful than another reveals new facts. Every new fact, in relation to previous discovery, may modify every other known fact. Men 2$8 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST search and search and in the end make plain only that infinitude leads to infinitude. All these ideas are printed, read in a truncated fashion, discussed and the world is be wildered ; it cannot adjust itself in another medium. Science has shown to man himself the mechanical part of him. We accept this fact stolidly for it does not alter the seasons, affect the harvests, or induce man to live on one meal a day. We are as we are ages before science as science was. In astronomy the result may be that we can calculate the possible dimensions of a sun spot, but we cannot avert disaster to the crops for all the calculations. In human life the individual soul brings to naught all collective results of calculation. Now we are being informed rather thoroughly as to our mental makeup. Psychology and psychiatry are busily at work to show us why we think as we do ; what we should think given certain environment, certain living conditions. Also, why, if we do not think as we should think SEARCHLIGHTS 259 in given conditions, we should be induced to think as others think we ought to think ! All this is well in its place as an experiment ; but meanwhile we grope befogged by the multi plicity of ideas and the hypnotic use of words, words, and ever words, until in the end we some times think we do not think at all. That sane word of Goethe s is needed to clear up this fog : " I have never thought about thinking." 10. And here is another word to the wise : " Scien tists need not so much close investigation for the purpose of supplying facts and coordinating them, but the concentrated and prolonged thought on the principles underlying natural phenomena." II. I was standing at the window one evening last October, watching for the coming of the boat. It was eight o clock. The night was black, for heavy thunder clouds obscured the sky. I was looking for the steamer s lights when, without warning, the searchlight focussed 260 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST me. It was startling. I felt for that second as if every secret thought of mine was laid bare to the night, as well as every organ of my body. This is the kind of searchlight I should like to turn on the coming hundred years. , But as I cannot do that, I trust I may be permitted to turn the searchlight of a question in three different directions in the hope, at least, of picking up the "buoys". Twenty years ago I visited Hull House. Fancy, then, the pleasure and profit I have had recently in reading Miss Addams s "Twenty Years at Hull House". This book, like the Memorials of Dr. Barnardo of London, is a sociological beacon as trusty as my Sankaty light "over eastward" across the moors. In the presence of such noble achievement we feel the lifting of the fog ; we see the clear ing of the social atmosphere. And because this work is so noble, so far reaching, so full of past accomplishment and future promise, I should like in all humility, but very earnestly, to put one question to its founder after her twenty years of such faithful work : SEARCHLIGHTS 261 "Would you, had you opportunity to begin again those twenty years of your life work, which has proved the salvation of so many, and en riched and enlightened as you are by this expe rience with human kind during all those years, lay as the first foundation stone of this work the head of the corner the actual teach ing, not only by example, to men and women and children of these various nationalities the power of God, the Father, to sustain the spirit of man, and the power of salvation on this earth through the great truths of life as taught by Christ?" 12. Truly, as Mr. Gilbert Murray says, there is such a thing as the "spiritual life-blood of a people". This "spiritual life-blood" must be nourished ; and music, literature, painting, sculp, ture, good comradeship, contact with finer minds, congenial work, help to nourish but not satisfactorily. The spirit of man cries out for other food; for that which will give him spiritual strength to endure the hardest con ditions ; for that which shall enrich his spirit 262 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST to such an extent that to be "poor" is not, in the man s outlook on this life, the "great evil" ; that will show him toil, labor, work as a blessing, not a curse. The spirit of man needs to be so sustained, so nourished that cold shall not be the cold of degree but of kind ("Blow, blow, thou winter wind, thou art not so unkind as man s ingratitude.") ; that suffering of the body shall be endurable in comparison with the suffering that comes from the consciousness of sin ; that the hunger of the body cannot kill the hunger of the soul for God ; that death shall be not only the "way out", but the "way in". Into what? We may not know; and life accepted on these terms is faith. 13- These things are of the mysteries. Yet even as I write that word "mysteries", I recall what a man who deals daily with life and death said to me a year ago : "It is all so simple," this power of God to sustain the spirit, and the meaning of Christ s life on earth. It is simple to be comprehended by every human being SEARCHLIGHTS 263 if only the channel can be opened by which man s spirit " may flow direct to God ". Swedenborg wrote thirty-eight I think I am correct in this number octavo volumes, many of them to interpret Christianity. Christ interpreted it in eight words : " I am come to show you the Father." 14. This world is not so very old. At heart it is still aglow; and constantly, although we may be unconscious of it, it sends forth from its glowing heart an energy and life-force by which our bodies are helped to live. One and all in this world are dependent on it. Neither is this humanity of ours so very old not yet. Its heart is aglow. But the crust is thickening. Feeding the spirit of man fans that heart-flame and sets free a life-force, the value of which can be hourly demonstrated. The spirit of man must have sustenance, must be fed, and not only fed but nourished, else the material facts of life in their complexity will overwhelm, overcome him. "Man shall not live by bread alone." 264 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST IS- And once more letting the searchlight-beam travel slowly across the length and breadth of our country, I wish it might find and illumine the mind, heart, and soul of an Indian of the past generation, a Winnebago, for instance. I should like to know what he thinks of our vaunted "civilization"? How he feels in re gard to the many philanthropic experiments that have been tried upon him ? How his soul regards the Great Mystery in the face of his race s devolution ? I should like to know if he have kept his faith. Thereafter the beam, travelling slowly, should seek out this island and pick up my own soul as it picked up the buoys on that dark night in October. And looking into that mystery I should ask of myself : "How dare you question another soul when you may not know your own ?" 