AUNT DESIRE COMES UP FROM THE CAPE.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 A Plea for Republican Simplicity. 
 
 " If, with fancy unfurled 
 
 You leave your abode, 
 You may go round the world 
 By the old Marlboro road." 
 
 THOREAU. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 ESTES AND LAURIAT, PUBLISHERS, 
 301-305 WASHINGTON STREET. 
 
 l88 3 .
 
 I23E 
 
 87 
 
 Copyright, 1883, 
 BY ESTES AND LAURIAT. 
 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS: 
 JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Why? 
 
 I was asked to attempt to write a light book for 
 summer reading. 
 
 What ? 
 
 I believe much in the New England of the past: 
 in its principles, moral and political : I am 
 acquainted with the farm house of the coast towns : 
 I love it and respect its intelligent simplicity. It 
 seems to me like a crown : it holds the best life. 
 
 Could I picture a family who maintain the early 
 traditions of the country, and contrast it with one 
 influenced by the haste for wealth, the feverish 
 excitements of society, and the passion for display, 
 of modern city life ? 
 
 There rose before me good Uncle Eben, and 
 quaint Aunt Desire, of the Cape. 
 
 Could I gather up all the old stories of their
 
 IV PREFA CE. 
 
 farm house on the Cape, and make of them a pic 
 ture ? 
 
 Could I show how the present tendencies of 
 city life appear to the eyes of one trained in the 
 republican school of thought of half a century 
 ago ? I could try. 
 
 You have these pictures discursively and imper 
 fectly drawn between intervals of work at an edi 
 tor s desk. They are not exaggerated. Almost 
 every incident, however strange any of them may 
 seem, is but the reproduction of a fact from the 
 note book of memory. 
 
 The lessons are simply the old ones : That work 
 and contentment are the sources of happiness and 
 that a true life is the best in its social and politi 
 cal results.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 MYSELF 9 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 IN WHICH AUNT DESIRE CONSTRUCTS A MODEL FAMILY 
 TREE 15 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 MRS. DESIRE ENDICOTX DECIDES TO COME UP FROM THE 
 CAPE 27 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 EP.EN FAVORS DESIRE S PLANS AND ENTERTAINS CARRIE 
 WITH ins YOUTHFUL RECOLLECTIONS OF MRS. GREEN . 37 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 THE OLD ORCHARD AND BURYING-GROUND 51 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 AUNT EXPRESSES HER OPINION OF SISTER CARRIE S BEAU . 66 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 I RECEIVE A STRANGE LETTER FROM FATHER 71
 
 iv CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 THE CLAM-BAKE, AND STORY-TELLING UNDER THE TREES . 75 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 CARRIE S "BOSTON" STORY " DOT." 87 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 REV. MR. GLASS MAKES A CLAM-BAKE FOR HIS CITY 
 FRIENDS WITH RESULTS DESCRIBED BY AUNT TO UNCLE 104 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE OLD HOUSE AND HOME, AND AUNT DESIRE S Two 
 WISHES no 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 THE OLD CAMP-MEETING AND THE NEW 119 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 PICNICS "CROWS IN THE TREES AND HAWKS IN THE AIR," 125 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 Two LETTERS 134 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 AUNT S FAREWELL EXHORTATION 139 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE A WALK AUNT CALLS ON THE 
 DOCTORS 148 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 DESIRE CALLS UPON SUNDRY EDITORS AND INTRODUCES 
 TO THEM THE PASTORAL POEMS OF MlSS FLORA PlNK . 156
 
 CONTENTS. v 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 NOVEMBER 167 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 EUGENE RETURNS FROM ETRETAT 173 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 AUNT RELATES TO UNCLE HER LUMINOUS CONVERSATION 
 WITH MR. McBRIDE, THE AGNOSTIC 185 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 " UP AND DOWN THE HARBOR GOES THE HENRY MORRI- 
 SON " UNCLE S NARRATIVE .... - 191 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 INTELLIGENCE FROM TREASURE MOUNTAIN 201 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 THE BLACK SEA UNCLE EBEN S NARRATIVE CONTINUED, 206 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 THE CLIO CLUB AUNT S NARRATIVE 213 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 ELECTION DAY - 222 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 THE LECTURESHIP SNOW 230 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 DECEMBER 238
 
 vi CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 AUNT DESIRE HEARS FROM THE WEST 241 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 MAY THE PRESIDENT S LEVEE LIFE LIES FAIR BEFORE 
 ME 245
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 AUNT DESIRE COMES ur FROM THE CAPE, .... Frontis. 
 
 AUNT DESIRE AND JEFF 18 
 
 THE BARN THEATRICALS 49 
 
 A CAPE CLAM-BAKE 75 
 
 "LOOK ALOFT" 85 
 
 HOGGARTY RUNS 106 
 
 "THAT is ALL BUSTED up" 204 
 
 AT THE PRESIDENT S RECEPTION 205
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 MYSELF. 
 
 I had just graduated from the Latin School. 
 
 It was July, and the house was to be closed. 
 Father and mother were going to the Hotel 
 Wellesley for the rest of the summer. This was 
 arranged for father s sake. He must be in 
 Boston daily, and at work. Money must be 
 made, else how were all the expenses of a house 
 on the Back Bay to be met ? It did not seem 
 quite right there was always a summer rest 
 for each member of the family but for father. 
 
 Father was forty-two years of age. He was 
 gray. There was a care-worn look on his face 
 always. He constantly talked of investments 
 and stocks ; he was always in a state of feverish 
 anxiety. He seemed to have no time for recrea 
 tion, little for thinking on the subjects of life 
 outside of his business, and as little for the
 
 10 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 enjoyment of nature and the pleasures that come 
 from the cultivation of spiritual thought and life. 
 
 I ventured to say to him one day : 
 
 "Uncle Eben, who lives on the Cape, is sixty- 
 five years old, and yet you look older than he." 
 
 "Eben never had any ambition. He is more 
 contented with ten thousand dollars than I am 
 with one hundred thousand dollars. He just 
 reads religious books, goes to church, and roams 
 about the woods and pastures like a cow-boy." 
 
 "But he seems happy. He is very intelligent, 
 and has good health. He looks like a young 
 man, and I wish you had less care and did not 
 grow old so fast." 
 
 " It can t be helped ; it can t be helped. It is 
 our American life, my boy. It did not use to be 
 so, when the country was new and people were 
 more independent and democratic ; but things 
 have changed. Life is a fever. Your Uncle 
 Eben may be wiser than I, after all, but I am 
 launched on a rushing stream, and I must go on 
 with the tide." 
 
 I was touched at this frank confession. One of 
 my older brothers was studying abroad ; another 
 was idling at Newport ; their expensive habits 
 were compelling father to be more ambitious in
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. I I 
 
 his business schemes, increasing his anxieties and 
 the number of his gray hairs. 
 
 My sister Carrie came into the room where we 
 were sitting father and I and said : 
 
 "Jeff, have you decided where you will take 
 your vacation ? " 
 
 " Yes, partly ; so far as this. I shall go where 
 it will make father as little expense as possible." 
 
 "Jeff, you are a noble boy," said father. 
 
 "Thank you." I saw tears in his eyes. 
 
 " Carrie, let us go down on the Cape, and spend 
 July and August with Uncle Eben and Aunt 
 Desire." 
 
 "Agreed, Jeff. I always liked Uncle Eben 
 and Aunt Desire well, she is a character." 
 
 " I am sick of all this straining after show and 
 effect ; all this slavery to stylish living ; all of 
 this aping Europeans in dress, politics, religion, 
 music and art, and I would like to spend a few 
 weeks in a home of true republican simplicity." 
 
 "Why, Jeff!" said father, the faint light of a 
 smile overspreading his features. " How in the 
 world, in the present state of society, did such a 
 thought ever come to you ? " 
 
 " For whom did you name me ? " 
 
 "For whom? Why, Jefferson, Thomas Jef 
 ferson."
 
 12 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 " So I have been told. I have been reading 
 the life of Thomas Jefferson, and I think it would 
 be a right good plan for American society to 
 return to his simple, democratic principles. I am 
 sick of snobs and second-hand Americans. Uncle 
 Eben agrees with me. Won t we have a good 
 time talking politics and telling stories under the 
 trees, Uncle Eben, Carrie and I?" 
 
 "And your Aunt Desire? Don t forget her," 
 said father, laughing, and dropping the Stock Re 
 porter into his lap. " Yes, your Uncle Eben can 
 talk, and what he don t know about everything 
 your Aunt Desire can tell him. Yes, yes ; his 
 home is one of true republican simplicity. Glad 
 you re going, Jeff. And you, Carrie. You cer 
 tainly will have all of my good wishes." 
 
 And so it was decided that we should go down 
 to the old family home, Carrie and I. We would 
 study local history with Uncle Eben ; we would 
 get Aunt Desire to relate to us the old-time 
 stories of provincial days. Uncle Eben was a 
 famous story teller, too, but rather historical and 
 heavy. For a story spiced with point and pro 
 vincialism, I have known no equal to Aunt 
 Desire. 
 
 Then, when the August days began to mellow
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 13 
 
 towards fall, we would go to the historic camp 
 meeting at the Vineyard. 
 
 Uncle Eben himself was a Methodist ; a broad 
 one. The reading of Swedenborg, Emerson, and 
 some of the best books of modern science had 
 widened his mental horizon to such an extent as 
 to make Aunt Desire tremble for his orthodoxy. 
 But when Uncle Eben was a boy, the good 
 orthodox people of the town had compelled the 
 Methodists to pay taxes to help support their 
 church. The Methodists protested; represented 
 themselves as a persecuted people, and grew. At 
 last they quite outnumbered their orthodox breth 
 ren, and then, acting upon the latter s own rule, 
 they voted them out of the church and took 
 possession of it. Eben being a Jeffersonian 
 Democrat in politics, sympathized with the Meth 
 odists in their struggle against "taxation without 
 representation," and united with them. Aunt 
 Desire was a Methodist pure and simple, and had 
 not been influenced by politics in her religious 
 views. She used to declare in class meetings 
 that she "never yet feared the face of clay," and 
 our story will show that she continued in the 
 same resolute state of mind after youthful curls 
 had given place to cap borders. But Desire 
 Enclicott at heart was a very good woman.
 
 14 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 As for myself, I was in danger of following my 
 brothers into purposeless, pleasure-seeking habits 
 of life. My chief amusement was billiards, and 
 this was leading me at chance times, with certain 
 agreeable but profitless companions, to the bar. 
 A reading of the life of Thomas Jefferson, on 
 account of my name, had somewhat interested me 
 in the early principles and simple habits of Amer 
 ican society a century ago. This experience had 
 given me a certain respect for Uncle Kben s 
 primitive opinions and manner of living, and had 
 made pleasant to my imagination a long summer 
 vacation on the Cape.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 IN WHICH AUNT DESIRE CONSTRUCTS A MODEL 
 FAMILY TREE. 
 
 "Aunt Desire," as every one called her, was 
 not an ignorant woman, as I found out, to my 
 surprise, before I had spent a week at the old 
 house. She used provincialisms freely, and Cape 
 adjectives and expressions of surprise, and some 
 times omitted the final "g" in her participles; but 
 on most subjects to which she "had given her 
 mind," she was remarkably well informed. 
 
 That she overrated the value of things of which 
 she had read but not seen, was true ; more culti 
 vated people have done the same thing. That 
 she regarded Boston much as the kitchen-girl 
 looks upon Rome, and anticipated a visit to that 
 city much as the old palmer dreamed of his pil 
 grimage, are also true. What wonder! Had she 
 not read the Boston Journal, Advertiser or Trans 
 cript daily for twenty years, and a religious Boston 
 paper for even a longer period ?
 
 1 6 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 My first discoveries of Aunt Desire s goodly 
 stock of intelligence were hardly pleasant experi 
 ences. I happened to say, carelessly, one day, 
 that I seldom attended the missionary concert in 
 "our" church ; that I was not much interested in 
 foreign missions ; and added the not very, original 
 remark, that " there were heathen enough at 
 home," especially if one s home was in Boston. 
 
 She was making blackberry pies how deli 
 cious these pies were, and how delightful their 
 memory is yet! when I volunteered the afore 
 said remarks about foreign missions and Boston s 
 heathen. She took her hands out of the dough, 
 and turned around in a most awe-inspiring way, 
 with a look of mingled pain and compassion in 
 her face. 
 
 " Can I believe my own ears ? " she said. 
 "And you a Boston young man, too ! Where the 
 Woman s Board meets, too ! " 
 
 I waited for a third rebuke, but she only looked 
 at me for a time, her black eyes snapping. 
 
 Then, seizing the rolling-pin and lifting it aloft, 
 she proceeded to free her mind in such a way that 
 I sat transfixed with amazement. 
 
 " Heathen enough at home ! Suppose St. Paul, 
 the great Apostle to the Gentiles, had said that !
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. I/ 
 
 Why, the gospel would never have gone out of 
 Jerusalem ! If St. Augustine had said tJiat, he 
 never would have gone to preach in England, and 
 you might have been a heathen to-day ! Did you 
 know that your ancestors were heathen, wanderin 
 about in sheep-skins, and that they were con 
 verted by foreign missionaries ? Do you know 
 that the missionary movement is the march of the 
 church towards the millenium ? 
 
 " If there is anything that makes Desire Endi- 
 cott indignant clear through and through it is to 
 hear some reconstructed Gentile like you ; some 
 descendant of a barbarian nation, like the bloody 
 old Saxons from which nation yon sprung, some 
 narrow-minded, purse-puckered, empty-headed igno 
 ramus like well, not you this time, like Dea 
 con Bamp, for instance, speakin lightly about the 
 spread of the Gospel, and makin an excuse for a 
 want of generosity by talkin about the heathen at 
 home ! Bless my soul, if the heathen at home 
 were to be left to such people for help and enlight 
 enment they would perish beyond any hope of re 
 covery ! Not that I mean to say that yon are not 
 generous, but it is plain to be seen that you have 
 not been brought up right." 
 
 " I have not found time to read much upon the
 
 1 8 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 subject, Aunt Desire; perhaps I ought to be 
 better informed." 
 
 " Did you ever find time to read novels and 
 such?" continued Aunt Desire, exasperatingly. 
 
 "A few." 
 
 " Don t you ever read the Missionary Herald 
 and Life and Light f" 
 
 "Mother subscribes for them," I added. "I 
 always put ten cents into the missionary box," 
 and I thought I had now made my peace. 
 
 " Ten cents ! " Up went the rolling pin. " Ten 
 cents ! Well, well, be charitable. Ten-cent pieces 
 were made on purpose. Why, Jefferson Endicott, 
 /give $20 a year to the American Board and $5 
 to the Woman s Board, and I save the money out 
 of the profits I make by sellin eggs, and I ve 
 always done my whole duty by the heathen at 
 home. Nobody never asked Desire Endicott for 
 anything that was good for them, that she could 
 give, that they didn t get it. You ask the neigh 
 bors if it isn t so. 
 
 " You will find in my room the lives of Wm. 
 Carey, and Dr. Judson, and Harriet Newell, and 
 all the Mrs. Judsons, and the reports of all the 
 different societies for the last ten years. When 
 you feel lonesome, boy, you are free to go and get
 
 AUNT DESIRE AND JEFF.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 1 9 
 
 them. I hope I have n t offended you, nor nothin . 
 If I have, I beg your pardon. The fact is there s 
 nothin you could have said that would have so 
 riled up the old Adam in me as just tJiat /" 
 
 A short time after receiving this indignant 
 protest and its apologies I happened to pass the 
 open door of Aunt Desire s room. I glanced at 
 her library of missionary literature, every book of 
 which she had more than once read, and I felt 
 sure that she knew vastly more than I about the 
 religious progress of the world, and I mentally 
 resolved to put twenty-five cents into the contri 
 bution box at any future missionary meetings I 
 might attend. 
 
 The episode gave me a view of Aunt Desire s 
 heart and character. She was wonderfully well 
 read on certain subjects, and carried conviction 
 with the expression of her opinions ; while on other 
 subjects her lack of information was as remark 
 able. I found this to be characteristic of many of 
 the wives of the old Barnstable county farmers : 
 they were clear in judgment, strong in conviction, 
 and undeviating in principle ; but their intelli 
 gence was directed to one thing. In many cases 
 that one thing was church history. One woman 
 that I met was perfectly familiar with Edwards
 
 20 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 theological works ; another with the lives of 
 English Wesleyan preachers, such as Whitefield, 
 Nelson, Fletcher of Madeley ; another could recite 
 all of Dr. Watts hymns ; another was a student 
 of Neander and d Aubigne. All were firm believ 
 ers in republican equality and missionary move 
 ments. On thinking over the matter, I cannot 
 see why this intelligence may not be as useful to 
 the \vorld in its results as the aesthetic studies 
 and attainments of their young Boston sisters. 
 In fact, I came to have a very deep respect 
 for it. 
 
 They were model housekeepers, and never 
 intrusted the fine art of cooking to some newly- 
 arrived Bridget from the Green Island, where 
 viands are not plenty, and where Mrs. Parloa does 
 not hold schools. They regarded cooking, like 
 the care of their children, as one of the trusts of 
 home. All this was different from the experi 
 ences of the homes I had been accustomed to 
 visit, and I must say increased my regard for the 
 wholesome lives of the sturdy dames of Barn- 
 stable. 
 
 The house was old, but well-preserved and 
 roomy. Aunt Desire s housekeeping was as per 
 fect as the art can be made. Everything in the
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 21 
 
 house was simple, though the furniture had an 
 old-time elegance, but so arranged as to have an 
 air of comfort. 
 
 "Yes," said Uncle Eben to me, one day, "De 
 sire is a good housekeeper, but her intelligence is 
 like the handle of a jug, all on one side. She has 
 a sharp tongue ; look out, my boy ! " 
 
 I soon had a very original illustration of the 
 truth of the last remark. 
 
 Both uncle and aunt had much family pride and 
 were lovers of historic lore, and of everything that 
 savored of antiquity. Eben knew the old colonial 
 history of Plymouth thoroughly, and the family 
 histories of most of the early settlers on the Cape, 
 at Plymouth and on the shores of Massachusetts 
 Bay. 
 
 One rainy afternoon, when I could neither walk, 
 ride, nor sail, Uncle said to me : 
 
 " Do you draw ? " 
 
 " I have taken lessons in drawing." 
 
 " I notice you have some large sheets of white 
 paper, what do you call it ? " 
 
 " Bristol board." 
 
 " Would you be willing to draw for me a family 
 tree ? " 
 
 " I will do as well as I can," and I at once went
 
 22 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 to my room for paper and pencils, and on return 
 ing, asked how I should begin. 
 
 "Draw the roots, first." 
 
 "What ought he to write at the roots of the 
 tree ? " he said, turning to Aunt Desire. 
 
 "My family began with the Toogoods, of Corn 
 wall. Zephaniah Toogood was a soldier in Crom 
 well s army. He \vas killed at the battle of 
 Marston Moor." 
 
 Aunt Desire s cap-border seemed to rise after 
 giving me this bit of family history, and she 
 walked to and fro in a very sweet frame of mind. 
 
 " I can trace the Endicotts further back than 
 that," said Uncle Eben, innocently. "The Eng 
 lish revolution is of a comparative recent date." 
 
 Aunt Desire started. Her pride was touched. 
 She moved her chair away from us and sat in 
 silence, an unusual mood for her. 
 
 Uncle brought out of an old mahogany desk, 
 some curious books and carefully-kept papers, and 
 we spent several hours together carefully con 
 structing a family tree. It was a very interesting 
 occupation, although Aunt Desire s silence made 
 me feel rather uncomfortable. 
 
 " Have you got through ? " asked Aunt Desire, 
 meekly.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 23 
 
 "Yes," said uncle. 
 
 "Isn t it noble?" asked I. "I should think 
 any family would be proud of a tree like that." 
 
 " That tree is all full of Endicotts, aint it ? " 
 asked Aunt Desire. 
 
 " Endicotts and their wives ; a regular Endicott 
 pair tree." 
 
 " How fur back does it go ? " 
 
 "To the Plantagenets." 
 
 "Now, Jeff, I want you to draw me a family 
 tree." 
 
 "A Toogood tree?" asked uncle. Aunt Desire 
 did not answer. 
 
 "Certainly," said I. "Here is a full sheet of 
 paper. How shall I begin ? " 
 
 " I should begin away back to beginnin ," said 
 Aunt Desire. " You might draw a little bioplasm 
 and a little protoplasm, that Eben tells about, for 
 the roots, and then write on one root Adam and 
 on another Eve. " 
 
 " Next ? " 
 
 " Cain and Abel," said Aunt Desire. " No, 
 Cain didn t belong to our family. I should put 
 merry The Jews. " 
 
 "Well." 
 
 " King Solomon. He didn t do quite right in
 
 24 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 all things, but I suppose I will have to own 
 him." 
 
 "Next, put Alfred the Great," she added. 
 
 "And," said Aunt Desire, in a loud whisper, 
 "leave out the Endicotts, when you get to them. 
 I ve heard that old Governor Enclicott hung 
 witches. I wouldn t want any such folks as those 
 on my family tree, would you ? " 
 
 Uncle Eben looked drolly at Aunt and me. 
 
 "I ll go and get tea now," said Aunt Desire." 
 She went out with the air of one who was mistress 
 of the situation, and that was the last I ever heard 
 of the family tree. 
 
 But if Aunt was sometimes sharp to Uncle she 
 was nevertheless true. He never had a sorrow or 
 a pain that she did not surfer too. She antici 
 pated his every want, and generally, except in one 
 thing, did everything in her power to make his 
 life happy. 
 
 This one exception is the point of my homely 
 story, and I will clearly explain it here. Aunt was 
 an ambitious woman. She was disappointed that 
 Uncle was not a more ambitious man. She wish 
 ed him to struggle for wealth and political honors. 
 For years she had daily reminded him what he 
 might have been.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 2$ 
 
 When father s business was so successful that 
 he purchased a stone-front house in a fashionable 
 street in Boston, and furnished it with a good 
 degree of elegance, Aunt Desire declared an open 
 war of words against Uncle s contentment. Envy 
 and jealousy led her often to say bitter things. 
 Uncle kept an even temper, and I once overheard 
 him say : 
 
 " You have not seen the end of brother s affairs 
 yet ; ambition and an expensive family are con 
 suming him. I would not exchange places with 
 him for his wealth. What you need, Desire, is a 
 contented spirit and a thankful heart. This world 
 is not our long home, Desire." 
 
 The overheard remark about father and his 
 affairs troubled me. It left in my mind a present 
 iment of evil, that returned again and again like a 
 shadow in my thoughtful hours. I loved Uncle 
 and respected his opinions. I am sure he loved 
 me, and he did what father seldom seemed to have 
 time to do, made me his friend and expressed his 
 affection for me. 
 
 He had never showed this spirit more than 
 during this last visit. His own sons were well 
 settled in the West. I could see that he was 
 lonely at heart, and I was happy in his affectionate
 
 26 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 confidences. The more I associated with him the 
 more father s condition and affairs troubled me ; 
 his life seemed to be a struggle for things that 
 gave him no happiness, that left him no time for 
 social or domestic affections, or independent 
 thought, and that sooner or later would turn into 
 dust. The question came again and again into 
 my mind, which will time prove the wiser and 
 the better life, father s or Uncle Eben s ?
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 MRS. DKSIKE ENDICOTT DECIDES TO COME UP 
 FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 " Now do hear that gal talk, Eben Endicott ! 
 And they always told that Boston wimmen was 
 proud, too ! Just as sure as you live, and as sar- 
 tin as my name is Desire, I m going to accept that 
 there invitation. I ve been wantin to make a 
 pilgrimage to Boston all my life. 
 
 " In the fust place, I want to go to the Monday 
 Lectureship. There are a few things in heaven 
 and on earth that I don t quite understand, and 
 Parson White don t explain um at all to my satis 
 faction. Why, he don t even know who Melchiz- 
 edek was ! I asked him once in the Bible Class 
 what made the grass green and the sky blue, and 
 he couldn t tell ; and then I made the simple 
 inquiry as to whether there would be such a thing 
 as sound if there was no one to hear it, and he 
 couldn t answer that ; and I don t think he could 
 explain how it is a man raises his hand to his
 
 28 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 head. What some people don t know in this 
 world is amazin . But I shall have a chance to 
 find out all about these unknowable things when 
 I come up from the Cape, Carrie. 
 
 " Then, too, I want to hear some music before 
 I die. If I have one desire more than another, 
 after havin all the great mysteries of the past and 
 future made clear to me, it is to hear the great 
 organ. They say some of the pipes are bigger n 
 one s body, and that it takes a steam-engine to 
 make it go. Bless your soul! just think o that, 
 Ebenezer Endicott ! Wot you laughin about, 
 Carrie ? Aint it so ? 
 
 "The fact is I m musical myself, naturally. You 
 wouldn t think so, now would ye, but I used to 
 sing in the choir. I never told you what a dread 
 ful mortification I experienced the fust time I 
 sung in church, did I ? No, well, I will some day. 
 It is a sort of curious story, not of much account ; 
 do to tell some day after a clam-bake in the 
 orchard. 
 
 "First was theology, next music. 
 
 "Well, I want to consult some o those great 
 physicians. I ve had some chronic troubles goin 
 on nigh upon twenty year. I ve been to all the 
 physicians in Barnstable County, but they haven t
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 29 
 
 done me any good. Why, would you believe it, 
 they are so ignorant that each contradicts the 
 other, and I don t get any satisfaction at all. 
 There aint any two doctors on the Cape that 
 has told me that the same thing ailed me, or that 
 prescribed the same remedy, and I have used 
 roots and yarbs until I am tired. 
 
 " Did ye ever read the doctors advertisements 
 in the Boston papers, Eben ? Wonder o wonders, 
 what cures they do perform ! Make ye all over 
 scientifically, chipper as a milkmaid, and stout as 
 a race-horse. . I want advice in some place where 
 the doctors are at least well enough educated to 
 tell you the same thing, and recommend the same 
 remedy. 
 
 "There is a little matter of law, too, that I 
 want to know about, but that aint for your ears, 
 Eben. 
 
 "Then, too, I want to see Richard Follett and 
 his new wife. Dick has got rich, they say. He 
 had a very hard time of it down here on the Cape. 
 But it was in him to be somebody, and when that 
 kind of a spirit is in a boy nothin can stand 
 against it. Ye can t make an eagle run round a 
 barnyard like a hen, as Mr. Beecher says. But 
 they do say that Dick is killin himself with work,
 
 30 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 and is merely heapin up money for an easy-going 
 family to spend after he s dead and gone. 
 
 " I have also a bag full of poetry that I want to 
 sell for Flora Pink, Jerry Pink s daughter. The 
 Pinks are awful poor, and Flora is kind o sickly 
 and needs the money. The editors of those rich 
 papers would be mighty small not to buy that 
 poetry when I tell um all the circumstances under 
 which it was written. Some of it was writ over 
 the dye-tub, when that there gal was waitin for 
 the dye to set ; and some of it was written at 
 midnight. What do you think of that ? Five 
 of the pieces are on " Spring," and four on 
 "Autumn." The last are very melancholy ones. 
 Flora s put into my keeping poetry enough to 
 supply all the editors of the city for a spell. Now, 
 does poetry command a good fair price, Carrie ? 
 
 "Well, I ve been intending to go up from the 
 Cape for forty years, and now, Eben, I ve been 
 invited, and by Carrie Endicott, too, whose father 
 lives on the Back Bay, and keeps his carriage. 
 And I m goin , sure, and next fall, too. The 
 Bible says, With all thy gettin s get wisdom. And 
 Boston, as everybody knows, is the fountain-head 
 of wisdom and learnin , from which all the streams 
 of intelligence flow. A great many of the people
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 3* 
 
 know so much they go crazy, they say. I don t 
 know how that may be ; but Carrie, Carrie Endi- 
 cott ! you needn t laugh ! You may depend upon 
 it that next winter I m comin up from the Cape. 
 
 " Think of it, Eben Endicott ! I never have 
 been out of sight of the smoke of the chimbly all 
 my days. Never had nothin nor went anywhere. 
 You ve always been just contented with a few 
 thousand dollars worth of property and a lot of 
 old books ; and I ve just done your cookin and 
 mendin , and gone neighborin and to the camp- 
 meetin s." 
 
 " Only the light kind of people travel." 
 
 "Who says that, Eben? Emerson? I thought 
 so. Solomon never said a thing like that." 
 
 "St. Paul?" 
 
 " What did he say ? Yes, what did he say ? 
 That I must n t come up from the Cape ? " 
 
 " Therewith to be content." 
 
 "That s what he said, did he, Eben? Well, I 
 don t care what he said. My mind s made up, 
 Eben, and I m just goin . Now, there ! 
 
 " There, he s gone out at last, Carrie. Think 
 of what a man Eben might have been if he d been 
 ambitious like me, and had improved his oppor 
 tunities. But you know what husband is, you
 
 32 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 know ; he s a clever man, a very clever man, and 
 a good provider and aforehanded, and he brought 
 up his children well. Don t say nothin ; now 
 that he s gone I will tell you that other reason 
 why I want to come up from the Cape. That 
 legal matter. He don t approve of what I did, 
 husband didn t. You know what Eben is ; he s a 
 good man enough as men go, but no force like 
 me. Don t ye never say nothin , I should feel 
 dreadful bad if anything were to happen to Eben ; 
 he s always been a good provider, as I said, and 
 always treated me well. I never asked him for 
 anything in my life that he didn t go right off and 
 get for me. 
 
 "It s a dead secret what I m about to tell 
 ye. Don t mention it for the world. I ve been 
 investiri . Well, I ought to have had my divi 
 dends, five per cent a montli, a year or two ago, 
 but they don t come ; they will be all the larger 
 when they do come, but there is a sort of myste- 
 riousness about the thing that I want to have 
 cleared up. That s one of the reasons why I wish 
 to come up from the Cape. 
 
 "It s a curious story, and I must tell you all 
 about it. You may have heard me speak of Rev. 
 Dr. Gamm. They used to call him the light-
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 33 
 
 house preacher, he knew so much about every 
 thing. He certainly was very gifted in his 
 tongue ; it would go like a windmill on a March 
 afternoon. He was a very social man, the doctor 
 was. Husband used to say that he had the talent 
 of veri similitude, whatever that might be. 
 
 "Well, the doctor was very unfortunate. He 
 had a disease of the throat. It came upon him 
 right in the prime of life, and compelled him to 
 hide his light under a bushel, or, to speak more 
 figuratively, the lighthouse went under a cloud. 
 So he became an insurance agent. The company 
 is all busted up now, but it paid him a great 
 salary while it lasted, $3000 a year. His name 
 appeared as treasurer on the advertisements of 
 the company, although he told me that he really 
 had nothing to do except to (write up) the company 
 for the newspapers, and sign his name to such 
 papers as the company sent to him, and to make 
 out the reports. 
 
 "He grew very fat; his throat trouble was 
 reduced to nothing but a hem, and as his work 
 was very light, he and his family used to board in 
 different places, at fine hotels. He said that he 
 looked upon the insurance business as the Lord s 
 work, since it provided for the widow and the
 
 34 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 orphan, and so he left off preachin altogether for 
 a spell. 
 
 " Three summers ago he came down to Sandwich 
 to look for a boardin place for himself and family. 
 He said that he would rather spend the summer 
 at Sandwich than on the Vineyard, because he 
 could go to the city or to the Vineyard from here 
 any day as he liked. He thought he would like to 
 board in a farm house for a change. I took him. 
 
 "One day as the Doctor and his family, husband 
 and I, were settin under the apple trees I well 
 remember the afternoon, for a shower was comin 
 up, and shadows of clouds were darkenin the bay 
 the Doctor related to us a very interestin story 
 about a discovery that had been made by some of 
 the Methodist brethren in New York. It made a 
 very strong impression on my mind, but husband 
 only said solemnly : 
 
 " Dr. Gamm, people don t get something for 
 nothing honestly." Sort of Emersonian talk, you 
 see. "The Methodists are a clean people," says 
 husband, says he. " They have had a clean record 
 for one hundred years, and I am sorry that they 
 should so far forget their primitive principles." 
 