16. I, like other humans, do not wish to be mis understood. If I rebel against the fact that, SEARCHLIGHTS 265 on account of the elements of which I am com posed and the laws that are supposed to govern my creation, I am classed with peas, beans, rabbits, guinea pigs, and monkeys for the sake of experimentation, it is not for a moment to be interpreted that I do not see and acknowl edge with reverence and thankfulness the great work of science; that I do not bow before the patience, the sacrifice, the toil that has given and gives such marvellous results so beneficial to mankind. But I rebel against the word of science being the final word for mankind. Nor am I alone in considering this attitude of finality "antiquated". Personally, I feel very near at times to the fish in the sea, the bird in the air, to the lowly grass and the flowers in which the dust of my material frame may appear again on this earth. When I see the petals of a flower prepare for the flower-sleep, when at sunset I see a raccoon curled about the branch of a tall tree like a chestnut burr on a twig, I, too, feel a certain natural kinship. I realize I am something of each. Nay, more, I have a feeling of pleasant 266 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST relationship with an intelligent monkey, and never omit an opportunity to put a five-cent piece into the tiny oh, so human ! hand that is thrust at me from the top of the hurdy- gurdy. Indeed, I would pay far more just to see at close range the inquiring lift of those callouses that stand for eyebrows, and the roll of those beady eyes. I am not so sure that I feel wholly unrelated to an electric light as I stand by the post. I realize that I am one with the universal elements, not so far removed from their curious combinations and expressions that I dare say to anyone of them, "I am made of different material from you." But when it comes to the fact of my own soul, my spirit draws the line. Into that spiritual fastness of mine no one has a right to penetrate forcibly, to deny its existence, or try to prove there is no such thing, or attempt to show that what I call "my soul" has been gradually evolved during aeons, as matter, from occult processes in the evolution of the amoeba. I may not know my own soul except dimly, in part, how can I, it being of the essence SEARCHLIGHTS 267 of the Creator whose " thoughts are as high above my poor thought as the heavens are above the earth" ? But I know I possess one; / have that knowledge, although no one else may have it, and I know that it is the reason for my being on this earth ; that for me to deny it is to deny me as a fact. I know that I may not know but in part this soul of mine, but that what I know of it assures me that I may not enter into another s soul. It is that part of me as an individual that another may not touch. Even love may not fuse one soul with another soul ; and the non- knowledge of this has been and is productive of such misery among men and women ! I touch it, at times, tangentially only ; but at others I may enter a little way into that spirit ual fastness and know something of its essence through intuitions that may not be denned or even catalogued. This soul of mine abides, in a way, apart. But it is mine, and to it I owe all that interprets this life, all that makes this life the great miracle, all that enables me to endure the thought of the saddened life of the 268 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST world, all that convinces me we "know only in part"; all that makes me conscious of some kind I care not what kind it may be of immortality. A materialist knows nothing of this ; nothing either of the universal soul or of mine. 17- I love to recall that word of George Sand s ; I am glad to record it just here : "II n y a de sur dans ce monde que ce qui se passe entre Dieu et nous." XVIII THE GULLS AND AVIATION I. ON a Sunday morning, two years ago, I was on one of the large yachts anchored in the harbor. After luncheon I had the deck to my self, barring the captain and two or three of the crew forward. A strong, southwest wind was blowing and threatened to increase. There were hundreds of gulls flying about over the harbor and in dulging in some aeronautic gymnastics solely it seemed for their own pleasure. But that was not so, for I was an interested and delighted audience of one. Through a powerful glass I watched their movements for two hours. No aeroplane has yet ventured to cross the sound and a portion of the open sea from the mainland to this island. But that day will 269 270 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST come; this is written in the Domesday Book of Progress. If, for instance, a flight were made from the life-saving station at Monomoy on the Cape, with the powerful stationary glass on my back porch I could follow the entire course. Watching these gulls so closely gave rise to doubts, to questions as to the final stability and utility of the aeroplane or any invention by which men may seek in future to conquer the air. These living aeroplanes knew exactly what they were about. With heavy, powerful, labored downward stroke they would beat slowly up at an angle of thirty degrees against the strong wind one mile, two miles, until they were high over the island. Then well, I cannot say just what happened. They cer tainly turned "on edge" when they tacked sharply and centripetally to come round before the wind; but in so doing they apparently turned turtle, for the wind was very strong. I cannot prove this, not after those two hours of patient watching; but I failed to see how they could make so sharp a turn in the face THE GULLS AND AVIATION 271 of that strong wind without a half-second of capsizing. Now that we know that aviators have flown head downwards, it may be possible that the gulls adjusted themselves in some such manner on that afternoon. The long, swift glide on full-spread wings to the level of the water was a thing to remember. Again and again they returned to their sport, beating up against the increasing wind, laboring heavily as I could plainly see, covering the up ward course only to perform that "on edge" turn at the height of their flight over the island and glide down triumphantly on the aerial toboggan slide. It reminded me of that at once toboggan ing, and the long hard pull up the hill for the sake of the glorious minute of rapid de scent. 2. After watching the gulls for so long a time, it seemed to me that in the present make of aeroplanes, the rigidity of the planes, the angle of their jointure and the location of the centre of gravity must militate against all permanent 272 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST stability in flight. But perhaps the Burgess- Dunne machine may solve this problem. Still, as I think it over, I cannot see how the air in movement is to be conquered; for even the gulls feel the great winds and are driven helplessly before them against any object, like the lighthouse lantern, that is in their aerial path. Moreover, the most of them lie low some where during a great gale. 3- Captain Paul W. Beck writes : "In actual flight I have experienced side slips, lateral fore and aft disturbances in balance, right or left drifts and other actual movements that I have been utterly unable to explain by any theory that exists. This experience is not unique, however; upon reciting some of these expe riences to pure scientists, I have been met with looks that plainly indicated that I was either stating untruths or was an egregious idiot. They would prove mathematically and scien tifically that which I already knew, viz., that my experience was impossible. Yet the ex periences stand." THE GULLS AND AVIATION 273 4- We experience something of this when, over against the "pure" scientist and materialist, we assert some intimations of immortality what may be termed unaccountable, spiritual "side slips", "right and left drifts". They say they are "impossible experiences". Yet such experiences stand. XIX DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS I. I HAVE taken so many in my life. Sometimes, and the majority of times, they have yielded me nothing. Sometimes what has been brought up from the depths has not been worth examina tion. Much has been strange, unaccountable, impossible to classify because unrecognizable for any known thing. Some findings have been familiar and as a result the depths have not seemed bottomless. At such times I feel that the lead has actually touched bottom. Helen Hunt Jackson said : "I do not think we have a right to withhold from the world a word or a thought, any more than a deed, which might help a single soul." Perhaps I, too, have no right to withhold from others what I have brought to the surface from deep sea soundings. The fact that these results have enlightened me may be proof that they may 274 DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS 275 help to enlighten another ; for does not Balzac say : "Nous allons de nous aux hommes, jamais des hommes a nous" ? 2. It seems to me that I always come very late two, three, four, sometimes ten years after publication to every book worth reading "for keeps". A book is written, printed, criti cized, lauded or condemned, and to me remains unknown, except for a review of it ; then, long afterwards, I turn the corner of a library alcove, for instance in this Island Athenaeum, and there it is holding out a hand to me and inviting me to enjoy it. This Athenaeum is a delightful place in which to browse, to read, to explore unknown coasts by way of books. I like its outside ; the great portico pillars remind me of the Acropolis at Athens. I like the inside and its seductive in consequence. It is such a relief, after the cut- and-dried processes by which a book is obtained from any of the great libraries, to prefer a simple request: "I should like this book, please;" 276 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST and it is yours, with a reassuring smile that it may continue yours by judicious renewal. There is one corner I call the "ancestral retreat" ; it is filled with charming old books on genealogy. They hobnob reaching out a hand across a century, and more with the latest "Life", "Letters", or "Discoveries". On a table near at hand are some wonderful maps by the United States Geological Survey of North Dakota between the Red River and the beginning of the Missouri plateau ; the region is thickly strewn with bits of terminal moraines which fact, in my thought of it, makes this other bit of island terminal moraine in the Atlantic akin to those far northern plains. A few steps aside and you find a revolving bookrack filled with readable delights. I dis covered there one day "Coke of Norfolk and His Friends " ; and after reading it decided that I knew more of the American War for Independence and of the England of the eigh teenth century through that one book, than I had learned all my previous life from historical gleanings. DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS 277 On the walls may be seen the painting of a clipper ship under full sail, and not far away the benevolent portrait face of Lucretia Mott; farther on a loan collection of Rembrandt prints. One nook is for foreign literature. A sign of the times is a small collection of books in Portuguese for the benefit of the foreign con tingent in the population. There is no distinctive booky atmosphere about the Athenaeum; it is a homey, cozy gathering-place for the intellectual life of the people of the island. I rarely visit it without anticipating some delightful find, and I am as rarely disappointed. A few months ago I came upon Maeterlinck s book, "The Treasure of the Humble". It invited me to make ac quaintance with it intimate acquaintance ; and dipping into it then and there, suddenly I found that I was " sounding in the deep sea". I kept on paying out my line, and the lead finally touching bottom I brought to the surface what will be found to be the truth concerning true love. 278 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST Here is Maeterlinck s word which, read with reverence, should enlighten a world. "When Fate sends forth the woman it has chosen for us sends her forth from the fast nesses of the great spiritual cities in which we, all unconsciously, dwell, and she awaits us at the crossing of the road we have to traverse when the hour has come we are warned at the first glance. Some there are who attempt to force the hand of Fate. Wildly pressing down their eyelids, so as not to see that which had to be seen struggling with all their puny strength against the electric force they will contrive to cross the road and go towards another, sent thither but not for them. But strive as they may, they will not succeed in * stirring up the dead waters that lie in the great tarn of the future . Nothing will happen. The pure force will not descend from the heights and those wasted hours and kisses will never become part of the real hours and kisses of their lives." This is one of the results of deep sea soundings of Love which is Life. Examine it closely, DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS 279 put it under the microscope of experience, and we recognize it to be a great truth. And be cause this truth is not recognized by all, in terpreted by all, we find the confusion of stand ards, the unhappiness, the misery of "Love s Wayfaring" we see the very thongs which bind in the "Wayfaring of Love" that Burne- Jones has painted. Maeterlinck prefaces this with, "Of the true, predestined love alone, do I speak here." But to those who interpret correctly, to them is given to know the heights and the depths, the patience, the long-suffering of Love its God-given strength to endure. How the millions of the Human Race toil for the sustenance of this Love that means Life ! The very thought warms the heart. 