 "Dr. Gamm sort o collapsed. But his story set 
 me all of a curiosity. It was something like this :
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE, 35 
 
 TREASURE MOUNTAIN. 
 
 " There was a gentleman of enormous wealth in 
 California, who was very ambitious to benefit the 
 human race by doin good he had been well 
 brought up and had not forgotten his early educa 
 tion. You know what Solomon says. Among 
 this man s great possessions was Treasure Moun 
 tain, full of silver, and this mountain of silver he 
 offered to the good Methodist brethren in New 
 York to establish a university in the South for the 
 education of young men for the ministry. A 
 regular George Peabody, you see. 
 
 "Well, a company had been formed for the 
 removal of Silver Mountain, with a capital of 
 $10,000,000 ; but $50,000 was needed to put this 
 mine, which reached from the earth to the heavens 
 above, in workin order, and this benevolent gen 
 tleman was willin that certain Methodist , of good 
 standin and deservin everyway, should subscribe 
 to that amount, towards the operation of the mine, 
 and he promised that the company would pay 5 
 per cent, a month on such investments. 
 
 " Five per cent, a month ! That took me, I had 
 five hundred dollars that I had been savin , and I 
 took this out of the Saving Bank and let the Doctor 
 have it to invest in Treasure Mountain for the
 
 36 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 benefit of the University ; also for my own benefit. 
 Husband didn t approve of what I did but you 
 know what husband is, you know ; don t you ever 
 say nothin , will ye ? 
 
 "Well, tis mighty curious. I havn t received 
 no dividends, nor heard anything of my $500 
 since. I hear that Dr. Gamm has an office in 
 Boston, and I shall go to see him when I come up 
 from the Cape. 
 
 " I read a paragraph in one o the papers a few 
 weeks ago that don t sound quite right. I cut it 
 out. Here it is : 
 
 "The Methodist brethren who took stock in the 
 T. M. Mine are now firm believers in the doctrine of 
 original sin and total depravity. All new stock schemes 
 are held in great disfavor at the Methodist head 
 quarters. No promoter of a new mining enterprise 
 could obtain a hearing among the dominies now, even 
 if he should present a prospectus setting forth three- 
 foot veins of silver covered with two-foot veins of gold, 
 and edged with all the precious stones spoken of in the 
 Book of Revelations." 
 
 " It makes me feel uneasy. I didn t like to show 
 it to husband ; you know what husband is, you 
 know, a nice man and a good provider, and all 
 that, but well you won t never say anything, 
 will ye, Carrie ? "
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 EBEN FAVORS DESIRE S PLANS AND ENTERTAINS 
 
 CARRIE WITH HIS YOUTHFUL RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 OF MRS. GREEN. 
 
 It was a mid-summer day. The old house was 
 shaded by a cool corner of the old orchard. The 
 doors and windows were open and we sat looking 
 out upon the long meadows of Pocasset and the 
 pleasant waters of Buzzard s Bay. 
 
 There was the same expression on the meadows 
 and the sea. In every breeze that passed, the 
 green meadows whitened with daisies, and green 
 waters with foam. There was a clear atmosphere, 
 full of sunshine over the sea ; and the white wings 
 of the gulls dipped listlessly through it on their 
 zigzag way. Here and there hung a sail, like a 
 broken wing, or a latine canvas of old. 
 
 The ospreys wheeled overhead and screamed. 
 In the orchard an oriole flamed around its nest. 
 In the old road now and then jogged a dilapidated 
 vehicle, scattering the sand.
 
 38 UP FROM THE CAPE, 
 
 It was like a land of dreams. The world seemed 
 to have gone off on a pic-nic, and to have left 
 us alone, and in our faces was a contented look, as 
 though we were glad to be left behind. 
 
 " Well, Desire, I am perfectly willing you should 
 accept Carrie s invitation, but I want you to re 
 member that wherever you may go you will find 
 no more happiness, no more beauty, no more 
 faith, hope and love, no more wealth, and no more 
 worth than what you carry with you." 
 
 Desire pushed her spectacles up her nose, and 
 put her hand half over her mouth and whispered 
 obliquely to Carrie : 
 
 "Emerson. He just gets Emerson to think for 
 him, husband does, /think for myself." 
 
 "A person need never go abroad for health," 
 continued Uncle, "the conditions of good health 
 are not outside of us but within us. And a per 
 son need never go wandering over the world to 
 find the Lord ; He s just as near to Buzzard s Bay 
 as anywhere else." 
 
 "There, Eben, you ve said enough, I never did 
 yet get out of sight of the smoke of the chimbly." 
 
 "I ain t going to make any objections, Desire, 
 to your going up to Boston from the Cape. I 
 only hope you ll bring back with you as much 
 happiness as you carry away.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 39 
 
 " I m contented to live and die right here in the 
 old house where I was born. I ve my Bible (and 
 that is as good as the Lectureship) and Shake 
 speare, and all the best histories and poets, and 
 when I want a little worldly wisdom I turn to 
 Emerson, though Job said about all that Emerson 
 has said, over again, thousands of years ago. 
 
 "And I am perfectly happy, I have no wish to 
 go even to the fair, or the circus, or the theatre, 
 or opera, or anywhere, but just to church on Sun 
 day s, and the Friday evening meetings, town 
 meetings and the yearly camp meeting. I make 
 clambakes in the orchard for other people s enjoy 
 ment and not for my own. I like to see other 
 people have a good time, and I am always willing 
 to put my own feelings aside if it will help to 
 make anybody happier. 
 
 "The greatest happiness we can have in this 
 world comes from forgetting ourselves and in 
 making others happy. He who denies himself the 
 most receives the most from the Lord. 
 
 " Running after amusement always looked to 
 me a very selfish thing. Pleasure flies from those 
 who seek it, and comes unsought to those who do 
 not think about it. A man should find the highest 
 pleasures of life in his purpose and occupations.
 
 40 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 Now, I am not hinting at you, Desire, I just want 
 you to go wherever you wish to, and take all the 
 comfort that you possibly can. I always gave free 
 permission to my boys to go to any right place 
 whenever they asked me. 
 
 "And the consequence was that they didn t 
 care to go anywhere, but just stayed at home like 
 their father, and read books and books. Then 
 they went out West and became farmers, and your 
 brother, Carrie, went to Paris. What do you 
 think of that, even to Paris, where all those polite 
 French people are that we read about in the 
 geography." 
 
 " Did you never go to places of amusement, 
 uncle ? " I asked. 
 
 " Only a few times ; that was when I was a boy. 
 I don t object to such things when they are pro 
 perly conducted, only they are not to my taste. 
 The last theatrical performance I attended was 
 some fifty years ago. I was one of the actors my 
 self." 
 
 I asked for the story. 
 
 Uncle was a pleasant story-teller, when the sub 
 ject was associated with his early life. He liked 
 to relate historic stories, and humorous incidents of 
 his boyhood and school days. The latter always
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 41 
 
 pleased me, and I sometimes noted them down in 
 my journal. So I will first introduce Uncle as a 
 story teller, in his account of 
 
 OUR ENTERTAINMENTS. 
 
 It was when I was at the Academy. One of 
 the boys, named Brown, who was a great lover of 
 Shakespeare, went to Boston and became stage- 
 struck. When he came back he gave some per 
 formances in his room for the benefit of the class, 
 and at last he suggested to us boys that it would 
 be a capital plan, to get up, as he said, " some, 
 entertainments." 
 
 "We could begin with a concert, and, after 
 some study, we could have amateur theatricals. 
 We could at least give Othello strangling Desde- 
 mona. That would produce a thrilling effect, and 
 would be something new in the Academy." 
 
 The idea of strangling Desdemona seemed to 
 us very novel and picturesque and we favored it. 
 
 There was quite a number in our school who 
 enjoyed a local reputation for their declamatory 
 abilities. We had one comic genius, and a singer 
 or two, and with this force we hoped to achieve 
 success. The girls of our acquaintance all 
 promised to come, if we bought tickets for them, 
 and pronounced the idea " splendid ! "
 
 42 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 The only difficulty was in finding a suitable place 
 in which to give our performance. The town-hall 
 was out of the question, the vestries of the 
 churches equally so, the school an impossibility, 
 and no private house would answer provided we 
 could secure one. 
 
 The only available place seemed to be a spacious 
 hay-loft over Frank Green s barn. But, unfortun 
 ately, it would be about as well to ask Frank s 
 mother for the use of her snapping black eyes as 
 for her hay-loft. 
 
 Mrs. Green was one of those loud, demonstra 
 tive, hard-working women, who go stormfully 
 through life, swift, strong and energetic, like a 
 steam-engine, equally as noisy, and almost as dan 
 gerous if you stood in her way. 
 
 She was the terror of all the children, although 
 really she was a kind-hearted woman in her own 
 way. She was always ready to do a good turn and 
 help a neighbor in distress, but she couldn t 
 endure boys idling about her premises. She was 
 sure they were trying to steal eggs, or fruit, or 
 something or other belonging to her ; and so she 
 used to sally forth on them with her eyes aflame, 
 clutching in her red right hand a most formidable 
 cowhide.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 43 
 
 I myself had two memorable encounters with 
 the good lady. I once had to take a letter to a 
 gentleman whose estate adjoined hers ; and, 
 instead of going around and reaching it by the 
 regular road, I leaped her wall and took a short cut 
 across lots. 
 
 Just as I got about half way, what should I 
 behold but Mrs. Green, cowhide in hand, accom 
 panied by two dogs, bearing down on me ! To 
 run would be utter madness, because I should be 
 certain to have the canine fangs buried in my 
 flesh long before I reached the opposite wall. 
 Strategy alone could help me in this awful emer 
 gency. Politeness and very humble bearing on 
 my part might mollify my pursuer, and these mild 
 weapons I resolved to use, encouraged by the 
 recollection that discretion is the better part of 
 valor. 
 
 My plan of defence was instantly conceived. 
 
 I stood still, and began looking about me as if 
 bewildered. 
 
 Down swept the enemy upon me. Before 
 she said a word in fact, she didn t mean to 
 speak much, except with the cowhide I very 
 politely asked her if she could inform me the 
 nearest way to Mr. Anderson s. Her eyes flamed
 
 44 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 at me awhile, then, swallowing a lump in her 
 throat, she pointed with her weapon the nearest 
 way over the wall. I thanked her with a bow and 
 retreated without a glance behind, and felt ex 
 tremely thankful when the stone wall was between 
 us. 
 
 The other encounter forms the subject of this 
 story. 
 
 Frank Green a nice, quiet lad, like his late 
 father ascertained that his mother intended to 
 go into the city soon, "for all day;" at \vhich time 
 we might have the hay-loft for our entertainment. 
 
 " First-rate !" we shouted. 
 
 "Then we ll have your hay -loft, Frank. We ll 
 have plenty of time to get ready!" cried Brown. 
 
 " Plenty !" we shouted. 
 
 "Tip-top !" ejaculated Brown. " And see, Frank, 
 you can poke round up there, you know, in the 
 meantime, and put things to rights get the hay 
 tucked away and cleaned up a bit, you know. I 
 s pose it wouldn t do for one of us to go and help 
 you ?" 
 
 " Twouldn t be well for mother to catch you, 
 that s all !" said Frank, ominously. 
 
 "No! Well, all right! You ll do all that s 
 wanted, Frank, in a quiet way, so as not to excite
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 45 
 
 suspicion," said Brown. " And now, boys, you 
 get your parts committed, and we ll have a rehear 
 sal as soon as possible next Saturday afternoon, 
 perhaps, down back of old Smith s barn." 
 
 Brown, as I have suggested, was a forward, 
 ambitious lad, and he took the whole management 
 of the affair upon himself, although the suggestion 
 was mine, in point of fact. Still I was, I confess, 
 more apt at suggesting schemes than in carrying 
 them into execution, and so very willingly con 
 ceded the work to my more energetic friend.. 
 
 At length the memorable day arrived. It was 
 as lovely a summer day as one could wish, just 
 like this. A brightness over everything, and our 
 hopes were high with the pleasure we were about 
 to enjoy and afford our friends, especially our 
 girl-friends, who would, no doubt, be charmed with 
 the performance. 
 
 Mrs. Green left for the city early in the day, 
 and was not to be home before late in the after 
 noon. Nearly all the school would be our audi 
 ence. Everything looked in a fair way for a 
 brilliant success. 
 
 At half-past two, the hour appointed, we began 
 climbing the rickety ladder that led up to the 
 hay-loft. This, of itself, made no little sport, but
 
 46 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 created some delay on account of the timidity of 
 the girls. 
 
 In the course of time, all were seated on such 
 seats as could be improvised for the occasion. 
 There were over twenty of us, all told, speakers and 
 audience. One of the boys led off with a song, in 
 such a harsh voice that we were really glad when 
 he broke down in the third verse and retired amid 
 the applause of the audience. 
 
 Brown, the ambitious Brown, was dressed in a 
 stunning manner, and had no fewer than three 
 pieces on the programme. His turn came next. 
 He stepped to the platform, or, rather, what we 
 called such, made a profound bow, and just as he 
 uttered the words, " Ladies and Gentlemen," a 
 voice from below shouting, " WHO S UP THERE?" 
 made my hair stand on end. 
 
 There was a dead silence. 
 
 " Ladies and gentlemen," continued Brown," 
 " I arise to do you the honor of giving you a 
 selection from Shakespeare. It is from Othello, 
 and I think you never saw anything like the per 
 formance that I am now about to perform." [He 
 was right.) " I ve been to Boston and have seen 
 it done, and it brought tears to the aujunce s 
 eyes.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 47 
 
 "Othello, you know, was jealous of Desdemona, 
 his wife. One day he came home and found her 
 asleep, and determined to smother her. with a 
 bolster. This I shall now proceed to do." 
 
 The excitement was intense. Brown kicked 
 together some loose hay, and threw his thin coat 
 over it with the amazing declaration : 
 
 " That is Desdemona ! " 
 
 He then took a large towel he had brought, and 
 held it up : 
 
 " That is the bolster." 
 
 Brown struck an attitude, and in a deep 
 voice approached the supposed Desdemona on her 
 couch. 
 
 "/ will kill thee!" 
 
 " I say," said a strange, hesitating voice, not at 
 all in the programme. 
 
 There was a short silence, then Brown pro 
 ceeded. 
 
 "I must weep." [And he did.) " But they are 
 cruel tears. She wakes ! " 
 
 Then, in a squeaking voice, supposed to repre 
 sent the waking Desdemona, he said : 
 
 WJws there ? Othello ? 
 
 " I say, whos there ? " 
 
 This latter question was hardly an echo. The 
 voice seemed to come up from below.
 
 48 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 But Brown was full of his subject now, and 
 proceeded in a high voice : 
 
 " Thou art to die ! " 
 
 He then added in a changed voice, supposed to 
 be Desdemona s : 
 
 " The Lord have mercy on me ! " 
 
 Brown next bent over the bundle of hay and 
 proceeded to smother the helpless wife. A 
 strange, convulsive sound, as of one in mortal 
 agony, seemed to issue from the old coat and hay. 
 It was a thrilling moment. 
 
 " / say, whos up there on the mow ? I want to 
 knoiv right off, now ! " 
 
 It was Mrs. Green ! 
 
 She wasn t on the programme. 
 
 "I say, who s there?" said the voice in such 
 a resolute tone as caused us all to start. 
 
 There was profound silence. 
 
 " I hear some one up in that loft ; come down, I 
 say, at once !" 
 
 "/; up here, mother," said Frank, with pale 
 lips. 
 
 " Yes, and who else ? It wasn t your voice I 
 heard. Is tJiere any one else there? Tell me before 
 I come up with the cowhide !"
 
 THE BARN THEATRICALS.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 49 
 
 " Oh, then and there was hurrying to and fro, 
 And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress." 
 
 Yes, it was a fearful moment, and to this day, 
 after the lapse of thirty years, I remember my 
 own sensations. Frank was the first to descend ; 
 and the sound of the cowhide on his jacket was 
 no means encouraging. 
 
 One after another we dropped to the floor, 
 where the amiable old lady was applying the cow 
 hide in a most vigorous style, uttering all kinds 
 of threats and exclamations with equal force and 
 perseverance. 
 
 At last the skirts began to make their appear 
 ance. 
 
 " What ! Girls ! " 
 
 This apparition completely bewildered her. 
 Boys were bad enough, but girls fairly par 
 alyzed her arm for a moment, so that the cowhide 
 dropped at her side. 
 
 But Mrs. Green was equal to the occasion and 
 faithfully did her duty. 
 
 "Jane, is that you ? " 
 
 Whack! Whack! 
 
 " Liddy, is that you ? " 
 
 Whack! Whack! 
 
 " Thankful, is that you ? "
 
 50 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 Whack! Whack! 
 
 And in this uniform manner each girl as she 
 descended the ladder of the improvised theatre 
 was met, and given an inspiration which acceler 
 ated her movements in the nearest direction 
 towards home. 
 
 I was not forgotten in the general discipline. I 
 had all the entertainments I cared to receive that 
 afternoon, and I have not been to any place of 
 amusement since. I did not even go to see the 
 " Pinafore.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE OLD ORCHARD AND BURYING-GROUND. 
 
 The charm of a small farm on the New England 
 Coast is usually its orchard. An old apple orchard 
 in Barnstable County and the Bay towns has beau 
 ties that no city forrester could produce in his 
 imitations of Italian gardens. From the time that 
 the blue-birds arrive and the red-headed wood 
 peckers first show their mottled wings on the 
 dead boughs until the last pippin falls there is 
 pleasure to be taken in the orchard. When the 
 orioles and thrushes come, and the arms of the 
 trees are filled with blooms ; when the air is full 
 of the songs of robins and the passing breezes 
 with delicious, almost suffocating odors ; when the 
 listless May days return with the hum of bees, 
 and the slightest stir in the air sends down show 
 ers of broken blossoms in creamy flakes upon the 
 emerald turf ; in dewy June mornings and celestial 
 mid-summer days ; in early autumn and late 
 autumn when the falling of the fruit follows the
 
 52 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 falling of the blossoms and when at last the drop 
 ping of the russet leaves ends all, it seems as 
 though something Paradisic remained in the mossy 
 old trees, and one is reminded that the same Hand 
 that fashioned the immortal gardens gave the 
 world such scenes as these whose beauties the 
 resurrective power of the spring-time eternally 
 renews. 
 
 The orchard at uncle s was indeed a noble one ; 
 it had grown into mossy colonnades in the salt air 
 of more than fifty years. The dead limbs were 
 full of wood-pecker s holes, the certain evidences 
 of age. Into the abandoned nests of the wood 
 peckers of other years, the wrens and blue-birds 
 swarmed. 
 
 Wherever else the air was close and sultry, the 
 orchard was always cool. The poultry loved the 
 orchard, and the peacock announced the coming 
 storm from its bars. The children of two genera 
 tions had played there, looking into the birds 
 nests in the spring, and fighting mimic battles, 
 like Francis I. with the oranges, in the fall. 
 
 At one end of the orchard was the ruin of a 
 cider mill. Here in anti-temperance days the 
 waste apples were ground. It was a ruin worthy 
 of an artist, and one too that was suggestive of 
 progress and moral reform.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 53 
 
 The cider-makers were a vanished race, but one 
 old custom associated with the apple harvest, 
 Eben steadily maintained, it was the Apple 
 Farm . 
 
 Eben s "Apple Farm s" were famous. The 
 neighbors came to them from far and near. That 
 two patent paring-machines would have done as 
 much work as all the invited guests, did not 
 matter. It was an old-time custom, and one 
 against which nothing evil could be said. 
 
 Eben prided himself on his story telling as 
 much as a star lecturer on his new fall lecture. 
 These "apple parins " gave him an opportunity to 
 rehearse the old stories of Plymouth, the Cape 
 and the Islands. 
 
 There was not a legend of colonial times with 
 which he was not familiar, whether of the Cape 
 towns or the harbor towns of Massachusetts Bay. 
 The old Indian history from the time that Ver- 
 assano, the Florentine, first saw the ancestors of 
 Massasoit, was better known to him than to any 
 writer on the subject I have ever read. He was 
 a careful reader of Drake, and almost always was 
 able to add to this historian s narrations some 
 legend or story of equal interest, if of less value. 
 
 Eben was also a poet, and he sometimes read a
 
 54 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 poem at the " Parin Bee." Music of flute and 
 fiddle, songs, story telling, and an occasional poem, 
 made these simple gatherings delightful occasions. 
 Many love-makings had begun here, and several 
 proposals of marriage had been bashfully made by 
 rustic lovers in the full moonlight, as they returned 
 from Uncle Eben s. 
 
 The great attraction of these merry-makings to 
 older persons was the supper. Aunt Desire was 
 a natural cook, and she put her pride and reputa 
 tion into every dish and loaf of bread prepared for 
 the "bee." Her brown bread was heavy with 
 plums, and even her baked sweet apples were 
 dusted with sugar. Her roast meats had all the 
 same shade of brown, and her "slumps," as she 
 called the enormous pot apple pics, were so 
 crusted with "sweetenin " that they were as 
 toothsome as candy. 
 
 The orchard wall was filled with old green 
 mosses. Robins made their nests among them. 
 On the wall near the porch was a row of house 
 leeks, and under it a long line of currant bushes. 
 
 Beyond the orchard and the ruined cider mill 
 was the old neighborhood burying ground. The 
 way to it wound around the orchard -and was 
 shaded by cherry trees. From the burying ground
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 55 
 
 we had an extended view of Buzzard s Bay and 
 the Islands. 
 
 The grave yard was nearly two centuries old. 
 The pioneers, of the days of Queen Anne and the 
 Georges rested here under dark slate stones, with 
 dreadful effigies. Here slept three generations of 
 the Endicotts, and here the old preachers of Cal- 
 vinistic faith and Cromwellian courage. 
 
 I used to go to the place with Uncle on Sunday 
 afternoons, and sit under the one solitary tree that 
 cast a shadow in this open town of the dead. 
 Uncle seemed to love the spot. 
 
 I said to him one day while we were there. 
 " Life seems to me all a mystery I wish I knew 
 what is farther on." 
 
 He laid his hand in mine, thoughtfully: 
 
 " If you would know what is farther on, you 
 must go farther on," he said, " Life is a mystery. 
 We have come out of the past, and what our 
 ancestors were largely determines what we are 
 now. We know more in childhood than in 
 infancy : more in manhood than boyhood, and the 
 horizon of life grows broader with age. Evolutions 
 of the past have produced us, and landed us on 
 life s mysterious shores. Other evolutions await 
 us. We shall lose this material covering, and the
 
 56 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 soul will go forth into the infancy of a new life to 
 progress and expand infinity is before us. 
 
 "The stars are but the shining dust 
 
 Of my divine abode, 
 
 The pavements of those heavenly courts 
 Where I shall dwell with God." 
 
 " I wish to believe as you do," said I, " but I 
 can arrive to no conclusion ; the great teachers 
 of religion tell me such different and contradictory 
 things. I look around me and what do I see ? 
 The Romish church condemns the Protestant 
 church as heretical, and the Protestant world holds 
 Rome to be Anti-Christ ; each sends the other to 
 doom and loss. The Greek church condemns both. 
 Even the Protestant church is full of sects which 
 teach different ways of salvation, and each con 
 demns the ways of the others. The creeds of fifty 
 churches in Boston contradict each other. Only 
 one can be right good men teach them all 
 what am I to believe ? Science explains nothing ; 
 whence we came, why we are here, or whither we 
 are going. 
 
 " I wish to know the truth and to practice it. 
 Your life and example make me wish to think 
 rightly and do rightly. Every young man at
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 57 
 
 times thinks as I do now, and is perplexed as I 
 am perplexed." 
 
 " My boy," said uncle, " the truths that Christ 
 taught to the woman at the well of Samaria 
 will never contradict human experience, or change. 
 The old beliefs are going and I do not regret their 
 loss, but these truths will eternally stand ; every 
 good that one does will be rewarded, and every 
 evil punished, and the pure spiritual life that the 
 gospel teaches is the best condition of the soul. 
 We have an evil nature. We can change it into a 
 good nature, and over that change the gates of 
 heaven open and glow. Christ made that change 
 possible, and preached it as the need of the world. 
 I believe in churches they are God s agents 
 but no church can unchurch any man who has 
 within him this spiritual life. These truths will 
 never change." 
 
 His remarks impressed me, and for the first 
 time in my life, I read that night the book of 
 John. 
 
 There was one stone in the windy old grave-yard 
 that rose above the others. Uncle told me that 
 he erected it at his own expense out of regard to 
 a most unselfish and true man. Under the name 
 " Bonny " were these curious lines :
 
 58 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 " No foot of land do I possess, 
 No cottage in the wilderness, 
 A poor wayfaring man." 
 
 I one Sunday asked uncle the purport of this 
 strange inscription, and he related to me this 
 beautiful account of one of the old Cape minis 
 ters : 
 
 A HILLSIDE STORY. 
 
 " It is not so much what we do for ourselves as 
 what we do for others that brings us love and 
 influence. 
 
 John Wesley was a self-forgetful man. He died 
 poor, and his refusal of money for more than need 
 ful purposes was one of the sources of his marvel 
 lous influence over men. At the age of forty, when 
 the storm of persecution had spent its force, and 
 the fruits of his labor began to appear, he wrote 
 the once famous hymn beginning, " How happy is 
 the pilgrim s lot." In this hymn he gave an inci 
 dent of his own experience as follows : 
 
 " No foot of land do I possess, 
 No cottage in the wilderness, 
 
 A poor wayfaring man: 
 I lodge awhile in tents below, 
 Or gladly wander to and fro. 
 Till I my Canaan gain,"
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. S9 
 
 This was literally true. When he and John 
 Nelson began to preach among the rough seafar 
 ing population of Cornwall, no one would give 
 them a meal s victuals. " We used to preach, and 
 then dine off the blackberry bushes," he said. 
 Before he died he was accustomed to preach from 
 an hillside pulpit to congregations of thirty thou 
 sand people in Cornwall, and both in the noble 
 man s castle and the peasant s hut he would have 
 been a welcome and an honored guest. 
 
 The old travelling preachers in New England, 
 and the then West in the times of Jesse Lee, were 
 greatly influenced by the reformer s example in 
 respect to their worldly affairs. They were often 
 treated with disrespect, but their hardships seemed 
 to heighten their spiritual life, and to renew their 
 confidence in their Master s assurance of final 
 triumph here and future reward hereafter. 
 
 One of these "circuit riders," or "saddle-bag 
 preachers," as they were sometimes called, was 
 Father Bonny. He rode thousands of miles in a 
 year, and he almost always prefaced a sermon by 
 singing the hymn I have quoted, or another be 
 ginning,
 
 60 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 " Come on, my partners in distress, 
 My comrades in the wilderness, 
 Who still your bodies feel." 
 
 A rich village esquire, who was a man of gener 
 ous impulses, but wholly indifferent to religion, 
 often entertained Father Bonny on his annual 
 visits to the town. 
 
 "The old man shall not have occasion to sing 
 No foot of land do I possess any more," he said 
 one day to his wife. "To-morrow is Thanksgiv 
 ing, and I am going to give him something at last 
 to be thankful for. Now that we have moved into 
 our new house, I think I will give him the deed 
 of the old homestead and the ten-acre lot. We 
 shall not miss the property. It belonged to my 
 father. I want it kept as of old." 
 
 He fulfilled his intention, and the old circuit 
 rider accepted the present with evident joy and 
 gratitude. 
 
 A year passed. Again Thanksgiving came, and 
 Father Bonny was expected to return to the town 
 and preach. He arrived at last, a white-haired, 
 trembling old man, and immediately went to the 
 stately house of the esquire, who the year before, 
 had made him the thanksgiving present. 
 
 Almost his first words were, "You must take it
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 6 1 
 
 back, Squire. It takes away my comfort when I 
 sing my hymn." 
 
 "Take what back?" asked the astonished 
 esquire. 
 
 "The house and lot, and then I can go to the 
 school-house and preach and sing my hymn in 
 peace." 
 
 "But I thought you d be thankful for it," said 
 the esquire. 
 
 "Squire, you will not understand me in this 
 matter, I am sure. I wish you could. But you 
 will believe me when I say that I have things to 
 be thankful for of which you are ignorant. You 
 cannot appreciate them, because you have not 
 experienced their blessed effects upon the heart 
 and life. Here is the deed. Take it. " 
 
 The esquire took it hesitatingly, but in silence. 
 As the deed left the old man s hand a holy calm 
 came into his face. He leaned back in the chair, 
 pressed his hands together and sang, in a tremb 
 ling voice, 
 
 "How happy is the pilgrim s lot, 
 How free from every anxious thought, 
 From earthly hope or fear." 
 
 His face fairly beamed with happiness when he 
 came to the line, "No foot of land do I possess."
 
 62 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 "Squire," he said, "would you know why I am so 
 happy ? Listen to the next verse : 
 
 " There is a house, my portion fair, 
 My treasure and my heart are there, 
 And my abiding home." 
 
 His voice faltered, but he presently added, 
 
 " The angels beckon me away, 
 And Jesus bids me come." 
 
 " Squire, I am not feeling well. I am sick. 1 
 think my work is almost done." 
 
 So it was. The village esquire saw the truth. 
 There were things to be thankful for that he knew 
 not of. They were more than wealth. They were 
 the marvellous spiritual perceptions, that are 
 supernatural gifts, by which a man knows that God 
 loves him and he loves God. It is not delusion. 
 This love of his God and the consciousness of 
 nearness to him had moulded the whole life of this 
 self-denying man. They had made him a blessing 
 to others, and had lighted the future with a bright 
 ness that made the grave a portal of delight. 
 Such experiences are born of heaven and not of 
 earth. 
 
 I had begun to take more serious views of life 
 under uncle s influence. The good man noticed
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 63 
 
 the change, and it seemed to give him great 
 pleasure. As I have said, he sometimes wrote 
 poems, homely rhymes, yet agreeable renderings 
 of wholesome truths and helpful illustrations of 
 right living. Soon after the talks I have given, I 
 found on my table, one night, these lines. I put 
 them in my note-book after reading, and I have 
 since read them thoughtfully many times. They 
 have helped me, plain as they are. 
 
 TO JEFFERSON. 
 I. 
 
 When the false teachers rise, more subtile than wise, 
 
 Who the faith of the good would destroy, 
 Who would rob you at last of the gold of the skies, 
 And, leave you but earthly alloy, 
 
 Believe them not. 
 Each evil you do will prove sorrow to you, 
 
 And each virtuous action a joy; 
 Be true to yourself and to others be true, 
 And be true to your Maker, my boy. 
 
 II. 
 
 They may say the Designer came from the design, 
 
 That evil was meant to enjoy, 
 
 That the striving for wealth and the babble of wine 
 Of the soul are a fitting employ. 
 
 Believe them not. 
 For each evil you do will prove sorrow to you, 
 
 And each virtuous action a joy ; 
 Be true to yourself and to others be true, 
 And be true to your Maker, my boy.
 
 64 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 ill. 
 
 The soul in dead matter received not its birth, 
 
 Nor the thoughts that the senses employ ; 
 And no long evolution has passed o er the earth 
 Without an Evolver, my boy. 
 
 Believe them not. 
 Each evil you do will prove sorrow to you, 
 
 And each virtuous action a joy ; 
 Be true to yourself and to others be true, 
 And true to your Maker, my boy. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The soul is a growth in the good or the ill, 
 
 Each virtue toward heaven ascends ; 
 Each noble act strengthens the wing of the will, 
 And evil to permanence tends. 
 
 Believe them not. 
 Each evil you do will prove sorrow to you, 
 
 And each virtuous action a joy ; 
 Be true to yourself and to others be true, 
 And true to your Maker, my boy. 
 