3- My creed as a worker is very simple. It has few articles. There can be no real work of any kind without toil which interpreted is perseverance, patience, endurance applied to daily and hourly tasks. 280 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST Long ago I ceased to consider the mere amassing of riches by men for the sake of amass ing them either true work or toil. It is what may be termed slavery, and consequent loss of true life in ignoble servitude. Work toil is man s greatest blessing, a blessing that makes mentally, bodily, spirit ually for health, provided it be not continuous overwork. We have constantly before our eyes evidence of the fact that overwork kills, ex cessive toil exhausts. But it is better to die than to be idle ; better to succumb than to live supine. Better to have an ideal, a hope, a legitimate ambition and die in the attempt to realize that ideal, fulfil that hope, accom plish what is aimed at, than to live in indolence, to live without effort, workless. Soldiers fall in the ranks ; men drop at their toil ; women sink beneath the load imposed on them or assumed of their own free will. This is the way of Life. And the way of Death ? What is a better guidepost therein than these words of Auerbach : "Fertig sein ist der beginnende Tod." The DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS 281 meaning in free translation may read : We have entered already on the path of Death when there is no longer something for which we may work. Satiety is slow death. 4- Once at a musical extravaganza, I was watching intently and with an uneasy feeling the girls in a chorus-ballet. There was no en joyment for me in this, for I knew the encores had been too many and the dancers using their breath in singing would soon be ex hausted with the repetition of their strenuous bodily exercise. Suddenly a girl, a thin, frail creature, fell forward out of the fictitiously joyous ranks rigid. She was removed ; the dancing chorus closing up in front of her. It was death there on the stage. The extrav aganza went on, without life or spirit, it is true ; but men and women played their parts to the end. I have thought so often since of that frail young thing. She was supporting herself, and doubtless another. She was doing her duty. Like a good soldier she fell fighting in the 282 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST ranks. Life had given her something and Death gave her far, far more : it took her suddenly from all deadening power of lingering disease, from all prolonged misery of want, from all the hard, hard struggle for her daily bread, saved her, possibly, from a living death. I have thought, at times, one might indeed envy her. One woman, at least, honors her memory. 5- I believe in Work of some kind for all. I believe that work should be so regulated that in an occupation which menaces health the hours should be very few, the shifts many, the wages large. A friend of mine worked as machinist in a machine shop until the iron filings hurt the delicate lung tissue and hemorrhage resulted. Rescued from that work, he found other and enjoys that to this day. 6. I believe that no man should be asked to work more than eight hours a day and that DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS 283 no man should be deprived of the privilege of work ing twelve hours if so minded. I believe that children, despite the child-labor laws, the aim of which is wholly laudable, but the regulation by them of child life not adapted to our present economical and educational conditions, should be allowed a certain amount of work ; should be permitted to begin to earn something at an early age. They are happier with the right amount of work ; they are unhappy without it. 7. I fail to see that the toil which exhausts the body, mutilates it, or kills it, is so great a curse as the alcoholism that kills the body after ex hausting it, wrecking the intellect, weakening the will, and inducing to crimes untold. 8. I believe that no kind of toil should preclude the possibility of an education of the right kind. In making this statement, I acknowledge that education as education is understood To day never yet produced character. Neither 284 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST will work produce it ; but it will develop it. I do not hold education, as we are accustomed to define it, in such high esteem as many others. The heart actually teaches for this life better than books. Character makes for a better moral environment than mere "culture", so called. When we approach the problem of education as it is understood at present versus the toilers, we are, as a nation, "all at sea". Deep sea soundings are in order here. As for this generation, it has been experimented with along so many educational lines that the marvel is that it can produce another generation upon which to continue the experiment. 9- In Miss Addams book, which I have already mentioned, I was greatly interested in the ac count of her visit to Tolstoy made in the hope that it might assure her that "Tolstoy s under taking to do his daily share of the physical labor of the world, that labor which is so dis proportionate to the unnourished strength DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS 285 of those by whom it is ordinarily performed, had brought him peace !" Tolstoy was so great in his simplicity, so earnest in his interpretation of the ideal that regulated the latter part of his life, that to me he has been and will remain one of the most pathetic figures in sociological history. He failed to sound deep enough but it was no fault of his. He struggled to be one with the toilers. He worked as a toiler. He strove to square his life by Christ s. He believed that only so by his daily toil in the fields, by his simple fare could soul and body be rightly nourished; in simple fare, simple life, simple love of man kind, strenuous physical labor showing itself in daily toil at the side of the peasant worker, could be found a panacea for the misery of life, a reconciliation of life with its glaring inconsistencies of social conditions. He failed to grasp this truth : Between the man who has and is not obliged to work for his daily bread, and the man who has not and must toil from day to day not knowing whence the 286 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST next dollar is to come for the support of himself and those dependent on him unless he continue to work, work, and ever work, there is fixed an impassable gulf. It cannot be bridged by sympathy, by intuition, by aid given gener ously in the true spirit of Christ. It is there; and it cannot be bridged. Tolstoy could not rid himself of his past. He was born into a state of society in which it was impossible for him to feel the pressure of poverty. No earnest and faithful attempt on his part could extract him from his inherited environment ; no effort, however prolonged, eradicate from his mentality the knowledge that there was "always something on which to depend". Nor could he render himself wholly dependent on his daily toil for his daily bread. This man s awful spiritual struggle to counter act his past and his inherited environment by a life of self-imposed toil is one of the present day s great tragedies. Struggle as he might, he could not bridge that abyss. It is no wonder Miss Addams failed to find what she so earnestly sought. DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS 287 Personally, I have always felt that if Tolstoy with that earnestness of spirit that flamed with the intensity of an apostle s zeal could have accepted his past and present and used the great gift of his intellect, the flame of his spirit, the infinite pity and love of his heart, the great power of his life experience, in giving to the world more of the masterpieces like those for which we are so deeply indebted to him, the world would have been enriched, taught, helped to a degree that his attempt to make himself one with the toilers fell far short of. Like his Levin, in "Anna Karenina", his lead failed to sound the depths of existence, but not through any lack of earnest, yes, tragic effort on his part. It was his fate to have been born as he was. That fate produced a thinker who saw in physical toil alone the salvation of man. 10. Evolution in all its phases that come before our eyes is most interesting, entertaining. I remember that at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago I spent an hour most profitably, 288 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST most entertainingly, with numerous examples of the process of evolution of the locomotive. Later I found in the ethnological section what might be labelled "The process of evolution as shown in the skull of man". There were the skulls of the various races at various periods, and the skull of prehistoric man. Accompany ing these was, of course, the skull of a man- ape, perhaps of Borneo ! In Boston a few months ago, I was watching the entrance of one of the great driving machines of the present day a locomotive of the New York Limited into the South Station. I stood on the platform for a moment looking at the behemoth. In appearance it was as far removed from the latest in that line at the Columbian Exposition as that was removed from the little wood engine and the train of coaches of 1831. I looked up at the monster breathing heavily above me and said to myself: "Well, it s just steam after all the pulse of this machine no matter what the change of form, as the instru ment of this steam power, induced by change DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS 289 of environment and railroad conditions. This machine is the final form of the adaptation of steam to locomotives. But it is the same steam, the same power that propels it through all its changes in form. Steam it is and steam it has always been, despite the evolution of the instrument into this No towering above me." This is precisely how I felt about those skulls : flat foreheads, pointed foreheads, full fore heads, low foreheads, acute facial angles, obtuse facial angles, or no angles at all practically, flattened occiput, protruding occiput, receding jaw, protruding jaw h m ! I said to myself : "These were men animated by the spirit of man. The machine adapted itself to this, that, or the other environment had to but the spirit of man, which makes him a man, remains throughout all changes of form the same spirit of man." This thought was a positive comfort to me, and no process of evolution has ever appalled me since that day, only interested, instructed, entertained. Evolution has been at work always, that is all we can say to designate un- 290 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST recorded time, at work before any law for mulated it ; and the formulating of the law can not change its working or the lines along which it works. This is another comfort. As for the man-ape of Borneo I have my own theory in regard to his skull and himself. It is abstruse, I confess ; and I dare not submit it to scientists. Not for fear of being laughed at ! Oh, no ; but because I truly believe that they never have taken such intuitive deep sea soundings in this special latitude and longitude on the ocean of evolution as have I. (And, of course, no scientist ever does take an "intuitive sounding" !) This must read and sound rightly audacious. I realize it none better ; but, after all, any one is at liberty to have a little private theory of one s own about anything on the earth or in the heavens. I have very few theories about things in general, but I have a decided one for this special subject. ii. And because evolution is held accountable for almost all that takes place nowadays, it DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS 291 delights me to know that, as a process, in one instance, at least, it is completely balked ; it "fails to work" in this case of the spirit of man. Along certain lines there is no such process. For instance : I say to some boys who are having recess in the house, on account of a stormy day, and are ranged one behind the other play ing tug-of-war to the detriment of knickerbockers and jacket belts the smallest boy, of course, at the head of the "tug": "Boys, if you don t keep your line away from that glass door in the corridor some of you will go through it." Now those boys really have a good deal of faith in me. They know I wish them well; that what I say is probably the truth, if they think at all about it which is doubtful, for in their boys way they have tested me and found that I am truthful with them. But, acknowledging all this, subconsciously perhaps, they shout as one: "Oh, no, we won t we ll be careful !" ("Careful" and a boy !) In a few minutes there is a tremendous crash. Some frightened boys appear bringing with them another boy of course the smallest at the 292 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST head of the "tug" with the feeble explanation that "a fellow let go too soon". As a result the small boy s head was propelled by sheer momentum through that glass door. Fortunately the jugular vein is not severed, but I have the doubtful task of picking out fine splinters of glass from the scalp of a closely cropped small head. When he feels better not so "wobbly" he tries to explain to me that he went through "head on". Perhaps he thinks I need enlight enment ! Would there be any use in my saying after this, "I told you so" ? A physician says to a man : "If you begin with that drug you will acquire the habit and such and such will be the result." But the man trusts to his own power of resistance ; he says : "Oh, no; it sha n t get the better of me. I ll be careful." But the habit is formed before he realizes it and his power of resistance is not sufficient to overcome it. No one has yet defined the safety line for the making of a bad habit. In course DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS 293 of time the result justifies the physician s warning. A father says to a son : " If you do so and so, if you abuse your health, if you make such and such experiments with life, so and so will happen not to your benefit. / have found this out by bitter experience. Profit by my experience ; be warned in time." But the son says to himself : "I am I ; father is father. I can do what he couldn t. Each is a law unto himself;" and goes his way irrespec tive of parental warning. These cases can be multiplied with the multi plier of the human race. So far as we have record of men s lives we find no tendency for one man to learn of another and more expe rienced, so far as his individual experiment with life is concerned. Generation after generation begins on the footing of the first generation of men. Evolution is not in evidence. In the face of experience of a hundred generations, the man of To-day decides that he is able to make his own experiment with life although he is warned of certain shipwreck. 294 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST He will not believe in that shipwreck until he experiences it ; then he desires to warn another, a younger. But that other also exercises his prerogative of individual experience, and in time they both cling to the same life-raft. It seems that it is just here that the spirit of man, the soul of man, of each individual, stands apart from every other of the race. It will do its best to work with the machine with which it is supplied and with which it must perform its work, if at all. The machine may change, may be obliged to adapt itself to new environment ; but the spirit of man remains the same. It begins and ends in itself. XX BEACONS I. ON the wall of my bedroom I may see at any hour, at any minute of a dark, clear, moonless night, the reflection of the wax and wane of the great beacon light seven miles across the moors on Sankaty Head. The first time I was aware of this, I came to the conclusion that it was some optical illusion ; perhaps an extra blood pressure on the optic nerve, or that curious effect we may sometimes note, when the eyes are closed, of strange, running, colored gleams of purple and yellow lights apparently crossing the retina and retir ing from sight somewhere above the left ear. But, investigating shortly, I found it was merely the reflection of the great light on San katy Head. 295 296 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST In the moonlight this beacon shines as Capella shines in a clear, dark winter s night when it mirrors itself in the harbor waters. Its light is visible to the mariner forty miles at sea. At times, in exceptional gales, the flying spume dims it. In fog it is obscured. But even when I cannot see it, I know it is always there. 2. It would be a matter of amazement if some were to ask, and in all probability the ques tion might be put to me, "How do you know it is always there ? What proof have you if you cannot see it in fog or heavy storm ?" I make answer : "Simply because I know it is there." "But that is no reason," says one. I reply that I know it is there because night after night I have seen it there ; because I have faith to believe it there, having seen it so many times." "But that is no reason," a second makes objection; "your faith does not prove it." Now, what answer shall be made to this ? BEACONS 297 If I say : "If you will take sloop, or schooner, or tug, and in snow and sleet, in the teeth of a sixty-mile-an-hour gale contrive to double Great Point, work along past Great Round Shoal and get under the lee of Sankaty, or if you will cross the moors in the face of the blizzard till you actually reach the light, you will find it there. Make your own experiment;" they will protest : "But that is impossible. You know per fectly well we could not make that journey by land or sea without guide and compass, or even with them in such a storm. We should be exhausted ; we should perish." "Well," I conclude, "then if you were to attempt it you would perish ; but the light would be there for all your perishing. And what you assert is no argument against my faith in the keeper s trustworthiness." 3- This ocean that I see from my windows was uncharted when Columbus set sail on it. But he had the stars, a compass that varied 298 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST and faith. With these he went forth on unknown seas and finally gave to us our country. An astronomer of the present day might be able to prove to Columbus that the star by which he guided his little caravel was not there ; that it had been dispersed in star dust aeons before the Santa Maria s keel ploughed the unknown ocean ; that what he saw was but the simulacrum of the star the light of it merely which was travelling for millions of years after the disper sion of the star to reach the discoverer s eye. I can fancy Columbus look of amazement after having given to his sovereigns a new world to hear that he was guided thereto by a simu lacrum of a star. In imagination I hear his answer in no uncertain tone : "The light was there, star or no star. I saw it; by it I steered my caravels. Behold the result!" This is the test : "Behold the result." 