 Whate er they may say, be sure the false way 
 
 Will leave you at last but life s scars ; 
 The lights and the flash of the gilded saloon 
 Are not the pure rays of the stars. 
 
 Believe them not. 
 Each evil you do one day you will rue, 
 
 When death shall life s prospects destroy; 
 Then be true to yourself and to others be true, 
 And true to your Maker, my boy. 
 
 VI. 
 
 The guide of the soul is the old Bible still, 
 And the teacher of spiritual joy,
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. ,65 
 
 And he only finds loss, let him go where he will, 
 Who turns from its counsels, my boy. 
 
 Believe them not. 
 For each evil you do will prove sorrow to you, 
 
 Whatever your hands may employ, 
 Then be true to yourself and to others be true, 
 And true to the Master, my boy. 
 
 UNCLE EBEN. 
 3
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 AUNT EXPRESSES HER OPINION OF SISTER 
 CARRIE S BEAU. 
 
 "Jeff Jefferson, sit down here, under the 
 woodbine. I don t like to say it, but I can t help 
 it ; I don t like your sister Carrie s beau at all, 
 that Rev. Mr. Glass. He hasn t any blood in 
 him, no eyesight to speak of, and he talks through 
 his nose. 
 
 "Then, too, I can t understand half that he 
 says, can you ? Yesterday he said to uncle as I 
 was cookin , that everything was tendin to the 
 complete and possible pan. 
 
 " The complete and possible pan ! After all 
 the trouble I had had on the Cape with the tin- 
 peddlers, I was glad to know that an ample and 
 possible pan was to be the outcome of everything 
 at last, but as that kind of pan would be a rather 
 meagre result of the evolutionary processes of 
 creation/ as he called it, I concluded that some 
 other kind of pan must be meant.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 6/ 
 
 "There is one question that always puzzled me, 
 I wonder if it ever troubled anyone else ; it is 
 why evil should be in the world at all ? So I 
 thought I would ask Rev. Mr. Glass. 
 
 " Evil/ said he, is the remnant of our old ani 
 mal nature the old animal in us, so to speak, not 
 yet wholly eliminated in the rise of man. 
 
 "I clapped both hands to my cap-strings. Evil 
 is the old animals left in us in the rise of man ! 
 You don t think, Mr Glass, that man was once an 
 animal ? 
 
 " Certainly, madam. 
 
 " And what shall we be next ? 
 
 "Man is rising, madam, said he, rising. The 
 time will come when man will no longer talk, but 
 will communicate thought by mental impressions ; 
 when he will no longer eat, but assimilate ; when 
 he will no longer wear clothing, but will be sur 
 rounded by a radiation, a halo ; and there will 
 come a time, madam, when it will no longer be 
 fashionable to wear the body at all. 
 
 " That s so, said I. It isn t fashionable to 
 wear the body a great while, even now. How 
 long do you think it will be before that time will 
 come, Mr. Glass ? 
 
 " He said something about multifarious ages,
 
 68 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 and, law, I couldn t understand him, no more than 
 I could a blackbird. If a man s got anything to 
 say, why don t he say it, and not go all around 
 Robin Hood s barn, that way ? 
 
 " I am naturally fond of music. I can sing nearly 
 all the tunes in Gospel Hymns No. i, 2, and 3, 
 and the singing of those hymns and tunes has 
 made me a better woman. 
 
 "One day, as Mr. Glass stood leaning on the 
 banister in a very staturesque way, as Carrie 
 calls it when he stands on one foot, with the toe 
 of his other foot just touching the floor, one knee 
 crooked like one s elbow, he said to me with a far 
 off look in his face. 
 
 " Who is your favorite composer? 
 
 " P. P. Bliss, said I. 
 
 " Bliss, Bliss he seemed thinking over the 
 great names of the past, sort of wandering through 
 the Middle Ages Bliss, how strange, I never 
 heard of him." 
 
 " More than twelve million copies of his books 
 have been sold, said I. Sell like hot cakes in 
 England, Scotland and Ireland too. Why, every 
 child knows the compositions of P. P. Bliss. 
 
 " Extraordinary. He drummed with his fingers 
 absently on the banister. Mr. Bliss must be an
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 69 
 
 American composer, else I would have known of 
 him. 
 
 " Yes, he is an American composer, said I, 
 and my opinion is that his hymns and tunes 
 have done more to help the honest people of 
 America to a better and happier life than any 
 other man. I think that that man is the best 
 writer, whether it be of books or music, who does 
 the most good in the world : don t you, Mr. Glass? " 
 
 " I see, Madam, you value art merely as an influ 
 ence on character and as an educator of the spirit 
 ual sentiments. A provincial musician, like Tom 
 Moore, would satisfy a taste like that. With us, 
 the case is different. We value art for art alone. 
 We do not value it for its influence on character 
 at all. We do not value it either for the light and 
 hope it may bring to common souls. 
 
 " Then what is the good of it ? 
 
 " If you had had an artistic training the question 
 would have been superfluous, madam. The prin 
 ciple is this art is art. The great artist does 
 not seek to apply it to vulgar uses. If you were 
 to attend one of the concerts of the Thalia Club 
 you would get my idea better. Classical art can 
 only be understood by illustration. P. P. Bliss : 
 Bliss, an American composer ; has had much
 
 70 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 influence among American people. Strange I 
 never heard of him. The fact is I do not read 
 American papers ; occasionally look over the 
 National, that is about the only American paper 
 we Club House men ever read. 
 
 " He continued to drum on the banister with the 
 same far-away look in his eyes. I thought he 
 must be in a sort of artistic rapture ; spell-bound, 
 so to speak, but after he had gone, I happened to 
 glance up at the corner bracket to which his atten 
 tion had been directed, and what do you think I saw 
 there ? The statue of Prayin Samuel, that used 
 to be there ? No, Carrie had taken that down and 
 put up a looking-glass. 
 
 " Now, a man like that can t have any good sense. 
 What could he do to support a family ? That s 
 the kind of people they make institutions of I 
 mean asylums and such. 
 
 " I mean to have a square talk with Carrie, some 
 day. I don t care if he was a Harvard divinity 
 student. I want Carrie Endicott to remember 
 that she has got Puritan blood in her veins, and 
 when she marries, I hope it will be to a man, and 
 not to a boy whose legs are too airy to hang his 
 hat on. You don t like such people, now do you, 
 Jefferson ? "
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 I RECEIVE A STRANGE LETTER FROM FATHER. 
 
 Riding, boating, wandering over the sandy hills, 
 helping Uncle Eben ! How pleasantly the summer 
 days passed, and how like a home indeed seemed 
 the old house where my ancestors had lived and 
 died ! 
 
 I had written to father for some money a 
 moderate amount and in my letter I had spoken 
 of my affectionate respect for Uncle Eben, and my 
 interest in his opinions and the helps and com 
 forts of his simple, democratic way of life. 
 
 Father had never been confidential with me. 
 He seemed to be ambitious that I should be well 
 educated and should go into good society that 
 was all. I never ran to his easy-chair to tell him 
 my little affairs, to kiss him good night, or took 
 arm-in-arm walks with him. Other boys did these 
 things. I envied them. 
 
 I received an answer to my letter that at once 
 made me happy yet apprehensive of some impend-
 
 I 
 72 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 ing evil. It kindled a flame of real affection in 
 my heart, yet left me ill at ease. With the sun 
 light came a cloud. 
 It read as follows : 
 
 HOTEL WELLESLEV, 
 July 2oth. 
 
 MY DEAR SON: And I can truly say, dear son. I 
 have not shown you much sympathy or affection, and I 
 have expressed to you none ; hut something that you 
 have done almost unconsciously has turned my thoughts 
 constantly to you for the last three weeks, and has 
 brought into my experience a strong sense of love for 
 you. It is the only happiness I have. 
 
 It was this: you said to Carrie that you wished to 
 spend the summer in such a way as to make me as little 
 expense as possible. How different is this from the 
 conduct of the rest of the family! It showed me that 
 you saw that I was overworking, was troubled, and 
 that you have at heart some real regard for me. 
 
 The small amount of money for which you now ask, 
 and which I send, shows, also, that what you said was 
 not mere sentiment. Your expressed regard for Brother 
 Eben and his simple republican home, accords now with 
 my own feelings. Jefferson, let me say to you what I 
 have not said in my letters to any other member of my 
 family, I love you ! 
 
 I wish to tell you privately that I am greatly troubled 
 about my business affairs. At times my brain burns. 
 I get up at night, for I cannot sleep much, and I walk, 
 walk. It is very beautiful here, the great pine groves,
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 73 
 
 the winding Charles, the hills, the gardens, and the 
 prospect of the college. But your mother is not satis 
 fied ; she says it is too quiet for her, socially, and she 
 has decided to spend the rest of the season in Newport. 
 I shall return to my home in the city. I have no heart 
 to go to Newport, haunted as I am by business secrets 
 that I can share with no one. 
 
 Your brother in Paris seems to me very thoughtless 
 and extravagant. He has just asked me for another 
 draft of ^"250. His letter is filled with descriptions of 
 fashionable life, all about the "swells" at Etretat, 
 and expresses no regard for me. How heartless it 
 seems beside of yours ! 
 
 Jefferson, I have made some mistakes in life. I 
 engaged in speculation to meet the expenses of a very 
 ambitious family. My ventures were very successful 
 for a time ; they have not been so of late. I hope it 
 will end well. 
 
 I have not made friends of my family ; the excite 
 ments and demands of business have left me no time. 
 I have not had time to think and read books, or to 
 cultivate a religious faith, like Eben. I have not had 
 time to care for my own health. The consequence is 
 that this world seems to me empty and selfish, and the 
 future dark and hopeless. My health is breaking at 
 forty-two. I cannot sleep, as I have told you; my 
 brain is always awake. I have no one but you to love 
 me. I sometimes wish I had followed the traditions of 
 my family, and had lived as simple but true a life as 
 your Uncle Eben s. 
 
 I think of the Cape constantly; of the old house, the 
 orchard, the burying-ground. If I were to die suddenly
 
 74 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 I would wish to be buried there, where brother would 
 care for my grave. I have a presentiment of coming 
 misfortune. I can feel a shadow beginning to steal 
 over the sun, though it has yet only touched it. If 
 anything happens to me I wish you to go to live with 
 Eben. He will speak charitably of me to you ; he will 
 understand. You are my own true son. 
 
 Remember me always, whatever may happen, as 
 Your loving father, 
 
 HENRY ENDICOTT. 
 
 I read this letter over twenty times. I did not 
 show it to Carrie. I withheld it from Uncle for I 
 knew that there were some things in it that would 
 cause him pain. What was I to infer from it ? 
 
 Many things, as my story will show. It had 
 one immediate effect it made me love my father 
 more than any one in the world, and resolve to be 
 true to him and his interests. It gave to my life 
 two elements it needed, affection and a purpose.
 
 
 CAPE CLAM-BAKE.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE CLAM -BAKE, AND STORY -TELLING UNDER THE 
 TREES. 
 
 The clam-bakes in Uncle Eben s orchard were 
 famous in the towns of the Cape. Several church 
 societies held their " annual " clam-bakes there ; 
 mid-summer " feasts of tabernacles ;" gatherings of 
 rustic simplicity, such as are known only on the 
 Rhode Island and Massachusetts coast. A West 
 ern man, a Southerner, or a foreigner can have 
 little conception of the social charm of these pro 
 vincial merry-makings. Almost every church 
 society on or near the Southern New England 
 coast has its annual clam-bake. 
 
 In fact many of the churches in the country 
 and small towns depend upon the profits of this 
 out-of-door festival to make up the deficits in 
 their " running expenses " and in the minister s 
 small salary. 
 
 " How do you raise your minister s salary ? " I 
 once asked of a deacon who lived in one of the 
 small coast towns.
 
 76 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 " We pay him well ; he s first-class, and an 
 amazing smart preacher. I don t know how we 
 would get along if it wern t for the clam-bake. 
 Last year we had two." 
 
 The clam-bake is of Indian origin. How it 
 became a kind of church festival we cannot tell. 
 Its customs are peculiar to itself. The clam-bakes 
 at the popular summer resorts have little in com 
 mon with them. 
 
 When the "trustees" of some rustic church 
 decide that they have a clam-bake, the members 
 of the church and society feel that they are bound 
 to give it their practical support. 
 
 A few days before the feast the men and boys 
 of the church and society go " clamming " twice a 
 day, at the low tides. Each has his hoe and 
 basket, and the bivalves which they dig are placed 
 in a common pile. 
 
 On the day before the great event, a party of 
 men go fishing, giving their time and its results to 
 the common cause. 
 
 While the men are thus preparing for the rustic 
 feast, the women are as busy making brown-bread, 
 white-bread, " stuffings," puddings and pies for 
 the same purpose. These preparations are the 
 topic of talk of the neighborhood.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 77 
 
 The day arrives, almost always a fine one 
 usually in August "after haying." The sun comes 
 up blazing over the sea, coloring the thin fogs as 
 they roll away, and lighting up the half of each 
 white sail that drifts along the watery horizon. 
 
 The air is cool and refreshing, after the last 
 evening s heat. The birds sing in the old orch 
 ards ; the dew quickly disappears, filling the air 
 with the odor of new-mown hay in its drying. 
 
 At an early hour the "trustees" prepare on the 
 ground in a grove or orchard a "bake-hole" of 
 "live " stones, and put upon the stones a huge pile 
 of cord-wood. 
 
 The wood is lighted ; the smoke curls into the 
 light air, a great flame arises and is fed by logs 
 of seasoned wood for some two hours. The "live" 
 stones are thus heated, and into this simple oven 
 from ten to forty bushels of clams and a great 
 quantity of fish, together with Irish potatoes and 
 sweet potatoes and green corn are placed, and are 
 baked under the direction of a " manager " who 
 must be a man of experience, judgment and skill 
 in such matters, or the " bake" may come out 
 "raw" or underdone, and prove a failure. 
 
 The orchards or groves where these festivals are 
 held are usually on hill-sides or on some part of
 
 78 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 the coast over-looking the sea. They are leafy 
 and cool, with an over-tide of summer sunlight 
 glimmering through the boughs. 
 
 The tables for the feast, of rude boards, are 
 picturesquely .spread under the arches of young 
 apples or acorns. The ospreys wheel and scream 
 in the air above, and the locusts sing in the tree- 
 tops. 
 
 In the middle of the forenoon the gathering 
 begins. Every vehicle from the houses for miles 
 around comes loaded with the young, middle-aged 
 and old; all in holiday dress or Sunday clothes. 
 Aged people who do not meet oftener are sure to 
 renew their old friendships at the clam-bake once 
 a year, and relate to each other an annual chapter 
 of their uneventful lives : their fluctuations of 
 health, their rheumatisms, when they heard last 
 "from brother Jeems s wife," and how the Cobb 
 family "out west," are getting along. 
 
 The women bring contributions of new made 
 butter, and dressings, pies and cake. 
 
 As soon as the bake-hole is "open," the feast is 
 hurriedly served, while the clams and fish are 
 "hot." The young people are in high spirits; it 
 is a merry, chatty scene ; simple and innocent. 
 No poet has sung it ; no painter attempted to 
 paint it.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 7 9 
 
 After the dinner remarks are made by the 
 pastor, and by invited guests who are generally 
 from the city and pay for their entertainment in 
 contributions of cheap jokes and small talk. 
 Songs are sung, and the rest of the day is devoted 
 to recreations, swinging, croquet, boating, confiden 
 tial talks, and more singing. 
 
 Aunt Desire was the soul of benevolence at 
 these rural festivals. Her rooms were open to 
 the old and young ; she supplied from her own 
 cupboards any articles for which provision had not 
 been made, and usually attended to the cooking of 
 the dressings, a matter that required especial care. 
 
 After the dinner was over the children would 
 gather around her in some quiet place under the 
 trees, and ask her for stories of old Colony times. 
 These were not only interesting in themselves, 
 but she usually added somewhat to their charm 
 by giving cookies to all her appreciative hearers ; 
 and as aunt s cookies were unequalled she never 
 lacked an audience. 
 
 One of the small societies of one of the Plymouth 
 county towns had arranged with Uncle Eben for 
 a clam-bake and picnic in the orchard. The 
 church was poor, and Aunt Desire took an especial 
 interest in this gathering for that reason. She
 
 80 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 invited the Rev. Mr. Glass to remain a few days 
 longer than he had intended, so as to "enjoy the 
 bake " and address the children. She remarked to 
 me that she did not think that what my clerical 
 friend would say would be of .much interest or 
 value, but that it " would be handy to have a Bos 
 ton minister on the grounds, just for the name of 
 it, you know." 
 
 Aunt made preparation for the gathering by 
 baking "three stone jars full of cookies," as she 
 expressed the result of her labors over the oven, 
 one sultry August morning. 
 
 "And now, Carrie," she said to my sister, "I 
 want you to think out a Boston story to tell to the 
 children, a real pretty one, something that will do 
 us credit." 
 
 Mr. Glass had never seen one of these shore 
 dinners. He seemed to take much interest in it, 
 and remarked to me, that this was " something 
 extraordinary, really remarkable." He even 
 helped bring wood for feeding the fire of the stone 
 oven, until a snake chanced to run out of the wood 
 pile, "a wiggling reptile, that might be poisonous," 
 that caused him to make a sudden retreat, and 
 look upon that part of the field of operations with 
 a disturbed and hesitating countenance.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 8 1 
 
 Aunt had her usual audience after dinner. More, 
 not only the children gathered around her, and 
 sung their songs, but many old people, who sung 
 several camp-meeting hymns, and talked of the 
 manners and customs of other days. 
 
 A STARTLED CHURCH CHOIR. 
 
 "A story?" said Aunt Desire. "Well, there s 
 nothin disobleegin about me. I am always ready 
 to talk when any wants to hear me. Some of 
 my friends do not always want to hear me : hus 
 band for instance. Have some cookies f 
 
 " Well, I think of one that will perhaps please 
 the young people and old people too. It happened 
 long ago, nigh upon fifty years. 
 
 " The old Orthodox society in the town where I 
 lived when I was a girl, had much trouble about 
 their singin . The young folks wanted a choir, 
 and the old folks didn t, and it made a sort of divi 
 sion. Those who favored singin by the congrega 
 tion quoted the passage Let all the people praise 
 thee ; and those who wanted a choir answered 
 with, Let all things be done decently and in 
 order. Haveacookeef 
 
 "At last the deacons consented to have a choir. 
 Now I have a powerful voice, naturally, though I
 
 82 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 can t sing as I used to, and I d been to the singin* 
 school, and knew the notes. Miss Flinn agreed 
 to sing alto, the schoolmaster, tenor, and Timothy 
 Toogood, base, and I was chosen to be the 
 soprano, which made me the head singer of all. 
 
 " We met to practice and we astonished our 
 selves by the music we made. I laid awake nights 
 thinkin how we would astonish other people on 
 Sunday. 
 
 "And we did. 
 
 " We concluded to open the services by a volun 
 tary, that is, a piece not in the old hymn-book, 
 a sort of free offerin , as it were. It was a beauti 
 ful piece we selected ; I remember it now. It was 
 what I call poetry. 
 
 "Repeat it ? Well, I will. Have some cookies? 
 
 "In the tempest of life, when the wave and the gale 
 Are around and above, if thy footing should fail, 
 If thine eye should grow dim, and thy caution depart 
 Look aloft ! and be firm, and be fearless of heart. 
 
 " If the friend who embraced in prosperity s glow, 
 With a smile for each joy and a tear for each woe, 
 Should betray thee when sorrows like clouds are arrayed, 
 
 Look aloft ! to the friendship which never shall fade. 
 
 "Should the visions which hope spreads in light to thine eye 
 Like the tints of the rainbow, but brighten to fly, 
 Then turn, and through tears of repentant regret, 
 Look aloft ! to the Sun that is never to set.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 83 
 
 " Should they who are dearest, the son of thy heart, 
 
 The wife of thy bosom, in sorrow depart, 
 Look aloft, from the darkness and dust of the tomb, 
 
 To that soil where affection is ever in bloom." 
 
 "There, I call that poetry, don t you? None of 
 your Pull for the Shore verses, although that 
 piece is all well enough in its place, but genuine 
 sentiment. 
 
 "It was a pleasant Sabbath and the church was 
 crowded. I felt a kind of trepidation come over 
 me as I looked from the gallery on the heads 
 bobbin below, and my heart was all in a flutter. 
 Every stroke of the bell smote me like a knell of 
 doom, and, as the people kept pilin into the 
 church and castin sly looks towards the gallery, 
 I wished a hundred times, like the poet, for a 
 lodge in some vast wilderness. At length the 
 bell ceased tolling, and the people were all ears. 
 I got up nervously, my limbs trembling all over, 
 and my mouth as dry as a chip. We formed a 
 line, the bass viol banged and squeaked, and at 
 last all was ready. I gasped once or twice, then 
 I started off at the top of my voice, in a manner 
 that was astonishing. I made the arches ring. I 
 begun to feel as proud as a prima donna. A part 
 of the piece was very high and afforded me an 
 opportunity to display my strength of voice.
 
 84 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 "Just as I was singin the Look Aloft in the 
 second verse, who should come hobbling into the 
 gallery but old Dame Rider, followed by her 
 yellow dog. I hate dogs in general, and hated 
 this one in particular, for he always seemed to 
 owe me a grudge. 
 
 " A pitcher partly filled with water, stood on the 
 floor not far from my feet. The dog trotted for 
 ward, casting an evil eye at me, and jammed his 
 head into the pitcher. I sang Look aloft as 
 loud as ever I could, and then looked at the dog. 
 
 " He had put his head into the pitcher so far that 
 he couldn t get it out, and was backing towards 
 me with the pitcher on his head, bowing in a way 
 that appeared very polite. The rest of the choir 
 tittered, but the thought of what might happen 
 if the dog should break the pitcher or slip it off, 
 filled me with terror. 
 
 " Look aloft, " I screamed. 
 
 "I didn t look aloft myself, but straight at the 
 dog, which was wiggling, howling and yelping 
 close to my heels, and pushin against me with the 
 pitcher snugly fitted to his head and neck. 
 
 " I kicked him spitefully, then sung Look 
 aloft again, in a terrific manner, myself looking 
 at the dog. He moved off a little and I ventured
 
 LOOK ALOFT.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 85 
 
 a glance at the congregation. They were indeed 
 looking aloft, and at your humble servant most 
 enquiringly. 
 
 "A happy thought struck me. I would let them 
 know the cause of my agitation. So I sung Look 
 aloft, louder than ever. They all looked, and I 
 added in a twinkling: 
 
 " Get out, you dog. 
 
 " I put out my foot and gave him a push, and 
 what do you think that dog did ? He backed 
 right over the railing of the gallery, and tumbled, 
 howling and yelping, into old Mrs. Toogood s pew 
 below. Mrs. Toogood was looking aloft when the 
 accident happened. 
 
 " Everybody was grinning in a most improper 
 manner. I finished the piece, and we didn t sing 
 any more that day. We started for home as soon 
 as the benediction was pronounced, and didn t 
 dare to look to the right hand nor to the left, nor 
 even aloft. 
 
 " But next Sunday we opened with Haddam, 
 and we had urn for sure. Everybody was delight 
 ed, and our choir went on without any quarrel for 
 more than three months. Was there ever heard 
 anything equal to that ? Have sonic more cookies, 
 all of yon, noiv do. Don t be sparin , plenty more 
 where these came from.
 
 86 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 Now, children, my niece here, Carrie Endicott, 
 will tell you a Boston story. Sit down, Mr. Glass. 
 No, there ain t no horrid snakes in this part of the 
 orchard, and if they were, they re as harmless as 
 robins.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 CARRIE S "BOSTON" STORY "DOT." 
 
 I have a story of a little musician, friends. We 
 have lovely music in Boston : I will try to picture 
 it to you. 
 
 The church was vast and dim. The air was 
 fragrant with pine boughs, and over the golden 
 cross of the chancel hung heavy wreaths of box 
 and fir. A solitary light shone in front of the 
 organ. 
 
 Little feet were heard on the stairs leading to 
 the orchestra. A door in the organ-case opened 
 quietly and was about to close, when a voice was 
 heard : 
 
 " Is that you, Dot ? " asked the organist. 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " What makes you come so early ? It is nearly 
 an hour before the rehearsal begins. I should 
 think the little bellows-room would be a rather 
 lonely place to wait an hour." 
 
 "I always come early," said the boy, timidly. 
 
 " So I have noticed. Why ? "
 
 88 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 "Mother thinks it best." 
 
 " Come out here, and let me talk with you. I 
 have sung in the choir nearly a year, and have 
 hardly had a glimpse of you yet. Don t be bash 
 ful ! Why, all the music would stop if it were not 
 for you, Dot. Our grandest Christmas anthem 
 would break into confusion if you were to cease to 
 bloiv. Come here. I have just arrived in the 
 city, and have come to the church to wait for the 
 hour of rehearsal. I want company. Come, Dot." 
 
 The little side door of the organ moved : a 
 shadow crept along in the dim light towards the 
 genial-hearted tenor. 
 
 "Do you like music, Dot ?" 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " Is that what makes you come so long before 
 the rest ? " 
 
 " No, sir." 
 
 "What is it, then?" 
 
 "I have a reason mother would not like to 
 have me speak of it." 
 
 " Do you sing ? " 
 
 " Yes, at home." 
 
 "What do you sing?" 
 
 "The parts I hear you sing." 
 
 " Tenor, then ?"
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 89 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Will you sing for me? " 
 
 " Now ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " I will sing Hark, what mean ? 
 
 "Rossini an adaptation from Cujns Animam." 
 
 The boy did not understand. 
 
 "Well," said the tenor, "I beat time now, 
 Dot." 
 
 A flute-like voice floated out into the empty edi 
 fice, silvery, pure, rising and falling through all 
 the melodious measures of that almost seraphic 
 melody. The tenor leaped to his feet, and stood 
 like one entranced. The voice fell in wavy 
 cadences: " Heavenly Hallelujahs rise." Then it 
 rose, clear as a skylark, with the soul of inspiration 
 
 in it : 
 
 " Hear them tell that sacred story, 
 Hear them chant 
 
 The tenor, with a nervous motion, turned on the 
 gas-light. 
 
 The boy seemed affrighted, and shrank away 
 towards the little door that led to the bellows- 
 room. 
 
 "Boy!" 
 
 "Sir?"
 
 90 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 "There is a fortune in that voice of yours." 
 
 "Thank you, sir." 
 
 " What makes you hide behind that bench ?" 
 
 " You won t tell, sir ?" 
 
 " No : I will befriend any boy with a voice like 
 that" 
 
 The boy approached the singer and stood 
 beside him. 
 
 He said not a word, but only looked toward his 
 feet. 
 
 The tenor s eyes followed the boy s. 
 
 He saw it all, but he only said tenderly : 
 
 "Dot!" 
 
 A chancel door opened. An acolyte came in, 
 bearing a long gas-lighter : he touched the chan 
 deliers and they burst into flame. The cross 
 glimmered upon the wall under the Christmas 
 wreaths ; the alabaster font revealed its beautiful 
 decorations of calla lilies and smilax ; the organ 
 glowed with its tall pipes, and carvings, and 
 cherubs. 
 
 The first flash of light in the chancel found Dot 
 hidden in his little room, with the door fast closed 
 behind him. 
 
 What a strange place it was ! A dim light fell 
 through the open carvings of the organ case.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 91 
 
 Great wooden pipes towered aloft, with black 
 mouths like dragons. Far, far above in the 
 arch was a cherub, without a body a golden face 
 with purple wings. Dot had looked at it for 
 hours, and wondered. 
 
 He sat looking at it to-night with a sorrowful 
 face. There were other footsteps in the church, 
 sounds of light, happy voices. 
 
 Presently the bell tinkled. The organist was 
 on his bench. Dot grasped the great wooden 
 handle ; it moved up and down, up and down, and 
 then the tall wooden pipes with the dragon mouths 
 began to thunder around him. Then the chorus 
 burst into a glorious strain, which Dot the year 
 before had heard the organist say was the " Mid 
 night Mass of the Middle Ages : " 
 
 " Adeste fideles 
 Laeti triumphantes, 
 
 Venite, 
 
 Venite, 
 
 In Bethlehem!" 
 
 The great pipes close at hand cease to thunder. 
 The music seemed to run far away into distance, 
 low, sweet and shadowy. There were sympa 
 thetic solos and tremulous chords. Then the tem 
 pest seemed to come back again, and the luminous
 
 92 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 arch over the organ sent back into .the empty 
 church the jubilant chorus : 
 
 " Venite adoremus, 
 
 Venite adoremus, 
 
 Venite adoremus, 
 
 Dominum." 
 
 After the anthem there were solos. The tenor 
 sang one of them, and Dot tried to listen to it as 
 he moved the handle up and down. How sweet 
 it sounded to Dot s ears ! It came from a friendly 
 heart except his mother s it was the only voice 
 that had ever spoken a word of sympathy or praise 
 to the poor bellows-boy. 
 
 The singers rested, laughed and talked. Dot 
 listened as usual in his narrow room. 
 
 "I came to the church directly from the train," 
 said the tenor, "and amused myself for a time 
 with Dot. A wonderful voice that boy has." 
 
 "Dot? " said the precentor. 
 
 "Yes ; the boy that blows the organ." 
 
 " Oh, yes ; I had forgotten. I seldom see him," 
 said the precentor. " Now I think of it, the sex 
 ton told me some weeks ago that I must get a new 
 organ-boy another year; he says this one Dot 
 you call him? comes to the church through back 
 alleys, and goes to the bellows-room as soon as
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 93 
 
 the church is open and hides there until service 
 time, and that his clothes are not decent to be 
 seen in a church on Sunday. Next Sunday begins 
 the year I must see to the matter." 
 
 "He does his work well ? " asked the alto, with 
 a touch of sympathy in her voice. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Would it not be better to get him some new 
 clothes, than to dismiss him ? " she asked. 
 
 " No. Charity is charity, and business is busi 
 ness. Everything must be first class here. We 
 cannot have ragamuffins creeping into the church 
 to do church work. Of course, I should be glad 
 to have the boy supplied with clothes. That is 
 another thing. But we must have a different per 
 son in the bellows -box. The sexton s son is 
 bright, dresses well, and I have no doubt would be 
 glad of the place Now we will sing the anthem, 
 Good-will to men. " 
 
 The choir and chorus arose. The organist 
 tinkled the bell, and bent down on the pedals and 
 keys. There was a ripple of music, a succession 
 of short sounds, and silence. 
 
 The organist touched the knob at the side of 
 the key-board, and again the bell tinkled. His 
 white hands ran over the keys, but there issued 
 no sound.
 
 94 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 He moved nervously from the bench, and 
 opened the little door. 
 
 " Dot ? " 
 
 No answer. 
 
 "The boy is sick or faint." 
 
 The tenor stepped into the room and brought 
 out a limp figure. 
 
 "Are you sick, Dot?" 
 
 "Yes, sir; what will become of mother?" 
 
 " He heard what you said about dismissing 
 him," said the alto to the precentor. 
 
 " Yes, but the sexton was right. Look at his 
 shoes why, his toes are sticking through them." 
 
 "And this bitter weather!" said the alto, feel 
 ingly. 
 
 " Can you blow, Dot ? " 
 
 " No, sir ; it is all dark, sir. I can t see, sir. I 
 can t but just stand up, sir. You won t dimiss me, 
 sir, mother is lame and poor, sir paralyzed, sir ; 
 that s what they call it can t use but one hand, 
 sir." 
 
 "This ends the rehearsal," said the precentor in 
 an impatient way. " Dot, you needn t come to 
 morrow, nor till I send for you. Here s a dollar, 
 Dot charity Christmas present." 
 
 One by one the singers went out, the precentor
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 95 
 
 bidding the sexton have a care that Dot was sent 
 home. 
 
 The alto and 4 the tenor lingered. Dot was 
 recovering. 
 
 " I shall not hear the music to-morrow. I do 
 love it so." 
 
 " You poor child, you shall have your Christmas 
 music to-morrow, and the best the city affords. 
 Do you know where Music Hall is, Dot ?" 
 
 "Yes, lady." 
 
 "There is to be an oratorio there to-morrow 
 
 
 
 evening The Messiah. It is the grandest ever 
 composed, and no singing in America is equal to 
 it. There is one chorus called the Hallelujah 
 Chorus it is wonderful: the man who composed 
 it thought he heard the angels singing and saw 
 the Lord of Heaven, when he was at work upon 
 it ; and Jic is to be the first tenor singer and / 
 am to sing the altos wouldn t you like to go, 
 Dot ? " 
 
 " Yes, lady. Is the man who composed it to be 
 the tenor singer the one who heard the angels 
 singing, and thought he saw the Lord ? " 
 
 " No, Dot ; he is to be the tenor singer." 
 
 "/, Dot," said the tenor. 
 
 " I have a ticket for the upper gallery, which I
 
 96 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 will give him," said the alto. "A friend of mine 
 bought it, but I gave her a seat on the floor, and 
 kept this for well, for Dot." , 
 
 The tenor talked low with the lady. 
 
 " Here is a Christmas present, Dot. " He 
 handed Dot a bill. 
 
 "And here is one for your mother," said the 
 alto, giving Dot a little roll of money. 
 
 Dot was better now. He looked bewildered at 
 his new fortune. 
 
 "Thank you, lady. Thank you, s^ir. Are you 
 able ? " The alto laughed. 
 
 " Yes, Dot. I am to receive a hundred dollars 
 for singing to-morrow evening. I shall try to 
 think of you, Dot, when I am rendering one of the 
 passages perhaps it will give me inspiration, 
 I shall see you, Dot under the statue of 
 Apollo. " 
 
 The sexton was turning off the lights in the 
 chancel. He called Dot. The church grew dim 
 mer and dimmer, and the great organ faded away in 
 the darkness. In the vanishing lights the alto 
 and tenor went out of the church, leaving Dot 
 with the sexton. 
 
 It was Sabbath evening Christmas. 
 
 Lights glimmered thickly among the snowy trees
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 97 
 
 on the Common ; beautiful coaches were rolling 
 through the crowded streets. 
 
 Dot entered Music Hall timidly by a long pass 
 age, through which bright, happy faces were pass 
 ing, silks rustling, aged people moving sedately 
 and slowly, and into which the crowds on the 
 street seemed surging like a tide. Faces were 
 too eager with expectation to notice him or his 
 feet. At last he passed a sharp ;,ngle in the long 
 passage, and the great organ under a thousand 
 gas-jets, burst upon his view. An usher at one of 
 the many lower doors looked at his ticket doubt 
 fully : - 
 
 " Second gallery back." 
 
 Dot followed the trailing silks up the broad 
 flights of stairs, reached the top, and asked another 
 usher to show him his seat. The young man 
 whom Dot addressed had that innate refinement 
 of feeling that marks a true Boston gentleman. 
 He gave Dot a smile, as much as to say " I am 
 glad you can enjoy all this happiness with the 
 rest," and said : 
 
 " Follow me." 
 
 His manner was so kind that Dot thought he 
 would like to speak to him again. He remem 
 bered what the alto had said about the statue of
 
 98 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 Apollo, and as the usher gave him back his check 
 and pointed to the number on the check and the 
 seat, Dot said : 
 
 " Will you please tell me, sir, which is the 
 statue of Apollo ? " 
 
 The usher glanced at the busts and statues 
 along the wall. He spoke kindly : 
 
 " That is the Apollo Belvidere." 
 
 Dot thought that a pretty name ; it did not con 
 vey to his mind any association of the Vatican 
 palace, but he knew that some beautiful mystery 
 was connected with it. 
 
 And now Dot gazes in amazement on the scene 
 before him. In the blaze of light the great organ 
 rises resplendently, sixty feet in height, its impos 
 ing faade hiding from view its six thousand pipes. 
 People are hurrying into the hall, flitting to and 
 fro ; young ladies in black silks and velvets and 
 satins; old men where were so many men with 
 white hair ever seen before ? stately men with 
 thin faces, bald teachers, college professors. 
 Tiers of seats in the form of half a pyramid rise at 
 either end of the organ. These are filling with 
 the chorus sopranos and altos in black dresses, 
 and white shawls, tenors and basses in black coats, 
 white neck-ties and kids. In front, between the
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 99 
 
 great chorus, rises a dark statue, and around this 
 musicians are gathering players on violins, 
 violas, violoncellos, contra basses, flutes, oboes, 
 bassoons, trumpets, trombones, horns ; the pyra 
 midal seats fill ; the hall overflows ; the doors are 
 full, the galleries. The instruments tune. A 
 dark-haired man steps upon the conductor s stand; 
 he raises his baton ; there is a hush, then half a 
 hundred instruments pour forth the symphony. 
 Dot listens. He has never heard such music 
 before ; he did not know that anything like it was 
 ever heard on earth. It grows sweeter and 
 sweeter : 
 
 " Comfort ye." 
 
 Did an angel speak ? The instruments are 
 sweeter now : 
 
 " Comfort ye my people." 
 
 Did that voice come from the air ? 
 
 Dot listens and wonders if this is earth : 
 
 " Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God, saith 
 your God." 
 
 Dot sees a tall man standing alone in front 
 of the musicians is it he that is singing ? Dot 
 gazes upon his face with wide eyes, It is he
 
 100 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 and Jie is the tenor who had befriended him the 
 night before. 
 
 What music followed when the chorus arose 
 and sang : 
 
 Every valley shall be exalted ! " 
 
 Dot hears the grand music sweep on, and he 
 feels, as all feel, that the glorious Messiah is about 
 to appear. He sees a lady in white satin and 
 flashing jewels step forward : he hears a ripple of 
 applause, and a voice full of strength and feeling 
 sings : 
 
 "Oh thou that tellest good tidings to Zion, O thou that 
 tellest good tidings to JerusalL m, say unto the cities of 
 Judah, Behold your God ! " 
 
 Dot knows that voice. Will indeed she lift her 
 eyes to him ? 
 
 No, she does not. She sits down, the hall ringing 
 with applause. She rises, bows, but she does not 
 look towards the statue of Apollo, near which 
 Dot is sitting. 
 
 Dot hears dreamy music now, more enchanting 
 than any before it. The great audience do not stir, 
 or move a fan, or raise a glass. It grows more 
 ethereal ; it seems now but a wavy motion in the 
 air. He hears a lady near whisper :
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. IOI 
 
 "The pastoral symphony." 
 
 The alto has risen again. She stands out from 
 the great chorus what a beautiful figure! The 
 dark-haired man lifts his baton : the lady turns her 
 face toward the upper gallery. Her eyes wander 
 for a moment ; they rest on Dot : 
 
 He shall feed his flock like a shepherd, and he shall gather 
 the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and 
 gently lead those that are with young. 
 
 There was no applause now. Tears stood in the 
 alto s eyes tears stood in the eyes of every one. 
 There was a deep hush, and tears, and in the 
 silence the alto stood looking steadily at Dot. 
 
 There was a rustle in the hall it grew. The 
 silence was followed by a commotion that seemed 
 to rock the hall. The applause gathered force 
 like a tempest. 
 
 Then the beautiful lady looked towards Dot, 
 and sang again the same wonderful air, and all the 
 hall grew still, and people s eyes were wet again. 
 
 The Hallelujah Chorus with its grand fugues 
 was sung, the people rising and standing with 
 bowed heads during the majestic outpouring of 
 praise. 
 
 It is ended now faded and gone. The great 
 organ stands silent in the dark hall ; the coaches
 
 102 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 have rolled away, the clocks are striking midnight. 
 
 " I have come to congratulate you before retir 
 ing," said our tenor to the alto, as he stepped 
 into the parlor of the Revere House; " To-night 
 has been the triumph of your life. Nothing so 
 moved the audience as " He sJiallfeed his flock like 
 a shepherd. " 
 
 " Do you know to what I owed the feeling that 
 so inspired me in that air ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "It was poor little Dot in the gallery. You 
 teach music, do you not ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "You are about to open a school ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Give Dot a place as office boy errand boy 
 something. It will lift a weight from my heart. 
 
 " I had thought of it. He has a beautiful voice." 
 
 "I might get him a place in a choir." 
 
 Fifteen years have passed. The old Handel and 
 Haydn Society have sung The Messiah fifty, per 
 haps sixty times. The snows of December are 
 again on the hills. The grand oratorio is again 
 rehearsing for the Sabbath evening before Christ 
 mas.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 103 
 
 A new tenor is to sing on the occasion he was 
 born in Boston, has studied in Milan, and has 
 achieved great triumphs as an interpreter of sacred 
 music in London and Berlin. 
 
 The old hall is filled again. The symphony has 
 begun its dulcet enchantment ; the Tenor, with a 
 face luminous and spiritual, arises, and with his 
 first notes thrills the audience and holds it as by a 
 spell : 
 
 " Comfort ye." 
 
 He thought of the time when he first heard 
 those words. He thought of the hearts whose 
 kindness had made him a singer. Where were 
 they ? Their voices had vanished from the choirs 
 of earth, but in spirit those sweet singers seemed 
 hovering around him : 
 
 " Comfort ye my people." 
 
 He looked, too, towards the Apollo on the wall. 
 He recalled the limp bellows-boy who had sat 
 there sixteen years ago. How those words then 
 comforted him ! How he loved to sing them now ! 
 
 " Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her that 
 her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned." 
 
 It was Dot.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 REV. MR. GLASS MAKES A CLAM-BAKE FOR HIS 
 
 CITY FRIENDS, WITH RESULTS DESCRIBED 
 
 BY AUNT TO UNCLE AS FOLLOWS : 
 
 " Eben, is that you ? 
 
 " I m glad you have come home. Such a day as 
 I have had ! 
 
 " Why? Mr. Glass s clam-bake. 
 
 " Mr. Glass ! he hasn t any more brains than a 
 robin I don t like him, and I don t believe Jef 
 ferson does, either. I d like to hear him preach 
 just once. I suppose I shall when I go up from 
 the Cape. 
 
 " What has happened? What ain t happened ! 
 Mr. Glass, you know, was so taken with that clam 
 bake that we had here last week, that he thought 
 it would be a very fine notion to give a bake 
 of his own to his Boston friends. You told him 
 that you had no objection, and on Carrie s account 
 I favored the plan. I rather wanted to see his 
 Boston friends. Well, he hired Hoggarty, the
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 105 
 
 Irishman, to help him ; also counted on the help 
 of Jeff. 
 
 "Well, you ought to have seen his friends as they 
 came skippin up to the house after the train arrived ! 
 They were a lot of young men, thin as rails. Some 
 on them had spectacles on one eye and some on 
 both ; all had canes or umbrellas, and books or 
 magazines. 
 
 "Mr. Glass ran out to meet um, and I heard 
 one on um say : 
 
 " How are ye, old boy? We don t meet our 
 minister in that way. 
 
 "There were eight on um. In the course of an 
 hour, I happened to look out of the window, and I 
 saw a sight that would have astonished one of the 
 old prophets. It was two objects flying through 
 the air, half men and half wheels ; like the pictures 
 in the almanac, of a strange race of beings in early 
 times, half men and half horses. The wheel 
 seemed flying the men, and where the man left off 
 and the wheel began I couldn t imagine. 
 
 " Up they came to the door. 
 
 " Brought our centipedes with us, old fellow," 
 said one of them to Mr. Glass. "Been making the 
 sand fly for an hour." 
 
 "Then the men and the wheels came apart. I 
 never was more astonished in my life.
 
 106 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 " Mr. Glass had bought ten bushels of clams to 
 feed these ten young men. Why, ten bushels 
 would have fed a thousand such fellows, with 
 basket fulls to spare. 
 
 " There was a great smoke at the bake-hole ; Mr. 
 Glass and Mr. Hoggarty ran hither and thither. I 
 was very busy makin the dressin and the pies, 
 and Carrie entertained the ten thin young men on 
 the piazza. 
 
 "About one o clock Jeff came in with a scared 
 look on his face. 
 
 " Somethin happened, said he. 
 
 " Massy ! What ? said I. 
 
 "The bake-hole is opened, and Hoggarty has 
 run away. 
 
 " Hoggarty s run away ? 
 
 " Yes, he opened the bake-hole, and ate one or 
 two clams, and just said " Holy St. Patrick! " and 
 leaped over the wall and run home a minute, and 
 I have just seen him going over the hill half a 
 mile away. What do you suppose it is ? 
 
 " Limy, I guess, said I. 
 
 " What s to be done ? 
 
 " I ll tell you. You act as waiter; bring the 
 bake to the tables, and I will go out and serve it 
 at the tables. That will make things pleasant all 
 around.
 
 HAGGARTY RUNS.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. IO/ 
 
 "When I went to the tables there sot the ten 
 young men lookin as though they hadn t had any 
 thing to eat since childhood. As I remarked, 
 some on um had spectacles on one eye, and some 
 on both. Mr. Glass and Carrie sat at the head of 
 the table. 
 
 " The bake is ready, said I. 
 
 " Yes, said Mr. Glass. The waiter has gone; 
 queer, aint it ? 
 
 " I have arranged with Jeff to serve the tables. 
 Will you ask a blessin , Mr. Glass ? 
 
 "He turned white as a ghost and then red as a 
 rooster, and there followed a strange sort of a 
 silence and he a minister, too! I couldn t 
 imagine what made him so backward, none of the 
 Cape ministers are so. We always ask a blessing 
 at a clam-bake. 
 
 " I was determined to stand by my colors. I 
 never yet feared the face of clay. I covered my 
 face with my hands, and made up my mind that 
 I wouldn t move an inch until Mr. Glass or one of 
 those students, asked a blessin . 
 
 " It was awful solemn. 
 
 " Well, while I was in that devotional attitude, 
 waitin , Hoggarty s wife came up behind me unbe 
 known, and fairly hissed in my ear :
 
 108 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 " That there bake is all raw \ Just as raw as 
 twas when it went into the bake-hole. That city 
 feller made the bake-hole of old stones. 
 
 "It came upon me like a thunder-clap ! 
 
 " Pity sake! where is Hoggarty? said I in a 
 whisper. 
 
 " He s scooted he wa n t to blame. 
 
 "Well I got up and went to the bake-hole, and 
 just bit one of those clams, and it was just as 
 tough as whit-leather. I turned round and rolled 
 my eyes up to the skies. 
 
 "There s nothin like havin grace at a tryin 
 time. You think that I havn t much self-control ; 
 but I have. I felt as though I wished that the 
 earth would open and swaller me up ; but when I 
 looked around and saw the wonderin look on Mr. 
 Glass s face, and Carrie dressed up so pretty, and 
 lookin so innocent, I just said : 
 
 "The bake is not quite ready yet; if you will 
 all go to the croquet-ground for an hour or so, 
 Jeff and I will arrange it, and I will call you 
 when we are ready. 
 
 " Then I took a peck of them clams out of the 
 ten bushel in the bake-hole, and boiled um quick 
 over the kitchen fire, and I served them with all 
 the good things in the house, and when they had
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 109 
 
 all had a good dinner and a good time, I asked 
 em if one of em wouldn t return thanks and 
 who do you think did it ? 
 
 "Jeff?" 
 
 " Yes, Jeff, and I never was more astonished in 
 all my life. But, then, Jeff was the only one 
 besides myself who really knew how much there 
 was to be thankful for. 
 
 " Well, I did everything I could to make the 
 visit pleasant and to cover up the ignorance of 
 Mr. Glass, and just as one of them centipede men 
 was hoppin onto his wheel, what do you suppose 
 I heard him say to Mr. Glass ? Just this : 
 
 " You didn t fix that bake right, old fellow, 
 and if it hadn t been for Old Mother Sassafras, 
 we wouldn t have had any dinner at all. 
 
 " Old Mother Sassafras ! And that after all I 
 had done for them, too!"
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE OLD HOUSE AND HOME, AND AUNT DESIRE S 
 TWO WISHES. 
 
 There is a charm about an old country house, if 
 its associations have been interesting. Uncle 
 Eben s was older than the Republic, and a part of its 
 mahogany furniture had come far down from colonial 
 times. In the old parlor, his ancestors for three 
 generations had been married. In one of the 
 great chambers, called the " spare chamber " his 
 grand-parents, great-grand-parents, and several 
 uncles and aunts, of saintly memory, had died. 
 
 In this last room were portraits, old family 
 Bibles, hymn books, silhouettes and "samplers." 
 Over the open fire-place, from whose hearth the 
 old-time log-fires had now forever faded, was a 
 cupboard or recess containing the Family Christian 
 Library, Edward s works, the American Magazine, 
 the New England Family Magazine and the 
 Youth s Companion. On an antique bureau were
 
 UP FROM 7"HE CAPE. Ill 
 
 copies of the old English poets Collins, Gray, 
 Beattie, Thompson, Goldsmith. 
 
 I read .here these fine old pastoral poets, with 
 appreciation, for the first time. Their influence 
 fostered my growing taste for the independency of 
 country living and thinking ; they led me to see 
 rural life as I had never interpreted it before. 
 
 Aunt Desire was a wonderful house-keeper ; she 
 was in more respects than one a superior woman, 
 with all her eccentricities. 
 
 "I should be perfectly happy," said uncle to me 
 confidentially one day, "if it were not for wife s 
 tongue. But then," he added, "she took such 
 good care of my father and mother and aunts in 
 their old age ; that was when she was a young 
 woman, too. Why, there were ten years that she 
 did not go out anywhere ; just devoted herself to 
 my folks as though they had been her own. That 
 is what I call a test of love. 
 
 " She will never see the money, poor woman, 
 that she let Dr. Gamm have to invest." He added 
 with a half roguish look, " Won t her tongue go when 
 she finds out how she has been taken in ? But I have 
 two hundred dollars that I can spare, and I am 
 going to give her that when she goes up from the 
 Cape. She will be a wiser woman before she 
 returns."
 
 112 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 The table was always kept set, and was loaded 
 with the best food at breakfast, dinner and tea. 
 The new milk, fresh eggs, vegetables of all kinds 
 direct from the garden, the honey, preserves, and 
 berries, were my choice, although Aunt said that 
 I seldom ate anything but the "trimmin s of the 
 table." 
 
 There was a spirit of fine old hospitality in thus 
 keeping the table always ready for the guest. In 
 spring and fall the drovers used to call and be 
 entertained. In mid-summer, Methodist ministers 
 and class-leaders, especially of the old school, fre 
 quently stopped on their way to the vineyard. 
 
 There was a "prophet s chamber" kept especi 
 ally for brethren who liked to prolong their stay, 
 an occurrence that was not uncommon. 
 
 It was a somewhat remarkable room, this "proph 
 et s chamber." The bedstead had high posts, 
 curiously carved, and curtains. Over the shelf 
 hung a steel engraving of the death of John Wes 
 ley. Biographies of Zinzendorf, Wesley, Fenelon, 
 Madam Guyon, and of several notable revivalists 
 of the last century were piled upon the table. The 
 woodbine fell loosely about the windows, and the 
 swallows above it made their nests in the eaves. 
 
 The interest that uncle took in me seemed
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 113 
 
 rather remarkable after the indifference with 
 which I had been treated at home. Father was 
 always absorbed in business, and mother in society. 
 My brothers were never intimate with each other, 
 but made their friendships outside of the family. 
 
 Uncle never, or seldom, gave me advice directly. 
 When he wished to show me a truth, and impress 
 it upon me, he commonly did it by illustration. 
 
 I had told him that my love of billiard playing 
 had sometimes led me to the bar, that I might not 
 seem discourteous to those who invited me to 
 such refreshments. I noticed that his face always 
 shadowed when I made allusion to these conven 
 tionalities ; he seemed to indicate by his manner 
 that he thought it dangerous not to be always 
 positive and strong. I shall never forget, how 
 one evening, he expressed this thought to me. 
 
 We were sitting under the porch woodbine, 
 uncle and aunt, sister and I. Aunt chanced to 
 speak of Stephen Marliave, a man of some local 
 reputation, who had died within a year. 
 
 "Yes Stephen," said uncle. " He was one of 
 the largest-hearted men I ever knew. We all 
 owed something to Stephen." 
 
 Then he added in a tone of regret : 
 
 " He had only one fault."
 
 114 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 The light fell in pencil rays through the trees. 
 I sat in silence enjoying the refreshing coolness. 
 
 "He had great abilities, Stephen had. We 
 sent him to the Legislature three times. They 
 thought of nominating him for Governor. 
 
 " But," he added, sadly, " Stephen had one 
 fault." He looked at me. 
 
 I made no answer. I was tired. 
 
 "A very generous man, Stephen was. Always 
 visited the sick he was feeling when any one 
 was in trouble. The old people all liked him. 
 Even the children used to follow him in the 
 streets." 
 
 "A good man, indeed," I said, indifferently. 
 
 "Yes ; he only had one fault." 
 
 " What was that ? " I asked. 
 
 "Only intemperance." 
 
 "Did it harm him?" 
 
 "Yes, somewhat. He didn t seem to have any 
 power to resist it at last. He got behindhand 
 and had to mortgage his farm, and finally had to 
 sell it. His wife died on account of the reverse ; 
 kind of crushed, disappointed. Then his children, 
 not having the right bringing up, turned out 
 badly. His intemperance seemed to mortify 
 them and take away their spirit. He had to
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 115 
 
 leave politics ; twouldn t do, you see. Then we 
 had to set him aside from church, and at last his 
 habits brought on paralysis and we had to take 
 him to the poor-house. He died there ; only 
 forty-five. There were none of his children at 
 the funeral. Poor man, he had only one fault. 
 
 " Only one fault ! " He paused. 
 
 " The ship had only one leak, but it went down. 
 
 " Only one fault !" He paused again. 
 
 "The temple had only one decaying pillar, but 
 it fell. 
 
 " Only one fault. Home gone, wife lost, 
 family ruined, honor forfeited, social and relig 
 ious privileges abandoned ; broken health, poverty, 
 paralysis and the poorhouse. 
 
 " One fault, only one, Jefferson. 
 
 " Stephen had but one fault." 
 
 I said nothing. He added : 
 
 " Indulgence in a single wrong propensity, no 
 matter how small it may seem at first, is an open 
 way to ruin. The loss of some of the finest char 
 acters that the world has seen may be traced to a 
 single fault, as some of the most stately wrecks 
 that drift upon the seashore are caused by a 
 single imperfect timber."
 
 Il6 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 Men 
 
 Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect, 
 Their virtues else be they as pure as grace, 
 As infinite as man may undergo, 
 Shall in the general censure take corruption 
 From that particular fault. 
 
 "A single error destroys one s self respect, 
 weakens one s resolution, and impairs one s confi 
 dence in God. The knowledge of evil is a fearful 
 thing, and the only safety for a youth is to resist 
 its beginnings; for the beginning of evil is as 
 when one letteth out water. 
 
 I saw the truth that he wished to convey, and 
 felt it. 
 
 He was not only careful for my moral training, 
 but seemed concerned about a matter with which 
 I had never been approached before my politi 
 cal opinions and education. 
 
 " I tried to bring my sons up well," he remarked, 
 the same evening, " and I put in their way the 
 best books on American history I wanted them 
 to know how to vote. Every American young 
 man should be trained to vote intelligently. I 
 hope brother is thoughtful about this matter ?" 
 
 " Father ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Why he never votes himself. Says he has no 
 
 time."
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 1 1/ 
 
 " And Eugene ? " 
 
 "Brother Eugene he says it is vulgar to vote; 
 that no gentlemen s sons now take any interest in 
 American politics. He belongs to a swell club ; 
 young men who talk English politics ; read the 
 London Atheneum and N. Y. National; pride 
 themselves on knowing nothing about home affairs 
 at all. Why, I don t think Eugene could tell who 
 is his representative in Congress." 
 
 " Now, Eben," said Aunt, "why do you set that 
 boy to talkin in that way. Eugene Endicott is a 
 gentleman, and don t hang around town meetin s 
 as our boys used to do. Perhaps if you sent your 
 sons to Paris, after they had left the Academy, 
 they never would have gone West. I always had 
 an ambition for those boys. You meant well 
 but it ain t no use to say nothin . There ain t 
 much for any on us in this world." 
 
 She rocked violently to and fro, and added : 
 
 "What would I give if those boys were here to 
 night. I wish that they had never gone away. 
 It was nothing but that independent spirit that 
 Eben distilled into them, that sent them off \Vest. 
 John went to Kansas that he might vote the Free 
 State ticket at the time of the struggle against 
 the Lecompton Constitution ; how I do hate that
 
 Il8 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 word ; I used to hear nothing else in Old Buch 
 anan s times. Then Henry followed him, and 
 both came near being killed by the Border Ruf 
 fians, as they called them. It was my prayer that 
 one of them boys might become a lawyer and the 
 other a minister. I would have felt that I had 
 lived for something then. Those were the two 
 wishes that I used to carry to the Lord but 
 twan t no use to carry em to the Lord, and tain t 
 no use to say nothin you all know what hus 
 band is, you know."
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE OLD CAMP-MEETING AND THE NEW. 
 
 " Who do you think is goin to preach on the 
 camp-ground, Sunday?" asked Aunt Desire, of 
 Uncle, one August day, laying down the paper. 
 
 "The Bishop?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Dr. Hope?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "I do not know." 
 
 "Dr. Gamm. I m goin." 
 
 There was a bright expression in Aunt s face, 
 and a shadowy one in Uncle s. 
 
 " I don t think that I will attend," said Uncle. 
 
 "Then I will git Jeff to go with me." 
 
 Uncle looked relieved. 
 
 I had heard Uncle s friends who were Metho 
 dists, relate wonderful tales of the old-time Vine 
 yard Camp-Meeting, now a by-gone glory. The 
 patriarchal simplicity of these gatherings of God, 
 beneath the great oaks through which continually
 
 120 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 breathed the summer winds of the sea, was indeed 
 a holy memory to the old, and the picture has a 
 poetic charm for any susceptible and devout mind, 
 and although I well knew that the camp-meetings 
 of to-day were too much exhibitions of vulgar 
 wealth and pleasure seeking, I could hardly divest 
 them of the coloring of their old associations. 
 
 What scenes were these old gatherings like the 
 school of prophets, under the oaks ! The camp of 
 tents arose like the tents of the Hebrews around 
 the early tabernacle. There multitudes gathered 
 to listen to men moved by the Divine Spirit, and 
 to seek the securities of that life that shall out-live 
 the stars. We are told of the "shining counte 
 nances of Christian faces lighted up with holy 
 joy:" of the morning songs in the tents as the 
 great sun stood like a gate of fire half risen above 
 the sea ; of the sunrise hymn of the new converts, 
 which was termed in mystic language, " The sere 
 nade of angels." Father Bonny was there : Kent, 
 Butler, Allen, Liversey. We hear the old Metho 
 dist speak of the "awful sense of the Divine Pres 
 ence" that used to fill the encampment ; how that, 
 to use the highly mystical terms of the period, "the 
 slain of the Lord lay upon every side." 
 
 We are told of Sabbath mornings that rose
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 121 
 
 "amid bursts of hallelujahs from the hosts of the 
 Spiritual Israel ;" of the parting ceremonies, when 
 the people, marching in a procession, within the 
 circle of the tents, suddenly halted, and then each 
 passing all the others, bid every one a farewell. 
 
 " Farewell, my dear brethren, the time is at hand, 
 That we must be parted from this social band. " 
 
 What serene days were those when the mid 
 summer sunlight in the dry heaven dreamed over 
 the great water ways to the ocean : How awful 
 was the scene when the tempest darkened the red 
 sky, and smote the sea, and bent before it the 
 giant oaks : How calmly and gloriously rose the 
 full moon when the tempest had passed : What 
 hymns arose in the grove prophets inspirations, 
 and not mocking birds songs. I seem to hear 
 them, as the old people used to sing them to me 
 in childhood, on my visits to Sandwich and Fal- 
 mouth. 
 
 It was holy ground. Where easy . preachers 
 now too often blow the bubbles of poetic specula 
 tion, and lighter hearers as often listen, dividing 
 their time, perhaps, between pulpit pyrotechnics 
 and those of another kind ; where showy peddlers 
 of real estate talk over their wares, and look out on
 
 122 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 the sea and up to the stars of the sky and hold 
 both as mere pieces of valueless property, the 
 bushes once burned with flame, and the altars of 
 Jehovah blazed with celestial fire. 
 
 We went to the Camp-Meeting aunt and I. 
 
 If the "Old Spirit" was gone, the beautiful 
 temple of nature remained, even with the de 
 formities of the hotels and the cottages of the 
 spiritual sluggards that surrounded it. The old 
 groves I wished to see, the star-light over the 
 waters, the sunrise, the summer bays with their 
 thousand sails, all brought back the stories I had 
 heard of the time when here simple souls came 
 together to worship God in spirit and in truth. 
 
 Such people came here now : they were respected 
 as " old time Methodists," but their power with 
 people was gone. The Vineyard Association 
 could no longer say, " silver and gold have I none," 
 nor to the helpless halting soul, " rise up and 
 walk." Uncle had described the change to me, 
 and I saw it as he saw it, and as any one may see 
 it at a glance, as his eye sweeps the gay town of 
 the trees. 
 
 We arrived Saturday evening. Aunt s first 
 inquiry of the brethren was for the " boardin 
 place of Rev. Dr. Gamm."
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 123 
 
 " I have some secular business with him," she 
 said to me, when she noticed my surprise. " My 
 dividends you know ; I told you." 
 
 The next day was in August splendor. There 
 was a brilliant gathering of unconcerned-looking 
 people in the pavilion. Dr. Gamm preached on 
 electricity and the velocity of celestial visitants to 
 the earth ; the inter-stellar wonders, and the city 
 of gold. It was a meteor flash ; a surprise, and 
 gone. 
 
 When he ended, Aunt hastened to the platform, 
 which was filled with ministers. The Doctor evi 
 dently saw her coming, and did not desire an 
 interview, and quickly moved away with one of 
 his friends. 
 
 After the evening sermon, which was given by 
 a holy-looking, spiritual-minded old man, and was 
 of excellent spirit and influence, a social meet 
 ing was held, and among the leaders appeared the 
 Doctor. Aunt also appeared, an unexpected 
 seeker after knowledge, and presently the Doctor 
 had gone. 
 
 "I didn t enjoy the meetin greatly," said Aunt 
 to me, after the service was over ; " never mind ; 
 I ll have it out with Dr. Gamm when I come up 
 from the Cape. I ll show him my capabilities yet 
 you wait and see."
 
 124 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 The old man s evening sermon, as I said, was 
 beautiful. It made me feel that there was some 
 thing in his soul that I needed to complete my 
 life and its aim and happiness that I did not 
 possess. I dreamed of it. 
 
 The next day, as we steamed away on the 
 pretty boat, several people on deck discussed the 
 Sunday morning sermon in our hearing. 
 
 "A fine discourse, that on the inter-stellar 
 wonders and celestial splendors," said one. 
 
 " Reminded me of Daniel or Ezekiel s vision," 
 said another. 
 
 " Like the descent of the gods on Olympus, " 
 said a pretty miss. 
 
 " Of what did it remind you ? " I asked of Aunt 
 Desire. 
 
 " Well, Jeff, I was rather worldly-minded, yes 
 terday. It reminded me, well I wouldn t like 
 to say." 
 
 "Just to me ? " 
 
 "Well Treasure Mountain. Don t tell Eben. 
 You know what husband is, you know."
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 PICNICS. "CROWS IN THE TREES AND HAWKS IN 
 
 THE AIR." 
 
 On one of the hills back of the orchard, called 
 Pine Tree Hill, was an old Indian burial-ground, 
 such as are often seen on the farms near the 
 coast. It was shaded by a grove of pines and 
 oaks ; the ground was full of sea-shells, and the 
 graves were marked by rows of mossy stones, 
 whose tops had almost sunk to a level with the 
 grass. 
 
 It was a favorite picnic-ground. Parties, socie 
 ties and churches held picnics there, in much the 
 same way that church societies made their annual 
 clam-bakes under the fifty-year-old trees in the 
 orchard. 
 
 I sometimes went there with uncle, on warm 
 afternoons, the better to enjoy the breeze from 
 the Bay. Uncle liked the place, and sometimes 
 read old histories there, under the trees. 
 
 He told me there many Indian stories that are
 
 126 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 not found in histories, as he said, but which he 
 thought very romantic and of much local interest. 
 Among these were accounts of Alexander, the son 
 of the great Massasoit, and his warrior queen, 
 Weebamo, who was truly a Boadicea ; of the son 
 of Philip who was sold into slavery to Spain ; of 
 Amy, the daughter of Massasoit, whose descend 
 ants still live in a town above the Cape, and are 
 sometimes called "The Princesses." 
 
 Whenever the children had a picnic on Pine 
 Tree Hill, they invited Aunt Desire. Her stories 
 and her cookies, as well as many friendly offices 
 in the way of dishes, pitchers of milk, and pitchers 
 of water, were sure to be a benevolent feature of 
 the rustic spread. Aunt was a kind of gypsy queen 
 on such occasions ; a delight to all good people and 
 obedient children, and a terror to evil doers ; her 
 opinions were decisive, and her influence over the 
 young was absolute. A hundred questions arise 
 at such a gathering, but no one ever thought of 
 disputing the opinions and decisions of Aunt 
 Desire. 
 
 Sitting on the grass or carpet of dry pine 
 needles, under the intermingling trees, with one 
 or two old ladies, and a dozen or some twenty 
 children about her, what delightful stories she
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. I2/ 
 
 used to tell ! There was a kind of magic and 
 magnetism in them, or rather perhaps in her 
 manner of telling them, that spirited the youthful 
 fancy off to fairy-land. One of these stories, often 
 repeated, related to a certain wild goose which an 
 old wife on the Cape once gave to her son to carry 
 to sea for his Thanksgiving dinner, but which flew 
 home after a voyage of some days, and was found 
 in the farm-yard, "honking, " on Thanksgiving 
 morning. 
 
 But her favorite story with the little people, she 
 called " Crows in the Trees and Hawks in the 
 Air." I heard her relate it several times. She 
 gave it an air of mystery, and imitated the birds 
 of which she spoke with highly dramatic effect, 
 and made the final tragedy wonderfully agreeable 
 to the children by liberal donations of cookies. 
 
 CROWS IN THE TREES AND HAWKS IN THE AIR. 
 
 " It is a story with a moral," she would begin. 
 "Have some cookies? Now, listen, and you will 
 learn what it is not to obey your betters. Tis a 
 dreadful thing, a very dreadful thing. There are 
 crows in the trees and hawks in the air. Let me 
 tell you about Biddy High-Fly.
 
 128 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 " Well, old Mrs. Red Comb was a very discreet 
 bird, but she had a very ambitious pullet, who had 
 caused her more trouble than all the rest of her 
 brood. The pullet s name was Miss High-Fly. 
 
 " My daughter, said Mrs. Red Comb to her 
 one day, I am afraid that you will come to some 
 evil end. There are crows in the trees and hawks 
 in the air. Your waywardness troubles me. Let 
 me advise you to be on very obedient terms with 
 the mistress of the farm-house. Let her make 
 your nest and select your eggs for setting, and 
 have the oversight of your family when they are 
 hatched. 
 
 " Not I, said Biddy High-Fly. Not I. Cut 
 cut cut not I, cut! They don t rob me of 
 half of my eggs, and then stick me up in a dingy 
 hen-house on the same nest in which my great 
 grandmother used to sit. I m a biddy of spirit, I 
 be cut cut a cut ! I mean to steal my nest 
 in the woods or fields, and have all of my eggs 
 myself, I do. Then I shall come home at last 
 bringing a brood that will make all of the hens 
 cackle, and the mistress of the farm-house stare. 
 
 " But the crows? 
 
 " A straw for the crows! I will hide my nest. 
 
 " And the hawks ?
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 129 
 
 " A fly for the hawks ! They ll find that there 
 is one biddy that has the courage to defend 
 herself. 
 
 " What would you do with your chickens after 
 they were hatched ? Who would feed them ? 
 
 " Squire Parsnip s corn-field would be good 
 picking, I fancy. 
 
 " The squire s men would kill you. 
 
 " They d have to catch me first. I have got 
 both legs and wings, I have. I should squat down 
 if I heard any one coming. 
 
 " Mrs. Red Comb dropped her tail in despair, 
 and only said, You poor, silly creature ! You 
 will find out one day that there are crows in the 
 trees and hawks in the air ! 
 
 " So Biddy High-Fly made her a nest under a 
 bramble-bush in the woods. She laid sixteen 
 eggs, and then she begun to sit. 
 
 "One sunny afternoon she was startled by the 
 sound of caw caw caw, and presently Mr. 
 Crow dropped down on a green bough near her 
 nest. Biddy s heart was all a-flutter. 
 
 "Fine afternoon, said Mr. Crow caw caw 
 
 caw. 
 
 " Yes, sir, cut cut, answered Biddy, very 
 short. 
 
 5
 
 130 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 " You are one of the finest biddies I ever saw, 
 said Mr. Crow. You have a nice nest of eggs, 
 no doubt ? 
 
 " Cut a cut, said Biddy, good-humoredly, 
 smoothing her ruffled feathers. 
 
 " Will you just rise a little, and let me see 
 your fine eggs ? politely asked Mr. Crow. 
 
 " Biddy displayed her treasures. 
 
 " If you hatch all of those fine eggs, said Mr. 
 Crow, you and your family will be the ornament 
 and glory of the woods. I wish you success. 
 Good-afternoon. I will call again some day. 
 
 " Mr. Crow bowed very politely, and Biddy, 
 feeling highly flattered, rose and made a courtesy. 
 
 "Mr. Crow did indeed call again one day, and at 
 a time when Biddy was not at home. When s"he 
 came back to her nest she found that four of her 
 eggs were gone. She concluded that some low 
 bred pole-cat had been that way, but she never 
 suspected polite Mr. Crow. 
 
 " Biddy resolved not to go out of sight of her 
 nest again, but to live by catching flies. She 
 frequently observed Mr. Crow sitting upon the 
 top of a tall maple tree, and wondered that he did 
 not drop down and have a chat. 
 
 " Have some cookies ? Now, do ; there s more to 
 foller.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 131 
 
 "Well, one day Mr. Crow called again, bringing 
 with him a number of his friends. They compli 
 mented Biddy on her beauty, and Mr. Crow, alight 
 ing close to her nest, asked her if she wouldn t be 
 so accommodating as to rise and let his friends 
 see her fine eggs. 
 
 " Biddy rose very proudly, when suddenly Mr. 
 Crow darted under her, and, lifting her up, gave 
 her a toss over his head. His friends alighted 
 around the nest, and a goodly feast they had. 
 
 "When Biddy picked herself up, and saw her 
 eggs disappearing, she begun to scold most 
 lustily. 
 
 " O, you deceitful, lying creature ! she said. 
 Cut cut a cut. You black rascal ! a cut. 
 You wicked thief ! Cut a cut! 
 
 "Presently there was a report of a gun in Squire 
 Parsnip s corn-field, and Mr. Crow and his friends 
 made a rapid exit. 
 
 "Biddy found but one egg unbroken, and, with 
 gloomy thoughts, she sat down on that solitary 
 egg, and hid her head under her wing, poor thing. 
 
 " In the course of time her one egg hatched, 
 and she started, with her chick, for Squire Pars 
 nip s corn-field. On her way she heard a rustling 
 of wings above her head, and, looking up, saw
 
 132 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 Mr. Hawk. She sat down quickly, covering her 
 little chick, and crying : 
 
 " N-a-a-a ! 
 
 " Yes, said Mr. Hawk, your chicken for my 
 dinner, if you please. 
 
 " N-a-a-a, said Biddy, bristling her feathers, 
 so as to look as large and savage as possible. 
 
 " Mr. Hawk lit on Biddy s back, and, for a few 
 minutes, made the feathers fly. Biddy couldn t 
 stand this, so, uttering a cry of terror, she flew 
 towards the wall and hid herself under a stone. 
 The last that she heard of her little chick, it was 
 peeping in the sky. 
 
 "When she recovered from her fright, she went 
 to Squire Parsnip s corn-field and flew over the 
 wall. 
 
 " Shew ! exclaimed a frightful voice, and poor 
 Biddy flew back again, and ran for the farm-house 
 in the greatest terror. 
 
 " Haw haw haw! laughed Mr. Crow, as 
 he saw Biddy trudging home. Haw haw 
 haw ! What a fright of a hen ! And all the 
 crows on the tree-tops chorussed Haw haw 
 haw! 
 
 " The hens all laughed and cackled when Biddy 
 returned, for she was poor, and without a chick, 
 and her back was all bare of feathers.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 133 
 
 " There s that missing hen, said the mistress 
 of the farm-house, to her man, Joe. Catch her, 
 and put her in the hen-coop to fat, and we ll kill 
 her some day. She don t look fit to be out of 
 doors. 
 
 " So Biddy High-Fly went into the iron pot, 
 and was never seen again after the dinner that 
 day. 
 
 " Now, children, this is a kind of an allegory, as 
 Bunyan would say. Always obey what older peo 
 ple say to ye, because there are crows in the trees 
 and hawks in the air. Always listen to what the 
 preacher says. There are crows in the trees and 
 hawks in the air. And what your teacher says. 
 There are crows in the trees and hawks in the air. 
 
 "Don t be scared not too scared, I mean. 
 Be good, and they ll never get ye. Now we ll 
 have a cookie apiece. 
 
 " What is the Scripture moral of that story I 
 told you ? " 
 
 " There are crows in the trees and hawks in the 
 air," always chorus the children, 
 
 " Don t you forget it ! "
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 TWO LETTP:RS. 
 
 We had been riding over the sandy roads 
 Uncle and I. We were late for supper, and as we 
 were leaving the table, Aunt said : 
 
 "Here is a letter for each of you; I guess yours, 
 Eben, is from the boys." 
 
 We went to the piazza, and both of us were soon 
 absorbed in reading the letters we had received. 
 
 After reading,, we each sat in silence. 
 
 Aunt came out for a moment, to ask Eben if the 
 " boys were well," and, being assured that they 
 were, returned to her work. 
 
 " This letter," said Uncle, "I hope will prove 
 the first ray of a great joy. It makes me very 
 happy." 
 
 "Mine is different," said I. " It seems to me 
 like the shadow of a great sorrow. It makes me 
 sad. It is from father." 
 
 " Brother isn t he well ? " 
 
 "No."
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 135 
 
 "May I read it." 
 
 " I will read it to you presently. It excites me 
 strangely. Won t you read me yours, Uncle ? 
 you say it is pleasant ; it will perhaps make me 
 feel easier." 
 
 " It is from Henry marked Private 
 
 KANSAS CITY, 
 August 22d. 
 
 MY DEAR FATHER : 
 
 I am to-day forty-five years old. You will be glad to 
 know that I am successful and prosperous. Whatever 
 I am I owe to the influences of my dear old home 
 on the Cape. It was there I learned the principles that 
 gave me independence of character, and moral and 
 physical strength. I have tried to be true to the prin 
 ciples you were so careful to inculcate, not so much by 
 word as by example. Your influence grows upon me 
 with years never a son had a better father, and it is 
 because you always were true to your own sense of duty 
 that I have aimed to be true to mine. 
 
 When I came to Kansas, it was more from the desire 
 to help make it a free state than to gain wealth or repu 
 tation. You know what the influence of the JV. Y. 
 Tribune was to me then ; how your talk of the duties of 
 Americans to the higher law of right fired me. I was 
 willing to fight as I had voted, and to die to make a 
 single state of this nation of great possibilities true 
 to the principles of righteousness and freedom. 
 
 I was poor then. I am well-to-do to-day. I have a 
 beautiful home, and a farm of a thousand acres ; I have
 
 136 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 a true wife, and four children to whom I am teaching in 
 religion, in politics, in conduct of life, all that you taught 
 me when I was a boy. 
 
 You will ask why I am now writing from Kansas 
 City. I came here to attend a political conference. It 
 may please you to know that I have just been nomin 
 ated for congress from this district, and I think my 
 prospects of election are good, as the people seem to 
 respect me, and the republicans generally elect their 
 congressmen by a large majority. 
 
 Do not tell mother of my nomination. If I were to 
 fail of the election it would grieve her. She used to 
 wish me to study law. If I am elected to congress it 
 will probably as greatly please her as though I had 
 become a lawyer. In the event of my election I will 
 write to her and shall hope to surprise her ; so please 
 do not let her see this letter, or be told of this matter if 
 you can prevent it. 
 
 It is said that children fulfill the ideals or desires of 
 their mothers. John seems likely to do so. Mother 
 wished him to study for the ministry. Patriotism 
 brought him here. He has done well. He is rich; 
 better, he is a man of good influence. He has been a 
 class leader for five years, and has taken so much 
 interest in the founding of churches and schools in 
 destitute places that he has just been nominated for 
 the presidency of the Western Home Mission Society, 
 which will greatly increase his opportunities for doing 
 good. His influence, were he a minister, would hardly 
 be as great as now. I think his life does credit to his 
 home teachings. It is such lives that have made 
 Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota the New 
 England of the West.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 137 
 
 Remember me to dear, faithful mother. Whatever 
 may be my future, be assured of my resolution to be 
 true to my God, my parents, and my country. 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 HENRY ENDICOTT. 
 
 "That letter does me good ; it is more to me than 
 will be the fact of Henry s election ; to be a true 
 man is more than to be a congressman. It makes 
 me feel that I have not lived in vain, notwithstand 
 ing the hard things Desire sometimes says to me. 
 But she means well Desire. Right living will 
 produce right fruit at last, and her eyes will be 
 opened some day. I can wait." 
 
 " But brother s letter? " 
 
 " I do not understand it I hope you may. It 
 seems to me dreadful." 
 
 BOSTON, August 2oth. 
 
 JEFFERSON: You wrote me that you had invited 
 your aunt to come to the city. I wish thai" you would 
 return and bring her with you. She has strong good 
 sense, and is an excellent nurse. I want some one of 
 strong will near me ; it would help me. 
 
 I am not well. The doctor says that it was only a 
 slight effusion ; that it will soon pass away. I can t 
 sleep; I take chloral, but I can t sleep. My brain is 
 a-flame. The world is wild, and where am I ? I am 
 gone, lost! 
 
 I shall be calmer to-morrow; to-night I shall walk,
 
 138 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 walk ! How cool the air will be when the night comes. 
 Darkness! it is cool in the dark. The grave is dark 
 and cool. 
 
 It is the fever in my brain that makes me say these 
 things. I shall be calmer to-morrow. 
 
 Your mother will remain at Newport late. I would 
 have it so. The crash is coming; let her enjoy life 
 while she can. Don t tell her I am ill. I am not ill. 
 Eugene is at Etretat. He only writes when he wants 
 money. Archie has gone to Long Branch with 
 Stanley. 
 
 I have not treated Desire as I ought, wife is so 
 proud and peculiar. You know how it was. 
 
 I shall be calmer to-morrow. 
 
 Come at once, my dear boy. 
 
 I suppress a thousand agonies. 
 
 YOUR FATHER. 
 
 P. S. I was greatly excited when I wrote the above. 
 The doctor has been here and left me more chloral. 
 He says that there is no cause for alarm. The effusion 
 is only slight. I am calmer now. My business, oh! 
 my affairs ! But I must not think ! Destroy this. It 
 will show you my condition if anything were to happen.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 AUNT S FAREWELL EXHORTATION. 
 
 That summer on the Cape was the happiest I 
 had known. I think the influence of it will 
 last as long as I live. I certainly hope that 
 Uncle s influence may. He quietly taught me 
 that there is something in life better than I had 
 known, a simple faith in good that has the pro 
 mises of development beyond this stage of our 
 being, and this lesson I had not as well learned in 
 the city, with all of its scholarship and social 
 advantages. 
 
 Every thing charmed me until father s letter 
 brought a shadow. It was a pleasure to be jogged 
 along the country roads in an open carriage. 
 Wild roses and morning glories line the old stone 
 walls in summer, and white, feathery clematis 
 and flaming golden rods in autumn. It is a 
 pleasure to have your own boat and drift along a 
 coast about which no books or Boston letters have 
 been written ; to feel that all the delightful 
 things you discover are your own. It is a
 
 140 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 pleasure to go strawberrying, and blackberrying 
 and whortleberrying, with lunch and pail, and to 
 know that the delicious pies and cakes are made 
 from your berries. 
 
 The haying season ! the charm of that haying 
 I shall never forget. What is the cropped Boston 
 Public Garden to ten acres of newly cut clover, 
 spread out like a green sea ; with the dew dying 
 out of its thousand swaths ; with the air heavy 
 with perfume ; with an hundred robins and 
 thrushes singing in the locust trees, and bob-o - 
 links tossing themselves about in the sun ! 
 
 I had been to church every Sunday during my 
 visit, and such regularity was a new experience to 
 me. I even took a class in the Sunday school, a 
 work for which I had no qualification but uncle s 
 good influence. 
 
 During the minister s vacation Uncle took 
 charge of the social meetings, and on such occa 
 sions I always went with him. 
 
 " Eben is not a powerful exhorter," said Aunt 
 Desire to me one day ; " you know what husband 
 is, you know. Still," she further informed me, 
 "what he says in meetin is generally worth listen 
 ing to and sometimes it is uncommonly interestin , 
 sort of impresses you, you know."
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 141 
 
 "Aunt s exhortations were regarded as "power 
 ful." They were certainly energetic and definitive. 
 She held to the old methods and manners of the 
 days of Jesse Lee, and, as she said, " she did not 
 fear the face of clay." 
 
 The last Sabbath evening that I attended 
 church on the Cape, Uncle Eben led, in the 
 absence of the regular minister. 
 
 All of the families in the town were represented 
 in the meeting. It was a bad night, but there 
 were present ten people each of whom had passed 
 three-score and ten years. I was much impressed 
 with the opening hymn, one of the primitive 
 Methodist s : 
 
 " And let this feeble body fail, 
 And let it faint and die." 
 
 Uncle read for a Scripture lesson, the Galilean 
 parable of the rich fool, who provided everything 
 for this life but deferred the interest of his soul. 
 He illustrated the reading by a story, which 
 seemed to impress the silent audience. It much 
 impressed me. He said : 
 
 ""There was a young man that I once knew, 
 who fell into evil habits, and was made constantly 
 unhappy by his sense of wrong-doing and the fear 
 of the consequences.
 
 142 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 " Each evening when left alone, he reflected, 
 and as often said, I will change my course of 
 life to-morrow. I will to-morrow begin a life of 
 obedience to God. 
 
 "He would wait for the morning; but, when 
 he arose and went out into the world, it was still 
 to-day, so his old life went on. 
 
 " I will not change my course to-day, he said, 
 I will fulfill my intention to-morrow. I have 
 made to-morrow my reformation day. 
 
 " Time went on, but it was always to-day. It 
 was never the past ; no day ever returned again, 
 and to-morrow, the appointed day for his change 
 of life, did not come. 
 
 " He fell sick. At the crisis of his disease he 
 promised to begin a new life to-morrow. The 
 next day he was better, but it was not to-rftorrow ; 
 it was still to-day. 
 
 " His mother was a God-fearing woman. When 
 near death, she called him to her, and asked him 
 for her sake to begin that life that has the 
 promises of a better life than this. 
 
 " I will do all that you ask. I have long been 
 intending it. 
 
 " When will you begin ? 
 
 " To-morrow.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 143 
 
 " But when to-morrow came, it was still to-day, 
 and he did not fulfill his purpose. 
 
 "The frosts of years began to whiten his beard 
 and hair. Age was stealing on. Each night as 
 he looked into the glass, he saw the change, and 
 he hurried to his slumbers with the thought, 
 to-morrow I must begin the life that has the 
 promises of heaven. 
 
 " Old age came at last. His wife died. Then 
 his daughter died ; a lovely girl. He promised 
 each to begin a life of preparation for a future 
 meeting. I will, he said, begin to-morrow. 
 
 " His life had reached four-score years, and yet 
 it was always to-day. He fell sick, and the village 
 pastor told him that he could not live. 
 
 " How long shall I survive ? he asked. 
 
 " The doctor says you may live until to-morrow. 
 
 " That is the day I have long waited for, he 
 said. 
 
 " In the night he asked : 
 
 " What is the clock ? 
 
 " Eleven. 
 
 " Again he asked the same question. 
 
 " Twelve. 
 
 "Again. 
 
 " One.
 
 144 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 " It is still to-day, and there is no to-morrow. 
 
 " He passed away in the morning, and the hours 
 sped on, and for him there was no to-morrow, 
 when rose or set the sun. 
 
 " Now, brothers and sisters, the time is yours. 
 Speak as duty impels you." 
 
 "A number "testified." Then there was a 
 pause. 
 
 " Improve the time, brothers and sisters," said 
 Uncle, reprovingly. 
 
 Aunt Desire caught hold of the back of the seat 
 in front of her and rose slowly. She took off her 
 cotton gloves and dropped them on the seat and 
 turned around, and faced the audience. She evi 
 dently had a burden on her heart, and had made 
 up her mind to do her duty, and not to " fear the 
 face of clay." 
 
 " My dear brothers and sisters, I feel just as I 
 hadn t ought to, and when I feel just as I hadn t 
 ought to myself, I feel like makin good reso 
 lutions to do just as I ought to, and exhortin 
 other people to do as they ought to." 
 
 Uncle Eben evidently did not quite accept this 
 logic. He turned the leaves of the Bible ner 
 vously, and raised his spectacles as though won 
 dering what Desire would say next.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 145 
 
 " My brothers and sisters, I m going away for a 
 spell to leave ye ; I am goin up to Jerusalem to 
 attend the Feast of the Tabernacles." 
 
 She paused. One of the brethren said an en 
 couraging " Amen," and presently she started off 
 again in the direction of her first idea. 
 
 " And why don t ye do as ye ought to ? When 
 you read the Zions Herald, and the Journal, and 
 the Transcript, do you ever compare the lively doin 
 up to Boston with doin s down here by the cold 
 streams of Babylon ? Think of the Lecturship 
 where they make clear to you all the mysteries of 
 the world to come. Think of the faith that they 
 exercise there, healin all manner of- diseases and 
 takin away the appetites of the vicious, and 
 workin all the miracles of the days of the prophets 
 and apostles of old. I know that husband says 
 that faith is not confined to places, and we can 
 exercise it here as well as anywhere else ; but he 
 don t know everything, husband don t, no more 
 than I do. But think of the good those peculiar 
 people do. Societies think of the societies O 
 you that live on the husks of the land down here 
 by the cold streams of Babylon ! Societies for the 
 Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and Societies for 
 the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Women s
 
 146 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 Dress Reform Societies, and here I ve got three 
 alpaca dresses more than I can wear, but I mean 
 to reform, Prisoners Friend Societies, and societies 
 for sendin all wrong doin people to the country ; 
 societies for the education of everybody, so that 
 everybody can be educated, and societies to help 
 everybody get rich, so that they may have money 
 to give to the poor. Think of the Missionary 
 Societies, and the Mutual Aid Societies to make 
 the widow s heart happy when her husband has 
 gone, and the Art Societies and the Literary So 
 cieties ; why, it seems as though all the people 
 must be pious, and rich, and know near upon 
 everything. 
 
 " Don t you see how far you come short of your 
 duties and how you live below your privileges ? 
 It is true we haven t any drunkards to reform, 
 and no prisoners to help. I don t know as there 
 are any paupers in the town, or any misbehavin 
 people. But what of that ? You are not miracu 
 lous, like those Boston folks." 
 
 A brother near me groaned. 
 
 " Farewell, brothers and sisters, I am goin up 
 to Jerusalem to recuperate my faith. I am goin 
 to see things with my own eyes. I shall be with 
 you in the spirit, and when I return I hope I shall
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 147 
 
 have a tale to tell that will bring joy and gladness 
 to all your hearts." 
 
 Aunt sat down. She looked relieved. So did 
 uncle.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. A WALK. AUNT CALLS 
 
 ON THE DOCTORS. 
 
 I immediately returned home, and with feelings 
 of great anxiety. I hurried from the Old Colony 
 Depot across the city and Public Garden. Father 
 himself answered my ring. 
 
 "I thought it was you," he said, cheerfully, lay 
 ing his hand on my shoulder. " I think my letter 
 must have frightened you ; it was a false alarm. 
 The doctor says there is no danger if I can only 
 be kept quiet and get sleep. The difficulty is, I 
 do not get any natural sleep. I am glad you have 
 come. It will make me more quiet to have you 
 here. Where is your aunt and Carrie ? " 
 
 " They are coming in the carriage. I took the 
 short cut from the depot. You cannot tell how 
 relieved I am to find you better. Your letter did 
 alarm me." 
 
 There was a worn, anxious look in father s face, 
 and a strange light in his eyes. Something in his
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 149 
 
 appearence made me uncertain about the doctor s 
 sincerity. His cheerful appearance, however, 
 reassured me, and the shadow passed away. 
 
 He had been accustomed to allude to Aunt 
 Desire as "a character," and his invitations to 
 Uncle and Aunt had never been very cordial or 
 pressing : certainly not since the death of my own 
 mother. My step-mother was an amiable woman, 
 but a lover of society, and of her own circle of 
 friends, and she took no interest at all in father s 
 country relations. Eugene was her favorite step 
 son, and he seldom spoke with much respect of 
 uncle and his family, whom he called " those 
 people down on the Cape." 
 
 But when Aunt arrived from the depot, he met 
 her at the door of the carriage, and the old friend 
 ship with "brother Eben s wife," was renewed 
 after an almost silence of twenty years. 
 
 Few things in life ever gave me more pleasure 
 than that meeting, and the interview in the parlor 
 that evening. Father s mind on the latter occa 
 sion seemed to go back to the old farm ; old 
 associations, traditions and stories. He talked of 
 the family burying-ground, the little church, and 
 Pine Tree Hill. 
 
 " I was happy when I was a boy," said he ;
 
 ISO UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 "happier at night by the pasture s bars, than I 
 have ever been since. Money cannot buy happi 
 ness, Desire. Health is happiness ; hope is 
 happiness ; sleep is happiness. Did you ever 
 realize, sister, what a blessing it is to be able to 
 sleep ? " 
 
 The word "sister" seemed to win Aunt s heart 
 at once. Although she had said nothing to me, 
 I knew that she had secretly some hard things 
 in memory to overlook and forgive, in our family. 
 
 " No," said Aunt, " I never have thought about 
 sleep at all. I just sleep. I should be sorry to 
 be kept awake." 
 
 The evening passed pleasantly, but that night, 
 after we had all retired to our chambers, there 
 were mysterious sounds in father s room, as 
 though he was walking, walking. At midnight, 
 I was awakened by the same sound of incessant 
 steps, and again near morning. 
 - Father did not leave his room early in the morn 
 ing. When he appeared, he assured Aunt and I 
 that he was better, but there was a strange and 
 mysterious expression as of great and resolutely 
 controlled suffering in his face. I tried not to 
 notice it. 
 
 Aunt had not seen him for years, and could not, 
 like myself, mark the change by contrast.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 151 
 
 We went out to walk in the morning Aunt 
 and I. The Public Garden was flaming with asters, 
 and the air was full of the scent of the long, dark 
 beds of heliotrope. The Beacon Street mall was 
 an arch of leaves, tinted with autumn splendors. 
 The white swan and the black swan were swim 
 ming in the pond, and Aunt was delighted with 
 the scene as we passed from statue to statue. 
 
 Suddenly she asked, " Where is Boylston 
 Street ? " 
 
 " Right here," said I. " Why ? " 
 
 " The doctors. You know that one reason why 
 I have been wishin to come up from the Cape is 
 to see a reliable doctor." 
 
 " Dr. Warrenton lives there" said I. " Of ex 
 cellent reputation. Experienced." 
 
 "Will you call with me ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 We found the doctor s rooms very antique and 
 hung with pictures not very well calculated to 
 make one hopeful and happy. There was a skull 
 on an old clock which at once arrested Aunt s eye, 
 and caused her to make the rather embarrassing re 
 mark that she " supposed that it once belonged to 
 some poor critter or other some day or other." 
 The table was full of medical periodicals, the con-
 
 152 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 tents of which were not over-cheerful and assur 
 ing. There was an open fire-place ; the light was 
 curtained, and Aunt grew nervous while waiting, 
 as did I. 
 
 After a long time, a tall, lank, wrinkled-faced 
 man appeared, like the foreman of a jury with the 
 verdict. 
 
 " What can I do for you, Madam ? " 
 
 " Dear me," said Aunt, " I ve almost forgot. 
 That skull up there s kind o taken away my 
 recollections. I ve the catarrh. Is it danger 
 ous ? " 
 
 " I regard catarrh as consumption began." He 
 looked squarely at Aunt like a statue. 
 
 "You don t, though." 
 
 " Let me look at your throat." 
 
 Aunt opened her mouth \vith the expression of 
 a client waiting for the verdict. 
 
 " Congested. If that congestion was a little 
 lower down you would not live two years," he 
 added. 
 
 " How long have you had the catarrh ? " 
 
 " Fifty years." 
 
 "Humph ! and living yet." 
 
 "Jeff, let us go. I don t feel well. I always 
 told Eben that I was not well. I been in con-
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 153 
 
 sumption fifty years ! Well, it is a blessin that I 
 did not know it." 
 
 " How much is to pay, doctor ? " 
 
 " Five dollars for the examination," 
 
 Aunt paid the tribute due to knowledge and 
 experience. 
 
 "Jeff, I feel awful. I always thought I was 
 consumptive. Let us consult the next doctor in 
 the row." 
 
 He was a middle-aged, quiet-looking gentleman. 
 His apartment had a very conservative appearance. 
 
 Aunt stated her case in an anxious voice. 
 
 "The condition of which you speak," said he, 
 "is not an uncommon one. In some cases it 
 tends to serious disease ; in others it prevents 
 more serious disease : all depends upon the consti 
 tution. Whether it be a grave matter with you or 
 not depends upon your constitution." 
 
 "Thank you," said Aunt, in a tone of relief; 
 " how much is to pay ? " 
 
 "Five dollars." 
 
 "I m not quite so bad off as I thought I was. 
 It all depends, you see. I hope it is not a grave 
 matter with me, yet. Let us make one more call. 
 Here, let us go in here, and hear what Jie says." 
 
 The next doctor was fat and jolly. His room
 
 154 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 was full of landscape pictures, ornaments, vases of 
 flowers. 
 
 "What is your disease, madame ? " 
 
 " Consumption." 
 
 " How long have you had it ? " 
 
 " Fifty years." 
 
 " Fifty years ; let me examine your lungs. No, 
 I need not do that. I never knew any one who 
 had a pulse like yours to have any tendency to 
 consumption." 
 
 "Well, I ve got the catarrh ! " 
 
 " Most people have in this climate ; I look upon 
 that disease as consumption prevented ; acts as a 
 sort of an issue ; relieves the system. I ve always 
 noticed that catarrhal patients were very long 
 lived, I wouldn t be surprised if you lived to be 
 ninety, or more, and died of old age. When the 
 tendency towards disease takes the form of catarrh, 
 there s no telling how long a person may live." 
 
 "Jeff, I feel better. Don t I look better?" 
 
 " How much is to pay, Docter ? " 
 
 " Oh, nothing ; nothing ails you. Fine day ; 
 Public Garden looks splendid." 
 
 "Jeff, I am glad to be in the open air again. 
 How beautiful the world looks ! I like that doctor, 
 don t you ? How well I feel ; come to think
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 155 
 
 of it, the opinions of these two doctors are 
 almost exactly like those of old Doctor Black 
 and Doctor White down on the Cape. Strange, 
 now isn t it ?"
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 DESIRE CALLS UPON SUNDRY EDITORS AND INTRO 
 DUCES TO THEM THE PASTORAL POEMS OF 
 MISS FLORA PINK. 
 
 " Carrie, sit down a few moments, and let me 
 tell you how I have been treated, here in Boston, 
 too. I am disappointed in Boston editors. They 
 are not the men I thought they were. 
 
 " Blanche Hale spent a few weeks at our house, 
 some ten years ago, or more. She used to write 
 for the magazines, and especially for the Atlantic 
 MontJily. I asked her one day how she sent her 
 contributions to the editor of the Atlantic. She 
 said that her uncle, the Rev. Dr. Powers, took 
 her first articles to Mr. Fields, and that Mr. 
 Fields examined them, and accepted them, and 
 invited her to call at the contributors room. 
 
 " You should have heard her describe that 
 contributors room : Full of pictures, statues, and 
 fine furniture, and free at all hours of the day to 
 all who wrote for the magazine. When a person
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 157 
 
 called with articles, he had only to send his card 
 to Mr. Fields, who received him with bows and 
 smiles, and paid him $200. A very gracious 
 man was Mr. Fields, so Blanche said ; he had a 
 generous and unselfish appreciation for everything 
 good in a manuscript, and a helpful criticism for 
 what was defective. That is the way Blanche 
 expressed herself. 
 
 "Well, what Blanche said about the contribu 
 tors room and gracious Mr. Fields, and about 
 his generous and unselfish appreciation, and 
 helpful criticism, impressed itself upon my mind 
 like a picture. I thought if I took the poems 
 of that poor, unfortunate girl, Flora Pink, to 
 any editor s office, that I would be shown to 
 the contributors room, which would be full of 
 pictures, statues, and fine furniture, and that 
 some gracious man like Mr. Fields would come 
 bowing in, read the poetry, and give me a check 
 for $200. Flora needs the money so much, too. 
 
 " So I put a dozen or two of Flora s poems into 
 my travellin -bag, and made my way slowly in the 
 direction of the Old South Church and Old State 
 House, a way in which formerly all good people 
 used to walk. I came to the office of a paper that 
 I knew published poetry, and went in. There
 
 158 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 was a fine-looking old gentleman behind the 
 counter. 
 
 " I walked up to him with an air of confidence. 
 
 " Will you kindly tell me where the contribu 
 tors room is ? said I. 
 
 " Compositors room ? said he. 
 
 " The room where they entertain ladies who 
 bring valuable contributions to the paper/ said I. 
 
 " Oh, the editor s room. Next door ; up four 
 flights. 
 
 " I mounted the four flights of stairs ; it was a 
 long climb, but I do not mind hardships when I 
 think I am carryin happiness with me to another, 
 much less when I am on a mission with the 
 productions of genius for the consolation of the 
 world. 
 
 " At the head of the fourth flight were the 
 editors rooms, marked private, but I walked right 
 in, and findin an empty chair, sat down, a little 
 out of breath. A very fine-lookin man was 
 writin at a quiet, sunny desk. He did noL 
 look up. 
 
 " Hem, hem, said I. 
 
 " But he did not turn his head. 
 
 " Then I proceeded to open my bag, and to take 
 out Flora s poems, and look them over. I put
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 159 
 
 those on Spring in one parcel, and those on 
 Autumn in another; and those on Disappointed 
 Hopes, in another. 
 
 " Hem ! Hem ! says I. 
 
 "At that the intellectual lookin man s pen 
 seemed to fly faster than ever, and he looked as 
 though all the world was outside of his own 
 brain, and he wished it to remain so. 
 
 " Are you the editor ? asked I. 
 
 "He looked up, very pleasantly. 
 
 " How do you do, madam ? I beg pardon, 
 madam. I was very much engaged. 
 
 " Oh, I m in no hurry, said I, time isn t any 
 thing to me, just now, I m visitin in the city. Is 
 this the contributors room ? 
 
 " We have no contributors room, said he. 
 What do you wish, madam ? 
 
 " I have here some poems that it will do your 
 heart good to read. And a poorer girl than her 
 who wrote them don t live down on the Cape. 
 Here are ten poems on "spring" and ten on 
 "autumn." I wish you would just read em 
 and see what a genius that girl is ; and so poor, 
 too. 
 
 " But time is precious, said he. 
 
 " Oh, I m in no hurry, said I. I haven t any-
 
 160 UP FRO .If THE CAPE. 
 
 thing in particular to do. I m only visitin in the 
 city. 
 
 " But they are waiting for copy in the compos 
 ing-room, said he. 
 
 " O, well, never mind, I can wait. I feel quite 
 composed myself. Time is nothin to me when I 
 am visitin . 
 
 " If you will leave one or two of your best 
 contributions, madam, said he, I will look them 
 over as soon as I find time, and I will send you an 
 answer by mail. Just put your address upon 
 them. 
 
 " How would this do? said I. 
 
 " I began to read an affecting ballad called the 
 Two Orphans : 
 
 " Two orphan children once there was, 
 And why there was, was many a cause." 
 
 "Kind of mysterious, said I ; like Emerson. 
 "Once there was," that don t seem quite right. 
 
 " A very distressed look came over his pleasant 
 face. Then a boy came rushin in, without any 
 introduction. 
 
 " The foreman wants the copy for the sixth 
 page ; all out of copy ; waiting. Go to press an 
 hour earlier this afternoon.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. l6l 
 
 "The boy flew out of the room. 
 
 " Two orphan children once there was, 
 
 read I. Guess I ll alter that, Once there were. 
 Have you a pencil ? 
 
 " I am very busy, madam, this morning. Please 
 leave your contribution on the desk. 
 
 " I m in no hurry, but since it will be a con 
 venience to you I ll leave it. Just send the money 
 to that tJiere place ; I m visitin there. And re 
 member that Flora is very poor. A poorer girl 
 can t be found on the Cape. She needs just as 
 much as you can pay. I m sorry you are in a 
 hurry this mornin ; I m in no hurry. Just as well 
 stay as not. Good-bye. 
 
 " I left two poems. But after I got upon the 
 stairs, I chanced to think that I had not made the 
 correction, so I went back." 
 
 " Will you allow me just to correct that gram 
 mar ? said I. 
 
 " I will correct it if I accept the poem, said 
 the intellectual lookin man. 
 
 " Change "once there was," to "once there 
 were ? " 
 
 " Yes , said he, any way. 
 
 " Good by, said I. 
 6
 
 1 62 UP FROAf THE CAPE. 
 
 "Good by. 
 
 " When I got out on the stairs again, a thought 
 came to me like a thunder clap. If that editor 
 were to change once there was to once there 
 were then the rhyme wouldn t come right. 
 
 Why there was, was many a cause. 
 
 " I turned round, and hurried back. The door 
 of the editor s room stuck ; I couldn t open it. I 
 tried and tried, but it just stuck. So I came 
 away. 
 
 " I went to the office of our religious paper. I 
 found a lovely contributors room there, carpeted, 
 with pictures, book-cases and flowers. It was sur 
 rounded by little rooms where men were writin . 
 The rooms looked very pleasant, but the people all 
 had occupied expressions on their faces, or a far 
 away appearance, such as some folks have when 
 the contribution-box comes round. 
 
 " I went into one of the rooms. 
 
 " Be you the editor ? asked I of a man readin 
 a paper that was printed only on one side. 
 
 " I am one of the staff. 
 
 " I have brought you some poems on "Spring," 
 written by Flora Pink. Flora is very poor. 
 She
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 163 
 
 " Excuse me, madame. This is a busy day. I 
 am reading proof. If you will leave your articles, 
 they will be given to the manuscript reader. 
 
 " Flora is very poor. 
 
 " Yes, madame, but we accept articles on their 
 merits. It is our duty to give our readers the best 
 material we can secure ; the poverty of the author 
 cannot influence us in this thing ; that is a matter 
 for charity, and our duties to the public and our 
 duties to charity are distinct things. Do you 
 see ? 
 
 " The distinction is a fine one, as husband 
 would say, But let me read you one of Flora s 
 productions, and you will find that your duty 
 to the public and to charity lie in the same 
 direction. 
 
 " I took out Flora s Apostrophe to Winter. 
 Apostrophe seemed such an earthquake kind of 
 a word that I knew it would command attention 
 to what followed. It did. I began to read : 
 
 How cold is he, how icy cold, 
 As makes us shiver shakes untold. 
 
 "Here is another, said I, entitled "The Battle 
 Field Soldiers," suitable for the Fourth of July, or 
 any patriotic day
 
 1 64 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 "We poor soldiers of the battle, 
 Have to stand and hear the cannon rattle." 
 
 "Just then a voice was whistled right out of the 
 wall, Is the proof ready ? I beg your pardon, 
 madam/ said the gentleman. I must go to the 
 Library at once. Leave your articles. They will 
 receive attention soon after you are gone. Please 
 leave a card with them. So I left ten poems there 
 with your card and came away. 
 
 "Next I went to the office of the Youth s Instruc 
 tor. The editors rooms are most unsocially high 
 up there ; it was like climbing to the top of 
 Bunker Hill monument. 
 
 "I knocked. There was a dead silence. Then I 
 knocked again. The door was opened by a young 
 ish man with a very inquiring look in his face. 
 He offered me a chair, and I opened my bag. He 
 looked as though he was used to receiving 
 contributors. There was a sort of polite, good- 
 humored, easy despair about him, that must have 
 been the result of long experience. 
 
 " I asked him if he was the editor. He said 
 that he was one of the assistants, and acted for the 
 editor when contributors called. 
 
 "I then told him Flora s story. He did not 
 seem to be greatly affected, but heard me in a
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 165 
 
 quiet, respectful way, as though he had heard of 
 such cases before. 
 
 " If you will write your address on the articles 
 and leave them, said he, they will receive atten 
 tion at once. Here is a circular explaining our 
 rules in regard to contributions. 
 
 " I will take the circular and read it. " 
 
 " Here is a letter for you, Mrs. Endicott." 
 "A letter! I hope husband isn t sick or noth 
 ing. Why, why ; its that 
 
 Two orphan children once there was. 
 
 " Where s the check ? No check, no note, no 
 nothin . Poor Flora." 
 
 " Here s a package a boy left for you, Mrs. 
 Endicott." 
 
 " Why, why ; it s that Shiver Shakes Untold 
 piece, and all the rest of them. How did it get 
 here so soon ? Got back almost as soon as I did. 
 How wonderful ! What Will Flora say ? " 
 
 " Let me get that printed circular. How does 
 it read ? " 
 
 "Articles accepted are paid for. Those not accepted are 
 returned to their authors, if stamps are sent or left with the 
 manuscripts for the payment of postage. Declined manu 
 scripts, not accompanied by post-office stamps, will not be 
 returned."
 
 1 66 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 " What does that mean ? " 
 " Did you leave stamps ? " 
 "No." 
 
 " Then it means that you will never hear from 
 those poems again." 
 " But I ll call again." 
 " Will you what does that say ? " 
 
 " Articles should be sent by mail, and not left at the edi 
 torial office. The time of the editors cannot be given to 
 personal interviews with writers, nor ought personal influ 
 ence to be brought upon them by those seeking the accept 
 ance of articles." 
 
 " Well, I never ! It makes me hold my breath."
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 NOVEMBER. 
 
 Father did not improve. He grew weak in 
 body, and seemed to lose mental control whenever 
 he was excited. He could get little rest except 
 under the influence of chloral ; he was forming 
 the chloral habit, and the daily reaction against 
 the nightly drug was painful and pitiful to see. 
 
 My step-mother returned from Newport, and 
 was greatly surprised and alarmed to find father 
 so changed in appearance. Archie came back in 
 time for the opening of the fall session of the 
 schools, and we received a letter from Eugene, 
 saying that he would return in November. 
 
 A peculiarity of father s condition was his 
 intense likes and dislikes. He was governed 
 wholly by his feelings, and yielded to his impulses 
 without the exercise of reason. There were mem 
 bers of the family and several intimate friends 
 whom he constantly shunned, and that without 
 apparent reason. He liked to have aunt near
 
 1 68 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 him constantly, and her power to quiet him in his 
 excitable moods was greater than any other s. 
 
 He made me his companion. He seemed to 
 desire my constant attention ; always liked to 
 have me doing something that expressed my 
 sympathy for him. If I were absent, he fre 
 quently inquired for me, and was restless until I 
 returned. 
 
 We rode together ofi the beautiful October 
 afternoons, in the bright suburbs of Brookline, 
 among the villas of West Roxbury, over Milton 
 Hill, by the Charles, among the Blue Hills, to the 
 Newtons. 
 
 I gave nearly my whole time to him. If I 
 proposed going anywhere by myself he would say, 
 hopelessly : 
 
 " Do not leave me, Jefferson, it will not be 
 long." 
 
 These were sad days. They went on and on 
 through the mid-autumn but brought no change. 
 The trees of the Common turned to golden ashes, 
 rustled and fell. The calm splendors of the Octo 
 ber weather passed ; the November winds came, 
 and the Indian summer brought the last passing 
 brightness of the year, but still no change. 
 
 Aunt wished to return to the Cape. Her sug-
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 169 
 
 gestion of it made father worse, and the doctor 
 urged her to stay until winter. 
 
 " Everything depends upon mental quiet," said 
 the doctor. " He must not be crossed in any 
 thing. To oppose his will might prove suddenly 
 fatal." 
 
 He wished Uncle Eben to visit him, and a 
 letter was sent inviting and urging him to come. 
 Uncle replied, promising* to do so as soon as the 
 fall work of the farm could be left to other hands. 
 
 He came in Indian summer. Father was im 
 mediately better on meeting Uncle ; his spirits 
 revived ; the two talked of old days and their early 
 associations, and father seemed to live again in 
 the years long passed. The doctor spoke hope 
 fully. The cloud seemed passing. How I longed 
 for the old home calm again after the fever. 
 
 Aunt and I went out much together, now that 
 uncle had come. We were cheerful again, for the 
 doctor said that father would soon be better. In 
 our lives was an Indian summer weather. 
 
 Aunt one day made the call that she had prom 
 ised herself on the Cape, on Richard Follett 
 Hon. Richard Follett Dick Follett of the Cape. 
 
 He had been a poor boy, but by great, persist 
 ent Yankee shrewdness and energy, had become
 
 I/O UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 rich. He was one of the many farmers boys of 
 the Cape, who had brought to a city experience, 
 the force of right early training, good health, a 
 clear mind and an active ambition, and had pros 
 pered. After his first business successes he had 
 made it his untiring purpose of life to acquire 
 wealth. His aims turned into gold. 
 
 His house in the suburbs was imposing a col 
 onial mansion in a broad lawn, surrounded by fine 
 specimens of landscape gardening, and grand old 
 trees. It showed that his love of country life had 
 not changed. The estate was like a park in the 
 thickly-peopled streets. 
 
 We rode into the grounds. Though late in the 
 season, a fountain was playing, and the carefully 
 guarded flower-beds were still in bloom. 
 
 A group of polite children followed the servant 
 to meet us at the carriage, expecting to welcome 
 some well-known friend. 
 
 We were cordially received by Mrs. Follett, who 
 had heard her husband speak of Aunt, and she 
 introduced her cheerfully to her children. She 
 was a very gracious lady ; one of those whose 
 spirit is the light of home. 
 
 But when Aunt asked to see " Richard," her 
 face and manner changed. She looked troubled, 
 and was for a few minutes silent.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. I/I 
 
 " Have you not heard ? said she. 
 
 "Husband has not been well of late. Incessant 
 care, those business cares that leave one no 
 time for recreation, you must understand, Mrs. 
 Endicott, broke down his nervous system, and for 
 the last two years he has not been able to enjoy 
 the results of his business efforts. It is very sad. 
 I would be glad to have you meet him, Mrs. Endi 
 cott, but it would not be well. He seldom sees 
 his own children. His case is a very peculiar one. 
 He is very low-spirited ; a very peculiar case. I 
 do not always feel quite free to speak of it. I 
 only do so to his old friends." 
 
 " He is surrounded with everything to make 
 one happy," said Aunt. " He has wealth and 
 honors, a beautiful home and lovely children. I 
 am sorry that he cannot enjoy life. What form 
 does his melancholy take ? " 
 
 "We seldom speak of it," she reiterated hesitat 
 ingly, "you will think it very strange, but he con 
 stantly imagines that we are poor and shall come 
 to want." 
 
 We rode away from the grand old estate of the 
 over-worked man. 
 
 Aunt remarked thoughtfully on the way home : 
 
 " Eben has right views about some things, hasn t
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 he, Jefferson ? Ambition is a good thing, but it 
 is something to be contented, and to do one s daily 
 duties as they come to you, and to live for the 
 longer life that follows this. Taxed for a million, 
 yet thinks he is comin to want. Does not have 
 the society of his own children. Poor Richard : 
 there are men who are richer in happiness in 
 their cottages on the Cape. 
 
 "The fact is, Jefferson," she added, "it takes a 
 great deal of livin and experience to understand 
 life. We read the book backwards, many of us 
 do. It is well to take time in life to stop and 
 think." 
 
 I think Aunt is right. It takes much experi 
 ence to understand life, and too many read the 
 book backwards.
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 EUGENE RETURNS FROM ETRETAT. 
 
 Eugene has returned from Etretat. He is not 
 pleased to find Uncle and Aunt here, and has gone 
 to stay at the Club until those " wulgar, wagabond- 
 ish people," as he expresses it, "go" back to the 
 Cape. Father did not meet Eugene very cordially, 
 and I am sure Uncle and Aunt do not quite like 
 him, although I heard Aunt say : 
 
 " Eben, just see what your boys might have 
 been ! " 
 
 Eben shook his head in silence. He evidently 
 would not have been pleased to have had one of 
 his "boys" return home dressed like Eugene and 
 seemingly only ambitious to imitate the habits of 
 the sons of decaying families he had met abroad. 
 
 Eugene has "lost his interest in America." 
 So he says. He is interested chiefly in English 
 Tory politics, and regrets the fall of Beaconsfield. 
 He has become a Ritualist, and regards the 
 " Oxford movement " as " the beginning of a holy 
 pilgrimage back to Rome."
 
 174 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 He condemns our free school system. He has 
 received new light on many social problems. 
 
 " The education of the children of the poor is 
 all a meestake," he said yesterday, in Uncle s hear 
 ing. " It makes them discontented. It gives 
 them an ambition to rise above the callings in 
 which aw they are most useful. One has to 
 live abroad in order to see how great a meestake 
 it is." 
 
 Uncle colored. The toe of his boot moved 
 back and forth under the easy chair like a shuttle. 
 He did not reply. 
 
 Eugene has become an admirer of the new 
 school of art. He condemns melody in music, and 
 color in painting. "Melody and color," he says, 
 " are the delights of the wulgar." 
 
 " I always thought," said Uncle, "that the prose 
 of music was merely used to heighten the effect of 
 the poetry, or melody and that melody was the 
 true music of the sentiments. So in painting, 
 as in nature. I have supposed that low tones, 
 mutual tints, shades, were contrasts to heighten 
 the effect of color. I fail to see why in art the 
 lower should be made to take the place of the 
 higher, or the less put for the greater." 
 
 "It is not possible to discuss art except with
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 1/5 
 
 people who are trained to art, and belong to its 
 inner circles. Reason has nothing to do with the 
 matter at all. Reason is for the multitude ; art is 
 for the few. The common mind cannot under 
 stand. This is why so few comprehend the relig 
 ion of art : I mean symbols. All outward relig 
 ion is a majestic symbolism." He added : - 
 
 "We need in this country great masters to 
 build grand temples like those of the old world, and 
 fill them with symbols by which truth is prefigured. 
 Then we shall not be ashamed of our name. 
 Boston would be, indeed, St. Botolph s, and New 
 York worthy of the duke whose name she bears." 
 
 "You may be right," said Uncle Eben, in a 
 restrained tone. " But I do not so read history 
 In the Rome of art the Coliseum grew and crim 
 soned with human blood ; in the Athens of art the 
 strength of Greece wasted and decayed. Israel, 
 under the judges, was stronger than amid the 
 splendors of the reign of Solomon ; and the Rome 
 of the Republic, than the Rome of the emperors 
 in all their gold and purple. Art does not change 
 character. It is another power which does that. 
 As a servant of good, art is noble ; of evil, despic 
 able. Art, as art, is nothing at all." 
 
 Eugene touched upon politics.
 
 1/6 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 " What we need," he says. " is a grand consti 
 tutional monarchy, with titled families trained to 
 government, under whose gracious influence the 
 higher arts would flourish, and the aesthetic aspects 
 of religion grace our cities and glorify our national 
 name." 
 
 " I don t think I agree with him," said Aunt, in 
 an undertone, " but it is fine to hear a young man 
 talk like that. It shows that he is an original 
 thinker, and has spirit. I wish our boys could 
 have had some of the advantages of modern 
 culture not have just gone out West to fight 
 the border rufHans, in old Jim Buchanan s 
 days." 
 
 "The renascent days are coming," continued 
 Eugene. He twirled his moustache, twirled his 
 cane, and walked into the hall. 
 
 " The renascent days do seem to be on their 
 way," said Uncle to me. "After Cromwell came 
 Charles II. When young men cease to vote ; when 
 the church bestows more thought on what pleases 
 the eye and the ear, than upon inward life ; w r hen 
 faith in good declines, and saloons multiply ; when 
 art is put for virtue, the renascent days will come, 
 and a period like that of the Merry Monarch will 
 follow the age of the Hamptons and Miltons."
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 177 
 
 Uncle looked troubled. I could see that he had 
 taken a positive dislike to Eugene, and that each 
 had a sort of inward contempt for the opinions of 
 the other. 
 
 Eugene came ambling in from, the hall. 
 
 " Etretat was such a swell place. There was 
 at one time the families of a dozen noblemen 
 there, and the young men were such swells ! 
 There is nothing on earth that I so much admire 
 as fine young English gentlemen." 
 
 " Except of course, a fine young American gen 
 tleman," said uncle. " Of the old school, I mean. 
 Such as you often meet at your club, do you not ? 
 A young man with the principles and bearing of 
 Sir Henry Vane ? " 
 
 " So you seem to think that the young Ameri 
 can gentleman of the old school made a finer 
 figure in society, than we of to-day ? " 
 
 " He was certainly stronger in politics, in the 
 church, and in manly independence of character. 
 He was not less cultivated or courteous. For 
 example, let me illustrate : " 
 
 I felt that uncle was about to give Eugene a 
 democratic lesson that would be clear, and that it 
 would somehow have reference to the Duke of 
 York.
 
 178 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 He continued : 
 
 " The somewhat recent Penn celebration in 
 Philadelphia, brought distinctly into view the 
 character of the founder of Pennsylvania. It 
 was the character of William Penn that schooled 
 the Province, and that has made the history of 
 Pennsylvania exceptionally noble and honorable. 
 Penn s hand sowed the seed that blossoms in the 
 prosperous towns and communities on the banks 
 of the Schuylkill and the Susquehanna, in the 
 great industries of Harrisburg and Pittsburg, and 
 in the conscientiously used wealth and culture of 
 Philadelphia. 
 
 " He had been shocked at Christ College at the 
 irreligion and immorality that everywhere pre 
 vailed. The gay court of Charles was poisoning 
 all the higher circles of society, and especially the 
 literary institutions. The Church bowed obsequi 
 ously before statesmen of most corrupt character. 
 An age of wit, license, insincere politeness, and 
 enervating pleasures followed the stern rule of 
 Cromwell : the age of the Cavaliers. 
 
 "There were not wanting strong-minded men, 
 who protested against these tendencies to moral 
 decay. Among them were the Quakers. A few 
 students at Christ Church College were among
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. l?g 
 
 the protestants, and foremost among these 
 students was the handsome youth, William 
 Penn. 
 
 " He cloistered his serene intellect amid the 
 gayeties around him, and studied the lives of good 
 men, and stored his memory with the golden 
 thoughts of good books. He found his conscience 
 at war with the brilliant court that his father, 
 Admiral Penn, delighted to honor. He felt that 
 an age of darkness had come, and the young com 
 moner began to dream of a Christian democracy, 
 founded on right principles, that should practice 
 the virtues of self government in a new land. Out 
 of this dream came the province and state of 
 Pennsylvania. 
 
 " He heard of the Quakers, and met Thomas Loe, 
 an obscure disciple of George Fox. Under the 
 influence of this man, young Penn made the reso 
 lution not to conform to the usages of the gay 
 society of the time. 
 
 " His father heard of his non-conformity with 
 pain. The old Admiral was a most prosperous 
 man. He was Naval Commissioner, Admiral of 
 Ireland, a member of Parliament, and a favorite of 
 the Duke of York. He spread a jovial table, and 
 entertained the best company.
 
 180 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 " He resolved to bring his son to London and to 
 see "what hard dining and late dancing" would 
 do in weakening and destroying his new principles. 
 He took him to the theatres, gave him a dog and 
 gun, ridiculed him and had him whipped, and 
 finally sent him to Paris, with introductions to the 
 gay society of the French capital. 
 
 " Young Penn was somewhat influenced by these 
 dramatic episodes of life, but his principles were 
 not changed. 
 
 " When about twenty three years of age, he went 
 to Cork, sick of the garish scenes and false lights 
 that had so long glittered before him. Soon after 
 his arrival he learned that Thomas Loe, the 
 Quaker, was about to preach in that city. He 
 resolved to hear him. 
 
 "The plain Quaker, the apostle of the Inner 
 Light, announced the subject of his discourse. 
 
 " It was : There is a faith that overcomes the 
 world and there is a faith that is overcome by the 
 world. 
 
 "Penn was smitten by the subject. He felt 
 that it was a message to him. That night he 
 turned his back forever upon an idle and pur 
 poseless life, andbecame a Friend. 
 
 "Hat homage was the custom of the age.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. l8l 
 
 " Friends do not take off their hats to any 
 man/ said Penn to his father, when they again 
 met. 
 
 " How will you do at Court, you will not wear 
 your hat in the presence of the Prince ? 
 
 " Let me have a little time to consider the 
 question. 
 
 " He retired to his room, and prayed. 
 
 " He returned saying in effect that he would 
 not render pretentious homage to any man. 
 
 " Not even to the King and the Duke of 
 York ? 
 
 " No, not even to the King and the Duke of 
 York. 
 
 " His father demanded that he should leave his 
 house. 
 
 " He did so, but he had within him that which 
 is of more consequence than titles and estates, 
 the faith that overcomes the world. 
 
 " That type of young men is disappearing in the 
 East, but reappearing somewhat less heroically in 
 the West. The Winthrops of the first century, 
 the Adamses of the second, the Wendell Philippses 
 of this ; their simple habits, principles, and strong 
 purposes, are not the types and models of the new 
 order of things. Young men are putting on the
 
 1 82 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 old clothes of the Middle Ages, and one sees 
 second-hand Europe everywhere. The indepen 
 dence of thought and character that ennobles a 
 man for all time, seems to have passed away with 
 the war. Yet, a crisis like the war would bring it 
 back again. I believe in our people still." 
 
 Eugene was an intense admirer of what is dis 
 tinctively English, and of old English scenes and 
 associations. 
 
 "When I was in England," he said one Octo 
 ber morning, when he had called to ask about 
 father, " when I was in England, I visited as many 
 of the places associated with Dickens books as I 
 was able to find : Falstaff Inn, Goswell Road, 
 Rochester Castle, White Hart Inn, Gray s Inn, 
 Ralph Nickleby s Mansion, Old Bailey Prison, Old 
 Curiosity Shop, Chancery Lane, Lincoln Inn, Blue 
 Bell Inn, Epping Forest. I spent many days in 
 these places, book in hand. It was charming, 
 charming !" 
 
 "That reminds me," said uncle. "I would like 
 to visit some of the places associated with old- 
 time Boston. I wish you would go with me this 
 morning, Eugene, you are so fond of historic 
 places." 
 
 " What places are they, uncle ? "
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 183 
 
 " Well, first to the place where Mary Chilson is 
 buried. " 
 
 " Mary Chilson ? Mary Chilson ? I think I 
 have not heard much about Mary Chilson ? Who 
 was she ?" 
 
 " She was the first to leap upon Plymouth 
 Rock." 
 
 "Oh aw where from ?" 
 
 " From the boat of the Mayflower." 
 
 "Oh aw I beg your pardon. I really, 
 weally don t know where tJiat place is." 
 
 "Let us go and see the Boston Stone." 
 
 " The Boston stone ? I beg your pardon. I 
 really, weally never heard of the Boston Stone 
 the Boston Stone ? How curious. I beg your 
 pardon." 
 
 " Well, then, let us go and see the remains 
 of the old Province House." 
 
 " I have read of the old Province House in 
 Twice Told Talcs charming, all very charming ; 
 it was, I think, near the Old South Church. I 
 did not know that there were any remains. You 
 have the advantage of me, you see. I beg your 
 pardon." 
 
 " Then we will go to see the Old Codfish at the 
 State House."
 
 184 UP FROM THE CAPE, 
 
 " I do know where the State House is, Uncle. 
 That is a very evident building. But Uncle, I beg 
 your pardon, I wouldn t like to go to see an old 
 codfish, Uncle, really, weally I wouldn t."
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 AUNT RELATES TO UNCLE HER LUMINOUS CONVER 
 SATION WITH MR. MC BRIDE, THE AGNOSTIC. 
 
 " Husband, have you ever met Mr. McBride ? 
 He is a handsome gentleman, with a sprinklin of 
 gray in his hair ; round as a Dutchman, with rosy 
 cheeks, very social, and always ready to converse 
 on any subject. I asked Carrie one day to what 
 religious denomination he belonged, and she said 
 he was an Agnostic. I did not know just what 
 that meant, but supposed that it was one of the 
 high sects, and that he must have some myste 
 rious sources of knowledge, as edifyin as the 
 Lectureship, and as I wished to get as much light 
 as possible, I thought I would have an interview 
 with Mr. McBride whenever I should have a good 
 opportunity. 
 
 " There was one thing about Mr. McBride that 
 puzzled me : He was rich, he had been educated 
 at college, he had travelled in foreign countries, 
 he went into the best society ; as Carrie described
 
 1 86 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 him, he was a club-house bachelor, with every 
 advantage that the world can give, and yet he was 
 not contented or happy. He seemed runnin after 
 happiness all the time but never findin it. He 
 was not a hopeful man ; he did not believe in 
 people. With all of his wealth and learnin there 
 seemed to be something wantin , notwithstandin 
 that he was an Agnostic. 
 
 " One evenin he called when Henry s wife was 
 out, and Henry was quiet, and I found myself left 
 alone with him. Now, thought I, is my oppor 
 tunity ; now I will plunge into the deep sea of 
 knowledge and experience, and bring up pearls, 
 to use a figure. 
 
 "Mr. McBride, said I, would you have any 
 objection explainin to me your theological views? 
 You belong to one of the high sects, I hear. 
 
 " My theological views ? Don t you know, my 
 dear madam, I m an Agnostic, said he. 
 
 " Have you any objection, Mr. McBride to 
 tellin me your experience ? said I. We meet 
 around to the houses and tell our experiences on 
 the Cape, and we find it wonderful edifyin . 
 
 " No, madam ; said he no objection. It is a 
 sad story. I sought for the truth everywhere, 
 with this result, to become an Agnostic. I studied
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. l8/ 
 
 theology ; I read science ; I argued with ministers 
 of all creeds. I used to love to argue, and I have 
 spent hours and hours in the studies of the first 
 and best ministers in Boston, but I was brought to 
 no conviction of the truth. I resolved to go 
 abroad and study the German systems of phi 
 losophy. I spent two years in Berlin, but found no 
 satisfaction. Many were the hours that I passed 
 in the summer beer gardens, with students of 
 theology and science, as curious as myself, but I 
 was not able to arrive at any definite conclusion. 
 I left the land of the Reformation, and went to 
 Paris. Oh, the hours that I have spent in the 
 Boulevards, smoking my cigars and discussing the 
 mysteries of the soul ! I studied Hegel, and 
 Strauss and Compte. I became a Pessimist. 
 Then I went to England and pursued my inquiries 
 in the great club houses, where the wits and phi 
 losophers meet. I made myself more familiar with 
 the theories of Darwin, Tyndall and Spencer. 
 But the truth was not to be found anywhere. My 
 travels and studies were all in vain. I have dis 
 cussed this matter of theology with ministers of 
 all churches, with philosophers of all schools, with 
 scientists, artists and poets. I have sought and 
 found nothing:.
 
 1 88 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 " But I thought you were an Agnostic ? 
 said 1. 
 
 " So I am, madam/ said he. 
 
 " What is an Agnostic ? asked I. 
 
 " It is a man that don t pretend to know any 
 thing, said he. 
 
 " And you don t pretend to know anything ? 
 said I. 
 
 " No. 
 
 " Well, I might have knowed as much you 
 don t seem like a man who had any spare knowledge 
 to sell, or to give away. But Carrie said how that 
 you was an Agnostic, and I thought my first 
 impressions must be wrong. Mr. McBride, I hope 
 you will excuse me, I am a very plain spoken 
 woman, said I, but I always do my duty, and I 
 do not fear the face of clay. 
 
 " Mr. McBride, I would like to ask you a few 
 philosophical questions, said I. 
 
 " Proceed, madam. I shall be pleased to 
 endeavor to answer them. 
 
 " If you were going a fishing, you wouldn t go 
 up to the top of a granite mountain, now, would 
 you ? 
 
 " Certainly not, madam. 
 
 " Nor go out into the middle of the sea to look 
 for fruits, or flowers ?
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 189 
 
 " No, madam. 
 
 " You wouldn t split open a rock if you were 
 looking for your eye-glass ? 
 
 " I certainly should not, madam. But what have 
 your questions to do with this great problem? 
 
 " I m coming to that/ said I. You say you 
 have searched the land and sea, and studied all the 
 philosophies, to find the truth, and you can t ? 
 
 " Yes, madam. 
 
 " Well, hundreds of people on the Cape have 
 found the truth who never went twenty miles from 
 home, and never studied the philosophies, or saw 
 Paris. I know of one man who found the truth, 
 and never so much as left his bed. 
 
 " Extraordinary ! Where ? he asked. 
 
 " Where? In the only place that it is to be 
 found in his soul. 
 
 " I see you are a mystic, said he. 
 
 " No, there s nothin mysterious about it at all. 
 I ll tell ye how, you needn t have gone roamin 
 all over the world ; if you had just come to me, I 
 could have made the thing clear ; I understand it 
 perfectly ; the truth isn t lost. You just give up 
 all these selfish habits of yours, and wrong 
 desires, and open your heart to the truth, and the 
 truth will come to you naturally. Open the
 
 1 90 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 curtains of your soul to the light, and the light 
 will come in. 
 
 " Very poetic, madam, said he. 
 
 " If I were in your case, I ll just tell you what 
 I would do : I would throw away my cigars, and 
 leave off drinkin beer, and let the club-houses all 
 go, and I would repent of my sins, and you look 
 as though they might be quite numerous, and 
 
 " Goin ? asked I. 
 
 " Good night, madam, said he. 
 
 " Poor Mr. McBride, I m afraid he ll never find 
 the truth. And so an Agnostic is one that knows 
 nothin at all. Why, Eben, we needn t have taken 
 so much pains to study up these deep things 
 I knew more than that myself, when I was down on 
 the Cape. He didn t pretend to know nothin at 
 all, and he called himself by that great high- 
 soundin name, and didn t seem ashamed of it."
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 "UP AND DOWN THE HARBOR GOES THE HENRY 
 MORRISON ! " UNCLE S NARRATIVE. 
 
 "Up and down, up and down the harbor goes the 
 Henry Morrison. Every day but Sunday, with its 
 cells and its young passengers, on, on, through the 
 years ! 
 
 " My heart turns sick to think of it ; it brings 
 tears to my eyes, and yet the officer said to me : 
 
 " That is nothing, not a drop in the bucket; 
 these things are but the incidents and accidents 
 of crime. 
 
 " Incidents and accidents ! and yet so many 
 criminals and so young ! " 
 
 Uncle walked to and fro, and I asked him to 
 what he referred. 
 
 " I have to-day visited Deer Island ; I wished to 
 see the institutions, and they gave me a pass at 
 City Hall. 
 
 "While I was standing upon the deck, waiting 
 for the boat to start, and looking at the floating ice
 
 1 92 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 on the harbor, as it glistened in the noon-day sun, 
 several policemen and quite a number of hard-look 
 ing lads gathered upon the wharf, as if expecting 
 an arrival. Presently several close, padlocked 
 carriages, marked City of Boston, were driven 
 down to the pier. 
 
 " I walked forward to see who the new comers 
 were." 
 
 " Stand back, gentlemen, said an officer, 
 stand back till we get these prisoners on board, 
 so that we may see who they are, and not get the 
 crowd mixed. 
 
 "This seemed a doubtful compliment to the 
 gentlemen, and as we had no wish to get mixed 
 up with the people whom the officers were assist 
 ing out of the carriages, we stepped back, leaving 
 so broad a dividing line as to preclude the possi 
 bility of any mistake. 
 
 "The scene was a sad one. Nearly seventy 
 prisoners, most of them young, and nearly half of 
 them girls and young women, were brought on 
 board of the boat. Monday, and most of these 
 prisoners had been arrested for drunkenness or 
 disorderly conduct on the Sabbath ! 
 
 " The prisoners were a motley company. Several 
 of the boys seemed to be Americans, and the
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 193 
 
 young men, for the most part, foreigners. They 
 were all sober, now, and their conduct was such as 
 befitted their humiliating situation. 
 
 " As they stepped from the vehicles, and became 
 conscious that the people on the wharf and the 
 boat were looking at them, they hung their heads, 
 and with averted looks and downcast eyes, were 
 conducted below deck. 
 
 " Good-by, Harry, said a middle-aged woman, 
 as one of the boys passed her on the wharf. 
 
 "The tears were rolling down her cheeks, and 
 the head of the boy dropped lower. 
 
 " Good-by, mother. 
 
 "The boy did not look up. He was ashamed to 
 meet the face of his own mother. 
 
 " The behavior of the girls was wholly different 
 from that of the boys and men. Girls less seldom 
 lose their self-respect than boys, but it is said that 
 when they do fall into evil ways they are far more 
 brazen and reckless. 
 
 "The female prisoners came on board laughing, 
 or giving themselves airs, as though the whole 
 thing were a joke, or they were wholly indifferent 
 to public opinion. Not even the youngest of 
 them seemed at all affected by the disgrace of her 
 situation, and not one of them shed a tear. 
 7
 
 194 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 " I was informed that many of these girls had 
 before been sentenced to the Island, and that one 
 of them, in particular, had been committed to the 
 Reform School twenty-nine times, and to the 
 House of Industry a number of times. 
 
 " After the prisoners came on board, the boat 
 left the wharf for the Island. By my side sat an 
 old lady who was going to the alms-house. She 
 was neatly dressed, her face bore the line s of dis 
 appointment and sorrow, and she was bitterly 
 weeping. Of course she alone knew what caused 
 the tears to flow, but they evidently were associa 
 ted with her dismal prospects in life and her hard 
 lot. Occasionally some particular thought seemed 
 to be more painful than the others, and her tears 
 broke out afresh as often as it came to her mind. 
 She looked like one who had struggled against 
 poverty and the alms-house, but was now pros 
 trated, broken and hopeless. 
 
 " Have you any children ? asked an officer. 
 
 " Yes, but they are all scattered. I don t know 
 where they are. I used to live with Noel, my 
 youngest boy, and he was good to his mother till 
 he took to bad ways. 
 
 " At these words her grief broke out anew. 
 She buried her face in her bundle, and tried to
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 195 
 
 suppress an audible burst of anguish. And in 
 this way the poor, friendless, deserted mother, 
 robbed by vice even of her youngest boy, always a 
 mother s darling, continued her broken-hearted way 
 to the home of the friendless. 
 
 " It was a hard case, but shall I ever forget the 
 young woman that sat by her side, a stranger, 
 hating God and the world. How she did run on ! 
 I seem to hear her now. 
 
 " Hypoey," said the officer, rescued her from 
 suicide trying to drown herself under the 
 bridge. 
 
 " Life/ she said, I hate it. I was happy once, 
 and decent, and had a home and a child. God 
 knows how I loved that husband and child. Then 
 he took to drink. The saloon-keepers tempted 
 him. He grew worse but I loved him, and when 
 I went to the saloon-keeper and begged him for 
 the sake of my child to save him, he jeered at me. 
 Then he went to the bad, and the city that had 
 put temptation before him, put him behind the 
 bars. Then my child took sick and became a " 
 cripple, and / took to bad ways. I had not a 
 friend in the world. 
 
 " I went down under the bridge, last night, for 
 the waters to rise and cover me. The tide was out
 
 196 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 I thought of my old mother, long ago dead. 
 Blessed are the dead. The tide began to come in. 
 It cooled my feet. I thought of my old home, 
 and the trees, and the martins under the eaves, 
 and morning-glories. The tide was coming in. I 
 thought of the old school-house, the old church, 
 and the choir in which I used to sing. The tide 
 was rising. I thought of my early love for Wil 
 liam. How happy I was how I trembled with 
 delight when he first told me that he loved me ! 
 The tide was rising. I thought of my happiness 
 when I first kissed my baby. Then I thought of 
 woe Oh, God, how I suffered ! The tide was 
 rising. 
 
 " Then he came and dragged me out, and pulled 
 me in my wet clothes through the street, and past 
 that saloon, and that saloon-keeper put out his 
 head and jeered at me. 
 
 " It is he who ought to be here, not I. This 
 city licenses men to destroy family and hearts and 
 happiness, and the officials fatten on the wages of 
 death. It bids men destroy men, and sends the 
 wives of those that men destroy to the Island. It 
 protects the lights of hell that glimmer in every 
 street. It says " Allure, destroy ! " 
 
 " Go away, stranger; don t preach. I hate you!
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 197 
 
 I hate everybody. I cannot help myself. I wish 
 I were dead. 
 
 " How wildly she glared at me ! How she changed 
 her voice at the words the tide was rising. How 
 many saloons does the city license ? How many 
 men to rob and murder their brothers, and mock 
 at their families ? 
 
 " As I turned from her she added : 
 
 " Stranger, you look kind, as though you came 
 from the country, and had not been hardened by 
 such sights as these. My little boy how I loved 
 him when he was a baby, poor thing, before I took 
 to the bad sells papers on Columbus Avenue, 
 perhaps you would be willing to do something for 
 him; if you should, God bless you; he is a 
 cripple." 
 
 " When we arrived at the Island, the prisoners 
 were taken to the Reception-House, a brick build 
 ing near the wharf. I was invited into the officer s 
 apartment, where I remained during the calling of 
 the roll of the prisoners. 
 
 " Richard Honar. 
 
 " Here. 
 
 " How old are you ? 
 
 " Twenty. 
 
 " Where were you born ?
 
 198 UP FROM THE CAPE 
 
 " In Ireland. 
 
 " Can you read and write ? 
 
 " No. 
 
 " Have you a trade ? 
 
 " No. 
 
 " Have you been here before ? 
 
 " Yes. 
 
 " Under what name ? 
 
 " James Scott. 
 
 "The officers informed me that many of the 
 prisoners came to the Island under assumed 
 names, and that some of them had changed these 
 names so many times as to have almost forgotten 
 what their real names were. 
 
 "The same questions were put to each of the 
 prisoners. The men and boys answered with an 
 evident sense of humiliation, but the girls ex 
 hibited the same brazen effrontery as when on the 
 wharf. 
 
 " Mary Alton. 
 
 " Here! with a toss of the head, a pout of 
 the lips, and a forced smile on meeting the eye of 
 a companion. 
 
 " How old are you ? 
 
 " Eighteen. 
 
 " Have you ever been here before ?
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 199 
 
 " O yes , with a laugh. 
 
 " Under what name ? 
 
 " Mary Dennis. 
 
 " One of the boys was quite young. He gave 
 his name as Johnny. He looked neglected, and 
 his face showed a certain refinement of feeling 
 and a good heart. 
 
 " I said to him, Johnny, how came you here ? 
 
 " No cause, sir ; I m a vagrant. 
 
 " Have you any friends ? 
 
 " Only an aunt. 
 
 " Were you ever here before ? 
 
 " He seemed ashamed to answer, colored deeply 
 and said, 
 
 " Not while mother and sister were living. 
 
 " The prisoners were formed into a line, and 
 were conducted along the icy road to the institu 
 tion, a part of them having been sentenced to the 
 House of Reformation, and a part to the House 
 of Industry. 
 
 " These are not our criminals/ said the officer. 
 
 " They go to other places. 
 
 " Up and down, up and down the harbor goes the 
 Henry Morrison. With its cells. With its young 
 passengers. 
 
 " Up and down, up and down, daily.
 
 200 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 "I pity them from my heart. I have no hard 
 words ; I can but recall Robert Hall s expression 
 on seeing a poor drunkard dragging himself along 
 the streets of London But for the grace of 
 God, there goes Robert Hall. 
 
 " I never dreamed this fair city had such a side 
 as this. Few country people do. Up and down, 
 up and down the harbor Heaven pity them ! 
 
 "Degraded ? Yes, in life, but hardly more so in 
 heart than the man whose vote protects the ghouls 
 that feed and fatten on the souls of men !
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 INTELLIGENCE FROM TREASURE MOUNTAIN. 
 
 "Are we alone, Jefferson ? Something has hap 
 pened. I have a secret on my mind, and I have 
 been waitin for a chance to speak to you about it, 
 all by ourselves. 
 
 " I wouldn t have husband know of it for any 
 thing ; when I speak of that affair his mouth 
 begins to pucker you know what husband 
 is and such a wife as I have been to him, too ! 
 
 " What affair, do you ask ? 
 
 " Why, Treasure Mountain. 
 
 " It isn t best to trust in riches, Jefferson. They 
 take to themselves wings, and where they fly or 
 go to no man knows. 
 
 " I have been to Dr. Gamm s office, privately, 
 for a settlement, four times, and yesterday, and 
 yesterday, I was stunned, I was stunned at the 
 word that was left me. I came home that 
 astonished that I never saw a person or a house 
 on any of the streets ; that astonished I was and 
 I hesitate to tell it, even to you.
 
 202 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 " The first time I went, I asked for the Doctor, 
 and was told to send my card into the inner office. 
 I told the boy that I hadn t any card, but to tell 
 the Doctor that Desire Endicott wanted to see 
 him, she that he boarded with down on the 
 Cape. 
 
 " The boy returned. 
 
 " The Doctor is very busy with important busi 
 ness. He says you will have to call some other 
 day, says he. 
 
 "Now I boarded that man and his wife for $5 a 
 week, for six weeks, both of um. And they lived 
 high. Then I let him have $500 to pull down 
 Treasure Mountain, so as to found the University, 
 and do good. Should you have thought that he 
 would have sent me such a message as that ; should 
 you have thought it ? 
 
 " I called the next day and received almost 
 exactly the same answer ; would you have thought 
 it? 
 
 " I was determined not to be put off the third 
 time. So I wrote him a note. It was as follows, 
 very polite and respectful : 
 
 " Mrs. Endicott presents her compliments, and wishes to 
 draw her dividens on Treasure Mountain. She would like
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 203 
 
 principal and interest. She will wait until you can give her 
 an interview. This is her third visit. 
 
 DESIRE ENDICOTT. 
 
 " I sent this into the inner office by the boy. 
 After a long time the boy brought me back a slip 
 of paper. It read like this : 
 
 " An explanation of this affair will be left for you 
 to-morrow with the clerk at the desk. I am very busy 
 to-day. M. O. GAMM. 
 
 "I thought this was rather indefinite. But busi 
 ness is business, and busy men, I said to myself, 
 cannot let light matters like $500 stand in the 
 way of great transactions. He told me that 
 Company had a capital of $10,000,000. So I 
 overlooked the way he treated me, or I tried to, 
 and the next day went with my big wallet in my 
 inner skirt pocket, so that no thieves would get 
 at it, to draw principal and interest, and end my 
 connection with the great enterprise. 
 
 " I asked the clerk for the Doctor. 
 
 " He has gone, said he. 
 
 "Where ? asked I. 
 
 " To Chicago. 
 
 " Did he leave my money ? said I. 
 
 " He left no money for any one.
 
 204 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 " No word ? 
 
 " Nothing. 
 
 " Yes, he did, said that little errand-boy ; he 
 told me, just as he was leaving, to tell you that if 
 that old woman from Cape Cod called, just to say 
 that there Treasure Mountain affair all busted up 
 long ago, and to give her one of them printed 
 reports. 
 
 " Could I believe my own ears ! Well, I 
 brought away the printed report. It isn t infer- 
 estin readin ! I wish I had listened to what 
 husband said. But I am pretty firm-minded, and 
 I am not goin to tell Eben anything about it, 
 now, would you ? He d just say, I told you so. 
 And such a wife as I have been to him, too ! I 
 never wanted to scold so in my life, but who is 
 there to scold at ? 
 
 "Eben just offered me $100 to spend; he s a 
 good provider. I didn t accept it ; I hold my 
 head high in times like these. I expected to have 
 had my dividens from Treasure Mountain for 
 spendin money and for charity. Why, I d better 
 have let my money been in the Savin s Bank down 
 on the Cape ; now hadn t I ? 
 
 " That old woman from Cape Cod ! after all 
 I had done for him, too. All busted up !
 
 THAT IS ALL BUSTED UP."
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 205 
 
 There s my big wallet, the thieves may have it for 
 all me ; flat as a flapjack. I have often seen that 
 wallet, in the visions of the night, as I expected it 
 would look when I came to a settlement with 
 Treasure Mountain. It never looked like that. 
 
 " I haven t shown my capabilities after all. A 
 woman wa n t made to speculate, now, was she ? 
 But I have done as well as some of the men. I ve 
 got my report. 
 
 "7 e ff er son, one can never tell what a day may 
 not bring forth."
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 THE BLACK SEA. UNCLE EBEN s NARRATIVE, 
 
 CONTINUED. 
 
 "The story told me by the wretched creature on 
 the Henry Morrison has haunted me. As a change 
 from the sick room I several times walked over to 
 Columbus Avenue, hoping to meet her little son, 
 the newsboy. 
 
 "I found him it was as she had said he 
 was a thin shadow of life he flitted into and out 
 of the cars, on his crutch, like a ghost. 
 
 " I could not overcome the feeling in my heart 
 that I had a mission to do, and used to go down 
 and buy a portion of his little stock of papers, not 
 caring to be particular about the change. I can 
 not forget the look of gratitude that he used to 
 give me as he stood in the gaslight, and how he 
 seemed to drink in the words that indicated that I 
 cared for him like a soul thirsting for sympathy 
 and affection, and conscious of being unloved. 
 
 " One day I missed him. The other newsboys
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 2O/ 
 
 of whom I made inquiry concerning him said 
 he was sick. 
 
 "The days passed on until one Saturday evening 
 a little boy touched my arm in the street, and 
 said : 
 
 " Freddy is dead. May I sell you papers now ? 
 
 "When did Freddy die? 
 
 " This morning. 
 
 " Had he anyone to take care of him ? 
 
 " He lived with an old woman. 
 
 " Where ? 
 
 "At , North Street. 
 
 " North Street I went to the place. 
 
 " The stranger who visits Boston, and sees its 
 beautiful churches and fine public buildings, its 
 green Common, surrounded with elegant homes, 
 its Public Garden, with statues, fountains, and 
 flowers, and the evidences of wealth, refinement 
 and culture that meet him on every hand, can have 
 little conception of such a place as North Street. 
 
 " I found it a locality filled with tippling shops 
 and dens of vice ; with hard, miserable men, from 
 whom all that is godlike in human nature seemed 
 to have departed, and yet more miserable ^yomen ? 
 who shrink from the very face of day. 
 
 " I found the place where he lived, and inquired 
 of the house-keeper
 
 208 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 " When is Freddy s funeral ? 
 
 " I don t know ; Mr. comes after him to 
 morrow. 
 
 " Who is Mr. - - ? 
 
 " He buries folks for the city. 
 
 " I sought the city undertaker. 
 
 " Do you bury a newsboy from North Street 
 to-morrow ? 
 
 " Yes. 
 
 " Where? 
 
 " At Mount Hope. Did you know him ? Per 
 haps you would like to go to the cemetery with 
 me to-morrow ? 
 
 " I would. 
 
 " And, then he added, as we separated, prob 
 ably you will be the only mourner at the news 
 boy s funeral. 
 
 " It was a Sabbath afternoon, calm, still, golden. 
 I kept my appointment, and, as Mr. predicted, 
 I was the only mourner, or at least the only friend 
 who followed the little wanderer to his last resting 
 place. As I mounted the seat with the driver, I 
 saw in the back of the vehicle a little pine coffin, 
 and I was made doubly sad by the thought that it 
 was one for which no man cared. 
 
 " We passed down the pleasant streets, over-
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 209 
 
 arched with bright leaves. The churches seemed 
 flowing and reflowing with the long tide of people. 
 The Common, with its hazy, dreamy avenues, 
 presented a scene of life, beauty and contentment, 
 covered as it was with light, happy faces. Harrison 
 Avenue stretched before us like a winding stream 
 of sunlight, over which flitted the shadows of long 
 lines of trees, and sweetly sounded the mellow 
 notes of the church bells then away through 
 streets where untold rural beauties mingled with 
 the embellishments of art, and every thing, height 
 ened in the loveliness by the Sabbath calm, made 
 the blooming earth appear like the very borders of 
 a better land. 
 
 " All Paradise seemed mirrored in the trees ; 
 
 The same God made both heavenly flowers and these. 
 
 "Forest Hills! What a vision of loveliness on 
 any day ! How beautiful on the Sabbath ! The 
 great city lay behind us at last, and we passed 
 before a great gate, over which was written, I AM 
 THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE. 
 
 " We soon were at Mount Hope at the Potter s 
 Field. 
 
 " They had dug his grave in God s acre, removed 
 from the places of monuments and statues in a 
 quiet spot where the slumberers are sooner for-
 
 210 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 gotten though only a little sooner, after all than 
 those who sleep under the costly sculpture and the 
 tall shaft. 
 
 "An Irishman was waiting for us, leaning on 
 his spade over the little heap of earth on one side 
 of the grave. Then we took out of the carriage 
 the little coffin, and set it down on the green 
 earth. 
 
 " Twas the last time. Only one remove more 
 was to be made, and the lame newsboy would be 
 laid away forever from the green leaves and the 
 sunshine, from the flowers and the singing of the 
 birds. 
 
 "The silent sunshine fell upon his coffin, and 
 slanted into his little grave. Where was his 
 mother on this sad day ? Who was she ? Where 
 did she come from ? 
 
 " They took up the coffin and laid it down 
 again, this time under the sod. They shovelled 
 the earth in quickly, and left the mound to the 
 wild flowers. 
 
 " Fatherless, motherless, sisterless, friendless ! 
 My heart condemned me as I turned from the 
 little grave, because I had not been of still greater 
 service to the young life so quickly ended, but I 
 thanked God that He had led me to speak even
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE, 211 
 
 one word to cheer its loneliness, or to do one act to 
 brighten its shadows. 
 
 "Back to the city to the wilderness of 
 homes. 
 
 " It was near election day. 
 
 " As we hurried on I chanced to notice a huge 
 poster, on a board fence in a street, made poor and 
 wretched by saloons. 
 
 " It contained these words : 
 
 VOTE FOR SCANLAN. 
 
 " Scanlan was the saloon-keeper. We had been 
 finishing his work so far as the child was con 
 cerned. Other hands had carelessly laid the father 
 away somewhere. It only remained for others 
 to make the mother s grave any where. It would 
 soon be done. Then the saloon-keeper s work 
 would be done with this family. One of one hun 
 dred. 
 
 " Perhaps he will be a councilman then or an 
 alderman. 
 
 " Vote for Scanlan ! 
 
 "Why not ? He is doing a legitimate business. 
 He is rich. He expects to purchase absolution 
 one day and go to the blessed company of all
 
 212 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 faithful people. The city is generous to Scanlan ; 
 it sells him a license ; it gives his victims a home 
 on the cool islands, and it digs his graves. 
 " Vote for Scanlan. "
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 THE CLIO CLUB. AUN f s NARRATIVE. 
 
 "We went to the Clio Club concert husband 
 and I. 
 
 "We were told that this was a very choice club, 
 and that only very choice people were invited. 
 That made me feel very choice. It is a very agree 
 able feeling. 
 
 " Husband was not pleased with this word 
 choice that was so freely used about the concert. 
 
 " It neither sounds manly, democratic or Amer 
 ican, said he. You know what husband is 
 always talking about things being American. 
 
 "The programme was very choice, so everyone 
 said. There was nothing American about that as 
 anybody could see. 
 
 "How lovely it was that programme, all on 
 coffee-colored paper with rough edges ! There was 
 one piece called Just like Love, marked Davy, 
 Novello ; that, I thought, would be an old love 
 song ; a piano piece was printed under the name
 
 214 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 of Presto and Canzona Napolitana ; that, I thought, 
 would be a tune ; there was a Ballade by Rhein- 
 berger, a Cantabile by Tschaikowsky, a Venetian 
 Barcarolle, a Toccata, and a piece called Wein- 
 achtspastorale and a Grand Polonaise. There 
 was a March et Cortege from La Reine de Saba; 
 that, I thought, would be a march ; a Cavatina by 
 Centemesi. I may not pronounce these words all 
 quite right, but everything was foreign and far 
 away ; you see how much pains had been taken 
 to make it choice. 
 
 " There were several ladies who assisted at 
 the concert. These had double names, though 
 whether they had been married several times, or 
 whether their husbands names were only sort of 
 appendages, I did not know. Among them were 
 Mrs. Smith-Scholalli and Mrs. Jones-Florence. 
 Their names looked encouraging on the pro 
 gramme. 
 
 " There was a large man with a wide forehead 
 and black hair, that sat next to husband, and a 
 chipper little miss had a seat beside me ; both 
 were very entertainin . The little miss informed 
 me that the programme was very choice, and said 
 that we were about to enjoy a feast of soul. I 
 said that as far as I could judge the programme
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 215 
 
 was very promising, and that I thought that piece 
 would be very grand. I pointed to the Wein- 
 achtspastorale piece, and then I whispered to hus 
 band not to let on that we had just come up from 
 the Cape. 
 
 "I was not so very much carried away with the 
 pieces after all. I have enjoyed hearing Be Kind 
 to the Loved Ones at Home, or Ben Bolt, or the 
 Old Oaken Bucket, or the Old Arm-Chair, or 
 The Lake of the Dismal Swamp, or the Cana 
 dian Boat Song, quite as much as these far-away 
 airs. The organ and piano pieces were wonder 
 ful, so the little miss at my side said, but I had a 
 great feeling of relief when they were over; and 
 when I looked around to the clock and see 
 how fast the time was goin , they didn t express 
 anything to me but sound. 
 
 " Wonderful technique, said the little miss at 
 my side. 
 
 " The arithmetic of music, said I. 
 
 " How aptly you express it, said she. 
 
 " When people want inspiration, help and con 
 solation do they go to the arithmetic ? said hus 
 band, says he. 
 
 " If they are so educated, said the little miss, 
 they will find pleasure in intellectual music.
 
 2l6 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 " That was a very unwise remark that hus 
 band made to that pretty girl, too. But you 
 know what Eben is. 
 
 " About nine o clock, when they had been 
 playin two pianos, and all had ended with a grand 
 flourish and a great bobbin , and bowin , and 
 cheerin , husband said that he wasn t educated up 
 to it, and that we had better go. He said that he 
 wasn t much on figures. I whispered to him to 
 sit still and not show his ignorance ; that I could 
 stand it just as long as the rest could. He seemed 
 very restless for the last hour, husband did, and 
 kept lookin round at the clock. 
 
 " I was somewhat disappointed, after expectin 
 so much. If I had a-known all about the com 
 posers of these pieces, and why they wrote them, 
 and what they were intended to signify, and from 
 what works they were taken, and all about the 
 arts of construction and composition of music, I 
 would have enjoyed it. It made me feel my 
 ignorance, especially when I noticed how much 
 the little miss appreciated it, and how she clapped 
 her pretty hands with delight. 
 
 " During the intermission the large man who 
 sat by husband asked him how he enjoyed the 
 concert. I gave him a nudge with my elbow, so 
 he answered evasively at first.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 2 1/ 
 
 " There is no American music on the pro 
 gramme/ said he. 
 
 " Of course not. 
 
 " But here are selections of music of most 
 other nations. Have we no American com 
 posers ? said husband. 
 
 " I never heard of any that amounted to any 
 thing/ said the large man, good-humoredly. He 
 added : 
 
 " There is a strong prejudice against American 
 music. The Clio seldom makes use of American 
 words or music. It is very careful of its reputation ; 
 it is a very choice club. I like American art my 
 self. 
 
 " But we have an American literature that the 
 world reads ; we have young American art clubs ; 
 is there no school for the development of Ameri 
 can music ; for the setting of the poetry of 
 American life, history and scenery to song ? 
 said husband. 
 
 " Other nations have such clubs and schools, 
 and are proud of their own songs, music and 
 words. Every stream and river, and mountain 
 and valley, has its song, and the best singers are 
 not ashamed to sing them. We sing them. Would 
 it not be well to have some of our own ?
 
 218 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 " I never heard of such a thing before. It does 
 seem reasonable, as I think of it. It is held to be 
 one of the fine arts, here, to be as obscure as 
 possible ; we seek to use unknown places from 
 unknown names, as far as we can. See what a 
 programme that is, for example. We prefer Ital 
 ian words to German, and German to English, 
 though old English words will do, said he. 
 
 " He laughed as though he half agreed with 
 husband after all. 
 
 " But does the Club never present original 
 compositions ? 
 
 " Yes. Herbert once wrote a boat song on 
 the Volga; it was received with tremendous 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 " Was it published ? asked husband. 
 
 " Yes. 
 
 " Did it sell ? 
 
 " He sold enough copies to his own pupils to 
 pay for the plates. They all do that. 
 
 " He laughed again, as though it looked to 
 him rather ridiculous. 
 
 " Would not a song on the Charles, or Hud 
 son, or Ohio, have been as acceptable? It would 
 at least have been American. 
 
 " Perhaps so ; but the days of " Hail Columbia,"
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 2 19 
 
 and the "Blue Juniata," are gone, and foreign 
 teachers have taught us that the world is the 
 province of music, and that music is not provincial. 
 Every teacher teaches the music and songs of his 
 own land ; the songs that are most pleasing to him ; 
 it is only natural. The city is full of foreign 
 music.-teachers, and each is true to the music and 
 traditions of his own country. These teachers are 
 a great help to us, but each teaches his own art. 
 
 " And so the only people who are untrue to the 
 music and traditions of their own country are 
 Americans ? said husband. 
 
 " So it would seem. I never knew any one 
 except a Jenny Lind, Parepa-Rosa or a Nilsson 
 that even dared to face a Boston audience at a 
 concert like this with an American song. No 
 man ever does. America is new. Yankee Doodle- 
 ism is dead. Even the old Handel and Haydn 
 Society has gone by. Why, some of these young 
 men even laugh at Handel himself. 
 
 " Are you acquainted with the members of the 
 Club ? says husband. 
 
 " Yes. 
 
 " Who is the first one to the right? 
 
 " Hobbs. 
 
 " What is he?
 
 220 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 "A clerk. 
 
 " Where was he educated ? 
 
 " He came up from the Cape. 
 
 " Who is the next one? 
 
 " Now, this is too bad : if you go to analyzing 
 the Club in that way you will ruin its reputation. 
 The Club takes its tone and character wholly from 
 
 J 
 
 its teachers ; just like organ-pipes that respond to 
 another s touch. 
 
 " I see. 
 
 " They just sing. 
 
 " Wouldn t a school for the purpose of the 
 development of American music be a good thing 
 for Boston ? 
 
 " I think it would. 
 
 " Democratic utilitarian founded on the 
 principles of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart 
 Mill, that that is the best which benefits the 
 greatest number ; a school in which musical artists 
 should retain their own names and not be ashamed 
 of them. Artists in other nations do this. A 
 school that should sing American words under 
 American titles ; a school that should estimate 
 music as an influence as well as an art. 
 
 " I am somewhat a utilitarian. I believe, with 
 Mill, that the greatest happiness of the greatest
 
 UT FROM THE CAPE. 221 
 
 number should be the aim and end of all institu 
 tions. You see how that would apply to music. 
 That would be the best music that would be most 
 helpful and do the most good. I think we need a 
 school like that. Germany has such schools. 
 
 " Now what do you think ? as soon as husband 
 said John Stuart Mill, that little minx of a miss 
 looked up to me and said : 
 
 " What a lovely man your husband is, I think 
 he is just lovely. Mill was such a friend to women. 
 
 " I told husband that as we were goin home. 
 We both said that that would make the recollec 
 tion of the evcnin very pleasant, and when we 
 got home, and Jefferson asked Uncle how he liked 
 the concert, he just answered : 
 
 " It was lovely. We had good seats. 
 
 " After all that he had said, too ! "
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 ELECTION DAY. 
 
 It was Election Day. November. The air was 
 frosty, with a steely brightness. One of those 
 days that bring a rift of warmth into the cooling 
 season ; a calm in the month of storms ; a day that 
 ripens the leaves with which the fitful gusts of the 
 night winds have strewn the streets. 
 
 Uncle Eben was up betimes in the morning, as 
 was his custom on Election Day. On the Cape 
 the elections were held in the vestry of the church, 
 and he was always there early, just as he was 
 always punctual at the Sabbath service and at the 
 class and conference meeting. He had been 
 taught by his father and grandfather to regard 
 voting as a religious duty. He had always lookea 
 upon a large part of the Pentateuch as a political 
 book. 
 
 He read the Advertiser and the Post. They 
 were left at the door early. Then he went out and 
 bought the Herald ; then he hailed a boy and
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 223 
 
 bought the Globe. If he was not a voter in the 
 precinct, he wished fully to understand what were 
 the duties of the day. 
 
 At breakfast he remarked that it was "a bright 
 day for the election." Eugene came in and he 
 asked him if the "prospects were bright." 
 
 "For the base-ball match? I think so. We 
 shall have them to-day." 
 
 " For the election ? " 
 
 " Election Day, is it ? What for ? " 
 
 Uncle looked unhappy. Said something about 
 De Tocqucville and Mill ; something about the 
 principles of the "founders of the Republic." 
 
 Eugene was not greatly interested. 
 
 " I suppose everybody goes to town-meeting 
 down on the Cape," said he, " Americans just the 
 same as the foreigners ? Young men just like 
 old men even those who do not expect an office. 
 They have time for such things." 
 
 Eugene bustled about, making preparations for 
 the base-ball match. 
 
 " You vote before you go out of town ? " said 
 Uncle. 
 
 " Vote ? I never have voted. Young gentle 
 men do not vote. They do not want vulgar offices 
 if they could have them."
 
 224 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 He bustled about as before. 
 
 Uncle looked puzzled at Eugene s views of 
 politics, but a philosophical calm came into his 
 face after a brief disturbance. 
 
 " In this country," said he, " we have nothing 
 but the virtue of the people to sustain our institu 
 tions and to continue them to others. The virtue 
 of the people can only be maintained by intelli 
 gence at the polls. As long as Rome sustained 
 her virtue she stood against the world ; when she 
 surrendered her virtue she lost her rights, and the 
 barbarians of the North swept down and crushed 
 her. When the Republic of Venice " 
 
 But Uncle s audience had gone Eugene; I was 
 not a voter. 
 
 Uncle went to the polls early to see the descend 
 ants of the Franklins, Adamses, Otises, Sumners 
 and Phililpses maintain the trusts of their illus 
 trious and democratic ancestors. 
 
 The ward-room was in a public school building. 
 This seemed fitting to Uncle ; as appropriate as 
 the church vestry. On the Cape, the church, the 
 school and the ballot were alike sacred in his 
 view ; each belonged to the other. 
 
 The street was sentinelled with a row of patriots 
 of various nationalities and colors ; in the latter
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 22$ 
 
 respect, red was the predominating hue. These 
 offered ballots to the voters as they passed. 
 
 Uncle was not impressed by any very evident 
 intelligence of these super-serviceable servants of 
 the public. 
 
 "Never mind," said he, quietly. "This is a free 
 country." Then, quoting John A. Andrew, he 
 added, " I know not what record of sin awaits me 
 in another world, but this I do know : I never yet 
 despised a man because he was poor, because he 
 was ignorant, or because he was black. 
 
 He stopped and read the "voting-list" pasted 
 on a fence. He noticed there the names of the 
 ministers in the ward, the teachers, and of several 
 merchants who had called to inquire about father, 
 and whom Uncle had met ; also, of the Browning 
 Club, composed mostly of the sons of those mer 
 chants living on the avenue. 
 
 On the Cape the ministers voted early ; the 
 teachers at noon, and the members of the Farmers 
 Club in the afternoon, the vote of the latter 
 being generally unanimous and decisive. 
 
 Uncle went into the ward-room. The school 
 
 furniture had been removed ; there were sums and 
 
 geometrical figures on the blackboards, and the 
 
 floor was covered with saw-dust. Just why the 
 
 8
 
 226 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 halls of the patriots should have been covered with 
 saw-dust, like a stable, Uncle was puzzled to 
 divine. 
 
 A policeman, one of those guardians of the 
 peace who bring to their duties a very recent 
 knowledge of the institutions of foreign lands, 
 offered Uncle one of the two only chairs "outside 
 of the rail," and he gladly accepted it, and sat 
 down in the temple of learning, to see an 
 exhibition of patriotic interest that should pro 
 phesy of municipal greatness and glory for the 
 centuries to come. 
 
 The ministers did not arrive. 
 
 The saloon-keepers of one of the back streets 
 came early. They voted. They labored with 
 their friends. They were generous ; their language, 
 if not choice, was persuasive and forcible. 
 
 The teachers did not appear. 
 
 The janitor of one of the schools came, and 
 inquired for a ticket that contained the name 
 Dennis Flarity, and having complimented Dennis, 
 he retired to Dennis emporium in the single 
 back-alley of the ward of wealth and culture. One 
 such back-alley, at least, is to be found in even the 
 South End and Highland wards. 
 
 Neither did the members of the Browning 
 Club appear ; not even to give the decisive vote.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 22/ 
 
 The idlers on the Square, whom Uncle had 
 seen sunning themselves in the warm October 
 days, came. They lingered long, and before night 
 Uncle was able to see the utility of the saw-dust ; 
 the problem could not have been made more 
 clear. 
 
 The day passed. 
 
 A middle-aged man of the prevailing color, 
 who had been in the ward-room all day, seemingly 
 a self-appointed inspector, came to Uncle with 
 a smiling face. 
 
 "Are you a Republican or Democrat ? " 
 
 "I would give," said Uncle, "to man his birth 
 right " 
 
 " That s the talk," said the super-serviceable 
 patriot. 
 
 "And to labor in a field for manly independ 
 ence " 
 
 " You re the boy," encouragingly. 
 
 " And to him that works his dues. But " 
 
 " Ye s a gentleman. And now I will tell you in 
 confidence that Hibberdy and Hobberdy and 
 Smart are elected, sure. There haven t many 
 Americans voted to-day. They are all down town, 
 attendin to their business. It has been a good 
 day for us, sure."
 
 228 UP FROM THE CAPE, 
 
 " Who are Hibberdy and Hobberdy and Smart ?" 
 
 "Merchants, sure." 
 
 " What do they deal in ? " 
 
 " Importers ; don t you know Hibberdy and 
 Hobberdy ? " 
 
 " What do they import ? " 
 
 "Ah, my boy, they import ; and, sure, they im 
 port what gives the boys the inspiration to labor, 
 and helps build the railroads, and makes ye men 
 what speculates rich as the princes of the ould 
 country and the good ould times. That is a true 
 word ye said about labor and freedom, and now I 
 will go down to Hibberdy and Hobberdy s and 
 congratulate. And won t ye go too ? " 
 
 Uncle came back philosophically. The wind 
 scattered the leaves over the street. There was 
 November weather in his spirit. He said at the 
 supper table : 
 
 " 111 fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, 
 Where wealth accumulates and men decay." 
 
 "Has any one here voted to-day?" he asked 
 of me. 
 
 " Only Nolan." 
 " Nolan ? " 
 " The coachman." 
 "And Neversink."
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 229 
 
 " Neversink ? " 
 
 " The German girl s beau. We give him odd 
 jobs." 
 
 It had been a good day for Hibberdy and 
 Hobberdy and Smart.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 THE LECTURESHIP. SNOW. 
 
 " Brother Henry continued to improve, but he was 
 still very restless, and was not willin that we 
 should return to the Cape. 
 
 " We went to the Lectureship husband 
 and I. 
 
 " I expected to see the sun, but I didn t get a 
 ray of light it was just like a voyage to the 
 clouds. I had thought to receive great comfort 
 from the Lectureship when I should come up 
 from the Cape. 
 
 " What a scene it was ! We went early, at 
 eleven o clock, so as to get a seat. The doors of 
 the Temple were full ; people were runnin to and 
 fro like boys after a cry of fire. We rushed on 
 with the tide up one of the twenty stairways. 
 
 " It was not a sunny room. It was sort of 
 shadowy and mysterious. There were gas-lights 
 flashin on a gray and gold ceiling ; an organ 
 lookin cramped for room ; dust ; and people hur- 
 ryin .
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 231 
 
 " Everybody seemed movin about ; Sunday 
 school teachers, day school teachers, young 
 women in gray, widders in black, ministers in 
 white neck-ties, editors, professors, literary folks, 
 business men, clerks. 
 
 "The Temple soon filled, the aisles and the 
 doors. 
 
 " They were honest-lookin folks, and very 
 intelligent, but somehow they didn t seem satis 
 fied and contented and happy. There was a rest 
 lessness everywhere. It was not like an old 
 Quaker meetin at all, where people with blessed 
 faces just said nothin , but looked serene; nor like 
 an old-time Methodist meetin , where they used 
 to come together to talk about assurance, and 
 shout Glory! Everybody seemed a little uncer 
 tain and dissatisfied, as though there was some- 
 thin in life that they wanted and had not been 
 able to find. 
 
 " The platform was full of learned men. One 
 of them made a sort of scientific prayer to the 
 people, and then the lecturer began to explain the 
 mysteries of theology and science. 
 
 " I never listened so to any man. I thought 
 every minute that he was goin to say somethin 
 that I could understand. He talked amazingly ;
 
 232 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 it made me greatly excited. I knew it was all 
 about somethin or other, but the sentences all 
 went over my head. 
 
 "As near as I could get the sense of it, he said 
 that everything was all correct ; the world was 
 constructed properly, as Moses had said. Things 
 were all in harmony above the clouds. This was 
 very comfortin ; I had thought it was so. 
 
 "Then he proceeded to explain eschatology, 
 and how it would all be in the future ages. That 
 was just what everyone wanted to know, and I 
 would rather have given five dollars than not to 
 have understood what he said. Husband seemed 
 to drink it all in and to be powerfully interested. 
 
 "There was an old lady that sat by my side. 
 She was dressed in black satin, and had an ear- 
 trumpet, and she listened as though the fate of 
 the whole human family hung upon the speaker s 
 lips. 
 
 "When the lecture was over she said to me : 
 
 " Mysterious ! 
 
 " Yes, said I, very mysterious. 
 
 " Who was that man he said had got the 
 eschatology ? 
 
 " Dorner, said I. 
 
 " Deep? said she.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 233 
 
 Deep/ said I. 
 
 " Why, a person that can t see that that is 
 deep must be lackin , said she. I can see that 
 that is deep. 
 
 " So can I, said I. 
 
 " We agreed. 
 
 " I watched the crowd as it melted away. The 
 people didn t look satisfied ; they didn t seem sure. 
 I have seen more settled-lookin people go away 
 from a meetin at Yarmouth, or the Vineyard, on 
 the old camp-grounds. 
 
 We went out on to the Common, and passed 
 through to the Garden, and the avenue around 
 the hill with the monument. The air was cool 
 and bright, and the leaves were fallin and driftin 
 about on the walks under the trees. 
 
 "I asked husband how he enjoyed the discourse. 
 
 " These Boston people have a great privilege 
 in spending their dinner-hour in hearing theologi 
 cal questions discussed in that way, by one who 
 has made them a life-long study a great privi 
 lege, said he. But the real evidence of these 
 things docs not come from without, but from 
 within. It is a matter of experience. The 
 Gospel promise is that all who yield to the Divine 
 Will shall "know of the doctrine." I would give
 
 234 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 more to hear a plantation negro tell his experi 
 ence than to hear a theologian try to explain it. 
 I would rather see the light than hear a lect 
 urer try to analyze it. But the Lectureship is a 
 grand thing ; it is intelligence about truth. 
 
 " We sat down on a seat near the pond. It was 
 sunny and sheltered. Boys were sailin their 
 boats on the pond. 
 
 " This is not the first Lectureship that has 
 been given in Boston, said husband. A hun 
 dred years ago a Lectureship was held on this 
 Common under the trees. The great elm was 
 standing then. Ten thousand people used to 
 attend. The lecturer s philosophy \vas very easy 
 to understand ; it also had to do with belief and 
 doubt. It was, " He that seeketh, findeth." 
 
 " Men came to scoff, but their faces turned 
 white. Doubters came for light, and it shined 
 within. Men rejoiced in the inward evidence, 
 and their faces were calm and bright. This world 
 vanished ; the future glowed. 
 
 " They called him the New Light; the move 
 ment they named the New Light stir. 
 
 " The New Light died at Newburyport. When 
 he was dyin he was taken to the fields to preach 
 once more. He said : " I go to my everlasting
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 235 
 
 rest. My sun of life rose, shone, and is setting. 
 It is about to rise to shine forever." He sleeps 
 under one of the pulpits at Newburyport. 
 
 " The new Lectureship is good I do not 
 doubt its good influence, but is it better than the 
 old ? 
 
 "The wind blew around the hill, and we rose" 
 and went on. I saw that he had not received all 
 the light that he expected. He talks in a kind of 
 indirect way, husband does. He is very careful 
 of what he says, but when you know him it is not 
 hard to understand him. 
 
 " When we were at home he looked thoughtful. 
 Jefferson asked him about the Lectureship and its 
 results. 
 
 " Well, says husband^ my experience reminds 
 me of what Emerson says : 
 
 "I am not much of an advocate for travelling, 
 says Emerson, and I observe that men run away 
 to other countries because they are not good in 
 their own, and run back to their own, because they 
 pass for nothing in new places. For the most part 
 only light characters travel. Who are you that 
 have no task to keep you at home ? 
 
 " I think there is a restlessness in our people, 
 which argues want of character.
 
 236 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 " The stuff of all countries is just the same. 
 What is true anywhere is true everywhere. Let 
 him go where he will, the traveller can only find 
 so much beauty or worth as he carries. 
 
 " I have heard him quote that forty times, I 
 know it all by heart. What does it mean ? 
 
 "I never liked Emerson very well. It seems as 
 though when I hear husband quote him that he 
 meant me. 
 
 "Bright days went on, Henry was not worse 
 only he could get no natural sleep. 
 
 " One of the servant girls who has been sick a 
 long time had a hemorrhage she had no friends 
 in this country, and I wondered what would be 
 come of her. She cried all the time, and it made 
 my heart ache for her. 
 
 " One day she came to me with a smile, and 
 said : 
 
 " Dr. Cullis says he will take me I shall have 
 a home. He thinks he can help me. 
 
 " We rode out to the Consumptives Home one 
 day, husband and I. The doctor took us over the 
 grounds. How beautiful they were ! How pure 
 the air was there ! 
 
 " Whatever that man may believe, he is doing 
 good, husband says he, I know of nothing more
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 237 
 
 unselfish than to befriend a sick man or woman 
 who has not a friend. 
 
 " Husband gave the Home one hundred dollars. 
 - 1 would, only for my losses in Treasure Moun 
 tain. 
 
 " We went to a Catholic orphan asylum. 
 
 " It is doing good, doing good, husband says 
 he. He took out his pocket-book as he was 
 comin away. 
 
 " You re not goin to give anything to help the 
 Catholics, are you ? says I." 
 
 " There are no Catholics in the Sermon on the 
 Mount, says he ; a true heart knows nothing of 
 sects, but only of needs. You have not under 
 stood the parable of the Samaritan. 
 
 " Husband is becomin broad, husband is. I 
 hope he won t relapse. Still, I wasn t sorry to 
 have him give somethin for the children, because 
 children is children, I. would have given somethin 
 myself : only, you know, I d been speculatin . 
 
 " We came home from a ride to Mount Ida one 
 day, and found brother worse. 
 
 " It was nearly December. There was snow in 
 the air."
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 DECEMBER. 
 
 It is ended. How still is the house and how 
 heavy is my heart ! 
 
 The lights twinkle across the dark gulf of the 
 Public Garden, and I look out on to the darkness, 
 and wonder at the change, and at what it will 
 bring, and where its results will end. 
 
 The street band is playing Departed Days. 
 Light steps pass and happy voices melt away on 
 the air. 
 
 The doctor said that he did not expect it so soon. 
 He knew that his nervous system was exhausted, 
 but he thought the streams of life would flow back 
 again from nature s mysterious sources. He was 
 called too late. 
 
 How dark, how dreadful were those last days| 
 His brain had not slept for weeks it had had no 
 rest but the stupor of the drug. Life passed into 
 a deep horror ; then memory into oblivion. He 
 did not know us ; he did not suffer at the end. 
 
 One day the cloud partly lifted. He thought
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 239 
 
 he was in the old orchard on the Cape again. He 
 was a boy ; it was spring ; the trees were in bloom 
 and the robins were singing. He was a boy, and 
 happy, and years lay fair before him. There came 
 a vision of life, with its ambitions and struggles, 
 and he said : 
 
 "Hurry, hurry how they hurry; how the 
 years hurry ! " 
 
 I put my hand on his forehead. Tears came to 
 his eyes, and a helpless look into his face. Then 
 his face lighted. 
 
 " Is that your hand, mother ? " 
 
 " No ; Jefferson s." 
 
 "God bless you, my son. I thought it was 
 mother s. Do not leave me. It is going my 
 mind is going this is Night." 
 
 He never spoke again. He lived on, but the 
 world seemed all lost to him. Three weeks ago it 
 ended ; at midnight. 
 
 "Insolvent." When the lawyer said that, I 
 knew the whole truth ; how the ruinous state of 
 his business had produced the long, silent anxiety ; 
 the solitary anxiety, sleeplessness ; insomnia, 
 nervous exhaustion, and the exhaustion the col 
 lapse. His disease had begun in the over-use of 
 his nervous resources to gain wealth and to sustain
 
 240 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 the demands of an exacting social position. He 
 had consumed himself. 
 
 For us : for me. Poor father ! 
 
 What are we to do? My step-mother is going 
 back to her old home. Eugene is fitted for noth 
 ing useful. He is as proud as he is penniless. 
 He says he shall join an orchestra, and travel. It 
 looks to me like moral death. Archie has entered 
 a dry-goods house as a clerk. Fashionable life and 
 its habits have unfitted him for any independent 
 occupation. Carrie and I are going to Uncle 
 Eben s for the present. It is my purpose to go 
 West. 
 
 To-morrow the house will be closed. The 
 beautiful furniture will be taken away by the 
 auctioneer ; the pictures, the ornaments, the 
 silver, all. We have given up everything to meet 
 the demands of the law ; we go out as helpless as 
 the emigrants who land on our shores. 
 
 Friendship ? How strangely we are already 
 forgotten by those who used to share our hospi 
 talities. The polite associations of society hardly 
 deserve that name. Friends ? we seemed to 
 have more than we could welcome they are 
 now reduced to two Uncle and Aunt, on the 
 Cape. They are true ; they only.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 AUNT DESIRE HEARS FROM THE WEST. 
 
 " Eben ! 
 
 "Wonder of wonders: the apple trees are all 
 bloomin in January ! Who would ever have 
 thought that I would have lived to see a day like 
 this ? 
 
 " Eben ? 
 
 " What noiv ? Come here and tell me what 
 this means. 
 
 " Let me read you this letter from Henry: 
 
 " / have been elected to Congress? 
 
 " To Congress ! Just think o that ! I feel just 
 as though the Lord had appeared to me in the 
 burnin bush. I always told ye, Eben, that the 
 sons of these old Cape families turned out well 
 now, didn t I ? Good stock, well brought up ; 
 have some principles and character to put into 
 life. There s nothin better to make a man of 
 than an old-fashioned New England character,
 
 242 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 with a little Calvinism thrown in, though I am a 
 Methodist who say it. 
 
 " My majority was over three thousand, which is one 
 thousand more than usual party strength, and expresses 
 the public confidence in my character, and this expression 
 gives me more satisfaction than the mere fact of my election? 
 
 "That is good. I always tried to bring Henry 
 up to respect himself. I always told him that 
 whoever s respect he might lose, never to lose the 
 respect of Henry Endicott. Won t I be proud to 
 put his name on my family tree ! 
 
 " Brother John has been made president of the Wes 
 tern Home Mission Society and is engaged in establishing 
 new schools and churches in Dakota, and in the region of 
 the Red River Valley of the North. He has already com 
 menced some twenty schools and organized tivelve churches? 
 
 "There, that reads just like a story. I always 
 desired that one of my sons might become a law 
 yer and one a minister, and here I am blessed with 
 more than I ever asked for. I have always heard 
 that the good wishes of the mother turn into reali 
 ties in the children. 
 
 " / owe my apparent success much to your influence, 
 and as greatly to father s sound opinions and excellent 
 example?
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 243 
 
 " Sound opinions, excellent example. So 
 you are somebody, Eben, after all ! I m glad. 
 I wish I d found it out before; it would have 
 saved me from some hard feelin s, and so much 
 talk, you know. But we can t always see the end 
 from the beginning. 
 
 " I m satisfied now, Eben; everything is all 
 right in the world, as the Lectureship said. If you 
 are all right, the world is all right. And Eben, 
 I m never goin to find fault with you any more. 
 I don t feel as though I had always done quite 
 right by you in the past. But life all appears to 
 me differently now, just as the world appears when 
 you see it from a hill-top. 
 
 " There is always somethin to cast a shadow 
 into the sunniest day Carrie is feelin bad, 
 She has had a disappointment Rev. Mr. Glass. 
 
 " He says as how he has no means of support, 
 and she has none, and as how he does not receive 
 a call/ and she has not been brought up to 
 economy, he can only be a sister to her I think 
 he meant a brother. He says as how the world is 
 progressin , but hasn t yet reached his standard of 
 thought. 
 
 " How brother s family have gone to pieces ! 
 Their house gone, and their furniture sold under
 
 244 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 the hammer. Eugene a fiddler, and Archie a 
 clerk in a dry-goods store. Carrie is a good girl, 
 a girl of talent, but so dependent and unhappy. 
 
 " The fact is that that family had wrong views 
 of life, now didn t they ? Their father gave his 
 heart to wealth, and their step-mother to society, 
 and there s somethin in life better than that, now 
 ain t there ? Oaks don t grow from sun-flower 
 seeds. What s that ? I ve arrived at these views 
 rather late in life ? Yes, Eben, but since the 
 Lord has blessed us so greatly, you ll forgive me, 
 now won t ye ? You know what I am, you Vnow. 
 Don t you never say nothin ."
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 MAY THE PRESIDENT S LEVEE LIFE LIES 
 FAIR BEFORE ME. 
 
 It is May. The lilacs have budded, and the 
 blue-birds and orioles are flitting among the 
 apple-blossoms. The sky, stretching over the 
 Bay, is serene and blue. 
 
 I am at Uncle Eben s. 
 
 A year and a half has passed away since the 
 great changes in our family. Since that dreadful 
 December. I have been at Uncle s since those 
 dark days. 
 
 I have changed. My views of life, my hopes 
 and aims are not what they were, and not what 
 might be expected of a young man schooled in 
 society. I am about to marry the daughter of a 
 worthy Cape farmer, and am going West : into the 
 valley of the Dakota River to begin life with my 
 wife in a new town. 
 
 Eugene and Archie ridicule my decision and 
 purpose. Eugene still plays in the orchestra ; he
 
 246 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 has a dissipated look that troubles me ; he fiddles 
 for fifteen dollars a week and calls it art. I could 
 not do that after living so long under the influence 
 of Uncle Eben ; Eugene avoids Uncle ; he does 
 not visit him or write to him. 
 
 Archie is at Meade and Meadow s. He gets 
 eight dollars a week. He lives in a cheap board 
 ing house ; boasts that if he is poor he is still proud. 
 He never speaks of Uncle. I know that Uncle 
 would be glad to help him if he were to show the 
 right spirit, and I see that he is just such an 
 adviser as he needs. But Archie is in sympathy 
 with the social views and habits of Eugene, and 
 puts himself wholly under his influence. 
 
 Since Mr. Glass broke his engagement with her, 
 Carrie has lived with Uncle and his family. She 
 is now at Washington, with cousin Henry. She 
 is to be married in June. 
 
 I have read much since I have lived at Uncle s. 
 In politics, I have been much influenced by the 
 principles of Jeremy Bentham, and in social 
 opinions, by John Stuart Mill. But while I rever 
 ence the democracy of Mill, I can not respect his 
 religious views. I accept the principle that the 
 happiness of the greatest number should be the 
 aim and end of all institutions ; but I find the
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 247 
 
 same doctrine set forth in the Sermon on the 
 Mount, and in the Gospel Parables, and made clear 
 in Paul s argument in Corinthians; and I have 
 come to the conclusion that the habits, aims, and 
 hopes of a religious life are essential to the 
 happiness of men. In short, I have come to 
 believe what Uncle has often said to me, "that no 
 one can be perfectly happy unless he believes that 
 the door of Heaven stands open to him at the end 
 of life." 
 
 I saw three things in human experience that 
 impressed me as fundamental : that all virtue is 
 rewarded, that all evil is punished, and that the 
 spiritual life set forth in the Scriptures is the 
 hightest good of the soul and the completion of 
 its happiness. These views so influenced me that 
 I have consecrated my life, and have entered into 
 the joys of a religious experience, and united with 
 the little Methodist Church in the village. 
 
 I know but little of the ecclesiastical machinery 
 used by John Wesley and his followers, whom I 
 merely believe to have been good men. I look 
 upon this church as merely one of the many 
 spiritual orders of equal value, but especially 
 adapted to pioneer work in the West, where its 
 fruits have been good.
 
 248 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 Uncle knew that I was thinking earnestly on 
 these subjects, and he was more than pleased 
 at my conclusions. He used to say, " Be not 
 deceived ; cast your anchor, my boy, into ground 
 that will hold." 
 
 So a Jeffersonian Democrat in politics, evan 
 gelical in religion, and the husband of a true- 
 hearted, sensible, country wife, I expect to go 
 West. I have aimed to " cast anchor into ground 
 that will hold." I feel the certainty of usefulness, 
 and success within me. 
 
 Aunt has not spoken an unpleasant or censo 
 rious word to uncle since she returned from that 
 sad visit to the city. Uncle and aunt have had 
 but one difficulty since that experience; that was 
 about the making of their will. 
 
 They consulted "the boys," John and Henry, 
 about the matter. John wrote that he did not 
 wish for any part of their property, as he had 
 already enough of his own. He said, " Give it all 
 to Henry." 
 
 Henry answered, " Give it all to John. I am 
 well enough off. I do not need it." 
 
 " How much does a young man need to make a 
 fair start in the West ? " asked aunt, after the 
 last letter had been received.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 249 
 
 " A thousand dollars," said uncle. 
 
 " Let us give Jeff a thousand dollars." 
 
 " Yes ; that is what we must do," said uncle. 
 
 "And don t let us wait until we are dead, let 
 us give it to him now," said aunt. "We shall 
 never miss it." 
 
 "That is just what we will do," said Uncle. 
 "That is just my plan, I agree with you exactly." 
 
 " One can t do much in distributin property after 
 one is dead," said Aunt. 
 
 Uncle was of the same opinion. 
 
 " Now let us will all the rest to the Woman s 
 Board-." 
 
 " To the American Board, you mean ? " 
 
 "No, to the Woman s Board;" and Aunt pro 
 ceeded to deliver a missionary address as would 
 have astonished by its array of facts a professor 
 in history. Uncle was firm. 
 
 The discussion went on for several days, when 
 it was decided to give half of the estate to the 
 Old Men s Home and the Old Women s Home, 
 and to divide the other half equally between the 
 two Boards. After that Uncle and Aunt both re 
 turned to their former social state of serenity and 
 happiness. 
 
 Last winter Uncle and Aunt visited Washington,
 
 250 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 at the invitation of Cousin Henry. Carrie and I 
 managed the old place while they were gone. I 
 think from what he wrote me, that nothing ever 
 gave Cousin Henry so much honest pride as to 
 receive his father and mother and entertain them 
 at the Capital. 
 
 "Jefferson," said Aunt Desire, on her return, 
 " what do you think ? He took me to the Presi 
 dent s reception, and all these grand people treated 
 me like a queen. The dress I wore cost two 
 hundred dollars Henry paid for it. Think of it, 
 Jeff two hundred dollars I didn t feel right 
 I felt as though my stone-colored silk would have 
 done just as well, and that the money ought to 
 have been saved and have been given to the 
 Woman s Board. Henry did not mean I should 
 know how much that dress did cost, but the dress 
 maker by mistake sent the bill to me. When I 
 saw it I was that overcome that I held my breath, 
 but Henry said it was right." 
 
 Dear Aunt Desire : Her hobby is the Woman s 
 Board. Why should it not be ? It makes her 
 happy ; it makes her feel that she has a mission, 
 and that her life has been an especial value among 
 the factors of the world. 
 
 I am sorry to leave the dear old house on the
 
 AT THE PRESIDENT S RECEPTION.
 
 UP FROM THE CAPE. 251 
 
 Cape ; its orchard ; the meadows ; the graveyard 
 where my ancestors lie ; Pine Tree Hill. But I 
 go to carry all the good I have learned at Uncle 
 Eben s into a new town in a new country, and this 
 life, and a life beyond this life, lie fair before me, 
 and I am a happy man. 
 
 Since Uncle and Aunt have settled their affairs 
 for life, Uncle has seemed to be in a frame of 
 mind truly patriarchal. 
 
 He said to me one day 
 
 " My land journey is over. I am waiting by 
 the shore for the sail that shall take me beyond 
 the horizon. I have ate from many a table, but I 
 have hungered again. I have drank from many a 
 fountain, but I thirsted again. Better things are 
 beyond beyond. I am willing that the tent 
 should fall. I have a home that will last." 
 
 He goes to the simple church under the hill ; to 
 the place of graves. He is not quite seventy, but 
 he feels that he has already reached the border of 
 the new country, and that his work is done. 
 
 Life lies serene behind him. It is bright above 
 him and before him. Would that the world were 
 richer in simple lives like his ! I am assured that 
 I shall part from the man whose influence made 
 me when I shall take his hand to say farewell.
 
 252 UP FROM THE CAPE. 
 
 Aunt sees the change. 
 
 " He grows better and better every clay. You 
 know what husband is, you know." 
 "Yes, we all know that."
 
 Date Due 
 
 PRINTED IN U.S.A. 
 
 CAT. NO. 24 161
 
 A 000 547 459 8