4- It is a curious fact, I am told, that to man alone among animals belongs the inspiratory BEACONS 299 cry. There was breathed "into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." And here is its corollary : "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was ; and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it." Here we have the Human case : Birth Death ; the spirit given from a source and the spirit returning to that source inspiratory cry, expiratory sigh. Between the two, man pilgrimages from Infinity to Infinity. Faith is the sustenance of the spirit on this journey as food is the sustenance for the body. 5- "But where begin with faith ? What beacon can guide us ?" The answer is very simple : Begin with the child. "But how begin ? We are at sea." Again the answer is simple : Begin by teach ing the child faith in God as his Creator. "But if we do not have the faith to teach ?" Then do not teach the child. Take to gar- 300 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST dening where you have faith that a seed, which you, nor I, nor any human can animate, once put into good ground and tended by you will sprout and thrive. Take to cooking where you make bread irrespective of your ignorance of how to animate the kernel of wheat that it may grow and produce the flour of which you seem perfectly willing to make your bread and eat of it as well. Take to "clerking", to stenography, to weaving, spinning, hoeing, even but leave the teaching of a child to some one who has faith and is not afraid to confess it. 6. Mr. Peter Roberts in his exhaustive studies of the "Anthracite Coal Industry" and the "Anthracite Coal Communities" writes in con clusion : "If society is to be saved, the regenerating power can only come from the moral-spiritual nature of man, and every force, either in society or industry, which grinds the altars of a nation will ultimately grind to powder the foundations upon which society rests." BEACONS 301 One altar of our nation was broken, at least, when in this generation the simple petition, "Our Father", was made not obligatory in the common schools. The impressions received in childhood, the habits formed, in the majority of cases persist through life ; it is the way of the plant, the way of the sapling. No nation can afford to ignore this fact : That its children are the hope of its strength. This fact is both spiritual and eco nomical. In our common schools the children are taught to salute the flag ; it is made for them a symbol of their country. The government that should lay an embargo on this teaching would prove unfaithful to its great trust. I hold that it is just as unfaithful to a greater trust greater because universally human, not merely national when it attempts to educate the child and at the same time omits to teach him reverence for his Creator. "But the majority of children have some religious instruction. Does not this fill the need?" 302 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST By no means. For I am not considering "religious instruction" of any kind as we under stand it. Religious instruction, so called, given once or twice a week does not meet the need of this special case or apply to it. Between the hours of 9 and 12 A.M. the mind of the child is freshest, most impressionable. That mind expands like a plant to imbibe in fluences. The delicate brain-films, after sleep, are most sensitive to impressions. The child does his best work between these hours ; atten tion fixes itself with less strain ; interest is roused with less effort ; mischief is not so rampant as during the afternoon session. In these three precious hours not only should the child s mind be fed but its soul. The soul-feelers are at work seeking spiritual food. When they are given nothing, they turn inward on themselves, fam ished in part. The child comes out of the fresh air, perhaps sunshine, rain or snow all true delights to a healthy child to enter into confinement for three hours, with thirty or forty other children, between four walls darkened by blackboards, BEACONS 303 and into an environment foreign to his thoughts. During these three hours certain habits are in the process of formation; the intellect is sup posed to be quickened, and is in most cases ; the soul that is not provided for. Now the soul of a child is as constantly with him and a part of him as his brain and needs as much sustenance, if not more. There are various ways of providing it which it is not my province to touch upon except in this one case. Upon each daily entrance into this foreign environment for a child s thoughts, let there be made the simple petition, "Our Father". Let that be the first English learned by the millions of our foreign child population. This is no special instruction in any "religion" this simple acknowledgment of a Creator; but it teaches as nothing else can teach. Those few minutes of reverent silence when listening to the spoken words, or the reverential habit that is formed by daily repetition of those few words, makes for a certain attitude of mind impossible without it. It is as simple as lift ing the cap in the presence of the flag, or rising 304 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST when the Star-Spangled Banner is played. But its symbolism sounds far deeper depths the soul of the child. Lessing, that great believing unbeliever says : "We can be unfaithful to a national god, but never to the true God when once we shall have known him." But He must be made known. This is no matter of creed, doctrine, or reli gion as we understand that word that atti tude would now be called "antiquated"; it is a matter of forming in the child a habit of faith. It is a matter of giving regularly as the breaking of fast of a morning is observed to the child what the child spiritually, but unconsciously, needs to start his day. 7- This is no theory upon which I draw to illus trate ; I draw upon experience. For a few years I taught in a school, for both boys and girls, where it really seemed a matter of lese-majeste to name the Name. The curric ulum of the school was made on the basis of science-teaching. As the chiefs failed to recon- BEACONS 305 cile science with what that Name implies, all mention of the Name was considered taboo. Yet in all my experience I have never witnessed more earnest, more conscientious work for the children s sake. It was beyond criticism. It was a curious position in which to find one s self. Dealing daily with childish hearts, child ish brains, children s souls, I discovered the fact that I was failing all along the lines of instruction when I could not freely refer to the Creator of all created things. At that time psychology was to the fore; and I at once began that study in the hope that it might afford me help with my teaching; perhaps prove a substitute for what I was ex pected to omit in my work. Beginning with Mr. James "Psychology", I have finally fin ished all study in that direction with an attempt at Professor Miinsterberg s "Psychotherapy". This endeavor covers a period of nearly twenty years. I honestly and earnestly tried to solve the problem presented to me daily by these twenty-seven children my special class by placing myself in the position of a willing and 306 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST humble disciple of men who knew far, far more than I could ever attain to; whose knowledge of psychology and its handmaid physiology was profound. But in Mr. James words : "It did network." I discovered that in a certain direction I knew more of a child s soul by daily contact with the child along certain lines of instruction than anything Mr. James might intimate. This is not arrogance of knowledge ; it is said humbly, because I looked from my own soul into the child s and what I found there contradicted many of his theories. I found I was dealing with some spiritual facts that had escaped his keen analysis and theoretical excursiveness. Indeed, I came to the conclusion that, if I may be permitted the word, he was "floundering" spiritually. I speak only for myself ; I could find no anchorage with his deductions. 8. What was I to do when one day a girl of twelve, with all my sex s inconsequence, and apropos of nothing or so it seemed to me BEACONS 307 I think we were at work on some clay relief maps of South America said suddenly : "I want to believe the Bible is true, but I can t." Poor mite ! I knew she must have heard some discussion at home ; or possibly the mak ing of the relief in clay, and association of ideas had brought her a thought of Genesis I do not know. But this was her sudden statement. I could not ignore it and we were not sup posed to mention that Name. I was on the horns of a dilemma none the softest. But over against the soul of that child there was but one duty to feed it, if in truth I could. As the class was listening for an answer, I spoke to all : "Children, how many of you had bread for breakfast this morning?" The hands went up as one. " Who made the bread ? " I permitted general answers when we were "off guard" as I used to call those precious minutes for a child when he can speak in class without raising a hand. I received various answers in which the names of certain cooks were distinguishable. 308 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST "Of what is the bread made ?" All knew. "Of what is the wheat made ?" No answer; that called for enlightenment. I told them of the kernel of corn and the wheat. Then I sprang a question on them : "How is a grain of wheat made, now that I have told you of what it is made?" They could not tell neither could I. I explained to them as simply as I could what chemical combination is, but I also explained that no man, try as he might, could combine those elements to make one grain of wheat or a kernel of corn ; nor could he, were it possible for him to combine these elements, make the combination grow. "Now," I said, "if a man does not make it grow, who does make it ?" There was a faint, timid answer here and there : "God." "Yes," I said with emphasis, "God the Creator." And with these words a great bur den for those children s sake rolled from my soul. I spoke from absolute conviction and they knew it. "And, Helen," I continued, speaking to the small girl who had made the BEACONS 309 dispiriting statement, "would you not find it very unreasonable and foolish to refuse to eat bread because you cannot know just how it is made to grow, and because no one living or dead has been able to make it grow ?" "Yes." "And can you not trust God, who made us, for many of these things you cannot under stand ? Do you refuse to breathe because you cannot see the air you breathe ?" Never, never shall I forget the flush of joy that illumined that sweet face as she said with a sigh : "Oh, I do see it now ; and I feel so much better." Dear child ! She could not know how or why she "felt better"; but I knew : she had been fed, had been given a little food for her hungry little soul. And this instance is but one of many of which I have knowledge. After all my work in psychology I found that the soul of each child is different from the soul of every other child. On this rock of fact all my psychology went to pieces. Then I went down on my knees and asked for help over against the 310 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST soul of the child. . . . Perhaps it is needless to say that I handed in my resignation at the end of the year. 9- God is not mocked. An old truth that is ever new. No man, or woman, who has not unwavering faith in his Creator should teach a child. No man, or woman, should teach science to a child who has not reconciled his faith with that science ; who has not truly given both consent of the heart and assent of the intellect. No man, or woman, can be asked the question by a child : "Who made a star ? Who made this egg ? Who made this butterfly ? Who made me, and how?" and stand for a moment in the searchlight of that child s soul if he hesi tate a second in his answer. We need science; but we need faith in a Creator to go hand and hand with it. And I would have children taught science from their earliest years objectively, of course. Nothing so satisfies the inquiring mind, nothing so stimulates inquiry to effort along so many life-lines as such teaching BEACONS 311 But if I begin on this most interesting matter I shall overrun my manuscript ; indeed, I fear that I have already. The need of clear vision in this matter of the child s education was never so pressing as in this industrial age. We are in a transition state ; all sorts of forms along this special line are being evolved in our endeavors to adjust ourselves to a changed environment. This multiplicity of forms confuses, discourages, because of unsatisfactory results. It obscures the main object, the great beacon for this our Twentieth Century and all future centuries : The work that works in faith and hope. What a beacon light this is ! We must work in hope and teach others to work in hope ; we must live in faith, while we work in hope, and inspire faith in others ; but to do this we must make conditions such that educationally, industrially, economically, spirit ually, men and women, yes, and little children, shall be enabled to work in hope shall live in faith. I see no other salvation for our Human Race. 3 i2 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 10. FEBRUARY 9, 1914. The sunset was very fine to-night. I like to see it in the east by reflected light ; the effect is wonderfully beautiful. The waters of the harbor were heaving in the strong wind ; they were dark green. The shores of Monomoy and Shimmo were pale yellow and black in the level light ; one long, dark band behind them marked the plantation of dwarfed pines. The great sand dune of Pocomo Head gleamed deep orange in the strong rays of the setting sun. The shadows on the gray chimneys were sharply defined. Above, in a sky partly filled with heavy drifting clouds, the full moon was shining faintly. At the moment of sunset the great Sankaty Beacon twinkled across the moors. As dusk fell, the moon, shining from behind the dark, drifting clouds, silvered a portion of the harbor waters. A little light shone out here and there in the houses below the "Bank" and in the fishermen s huts on the shore small BEACONS 313 coastwise beacons. Brant Point gleamed on the left ; and far away on Great Point the third light on this Island Outpost in the Atlantic signalled across the Sound to Monomoy on the Cape. YB 73228 M159985 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY