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 OUR V ILL AGE
 
 THE WORKS OF JOSEPH C. LINCOLN 
 
 CY WHITTAKER'S PLACE 
 
 MR. PRATT "CAP'N ERI" 
 
 PARTNERS OF THE TIDE 
 
 THE " OLD HOME HOUSE " 
 
 CAPE COD BALLADS
 
 Good morning, Pashy. How d'ye do, Huldy? Nice seasonable 
 weather we're having.' " 
 
 [Page 6 7 .J
 
 OUR 
 
 BY 
 
 JOSEPH C. LINCOLN. 
 
 Author of "Cy Whittaker's Place," 
 "Cap'n Eri," etc. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 1909
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 Copyright, 1906, by Doubleday, Page & Company 
 Copyright, 1907, by The Phelps Publishing Company 
 
 Copyright, 1908, by P. F. Collier & Son 
 Copyright, 1909, by The Success Company 
 
 Published, April, 1909
 
 The reminiscences of boy life in a New England 
 seashore village, contained in this volume, originally 
 appeared as follows : "Our House," "Our Oldest 
 Inhabitant," "The Old Maids," and "Teacher," in 
 Collier's Weekly ; "The Cape Cod Clambake," in 
 Good Housekeeping ; "The School Picnic," in Suc- 
 cess; and "A Christmas Memory," in Country Life 
 in America. The author desires to thank the edi- 
 tors of these periodicals for their courteous permis- 
 sion to republish.
 
 TO 
 
 S. E. H. 
 
 WHO KNEW AND LOVED 
 
 "OUR HOUSE" 
 AND THOSE WHO DWELT THEREIN
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 OUR HOUSE 3 
 
 A CAPE COD CLAMBAKE ..... 29 
 
 THE OLD MAIDS 57 
 
 THE SCHOOL PICNIC 85 
 
 OUR OLDEST INHABITANT in 
 
 TEACHER 135 
 
 A CHRISTMAS MEMORY 165
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FACING 
 PACE 
 
 Good morning, Pashy. How d'ye do, Huldy? 
 Nice seasonable weather we're having ' ' 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 ' I was courtin' you then, Tempy. . . . Do 
 
 you remember?'" ..... 52 
 
 ' Don't talk to me about money these hard 
 
 times!" 1 120 
 
 'He'll be awful tickled with them skates'" . 182
 
 OUR HOUSE
 
 OUR HOUSE 
 
 ONE minute to twelve by the eight-sided 
 wooden clock on the wall over teacher's 
 desk. The hot forenoon session was all but 
 over. You closed your geography with a leaf 
 turned down at the page where the woodcut 
 of the " Palisades of the Hudson " was bor- 
 dered by the penciled gem : 
 
 If my name you still would find, 
 Look on page 149, 
 
 and slid the book under the ink-smeared, pin- 
 scratched lid of your desk. 
 
 Teacher struck the little bell on her table. 
 The third class in arithmetic, which had been 
 3
 
 Our Village 
 
 fighting a drawn battle with common frac- 
 tions on the settees at the rear of the room, re- 
 turned to its seats with the soft " pad " of 
 bare feet and the squeaking of ungreased, cop- 
 per-toed boots. " Snuppy " Rogers, who had 
 brought a turtle to school, and had left it in 
 his desk, reached his seat just in time to pre- 
 vent the creature from crawling out and tum- 
 bling to the floor. Snuppy drew a breath of 
 relief and immured the captive in the dun- 
 geon of his jacket pocket. 
 
 Teacher struck her bell again. The last 
 book slammed out of sight and the school 
 came to attention, hands behind backs. 
 " Ting ! " every scholar was on his or her 
 feet. " Ting ! " and the files began moving 
 toward the doors, girls on one side and boys 
 on the other, marching sedately until the 
 threshold was crossed, then grabbing hats and 
 caps and leaping down the stairs in a racket- 
 ous riot that awoke old Cap'n Daniels, asleep 
 behind the tobacco and candy show case in 
 his grocery, dry goods, and general store 
 across the road. 
 
 Our house was a good half mile from 
 4
 
 Our House 
 
 school, but you were there in five minutes. 
 Going to school oh, that was different ! 
 Sometimes it took three quarters of an hour 
 to go to school ; and Sunday-school about the 
 same. But when a boy consumed more than 
 five minutes in getting back to dinner from 
 either place, the folks appeared suspicious and 
 asked embarrassing questions concerning his 
 health or behavior. 
 
 You entered our house by the side door, 
 of course. That was the door of the dining 
 room, and it had wistaria and morning-glory 
 vines shading the latticed porch above it, and 
 the humming birds used to come there for 
 honey. You saw them sometimes when you 
 were sitting by the window, and were obliged 
 to keep very still or else be asked if you really 
 were learning your Sunday-school lesson or 
 only fooling. You seldom saw them at other 
 times because you didn't 
 keep still long enough. 
 
 Though you entered 
 
 our house by the side 
 
 door, there was a front 
 
 door and a back door. 
 
 2 5
 
 Our Village 
 
 But nobody ever went in at the front door, 
 except the new minister, maybe, when he 
 made his first call, and he didn't try it the 
 second time. You see, the hinges of the front 
 gate had remained so long without exercise, 
 in all sorts of weather, that they had ac- 
 quired chronic " rheumatics," and groaned and 
 shrieked agonized protests when disturbed. 
 And the box hedges each side of the front 
 walk were so very puritanical and prim that 
 they appeared to be standing parish commit- 
 tees investigating one's religious opinions. 
 
 " Hum ! " you could imagine the right-hand 
 hedge sniffing as the new divine moved up the 
 walk. " So that's the fellow they've called, is 
 it? Young squirt, isn't he? He'll have to 
 grow some before he can fill old Parson Simp- 
 kins' shoes." 
 
 " I should think so ! " responded the left- 
 hand hedge. " Look at those side whiskers. 
 And I don't exactly like the way he's dressed. 
 Kind of worldly kind of worldly. I 
 wouldn't wonder if he was one of those ad- 
 vanced thinkers. I don't believe that's the 
 sort of minister we want." 
 6
 
 Our House 
 
 And the big shells on each side of the front 
 steps were orthodox and " sot in their ways '' 
 .as the hedges. And the bell with the glass 
 knob announced one's timid pull with such a 
 ponderous " Clank ! r-r-rattle ! DING DONG ! 
 DING DONG! DING DONG ! DING DONG! DING DING 
 DING!" 
 
 No, the front door wasn't popular ; the very 
 good and intensely respectable seldom are, 
 I'm afraid. And the back door was rather 
 out of the way and led to the wash shed 
 which meant tubs to be pumped full, whether 
 you wanted to or not and the wood box and 
 kindling bins and other unpleasant reminders. 
 Confound a wood box, anyway! Most pro- 
 voking things they are. Never saw one yet 
 that wasn't empty when you wanted to play 
 ball or go swimming with the gang, nor full 
 when you ought to be studying and were 
 really hungry for an excuse not to. 
 
 But the wash shed wasn't altogether bad. 
 Ours had a flat tin roof, you remember, and 
 the rain made music on it, a pattery, cozy, 
 " comfy " sort of music, not shivery and 
 dreadful, like the song the winter wind sang 
 
 7
 
 Our Village 
 
 at night about your bedroom windows. Not 
 that kind at all. And the flat shed roof was a 
 bully place to play, being high and dangerous 
 and generally delightful. It was from the 
 corner of that roof that you flung to the breeze 
 the white cotton flag with your initial, in 
 black, gummed upon it just the kind of flag 
 displayed by Captain Nemo in " Twenty 
 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea." 
 
 You lowered Spotty, the tortoise-shell cat, 
 from that roof in a basket the day after your 
 return from the visit to Boston. You were 
 playing elevator; but Spotty, who apparently 
 did not care for modern conveniences, yowled 
 nervously during the descent and jumped 
 when six feet from the ground. 
 
 That wash shed was where you kept the 
 pair of tame rabbits your Aunt Hannah gave 
 you for a birthday present. You didn't keep 
 them there long, however. They were in a 
 wooden box with slats across its open side, 
 and, during the day and night when you and 
 the family drove to Harniss and stayed over 
 at Aunt Hannah's and Uncle Laban's, those 
 8
 
 Our House 
 
 white rabbits gnawed out of the box and 
 through the door into the kitchen. When you 
 returned you found them beginning opera- 
 tions on the door to the dining room. In a 
 week they would have had a subway from one 
 end of the house to the other. 
 
 Spotty didn't approve of the rabbits. She 
 didn't approve of dogs, either. Her rather too 
 frequent kittens were domiciled in a carpet- 
 lined box by the kindling bin, and you let a 
 dog so much as show his nose inside that 
 woodshed door and Whew! 
 
 The man who drove the butcher cart owned 
 a big, no-account dog that considered himself 
 " some punkins." While his master was 
 weighing a pound and a quarter of steak, top 
 of the round, on the scales at the back of the 
 cart, Prince that was the dog's name wan- 
 dered into our yard on a foraging expedition. 
 He approached the back door, tail wagging 
 and nose working expectantly. 
 
 " Nice ould Prince ! " called Bridget Kelly. 
 She was our washerwoman, bless her Irish 
 heart, and she liked dogs and boys. " Come 
 here, ould feller, and see what I've got for yez." 
 
 9
 
 Our Village 
 
 Prince came. He scented a bone, no doubt, 
 and he might have got it if Spotty hadn't been 
 on deck. As it was, Prince's brindle shoul- 
 ders had scarcely pushed themselves past the 
 jamb when a streak of tortoise-shell light- 
 . ning struck between those shoulders and 
 stayed there. The air was filled with cat and 
 dog profanity and tufts of brindled hair. 
 Prince reached the road in record time. Per- 
 haps he has stopped running by now he was 
 an old dog and this happened a good many 
 years ago. Spotty dismounted at the gate, 
 and sauntered back to her kittens, brush-tailed 
 and fiery-eyed, but as dignified as ever. The 
 only time that cat's dignity was shaken was 
 when she attempted to walk across the newly 
 varnished oilcloth covering the kitchen floor. 
 She made the transit finally, but it was a tacky 
 business. For the rest of that day she licked 
 varnish off her paws and made disgusted 
 faces. She seemed to think it a low-down, 
 vulgar trick to play on a lady and a mother. 
 
 The kitchen had its attractions for you, 
 I mean. There was the pump and the cocoa- 
 nut dipper, and the cool, spicy-smelling closet 
 IO
 
 with the cooky jar at our house it was a 
 mammoth affair which father had brought 
 home from sea filled with tamarind preserve 
 under the shelf. There was the big range 
 nobody ever called it anything but " cook- 
 stove," though and when mother or grand- 
 ma made gingerbread or doughnuts you could 
 generally count on a gingerbread horse or a 
 doughnut man to emerge from the pan or 
 kettle, hot and brown and deliciously indi- 
 gestible. 
 
 These, however, were but between-meal re- 
 freshments. The dining room was the head- 
 quarters of the commissary department, and 
 the dining room at our house was big and 
 light and homey. There were the pictures 
 on the walls, " Signing the Declaration," 
 " Rock of Ages," " From Shore to Shore " 
 you remember that ? A boat load of people, 
 children in the bow, ma and pa amidships, 
 and grandpa and grandma in the stern, being 
 rowed from a little port straight out to sea, 
 apparently. The children looked happy, but 
 the old folks were pretty blue. Who wouldn't 
 II
 
 Our Village 
 
 be? Starting to cross the ocean in a boat no 
 bigger than a dory, and crowded full at that! 
 
 The west window of the dining room was 
 filled with plants in pots and on wire racks. 
 Geraniums, callas, fuchsias, begonias, ivies, a 
 carrot scooped out, filled with water, and hung 
 in the sun by strings that was your contri- 
 bution to the collection a sensitive plant that 
 curled up when touched, as if it was ticklish, 
 and a lot more. And at least one canary in 
 a gilt cage. Snuppy's folks had a parrot, but 
 it couldn't sing only screeched. 
 
 Under the floor of that dining room was the 
 cistern, and on rainy days, if you put your ear 
 to the floor, you could hear the water running 
 in. Sometimes they took up the carpet, and 
 there was a trapdoor through which Ezra 
 Bean, a much envied person with whiskers and 
 high rubber boots, descended to clean the cis- 
 tern. A good manly job was Ezra's, and one 
 that you would cheerfully have attempted your- 
 self if the 'fraid-cats would only have let you. 
 
 The meals served in that dining room 
 were Oh, say ! Huckleberry dumpling with 
 cream sauce ! Pop-overs and riz biscuits ! 
 12 ,
 
 Our House 
 
 Barberry and sweet-apple preserve! Black- 
 berry pie ! Baked bluefish with drawn butter ! 
 Um! Um! It was there that, for once in 
 your life, you had all the watermelon you 
 wanted at one time. All you wanted for a 
 week. You felt the way grandpa in the 
 " Shore to Shore " picture looked. 
 
 When supper was over, that everlasting 
 wood box filled, and the other chores done, 
 you and the folks went into the " settin' room." 
 Not the library ; of course not. The library 
 was down the road next to the Congrega- 
 tionalist church. It was run by the Ladies' 
 Social Society, and, if your ma paid fifty 
 cents a year and didn't want all the books 
 herself, you could go there and get " The 
 Boy Hunters," " The Young Yagers," " Frank 
 on a Gunboat," "Watch 
 and Wait," and a whole 
 shelf ful more. People 
 didn't have libraries in 
 houses no such luck. 
 That room where you went 
 after supper was the " set- 
 tin' room." 
 
 13
 
 Our Village 
 
 There was a table in the settin' room, a 
 round table with a lamp on it. The lamp had 
 a shade made of paper and wire, and there 
 were pictures printed on the paper which 
 showed fine against the light. There were 
 pictures on the walls, too, principally paint- 
 ings of ships which your father and grand- 
 father had commanded, or perhaps a spatter- 
 work " God Bless Our Home " motto, or a 
 worsted thing called a sampler, made by 
 grandma when she was little. 
 
 The settin' room was good in summer, of 
 course, but it was better in winter, with the 
 tall, " air-tight " stove roaring hot, the cat 
 purring beside it, mother in the rocker mend- 
 ing stockings there always were stockings 
 to be mended at our house, and nobody could 
 ever mend them right but mother grand- 
 ma knitting mittens, father if he happened 
 to be home from a voyage reading the 
 Item, and you curled up on the hassock or 
 cricket, looking over the back numbers of 
 Godey's Lady's Book. And outside the hail 
 or snow beat with spiteful and envious fin- 
 gers against the panes, and the wind screeched 
 14
 
 vain threats concerning what it would do to 
 you if you only dast to come out and face it. 
 
 That air-tight stove was a puzzle to you 
 when you were very small and didn't know 
 what was what concerning things. You al- 
 ways hung your stocking beside it on Christ- 
 mas eve, and on Christmas morning Santa 
 had been there and stuffed that stocking full. 
 He came down the chimney, of course but 
 how? 
 
 It was a miracle, certainly, but now that 
 you are older you realize that there were far 
 greater miracles worked on those Christmas 
 eves. Our house then was a wonder shop of 
 miracles, and love and self-denial were its 
 fairy proprietors. If you could only step 
 back, through forty years or so, and be given 
 a precious moment in which to whisper thanks 
 in the ears long shut to your whisperings ! If 
 only you might enter that old settin' room, 
 find it tenanted as it used to be, and tell 
 them of your understanding and your grati- 
 tude ask their forgiveness for petulance and 
 fretful fault-finding! If only But there! 
 15
 
 Our Village 
 
 it's nine o'clock bedtime at our house. We 
 must go upstairs. 
 
 The brass hand lamp threw queer, homely 
 shadows of yourself on the walls of the stair- 
 way. And the stairs themselves were narrow 
 and steep as the shrouds of a ship or the lad- 
 der to heaven. Perhaps they were built that 
 way purposely by great-grandfather, who was 
 an ancient mariner and a deacon of the 
 church. At any rate, to tumble down their 
 almost perpendicular length was as easy, and 
 almost as disastrous, as to fall from grace. 
 You did it once, in your baby days, with a 
 china rabbit in your hand, and, with the blood 
 streaming from a cut in your cheek, an- 
 nounced that the " wabbit was all bwoke and 
 you were bwoke, too." This was a family 
 tradition in our house ; so also was the tale of 
 grandfather's fall, on a Sunday, when he had 
 his new go-to-meetin' suit on. The suit was 
 split in conspicuous and sundry places, and 
 grandpa said 
 
 The little room with the funny window 
 under the eaves was your room. The bed 
 with the painted flowers on its headboard was 
 16
 
 Our House 
 
 your bed. The washstand with 
 
 the pitcher and bowl was yours. 
 
 Through that window on shiny 
 
 nights the moonbeams streamed 
 
 and made queer, moving patterns 
 
 on the straw matting or the 
 
 braided rag mat. Through that 
 
 window you were once very 
 
 nearly yanked bodily by one big toe. It was 
 
 the night before the Fourth, and you had tied 
 
 a string to the toe and thrown the end out 
 
 of the window for Snuppy to pull, when he 
 
 should come at two o'clock, and wake you 
 
 up. It woke you ; you remember the waking 
 
 distinctly. 
 
 Through that window, too, the sound of the 
 distant surf used to drone on summer even- 
 ings. Against its little panes the leaves of 
 the " black heart " cherry tree scratched whis- 
 peringly when the breeze stirred them. Its 
 casement rattled defiant drumbeats in answer 
 to the battle cry of the winter gale. 
 
 On such a night, when the water in the 
 pitcher was freezing, and the snow sifting un- 
 der the warped sash, mother used to come tip-
 
 Our Village 
 
 toeing in to see if you were well tucked up. 
 The lamp was in her hand and her hair 
 sparkled and glistened in the shine of it. And 
 when she saw you were awake she smiled and 
 bent over and . . . 
 
 The next room was her room mother's 
 room. Through the open door we see the 
 little table by the window, the table with 
 father's picture and the vase of pansies on it. 
 There is the Testament with the bead-worked 
 bookmark. And the high, old-fashioned bu- 
 reau with its sweet, clean smell of lavender; 
 the work basket and the rocking-chair with 
 the figured chintz cushion ; the rickety foot- 
 stool, made by you with your first box of tools 
 a wabbly, unreliable piece of furniture, but 
 to her more precious than rare old Chippen- 
 dale, because you made it. 
 
 The remarkable feature of grandma's room 
 was the long, low, dark closet under the eaves, 
 a poky, weird tunnel, which, seen dimly by 
 lamplight, was full of old bonnets and trunks 
 and shadows. There was the umbrella with 
 the carved ivory handle, which Uncle Laban 
 brought from Calcutta ever so many years 
 18
 
 Our House 
 
 ago. It was much too nice to use, so grand- 
 ma kept it carefully rolled up in its case. 
 When she died, its silk covering was found to 
 have rotted with age until every crease was a 
 line of emptiness. The little armchair used by 
 Aunt Jane when she was a baby was in that 
 closet. So was her big china doll with the 
 beady black eyes and black plaster hair ; it was 
 dressed like Lucy in the Rollo books low- 
 necked, sleeveless gown, pantalets, and slip- 
 pers, all complete. Grandpa's Sunday tall hat 
 hung above it on a peg. To you that closet 
 was a sort of family vault. My! how dismal 
 and dead and lonesome it looked and smelled. 
 The " company " who visited our house al- 
 ways had good times during the day. When 
 night came they had your sincere pity. You 
 knew they were entombed alive in that icy 
 sepulcher, labeled " The Best Spare Room." 
 They were sunk fathoms deep in a sea of 
 feather bed, and kept down by counterpane, 
 blanket, "log-cabin" quilt, "rising-sun" quilt, 
 " crazy " quilt, " diamond " quilt, and a half 
 dozen other quilts, the names of which are 
 forgotten. Every time one of the family 
 
 19
 
 Our Village 
 
 " drew " a quilt at the church fair, they put 
 it on the bed in the spare room. They called 
 them " comforters " this was sarcasm. 
 
 Under the feather bed was a cornhusk 
 mattress that rustled like a rat's nest in a 
 pile of shavings. And under that was the 
 corded framework of the bedstead, each cord 
 with a separate squeak, and the whole af- 
 fair sagging down in the middle like an 
 old-fashioned hammock. A night in that 
 bed was distinctly not a restful experience, 
 though it did have its value as a means 
 of exercise. The sunken center grew warm, 
 after you had hung in it a while, but it 
 was as cramping as a meal bag and when 
 you climbed the heights . at each side, they 
 were cold as snow banks and you had to cling 
 to the rails to keep from sliding down again. 
 Cousin Alpheus, who weighed two hundred 
 and eighty, slept in that bed once. Next 
 morning he declared he was all bruises, be- 
 cause every time he fell asleep and " let go 
 his holt " he rolled downhill and hit the floor 
 in the middle. 
 
 20
 
 Our House 
 
 One of the choice bits in the spare room was 
 the " barrel armchair." Uncle Henry the 
 one who was drowned at sea made it himself 
 " out of his own head " and a receipt in the 
 paper. He took a flour barrel and sawed it 
 out and put a seat in it and covered it with 
 nice gay-colored stuff and put rockers on it. 
 When you sat in it the rounded back pushed 
 your shoulders together and " hunched " you 
 over in a heap. Grandpa sat in it once ; then 
 he took it up to the spare room, along with 
 the dressing table made of a dry-goods box 
 covered with dotted muslin. 
 
 The walls of the spare room were cheerfully 
 adorned with pictures and things. A wreath 
 from Cousin Elijah's coffin dipped in wax and 
 inclosed in a walnut case; his name, a lock 
 of his hair, and the date of his death in the 
 center of the wreath. A shell-worked basket 
 in a deep, shell-covered frame; some of the 
 shells had fallen out and the plaster of Paris 
 showed. An oil painting of great-grandfather, 
 painted by Asaph Doane, the sign painter; 
 Asaph had unusual talent everybody said so, 
 and the portrait proved it. There were other 
 3 21
 
 Our Village 
 
 portraits, too, mainly daguerreotypes, with 
 rings and necklaces realistically " put in " 
 with gilt paint. At Snuppy's house they had 
 a framed set of coffin plates relics of family 
 funerals hung in the spare room. This 
 added an appropriate touch to the apartment. 
 The front stairs of our house were as 
 steep as the everyday set which caused grand- 
 pa's accident. They led down to the dark, 
 musty-smelling front hall, with the mahog- 
 any hat rack and the model of the full- 
 rigged ship set in a sea of painted putty. 
 From this hall a door opened into Hush! 
 be reverent, please ; this isn't Sunday, and we 
 have no right to be here into the PARLOR. It 
 was always thus capitalized at our house. 
 
 You got into the PARLOR so seldom that 
 your memory of it ought to be hazy but it 
 isn't. A man who has been in jail but once 
 doubtless remembers it perfectly, and you 
 were in the parlor twenty times at least. 
 Once at Mary's wedding, once when the min- 
 ister called, once at Cousin Elijah's funeral, 
 and, oh, yes once or twice at house-cleaning 
 
 22
 
 Our House 
 
 times. You were driven out promptly then 
 by mother and grandma, who, in long aprons 
 and in sweeping caps, were officiating as high 
 priests in this holy of holies. But you re- 
 member the " haircloth set " and the marble- 
 topped center table, and the wainscot, and the 
 wax fruit on the mantel, and the alabaster 
 candlesticks, and the melodeon, of course! 
 
 All the melodeons you have heard since 
 sounded like the patent rocker only worse. 
 But the one at our house, as you remember it, 
 was different somehow. In the old days, on 
 a rare Sunday afternoon when Uncle La- 
 ban's folks drove over from Harniss, and 
 Cousin Mary put her feet on the carpet-cov- 
 ered pedals and opened the book of " Gospel 
 Hymns, No. i," with father and mother and 
 grandma and Uncle Labe and Aunt Hannah 
 and Ed and Tom and you, all standing up to 
 sing. . . . Well, have you ever heard such 
 music as the old melodeon made then? Have 
 you ever heard " In the Sweet By and By " 
 sung like that since? Or will you ever hear 
 it so sung again? 
 
 " We shall meet on that beautiful shore." 
 23
 
 Our Village 
 
 How many of those who 
 sung those words have jour- 
 neyed to that shore ! 
 
 You went back to our house 
 last summer. But somehow 
 it wasn't our house that you 
 found. The black heart cherry 
 tree had grown old and been 
 cut down. The post-office 
 building, where grandpa used 
 to sort the mail, and you used to watch 
 him and wish that you might be a real 
 live postmaster some day, had been moved 
 away. They told you it was a blacksmith's 
 shop now. You took their word for it ; you 
 had no desire to investigate. 
 
 There was a wide porch shading the parlor 
 windows. And not only were the blinds of 
 those windows thrown back, but the windows 
 themselves were open. And the front door 
 the sacred front door was open, too, and 
 through it strolled a flannel-shirted summer 
 boarder smoking a pipe. A pipe in the PAR- 
 LOR at our house ! No wonder the box hedges 
 had grown bald and gray! No wonder the 
 24
 
 Our House 
 
 place which used to look so big and tall and 
 fine now seemed so shabby and mean. No, 
 our house is our house no longer. 
 
 And yet, at night, as you strolled by it, with 
 the scent of the lilacs hanging in the heavy, 
 moist air, and the surf sounding as it used to 
 sound, far off and lazy, and the charitable 
 dark covering the changes of years, then 
 then it almost seemed . . . 
 
 Almost yes; but not quite. Never again 
 quite. The loved faces have vanished and the 
 loved voices are silent. And, as you longingly 
 looked and listened, the PARLOR windows 
 lighted up and some one began singing " Poor 
 John " to a banjo accompaniment. And sud- 
 denly you remembered that it was ten o'clock 
 and your wife had warned you that the night 
 air was bad for your rheumatism.
 
 A CAPE COD CLAMBAKE
 
 A CAPE COD CLAMBAKE 
 
 WHY, of course ! You know all about it. 
 It was such a lark ! The De Lanceys 
 invited you and you went with Clarence and 
 mamma in the auto. The tables were arranged 
 on the verandas of the De Lancey " beach 
 house," and the Van Snubs were there, and 
 the Bonds, and, oh, ever so many more. The 
 lawns were so green and velvety, and the 
 flower beds so trim and exquisite, and the 
 Sound so blue and lovely. 
 
 The De Lanceys are the nicest people ! Ex- 
 clusive, of course, but If it hadn't been 
 for the " No trespassing " signs, and those 
 horrid excursion boats whistling back and 
 29
 
 Our Village 
 
 forth, you might have imagined yourself 
 miles away from anything coarse or common. 
 And the De Lancey silver! And the little 
 necks ! And the clam bouillon ! And 
 
 Yes. Well, that isn't the kind of clambake 
 I'm talking about. And I don't mean the 
 other kind, either where you pay seventy- 
 five cents for a dingy slip of green pasteboard 
 and elbow yourself into a pavilion roofed 
 with dirty canvas, and fight for a wooden 
 chair at a table covered with a soiled cloth, 
 and have a dish of cold shells, filled with 
 leather and sand, thrown at you by a husky 
 pugilist in his shirt sleeves, while the fakirs 
 yell and the merry-go-round toots and Mrs. 
 Solomons argues shrilly that little Jacob ought 
 to eat free because he is only " goin' on six, 
 s'elp me," and No, I should say not. 
 
 The clambake I mean comes into being 
 somewhat after this fashion: You are sum- 
 mering, let us say, at a village " down on the 
 Cape," a lazy old village where the houses 
 and roads and sails are white, and the trees 
 and grass and shutters and city boarders 
 green, and the sea and sky and the natives 
 
 30
 
 A Cape Cod Clambake 
 
 most of them true blue. And you have 
 bathed and fished and sailed and smoked and 
 loafed have done almost everything, in fact, 
 except work. There arc people on Cape Cod 
 who work, but the average " summerer " no 
 matter what grim resolutions he may have 
 subscribed to before leaving home is not one 
 of them. 
 
 So, one morning, as you are industriously 
 filling your pipe I am now supposing you to 
 be a member of the tobacco blessed sex on 
 the porch, your wife emerges from the cot- 
 tage with a wistful, unsatisfied look in her 
 eye, and observes : " Oh, dear ! I do wish we 
 might have a real, old-fashioned clambake." 
 
 Whereupon you sit up in the hammock, 
 choke down your excitement, and reply in an 
 uninterested tone : " Clambake, my dear ? 
 Why, we had clams for dinner only yester- 
 day." 
 
 " Yes, I know ; but they taste so different 
 baked out of doors. I mean a real clambake 
 on the beach. One with corn and potatoes 
 and all the ' fixin's,' such as we used to have 
 when father was alive." 
 31
 
 Our Village 
 
 Now, your wife is, like your- 
 self, a Cape Codder born. She 
 used to live in the old Baker 
 house on the " lower road " the 
 one occupied at present by that 
 Portuguese family and her father 
 Ezra Baker, and he was the great- 
 est " cut up " for a grown man that ever 
 why, he just had to be a Universalist. No 
 Methodist, in those days, could go on picnics 
 and get up hay rides and " times " as he did 
 every week day of his " shore leaves," and 
 retain a regular standing in the church. No, 
 sir ! One couldn't enjoy life like that and be 
 godly. As old Deacon Bradley said once in 
 prayer meeting : " We have them amongst us, 
 O Lord, who imagine this airthly pilgrimage 
 be a vain thing. But let 'em beware and flee 
 to the ark of safety, while there is yet time. 
 There'll be no straw-ridin' and didoes over 
 
 there. Let 'em, I say, take heed to " 
 
 Just here your wife interrupts your medi- 
 tations. She says: 
 
 "The children would enjoy it so." 
 Bless the children ! They are the most con- 
 32- .
 
 A Cape Cod Clambake 
 
 venient excuses in creation. Probably, if it 
 were not for them, you wouldn't get to the 
 zoological gardens or the aquarium or the 
 fairy play oftener than once a year or so. 
 And as for the circus but that's an old 
 story. 
 
 So you look becomingly benign and paren- 
 tal and observe: 
 
 " That's so. It would please them, wouldn't 
 it? I'll step over and see Jones." 
 
 Jones has a cottage down the road a bit, 
 and you find him sitting on the porch and 
 looking resentfully at the lawn mower. He 
 has firmly resolved to cut the front yard that 
 morning, and is therefore glad to see you. If 
 the grass isn't cut while the dew is on it, the 
 cutting must go over until the next day. You 
 obligingly remain until the dew is all gone 
 and he is then in a condition to agree to any- 
 thing. Besides, hasn't he children, too? 
 
 Yes, indeed, he will be glad to help get up 
 a clambake. So will the Smiths and the Rob- 
 insons. Therefore, so much being decided 
 upon, you repair to Uncle Seth's to consult 
 concerning tides, weather, and the like. 
 
 33
 
 Our Village 
 
 You couldn't have a clambake without Un- 
 cle Seth. Nor without Aunt Tempy, either, 
 for that matter. They live on the " lower 
 road," too, and Uncle Seth was Cap'n Ezra's 
 second cousin. 
 
 Aunt Tempy won't shake hands because it 
 is baking day and her hands are all flour, but 
 she says Uncle Seth is out weeding the cran- 
 berry swamp and that he'll be " real tickled " 
 to see you. So to the cranberry swamp you 
 go and find Uncle Seth on his knees. He 
 looks from the rear to be mainly whiskers 
 and straw hat ; but between the whiskers 
 and the hat brim is a weather-beaten, tanned 
 old face that wrinkles into a smile of wel- 
 come. 
 
 "Clambake?" says Uncle Seth. "Well, I 
 declare, I dunno. There's precious nigh a 
 fortn't's work on this swamp, and my hayin' 
 ought to be done besides. I swan, seems 's 
 if we'd had so much wet weather lately that 
 I ain't had a chance to do nothin' scarcely. 
 Yus, yus; I'd like to go fust rate, but I de- 
 clare I'm 'fraid I can't spare the time." 
 
 You suggest that it would please the chil- 
 34
 
 A Cape Cod Clambake 
 
 dren. Uncle Seth is an 
 old fish, but he rises to 
 the bait. 
 
 " Yus, yus," he says. 
 " Twould suit^hem, I 
 don't doubt. Well, I 
 
 dunno. When d'you cal'late to have it? Oh, 
 'most any day's all right this time of year. 
 Let's go up to the house and find out about 
 the tides." 
 
 The " Old Farmer's Almanac " hangs on 
 the nail behind the " settin'-room " door. It 
 is dogs' eared and crumpled, although but 
 seven or eight months old. Uncle Seth wipes 
 his " nigh-to " spectacles and wets his thumb. 
 
 " Hum," he says, turning the leaves with 
 the wet thumb. " Let's see. To-day's the four- 
 teenth, ain't it? High tide to-day at three. 
 That makes it low water at nine. Day after 
 to-morrow it's low at eleven or thereabouts. 
 How'd day after to-morrow suit ye?" 
 
 It suits you, and you so affirm. But Uncle 
 Seth's conscience still troubles him. There 
 is that cranberry bog and that hay. Aunt 
 Tempy comes to the rescue. 
 35
 
 Our Village 
 
 " Oh, go 'long, Seth ! " she urges. " You 
 ain't had a day off, I dunno when. One good 
 time won't put you in the poorhouse. I'd like 
 a clambake fust rate. My ! my ! what a lot we 
 used to have when Ezry was^alive and home 
 from sea. That's right. He'll go. I'll make 
 him. Tell the children I'll have some apple 
 puffs ready." 
 
 A clambake wouldn't be a clambake with- 
 out Aunt Tempy's apple puffs. You carry 
 the good news home, and are received like 
 a conquering hero. The children proceed 
 to behave like small imps and your wife 
 wears a beatific smile. Jones comes over to 
 say that Robinson has a cousin from Buffalo 
 visiting him who has never eaten a clam in 
 his life, and doesn't know whether he'll like 
 them or not. However, he'll risk the experi- 
 ment. 
 
 Next day the sky is overcast and cloudy 
 and the gloom tlnereof descends upon the 
 household. The children run to you and their 
 mother at five-minute intervals demanding to 
 know if it is " going to clear off." Jones 
 comes down from the post office at noon with 
 36
 
 A Cape Cod Clambake 
 
 the Boston daily paper, and the Government's 
 hired prophets cheer you with: " Weather for 
 New England, Thursday: showers and fresh 
 easterly winds." Robinson and the Buffalo 
 cousin whose name, by the way, is Brown 
 drop in after dinner to remark that they are 
 "afraid it's all off." At last, in desperation, 
 you go down to the " lower road " and Uncle 
 Seth. 
 
 Uncle Seth gets up from the supper table 
 and comes out into the yard. With shirt- 
 sleeved arms akimbo he stands and gazes at 
 the sky, at the western horizon, and at the 
 weather vane on the barn. Then he makes 
 proclamation as follows : 
 
 " Wall, I dunno. Looks kind of how-come- 
 you-so-now, don't it? Depends on how the 
 wind holds. It's blowed from the sou'east all 
 day, but seems to be cantin' 'round more to 
 the south'ard. If she hauls 'round to the west 
 more, I shouldn't wonder if it faired off by 
 day. Good no'thwest wind's what I'd like to 
 see. There was spider webs on the grass this 
 mornin' and, gin'rally speakin', you don't see 
 them in a spell of real bad weather. I kind 
 4 37
 
 Our Village 
 
 of cal'late she'll haul 'round. Anyway, we 
 won't say die yet." 
 
 That's the kind of weather prophet for you. 
 You return home feeling that if the weather 
 next day should be bad it won't be Uncle 
 Seth's fault. He has done his best. 
 
 And, sure enough, next morning it has 
 " faired off." The wind has " hauled 'round " 
 to a little north of west and the bay is a bright 
 sapphire blue, sprinkled with flakes of white. 
 You harness the horse into the " democrat " 
 and help your wife in. The children and the 
 lunch baskets are aboard long ago. 
 
 The Joneses are waiting in their wagon at 
 the corner of the " shore road." The Smiths 
 and Robinsons have gone on ahead. As you 
 reach the top of the hill by the windmill the 
 whole panorama of beach and bay is before 
 you. The white sand along the shore, 
 streaked, at highwater mark, with lines of 
 dark-green seaweed; the weather-beaten fish 
 shanties and the pines at Rocky Point; the 
 fish weirs on the horizon ; the deep-blue water 
 beyond ; and, between you and them, a mile or 
 more of clean yellow and white flats and eel- 
 38
 
 A Cape Cod Clambake 
 
 grass-bordered channels. There is, so they 
 say, but one other place along our coast 
 where the tide goes out as far as it does just 
 here. And no one knows exactly where that 
 place is. 
 
 There is a hail behind you, and here come 
 Uncle Seth and Aunt Tempy in the carryall. 
 The children set up a whoop. 
 
 " All hands on deck ! " roars Uncle Seth. 
 " Faired off fine, ain't it? What'd I tell ye? 
 Hello there, young ones! Got your appetites 
 along?" 
 
 One of the boys takes down the bars in 
 the rail fence and you leave the road and 
 drive across the marshes. The wind is cool 
 and smells of salt. You reach the " wading 
 place," ford the creek, and emerge upon the 
 beach near the point. And here- are the 
 Smiths and the Robinsons, with hoes and 
 baskets and Buffalo cousin, all complete. 
 
 The horses are unharnessed and tethered in 
 the shade of the abandoned fishhouses. You 
 may have wondered why Uncle Seth and 
 Aunt Tempy came in the carryall instead of 
 the buggy. You cease to wonder when Aunt 
 
 39
 
 Our Village 
 
 Tempy unloads the boxes and 
 bundles. There are enough 
 of these to fill an ordinary 
 wagon. 
 
 " For Heaven's sake ! " ex- 
 claims Mr. Brown of Buffalo. 
 "That isn't all lunch, is it? 
 Going to invite the town to dinner ? " 
 
 Aunt Tempy smiles tolerantly. " You've 
 never been to a clambake afore, have you ? " 
 she asks. " Humph ! Well, / have." 
 
 " Turn to, you lubbers ! " orders Uncle Seth. 
 " Clam-diggers, fall in. Women folks, do 
 what they feel like doin'. Young ones, fetch 
 wood and get rockweed." 
 
 " Oh, don't make 'em fetch wood yet a 
 while, *Seth," says Aunt Tempy. " There's 
 time enough. They'll want to see the clams 
 dug." 
 
 The experienced diggers are around with 
 three- or four-pronged clam hoes and wooden 
 buckets. Uncle Seth, being a professional, 
 has a couple of " dreeners," crates made of 
 laths with handles of rope; Cousin Brown is 
 proudly brandishing a garden hoe. 
 40
 
 A Cape Cod Clambake 
 
 " What you cal'late to do with that thing? " 
 asks Uncle Seth. " Weed pertaters ? " 
 
 Mr. Brown affirms that he intends digging 
 clams with it. 
 
 " Sho ! Land of love ! You'll chop 'em 
 into hash, let alone breakin' your back. You 
 leave that ashore and come along to pick up. 
 There's diggers enough." 
 
 But the Buffalo pride is roused and Mr. 
 Brown still clings to his hoe. Shoes and 
 socks are removed and the barefooted brigade 
 marches forth to descend upon the unsuspect- 
 ing clam, Uncle Seth in the lead. 
 
 The flats are just beyond the stretches of 
 spiky sedge grass. Uncle Seth's toughened 
 soles brush the spikes aside or tramp them 
 down, but the tenderfoot rear guard performs 
 involuntary war dances and utters stifled but 
 emphatic remarks. 
 
 " Now," says the commander, at length, 
 " here's as good a place as any. If I was 
 after sea clams I'd go way out yonder back 
 of them weirs ; and if I wanted them big run- 
 downs I'd lay to 'bout a quarter mile nigher 
 shore'n that. But for a bake or a bile there 
 41
 
 Our Village 
 
 ain't nothin' better'n the little sage clams you 
 git along the edge of this grass. Hoe in ; all 
 hands ! " 
 
 Brown wishes to know how you can tell 
 where to dig. 
 
 " Well," condescends Uncle Seth, " I'll tell 
 ye. See them holes in the sand? Some of 
 'em's clam holes and some of 'em ain't. Them 
 that ain't is worms and you don't want 'em. 
 I can 'most gin'rally tell a worm hole from a 
 clam hole, but blessed if I know how I do it. 
 Instinct and sense of smell, I cal'late, same as 
 the old woman knew when the pie was burnt. 
 Come on, now ! Hoe in ! " 
 
 You " hoe in " literally, and the buckets 
 begin to fill. Uncle Seth's " dreeners " fill 
 quicker than the others and he resurrects less 
 of the long, ugly-looking, thousand-legged 
 sandworms. It is blazing hot here on the 
 flats and your ankles and legs begin to turn 
 a picturesque and vivid crimson. Also, along 
 toward the last layers in the bucket, you grow 
 conscious of possessing a back. You turn 
 over successive hoefuls of wet sand, and the 
 youngsters, splashed, dirty, and happy, plunge 
 42
 
 A Cape Cod Clambake 
 
 both hands into the 
 hole and pull loose the 
 clams. 
 
 " There ! " says Un- 
 cle Seth, whose " dreeners " are filled 
 long since and who has been helping 
 everyone else, " there's enough, I 
 jedge. Good, likely mess, too. Now 
 we can head for shore. Why, where's 
 where's Mr. Brown?" 
 
 Brown was very energetic when the dig- 
 ging f^rst began. His garden hoe turned 
 over yards and yards of flats and his breath- 
 ing was like the puffing of a donkey engine. 
 But, somehow, he didn't find many clams. 
 Most of those he did find were mashed, by 
 the sharp edge of the hoe, into pulpy com- 
 binations of shell and sand. And now he has 
 disappeared. The youngsters remember that 
 he wandered over behind the point. So all 
 hands begin to shout " Brown ! " at the top 
 of their voices. 
 
 The answer, when it comes, is somewhat 
 petulant. "Yes, yes! I'm coming. What's 
 the matter with you chaps ? " 
 43
 
 Our Village 
 
 He appears, hopping gingerly through the 
 sedge. But on his sunburned countenance is 
 pride unmistakable. 
 
 " I found a fine place in nearer shore 
 there," he declares, " just where that little 
 brook runs down. Look at that." 
 
 He displays a half bucket of little black clams, 
 a good deal hashed up by the hoe, and envel- 
 oped in a cloak of evil-smelling blue clay. 
 
 Uncle Seth inspects the find, sniffs suspi- 
 ciously and shakes his head. Obviously he 
 doesn't want to hurt the Buffalo relative's 
 feelings, but 
 
 " I'm I'm kind of 'fraid, Mr. Brown," he 
 says. " 'Course you didn't know no better, 
 not havin' experience, but you see clams that 
 you git out of that sink hole ain't Phew! 
 how they do smell up ! " 
 
 So Mr. Brown's treasures are discarded 
 and their discoverer limps ashore, one hand 
 on the small of his back, and plainly feeling 
 himself the victim of spite and envy. 
 
 The clams the good ones, not the shells 
 filled with sand that are in some of the buckets 
 are carefully washed in a channel of clear, 
 44
 
 rippling water, and the diggers return to the 
 beach. The " women folks " have not been 
 idle. There is a great pile of driftwood col- 
 lected old sun-bleached fragments of wrecks, 
 dead limbs from pine trees, laths from the 
 weirs and the like. 
 
 " Fust rate ! " says Uncle Seth. " That's 
 a good job done. Ain't got nobody's fence 
 in there, have ye ? Land sakes ! I remember 
 when I was a boy we had a bake and pretty 
 nigh used up all the rails off of Cap'n Benijah 
 Lathrop's fence, and Humph! I forget 
 that little pitchers have big ears. Guess I'd 
 better be careful. Scatter, you young ones, 
 and tote rockweed. Two or three of you men 
 get stones. I'll dig the hole." 
 
 You go along the beach, picking up round, 
 waterworn bowlders the size of your head. 
 Returning with these, you find that Uncle 
 Seth has dug a pit in the sand and is arrang- 
 ing the driftwood within it. Newspaper and 
 shavings beneath, chips and small fragments 
 above, the large limbs and beams on top. 
 Then he lights the fire. 
 
 It smokes, crackles, and roars. Then, into 
 
 45
 
 Our Village 
 
 the flaming pile are thrown the stones you and 
 the others have brought. More wood and 
 more stones follow. The fire burns down to 
 a mass of red-hot coals. These Uncle Seth 
 removes with a long-handled iron rake. 
 There are the stones, white hot; they hiss, 
 when sprinkled with water, like a flatiron just 
 off the stove. 
 
 " Now then," commands the chef, drawing 
 his shirt sleeve across his perspiring forehead, 
 " where's that basket, Tempy ? " 
 
 Aunt Tempy produces, not one basket, but 
 two big ones. From these her husband takes 
 green corn in the husk, new potatoes, and, 
 finally, thirty or more interesting looking lit- 
 tle bundles of white cheese cloth. 
 
 "What's them?" he vouchsafes. "Well, 
 son, them's tinker mack'rel little ones. I got 
 'em from the weir folks. 'Do 'em up that way 
 and they go fine with a bake ; cook jest right. 
 Now heave in the clams." 
 
 Over the hot stones are poured bucket after 
 bucket of the clean, wet clams. A mighty 
 hissing they make, too. 
 
 " Rockweed ! " shouts Uncle Seth. 
 46
 
 A Cape Cod Clambake 
 
 The children have brought big armfuls of 
 bulbous, damp weed, torn from the rocks be- 
 low tide mark. With this the bake is covered 
 and a square of canvas is laid over all. From 
 beneath it rises a great cloud of steam. Then 
 the canvas is covered with shovelfuls of the 
 coarse beach sand. 
 
 " There ! " says Uncle Seth. " Now we're 
 just goin' to let her sizzle for half an 
 hour." 
 
 While she " sizzles " your wife and Smith's 
 wife and Jones's and Robinson's, supervised 
 and directed by Aunt Tempy, spread the 
 cloths on the green in the shadow of the 
 pines. The lunch baskets are unpacked. Bis- 
 cuit and pickles and pies and doughnuts and 
 sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs and and, 
 oh, yes! a half bushel of Aunt Tempy 's 
 apple puffs and you rather sympathize with 
 Brown in his wonder at the supply of eat- 
 ables ; and yet you are conscious of a ravenous 
 appetite. 
 
 Jones has brought along the handiest thing. 
 It is a little folding camp stove, made of sheet 
 iron. When it is ready for use it is square, 
 47
 
 Our Village 
 
 like a box, and you simply pour in a little oil 
 and light it. It will be so nice for boiling 
 the coffee. Coffee, so Jones says, never can 
 be boiled just right over an outdoor wood 
 fire. 
 
 You inspect the stove; that is, you inspect 
 part of it, for one side seems to be missing. 
 At last it is found, in the bottom of the wagon, 
 under a lap robe, and the oil is poured in. 
 But somehow or other the wicks won't trim. 
 The stove smokes, smells, and sputters and 
 Jones sputters likewise. 
 
 " Want to hurry up with that 'ere coffee," 
 calls Uncle Seth. " Bake's 'most done." 
 
 This makes Jones still more nervous, and 
 it is ten minutes more before the stove is 
 ready. And then the coffeepot is lost. It 
 was right here a moment ago and so was the 
 coffee, but 
 
 " Turn to, all hands ! " shouts Uncle Seth. 
 " Bake's ready." 
 
 He carefully turns back the canvas and 
 
 rakes off the rockweed ; then into pans held 
 
 by the boys and girls he puts great handfuls 
 
 of hot clams, ears of corn, potatoes, and the 
 
 48
 
 A Cape Cod Clambake 
 
 cloth-wrapped fish. My! how good every- 
 thing smells. 
 
 " If we only had that coffee, now," sighs 
 Jones. " I was as sure I brought it and the 
 coffeepot, too,, as I am that I'm living. How 
 on earth 
 
 There is a shout. Uncle Seth appears, 
 bearing the big coffeepot, steaming and fra- 
 grant. 
 
 " While you was fussin' with that 'ere stove 
 contraption/' he explains, with a twinkle, 
 " I made a chip fire and started her bilin'. 
 Now, pitch in, folks, and eat while the stuff's 
 hot." 
 
 Eat? Well, that's what everybody does. 
 The children " pitch in " with both hands and 
 the grown people are not far behind. You 
 remember that Brown has never tasted a clam 
 in his life; he has eaten quahaugs, of course, 
 but they don't count. 
 
 He opens a shell, under the supervision of 
 Mrs. Robinson, extracts the clam, dips it in 
 his saucer of melted butter, and chews delib- 
 erately. 
 
 " Like it ? " asks Robinson anxiously. 
 49
 
 Our Village 
 
 " Don't know yet. Guess I'll have to try 
 another." 
 
 He tries another and another and another; 
 eats half a peck or so and decides that he 
 does like clams and will have some more. 
 
 " Have another mug of coffee," urges Un- 
 cle Seth. " Ain't nothin' the matter with that 
 coffee, is there? Even if 'twas biled out of 
 door." 
 
 There is nothing the matter with anything, 
 apparently. The clams are tender and deli- 
 cious; so, too, is the corn. And as for those 
 " tinker mackerel " ! Whew ! 
 
 At last the doughnut and apple puff stage is 
 reached and you begin to feel that a cigar 
 would be a pleasant wind-up to the feast. 
 But the children are eating yet. Wonderful 
 what appetites they do have down here; eat 
 twice as much as they do at home in the city. 
 
 " Land sakes ! " says Aunt Tempy, " 'course 
 you shall have more pie, if you want it. Let 
 'em eat, bless their hearts ! " 
 
 " Young ones are all mouth and holler in- 
 side, like a pumpkin lantern, I cal'late," ob- 
 serves Uncle Seth. " I used to be the same 
 50
 
 way. Ain't got all over it yet. 
 Pass them cookies, Tempy, won't 
 ye?" 
 
 Well, you can't eat forever, 
 even at a clambake. Pipe and 
 cigars are going and the " wom- 
 en folks " wash the dishes. The 
 sun sinks toward the west. The 
 fire has gone out and the tide 
 comes in. It creeps over the flats 
 and washes musically among the 
 sedge where you dug the clams. 
 The children are building forts 
 along the shore,, vain bulwarks 
 against old Ocean. 
 
 Uncle Seth and Aunt Tempy grow reminis- 
 cent. They talk of other clambakes in years 
 long gone when the village was peopled 
 with sea captains, who went away on long 
 voyages and came home occasionally to enjoy 
 themselves with their wives and families. 
 
 " 'Member that bake 'Lisha Doane got up, 
 Seth?" asks Aunt Tempy. "Not the little 
 one, when Caleb was here, but the big one 
 when he was home for the last time, just afore 
 
 51
 
 Our tillage 
 
 him and his wife was wrecked and drownded 
 off Hatteras? Much as forty folks there 
 was, old and young, and such a good time 
 as we had! Stayed down to supper and then 
 lighted lanterns and danced in the big barn 
 that was standin' then and belonged to Abner 
 Payne." 
 
 " Yus, yus," chuckles Uncle Seth. " Dance ? 
 I should say we did! 'Twas three o'clock in 
 the mornin' when I got home that time. I 
 was courtin' you then, Tempy, and I drove 
 down to the old house and got you. Do you 
 remember ? " 
 
 " I guess I do ! Mother says : ' Now, Tem- 
 py, don't tire yourself all out dancin'.' But 
 dancin' didn't tire folks in them days." 
 
 " That's so, it didn't. Seems 's if I could 
 have worked all day and danced all night in 
 them times. I couldn't do it now no more'n 
 nothin'. Must have been more life in the air 
 then." 
 
 There is a good deal more of this, but they 
 both agree that " clambakes ain't the fun for 
 folks same as they used to be." 
 
 It is sunset, and the western horizon is all 
 52
 
 I was courtin' you then, Tempy. . . . Do you remember? 1
 
 A Cape Cod Clambake 
 
 streaked with red gold and topaz and tur- 
 quoise. It is time to go home. So the horses 
 are harnessed, the empty baskets and pots and 
 pans are loaded into the wagons, and the pro- 
 cession moves back across the marshes. But 
 now the evening wind is cold and the dusky 
 meadows are lonely, and the frogs are sing- 
 ing plaintive songs of regret and longing. 
 And you think of father and mother and the 
 faces that once met you along the old village 
 streets. Heigho! Whoa, Ned! Hurry up, 
 children. It's bedtime. 
 
 Later in the evening you are conscious that 
 your legs and arms are red hot and that witch 
 hazel is good for sunburn. Also that a dys- 
 pepsia tablet or two might prove a restful so- 
 lace for the clams you have eaten. Robinson 
 limps over to say that Brown is in bed, 
 swathed in cotton and vaseline, and that his 
 ankles are beginning to blister. And, please, 
 what is good for a lame back? 
 
 But the children, lobster red though they 
 are, went to bed perfectly happy. No dys- 
 pepsia there and no regrets, either. In fact, 
 the youngest, who is so burned that his moth- 
 5. 53
 
 Our Village 
 
 er is really worried, demanded to know why 
 there couldn't be a clambake every day. 
 
 You used to feel that way, too. Now you 
 shudder to think of it. If old Father Time 
 would pause for a while in that everlasting 
 march of his ... " Folks don't have the good 
 times they used to have." Well, perhaps 
 that's so.
 
 THE OLD MAIDS
 
 THE OLD MAIDS 
 
 IT wasn't that old maids were rare in our 
 village. Single ladies of a certain age, who 
 scorned matrimony and were thankful that 
 they were not burdened with husbands and 
 household cares, were plentiful almost as 
 plentiful as sea captains. 
 
 The Widow Cummings's " select boarding- 
 house " was full of them. Miss Harriet Beas- 
 ley, who presided over the Ladies' Circulating 
 Library, boarded there; so did Miss Olivia 
 Simpson, the school-teacher, and Miss Jane 
 Berry, local leader of the Women's Rights 
 
 57
 
 Our Village 
 
 movement, and several more dignified and 
 precise spinsters. Conversation at the Cum- 
 mings table was conducted on a highly lit- 
 erary and learned plane. It is recorded of 
 Zoeth Labrick, the sexton, one of the few 
 males who " took meals " at the widow's, that, 
 after his first fortnight of select boarding, he 
 drifted into Dr. Hallett's office and asked the 
 doctor if the latter had " ary book around the 
 house that was wrote by Mike L. Angelo, one 
 of them Eyetalians." 
 
 " You see, doc," said Zoeth, " Hattie Beas- 
 ley and the rest have been talkin' about this 
 Angelo critter mealtimes till you can't rest. 
 Asked me what I considered the chief beauty 
 of his ' Moses.' And when I says, ' Moses 
 who ? ' they giggled. Makes a feller feel like 
 a born fool." 
 
 Abitha Doane, the milliner, was a spinster ; 
 so was Caroline Pepper, the dressmaker, who 
 lived with her. Caroline looked the part, too, 
 and wore jet earrings and a tan-colored " false 
 front." Either her head had grown or the 
 " front " had shrunk, for the tan area only 
 extended to the tops of her ears and her own 
 
 58
 
 The Old Maids 
 
 gray hair stuck out around the edges like 
 trimming. Miss Pepper was an old maid to 
 the fullest extent of the popular meaning of 
 the term, but when the people of our village 
 mentioned " the old maids " they were not 
 speaking of her and Abitha, nor of the board- 
 ers at the Cummingses'. They referred to 
 "Pashy and Huldy " Baker. " Pashy and 
 Huldy " were the old maids. 
 
 The house where the old maids lived was on 
 the Neck Road, beyond the grove known lo- 
 cally as " Elkanah's Pines," and near the 
 swamp where the feather grass grew and the 
 spring bubbled up in the sunken barrel. It 
 was a big, square, old house, standing a good 
 way back from the sidewalk, with high plas- 
 tered chimneys the plaster had peeled off in 
 spots so that the red bricks showed and it 
 had a massive front door with pillars at each 
 side and an arched window above. Your 
 Cousin Ed, who lived in Boston and was go- 
 ing to be an artist some day after he got 
 through " making the crew " and being condi- 
 tioned at Harvard enthused over that house. 
 He said it was a perfect specimen of Colonial 
 
 59
 
 Our Village 
 
 architecture. Then he saw the old maids 
 themselves, and promptly declared that they 
 were perfect specimens likewise. 
 
 Your earliest memories of the old maids 
 and their home are associated with summer 
 Sunday afternoons and the walks you used to 
 take with grandma. These walks varied a 
 little as to route, but their objective point was 
 always the same, namely, the cemetery. There 
 were many things which the respectable por- 
 tion of our village considered wicked to do 
 on Sunday, but to walk to the cemetery was 
 not one of these. Grandma liked to go there 
 for various reasons, to carry flowers for Aunt 
 Desire's grave, to see if the man who was paid 
 one dollar a year for taking care 
 of the family lot was earning his 
 salary, to inspect the new tomb- 
 stones which were erected from 
 time to time and speculate con- 
 cerning their cost, and to instill 
 into your young mind the inev- 
 itable end of worldly ambition 
 and the necessity of preparation 
 for the hazardous beyond. 
 60
 
 The Old Maids 
 
 You didn't care much for the cemetery. 
 There were several epitaphs which fascinated 
 you for a while, epitaphs like that of 
 
 SOLON TYNDALL, 
 
 KILLED BY A FALL FROM THE MAIN TOPSAIL 
 
 YARD OF THE BARK AMAZON, IN THE 
 
 HARBOR OF BUENOS AYRES 
 
 ON MARCH 12, 1850 
 
 He as a seaman did his duty well, 
 But his foot slipped and from aloft he fell, 
 Fell, but to rise and climb the shrouds on high, 
 And greet his Master with a glad "Aye, aye." 
 
 Or that which recorded the fate of 
 ABSALOM PETERS, 
 
 SHOT IN THE CREEK BY THE EXPLOSION 
 OF HIS OWN GUN. 
 
 As grandma when she read this inscription 
 invariably pronounced " creek " like " crick," 
 you associated it with the lumbago, called 
 locally " a crick in the back," and wondered 
 what the unfortunate Absalom was doing with 
 his gun behind him. Later you learned that 
 he was duck-hunting in the creek between 
 East Harniss and our village and had been 
 accidentally shot through the breast. 
 61
 
 Our Village 
 
 But though the epitaphs soon lost their nov- 
 elty and the cemetery itself grew to be as tire- 
 some as grandma's sermons, the walks there 
 and back were delightful. You turned in at 
 Cap'n Rogers's side gate, went down through 
 the pasture, by the " peat hole " where the 
 turtles were sunning themselves on the pro- 
 jecting stumps, and climbed the hill on the 
 other side. This hill in winter was the most 
 dangerous, and consequently the most fasci- 
 nating, coast in town, but now it was a daisy- 
 starred lookout from which you might see for 
 three land miles and fifteen watery ones. Di- 
 rectly beneath you were clumps of huckle- 
 berry bushes and scrub oaks, with the path 
 winding through them between the cranberry 
 swamps; beyond was the dusty yellow ribbon 
 of the Neck Road, bordered with gray rail 
 fences or mossy stone walls, with an occa- 
 sional house, barn, and chicken yard ; " Elka- 
 nah's Pines " made a velvety green blotch, 
 and the white stones of the cemetery shone in 
 the sun ; back of all was the blue bay, a-dance 
 in the wind, with the distant buff sand dunes 
 of the Trumet shore notching the skyline. 
 62
 
 The Old Maids 
 
 From the hill the old maids' house was con- 
 spicuous. Four-squared, solid, and aristo- 
 cratic, in its day by far the most pretentious 
 dwelling on the Neck Road, it seemed to be 
 holding itself aloof from the common herd, 
 and, secluded behind the two great elms at 
 each side of its door, to be viewing the village 
 with dignified toleration. At this distance 
 one could not see the broken plaster of the 
 chimneys, the lack of paint, the rotting shin- 
 gles, the fences leaning this way and that. 
 From the hill it appeared eminently genteel; 
 near at hand the shabbiness of the gentility 
 forced itself upon you. 
 
 The foot of this hill, near the plank bridge 
 over the cranberry ditch, was the spot where 
 you and grandma were most likely to meet 
 the old maids. You had caught glimpses of 
 them through the huckleberry bushes as you 
 came down the slope. The swamp honey- 
 suckles grew thick about the little bridge, and 
 perhaps that is why you never think of 
 " Pashy and Huldy " without seeming to sniff 
 the perfume of the honeysuckle blooms. 
 
 " Pashy " her right name was Patience, 
 
 63
 
 Our Village 
 
 you discovered later, and her sister's, Hulda 
 was in the lead. She always took the lead 
 when the pair went walking, just as she did 
 in all practical and worldly matters, house- 
 hold cares, and the like. Hulda only led in 
 fashionable conversation, in letter writing, in 
 fancy needlework, and in the discussion of 
 Tom Moore's merits as a poet. So it had 
 been since they were children Pashy was the 
 caretaker and business manager ; Huldy the 
 social star, the family pet, and ornament. 
 
 This distinction showed in the manner in 
 which the sisters dressed. Both wore gar- 
 ments which had been the fashion ten or fif- 
 teen years before, but Pashy's were plain and 
 businesslike, while Huldy's were more pre- 
 tentious and inclined toward a middle-aged 
 and very respectable coquetry. It was Pashy 
 who wore the shoulder kerchief and the plain 
 bonnet of a coal-scuttle pattern, which in cold 
 weather was exchanged for a quilted hood. 
 Her hair was parted in the middle and 
 brushed back at each side. Huldy wore curls 
 and a hat which tied with ribbons beneath her 
 chin; a figured cashmere shawl was thrown 
 64
 
 The Old Maids 
 
 over her shoulders, and about her neck was a 
 red coral necklace. Her lace collar was fast- 
 ened with a large cameo pin, and there was a 
 gold ring on her finger, and what grandma 
 called " danglets " of red coral dependent 
 from her ears. 
 
 Huldy carried a faded blue silk parasol, 
 neatly patched and mended in a dozen places, 
 and Pashy bore an ancient and pudgy green 
 umbrella and a flowered carpet-bag with a 
 pair of leather handles. The contents of that 
 carpet-bag seldom varied, and could have been 
 itemized from memory by every adult and 
 nearly every child in our village. There were 
 the two clean handkerchiefs a plain one for 
 Pashy and an embroidered one for Huldy ; a 
 bottle for smelling salts, empty; a leather 
 purse, containing very little except two large 
 house keys, those of the front and back doors ; 
 a little silk bag with some bits of sugared flag- 
 root in it ; and always on Sunday afternoons 
 a plump envelope stamped precisely in the 
 upper right-hand corner, and addressed to the 
 niece who lived in New Orleans. 
 
 Writing this letter to the far-off niece was 
 65
 
 Our Village 
 
 a Sabbath ceremony as regular and almost as 
 solemn as going to church, for the old maids. 
 Huldy sat down to the mahogany desk with 
 the rickety, twisted legs, and unlocked the 
 inlaid writing case, which her father, pom- 
 pous old Cap'n Darius Baker, had brought 
 home from Genoa when she was a child. 
 Pashy sat beside her sister, holding in her lap 
 a copy of " The Gentlewoman's Complete Let- 
 ter Writer." Between them, on the floor, lay 
 Dr. Johnson's ponderous dictionary. 
 
 Huldy looked at her sister, took up the 
 pearl-handled pen which had come with the 
 writing case, and drew a long preparatory 
 breath. Pashy returned the look and also 
 drew a long breath. Then Huldy dipped the 
 pen in the ink well and wrote at the top of the 
 sheet of note paper : 
 
 BELOVED NIECE : I take my pen in hand to inform 
 you that my dear sister and I are well and we trust 
 and pray that this may find you the same. 
 
 The letter, thus begun, continued for ex- 
 actly eight pages. It was filled with such bits 
 of village news as had reached the ears of the 
 66
 
 The Old Maids 
 
 sisters, together with a careful notation of the 
 household doings, how many eggs the hens 
 had laid, the number of pears on the ancient 
 Bartlett tree, and similar items, all couched in 
 the stilted language of the " Complete Letter 
 Writer," and ornamented with such quota- 
 tions from Moore's poems as Huldy consid- 
 ered appropriate. 
 
 The next step, following the completion of 
 the letter, was to take it to the post office, in 
 order that it might be sure to go out on the 
 early mail Monday morning, and this trip to 
 the office, via the same " short cut " which you 
 and grandma took on the way to the ceme- 
 tery, was the occasion of your meeting the old 
 maids with such regularity at the little bridge. 
 
 The conversation at these meetings did not 
 vary greatly. 
 
 " Land sakes ! " grandma would exclaim, 
 under her breath, " here's the old maids. 
 Thought 'twas about time. They're as sure 
 as death and taxes." Then aloud: "Good 
 morning, Pashy. How d'ye do, Huldy ? Nice 
 seasonable weather we're having. I presume 
 likely you're going up to mail your letter." 
 
 67
 
 Our Village 
 
 The old maids acknowledged the greeting, 
 each in her individual manner. 
 
 " Good afternoon," said Pashy briskly. 
 " Yes, we're going to the post office to 
 
 " To insert our epistle in the receptacle for 
 postal matter," concluded Huldy graciously. 
 " The weather is indeed delightful. As the 
 bard has said " 
 
 What the bard said cannot be recalled at 
 the moment. However, it doesn't matter ; he 
 was sure to have said something appropriate 
 to any and all topics. The old maids passed 
 on and grandma looked after them. 
 
 " Cat's foot ! " she exclaimed. " Don't they 
 beat the Dutch? A body would think they 
 were King Solomon's nighest relations, and yet 
 it's just as likely as not they don't have a full 
 
 ,,- ,** meal of victuals from one week's end 
 
 ^,v- to the other that is, unless they're 
 
 * 3 ^jCi' 1 * invited out." 
 
 ,*.x _** '' 
 
 There was truth in grandma's ob- 
 servation, but on the one 
 memorable occasion when 
 you and mother took tea 
 68
 
 The Old Maids 
 
 with the old maids the grandeur of the cere- 
 mony overshadowed any shortage in the com- 
 missary department. The table was set in 
 the dining room, of course, the old-time, low- 
 studded dining room, with its yellow wood- 
 work, which had once been white, with its 
 tall clock in the corner and the braided rag 
 mats on the floor, with its chairs at equal 
 distances along the walls, and each set so 
 exactly in its habitual place that there were 
 little marks on the floor which the legs fitted 
 into. 
 
 Everything was years and years old and far 
 behind the times ; even the tall clock, which, 
 so Pashy explained, was two hours and a 
 quarter slow, but, as she and her sister were 
 used to it and always figured accordingly, it 
 really didn't make much difference. The 
 clock, by the way, exhibited above its face a 
 painted marine scene, where a ship behind a 
 ridge of tin waves rocked steadily with every 
 swing of the pendulum. 
 
 The dishes were blue and white, with pic- 
 tures of pagodas and funny little bridges upon 
 them. The teacups had no handles that is, 
 6 69
 
 Our Village 
 
 they were made without them and both 
 Pashy and Huldy drank their tea from the 
 saucers instead of the cups themselves ; the 
 air with which Huldy sipped hers, holding the 
 saucer in her left hand, with the little finger 
 stiffly extended, was inimitable and impres- 
 sive. The milk pitcher was yellow, and upon 
 its side was a picture of the death of Wash- 
 ington, the great George being lifted from his 
 bed by four angels with spreading wings and 
 radiant halos, up to a mass of tumbled clouds 
 which seemed to betoken a coming thunder- 
 storm. 
 
 There were pictures on the walls, pictures 
 of ships at sea or of scenes in foreign ports. 
 A worsted " sampler," made by Pashy when 
 a schoolgirl, was framed and hung among 
 them ; so, too, was Cap'n Baker's certificate of 
 membership in the Boston Marine Society, 
 and the coat of arms of the Baker family, 
 done in screaming water colors. Also there 
 was a large colored print of the battle be- 
 tween the Constitution and the Guerriere. 
 The Constitution flew a ^tremendous battle 
 flag, the red and blue of which not only cov- 
 70
 
 The Old Maids 
 
 ered the banner but a liberal section of adja- 
 cent sky. 
 
 Pashy pronounced a solemn and lengthy 
 blessing, to which her sister, from the foot of 
 the table, responded with a devout " Amen." 
 Then Pashy poured the tea, Huldy passed the 
 bread and butter, and the meal began. 
 
 It was a quaint, old-fashioned meal, the food 
 not too abundant, but everything very good 
 indeed. There were caraway-seed cookies 
 and sweet-apple and barberry preserves, and 
 tiny cranberry tarts, sweetened with molasses 
 instead of sugar. And, while you ate, the old 
 maids and mother talked, talked of the min- 
 ister's latest sermon and of the weather and 
 of grandfather's health. Huldy embellished 
 the conversation with quotations from Dr. 
 Johnson and Tom Moore, and gave unquali- 
 fied testimonial to the benefit derived from 
 " Indian Bitters," a cure-all, the receipt for 
 which had been handed down from her grand- 
 parents. Also she spoke of Godey's Hady's 
 Book as the one periodical suited to the lit- 
 erary needs of a genteel family. 
 
 " We used to take," she added, a tinge of 
 71
 
 Our Village 
 
 regret in her voice, " Gleason's Monthly Pic- 
 torial, but that was when father was alive. 
 We don't take it now. It it isn't what it 
 used to be." 
 
 Now the Pictorial was still a revered vis- 
 itor at your house, therefore you were sur- 
 prised when mother acquiesced with a prompt 
 " No, certainly not." 
 
 One element of tea-table chat was conspicu- 
 ously lacking, that is, gossip. The old maids 
 never gossiped gossip was not genteel. 
 
 After supper you went into the sitting 
 room. And there, amidst staid, heavy pieces 
 of mahogany furniture and bits of bric-a-brac 
 from China and Japan and India, under in- 
 spection by rows of stiff portraits in oil, you 
 sat and wriggled while mother and the old 
 maids talked and talked and talked. 
 
 Huldy said good-by in the sitting room, but 
 Pashy came to the door. There she and 
 mother whispered for a few moments. You 
 caught fragments like : " Yes, the shawl will 
 be done in a week "if I can work nights; my 
 eyes aren't what they used to be." " Yes, we 
 should be thankful for the potatoes, but, of 
 72
 
 The Old Maids 
 
 course, we couldn't think of letting you give 
 them to us. We are not dependent upon char- 
 ity, thank goodness." And, " Please don't let 
 Huldy know I told you this. She is so deli- 
 
 cate, and has been through so much, poor 
 child, that I try to carry most of the load my- 
 self. But sometimes it is awful hard." 
 
 Then you went away into the shadows of 
 the starry night, wondering and thinking. 
 
 73
 
 Our Village 
 
 After you had passed the cemetery and felt 
 safe enough to relax your grip on mother's 
 hand, you asked her many questions, but she 
 would not answer them, always changing the 
 subject. So you knew there was a mystery 
 concerning the old maids a secret known to 
 mother and grandma, and perhaps all the 
 " grown-ups," but not to little boys. 
 
 Well, you know the secret now. The ro- 
 mance you suspected was there, but it was 
 such a sordid, pitiful romance ; hardly worth 
 the telling, it may be, except for the fact that 
 it contained a great surprise. And the sur- 
 prise was this : 
 
 The old maids were not old maids at all! 
 That is, one of them was not. Huldy had 
 been married; she was a widow. 
 
 Cap'n Darius Baker was a great man in his 
 day. One of the magnates of our village he 
 was, after he retired from sea, and drove a 
 span and gave h'berally to the church and for 
 town improvements. After his election to the 
 State Legislature the big house on the Neck 
 Road was filled with guests whom the cap'n 
 brought down from Boston, and there were 
 74
 
 The Old Maids 
 
 parties and dinners galore. Once it was 
 grandma's pet story the Governor visited 
 our village, and it was Cap'n Baker who en- 
 tertained him and, at the ball that evening, 
 Cap'n Baker's daughter Huldy who led the 
 march with the great man. 
 
 Pashy and Huldy were girls at that time, 
 but then, as later, it was Pashy who attended 
 to the household duties and Huldy who shone 
 in the social gayety. Mrs. Baker had died 
 when her youngest daughter was born, and 
 upon Patience, the elder, fell the care of the 
 establishment and its servants three of them, 
 more than any other house in the community 
 could boast of. Pashy was plain and practi- 
 cal ; Huldy rather pretty and poetical. Huldy 
 was her father's spoiled darling, and Pasby, 
 without jealousy, assisted in the 
 spoiling. 
 
 Cap'n Darius, though respect- 
 ed and envied, was not a univer- 
 sal favorite. He was considered 
 pompous and " stuck up," and 
 people said that he held himself 
 above " common folks." At any 
 
 75
 
 Our Village 
 
 rate he certainly did seem to consider his 
 daughters too good for the village young men 
 who came to call upon them, and some of 
 these young men were promising skippers of 
 full-rigged ships, and " catches " whom many 
 *a scheming parent had marked and laid traps 
 for. So, though the girls Huldy in particu- 
 lar had many would-be beaux, no one of the 
 latter could be picked out by the gossips as 
 " steady company " for either of the sisters. 
 
 And then came the count. This is the 
 only recorded instance of the coming of no- 
 bility to our village, and it created a sensa- 
 tion which extended over the whole county. 
 On the first Sunday when Huldy Baker en- 
 tered the meeting house upon the arm of the 
 titled foreigner, Parson Simpkins's reading of 
 the Scripture stopped for an instant, and the 
 buzz of excited interest which stirred the con- 
 gregation reminded its older members of the 
 time when Araminta Penniman marched up 
 the aisle with her bonnet on " hind side be- 
 fore." 
 
 The count, so it appeared his name is for- 
 gotten now, and you never heard it pro- 
 76
 
 The Old Maids 
 
 nounced twice alike by those who pretended 
 to remember it was an Italian nobleman vis- 
 iting this country on a pleasure trip. He had 
 met Cap'n Darius at a dinner in Boston, and 
 the cap'n, with customary enterprise, had 
 seized upon him and brought him home for 
 an over-Sunday stay. People, supposed to be 
 up in such matters, remarked that he was 
 " dead gone on Huldy already." 
 
 Apparently he was, for he came again and 
 again, until, finally, the engagement was an- 
 nounced. The wedding was the swellest af- 
 fair ever known on the Cape, and, so the 
 Item said, was attended by " a galaxy of 
 beauty and chivalry which would have done 
 honor to the proudest capitals of Europe." 
 None of the count's relatives were present, 
 but that was not expected Italy was a long 
 way off in those days. The bridal couple de- 
 parted, via the Boston packet, on their honey- 
 moon journey to well, anywhere, from the 
 pyramids of Egypt to Niagara Falls, accord- 
 ing to who told the story. Cap'n Baker re- 
 turned to the Legislature, Pashy remained at 
 home to keep house as usual, and our vil- 
 
 77
 
 Our Village 
 
 lage rubbed its eyes and settled back to await 
 developments. 
 
 They came within a year. Of course every- 
 one who reads this has already foreseen the 
 miserable denouement. But cables were un- 
 known and newspapers scarce then, so tales 
 of bogus counts and their wiles had not been 
 printed broadcast to serve as warnings for as- 
 piring fathers and ambitious young women. 
 The count wasn't a count at all. He wasn't 
 even an Italian, but hailed from somewhere 
 in the South and had a wife and daughter 
 living in New Orleans. Anxious letters from 
 the forsaken wife led to the disclosure and 
 the consequent scandal. Our village stopped 
 work for a week, to gather at the sewing cir- 
 cle and the post office and whisper rumors 
 and surmises. 
 
 The rumors became certainties, and more 
 rumors trod upon the heels of the first. 
 Huldy had come back to her father at Boston. 
 The count was in jail somewhere. Cap'n Ba- 
 ker was in financial difficulties ; he had been 
 speculating and had lost all his money ; the 
 marriage with the supposedly rich nobleman 
 78
 
 The Old Maids 
 
 had been arranged by 
 him with a hope that 
 his son-in-law's wealth 
 might help him out of . 
 his troubles. Huldy was 
 very sick. There was 
 talk of arresting her father. 
 
 They say Pashy's demeanor at this 
 dreadful time was something to be re- 
 membered. She grew thin and white, A^ 
 but she bore herself as proudly and 
 went about her work as bravely as when the 
 family name was clean and unsmirched. She 
 went to church each Sunday and sat in the 
 Baker pew, and those who would fain have 
 sympathized with her did not dare do so, any 
 more than the meaner souls who would have 
 liked to gloat over her downfall dared sneer 
 in her presence. 
 
 Then came the final crash. Cap'n Darius 
 committed suicide in a Boston hotel, and 
 Huldy, weak, worn, and crushed, came to our 
 village with the body. Even then Pashy did 
 not openly give way, but sheltered her sister 
 from curious eyes and took upon her own 
 79
 
 Our Village 
 
 shoulders all the worry and anxiety of the 
 months that followed. 
 
 So that is the story of the old maids. All 
 their lives they lived in the old house, amidst 
 the treasures collected during their father's 
 prosperity, and no one but a very few knew 
 though many guessed how hard was the 
 struggle for even the necessities of life, and 
 how they sewed and crocheted and knit far 
 into the nights to make the articles they sold 
 to the townspeople and the summer visitors. 
 And to fewer still was known how stead- 
 fastly Pashy bore her burden and how she 
 refused charity and sacrificed her own com- 
 fort and actual needs to humor her weaker 
 sister. The " niece " in New Orleans was trie 
 count's daughter. Huldy felt a curious and 
 deep-rooted sympathy for this girl, whose 
 father had wronged her, and the letter every 
 Sunday was faithfully written and faithfully 
 mailed until the hands which wrote and mailed 
 it were still forever. 
 
 The old maids died years ago, before you 
 left our village. Pashy, worn out, died first, 
 and Huldy, entirely at sea without her pro- 
 80
 
 The Old Maids 
 
 tector and guide, followed in a few months. 
 She left the house and its contents to the New 
 Orleans " niece," but no sooner was she in 
 her grave than, behold, a swarm of hitherto 
 unheard-of relatives appeared cousins three 
 or four times removed and they fought over 
 the will like sharks over a dead whale. There 
 were auction sales at which the blue china 
 cups and saucers and the spinning wheels and 
 warming pans, the mahogany furniture and 
 the gilt-framed mirrors ; were sold at prices 
 which would have kept the old maids in com- 
 fort for years. But to sell articles which be- 
 longed to " father " was not Pashy's way ; she 
 would have worked herself to death first. 
 The house on the Neck Road is now occu- 
 pied by a Portuguese family, who pick cran- 
 berries and go out " choring " and washing. 
 One day during a recent summer, as you were 
 strolling by, you saw three of the little Portu- 
 guese children goodness knows how many of 
 them there are playing at " keeping house " 
 in the yard. They had a lean-to of boards, 
 and it was furnished, after a fashion, with 
 broken-down doll's furniture donated by some 
 81
 
 Our Village 
 
 kind-hearted summer resident. There was a 
 piece of looking-glass tacked on the walls of 
 the playhouse and what appeared to be a 
 framed picture. But it wasn't a picture it 
 was the worsted " sampler " that hung on the 
 walls of the dining room that evening when 
 you took tea with the old maids. 
 
 You bought that sampler and you have it 
 yet. To you it is fragrant with the scent of 
 wild honeysuckle and of sugared flagroot, of 
 the summer Sunday walks with grandma, and 
 memories of " Pashy and Huldy."
 
 THE SCHOOL PICNIC
 
 THE SCHOOL PICNIC 
 
 I PRESUME that few, if any, of those pres- 
 ent have ever attended a school picnic. Wait 
 wait just a minute, please! Kindly keep 
 your seats. Don't attempt to protest all at the 
 same time. The chairman has accorded me 
 the privilege of the floor and I do not intend 
 relinquishing it until I have made my speech. 
 As I was about to say when interrupted I 
 presume that few, if any, of those present 
 7 8 5 '
 
 Our Village 
 
 have ever attended a school picnic, such as a 
 wise committee used to provide yearly for the 
 children in our village. 
 
 I do not mean a Sunday-school picnic. 
 There! Now will you be quiet? Certainly 
 we had Sunday-school picnics ; our society al- 
 ways had one, and so did the Baptists and the 
 Congregationalists and the Methodists, every- 
 one, in fact, except the Come-Outers, and their 
 regular meetings, being held in the open air 
 or in the parlors of the members, were usually 
 more or less in the nature of picnics, and live- 
 ly ones, too. Sunday-school picnics were good 
 fun; I admit it. But the attendance was 
 limited, only the scholars and teachers of your 
 own faith being invited, whereas to the annual 
 picnic of the day-school came boys and girls 
 you scarcely knew, or had merely heard of; 
 youngsters who lived way " up to the west- 
 'ard," in the vicinity of the abandoned salt 
 works, or in " Bassett's Holler," by the fish- 
 houses ; or in " Woodchuck Lane," where the 
 little one-story schoolhouse was half hidden 
 by scrub oaks and huckleberry bushes and the 
 teacher was paid twenty dollars a month and 
 86
 
 The School Picnic 
 
 earned it. Often there were as many as one 
 hundred and sixty children at the day-school 
 picnic; the biggest crowd you ever saw, till 
 you grew older and visited the County Cattle 
 Show at Ostable. 
 
 May was the month of the school picnic, 
 and the selection of the date was another 
 proof of the wisdom of the committee. May 
 was one of the months when the average 
 youngster in our village had almost to be 
 driven to school. It was, of course, hard to 
 study in January, when the " sliding down- 
 hill " was in its prime ; or in February, when 
 skating on the schoolhouse pond was at its 
 best, and you swallowed your lunch in four 
 gulps, with your skates already strapped to 
 your feet ; or in early June, when the water 
 was warm enough to go in " swimmin' " ; yes, 
 or in October, when the shagbarks were drop- 
 ping in the woods ; or in November, with 
 Thanksgiving so near. But May school in 
 May was cruel! 
 
 You see it was in May that the weather 
 grew warm enough for the windows to be 
 opened. There was no fire built in the school- 
 
 87
 
 Our Village 
 
 house stove. Some of the toughest boys 
 fortunate youngsters whose parents were poor 
 or shiftless began to go barefoot and to wig- 
 gle their toes in triumph at their shod and 
 envious brethren. The scent of new grass and 
 green things drifted in on the breeze. Birds 
 sang in the orchard beyond the whitewashed 
 fence. It was " nesting time/' and every male 
 in our village, under the age of fifteen, had a 
 cherished collection of eggs and was ambi- 
 tious to add to it. Winter was over, spring 
 was in its glory, and young blood stirred in 
 answer to its call. No wonder that lessons 
 limped and halted and discipline became more 
 irksome than ever. 
 
 And then, on a forenoon when rebellion 
 was most acute and even the good boys 
 dreamed of " hooking jack " and going " egg- 
 ing," a dignified rap sounded on the school- 
 room door. Teacher, hastening to answer it, 
 admitted no less a personage than Captain 
 Benijah Penniman, Chairman of the School 
 Committee. And after a brief consultation 
 she announced that Captain Penniman would 
 address the school. The captain's addresses 
 88
 
 The School Picnic 
 
 were, ordinarily, 
 
 pompous and dry 
 
 enough ; but now, as 
 
 you squared your 
 
 shoulders and put 
 
 your hands behind 
 
 you in the attitude 
 
 of " attention," your face and 
 
 those about you were on the broad 
 
 grin. You knew what he was going to say. 
 
 He was going to announce that the school 
 
 picnic would be held in Bradley's Grove on 
 
 such and such a day. Scholars were expected 
 
 to bring their own lunches and meet in the 
 
 school yard at half past eight. Lemonade and 
 
 ice cream would be provided free. " Ahem ! 
 
 I er trust your behavior on that occasion 
 
 will be becoming and such as to warrant the 
 
 committee's er generosity for another year. 
 
 Ahem ! er yes." 
 
 Oh, that week the week before the great 
 event ! Seven days ? One hundred and sixty- 
 eight hours? Humph! Well, maybe. But 
 if every one of those hours was not a full 
 year long, then you missed your guess. The 
 89
 
 Our Village 
 
 copy in the writing book affirmed that " Time 
 flies," and you are willing to admit, now that 
 you and the old gentleman with the scythe 
 are better acquainted, that there is some truth 
 in the statement ; but during the week preced- 
 ing the school picnic you would have sworn 
 that he stopped in the middle of the road and 
 crawled under the car to tinker with the ma- 
 chinery. You spent the waking hours of that 
 week with one eye on the clock and the other 
 on the weather. 
 
 The weather used to mean so much in our 
 village. When the First Baptist Society an- 
 nounced their strawberry festival " straw- 
 berry vestibule," Sylvanus Cahoon persisted 
 in calling it the printed date on the bills was 
 invariably followed by the line, " If stormy, 
 first pleasant evening." And if it should 
 storm on the day set for the picnic! 
 
 But it didn't. As you left the house, with 
 your lunch basket on your arm, at a quarter 
 to eight you had been up since half past five 
 and broad awake for an hour before that 
 the shadow of the big silver-leaf in the front 
 yard lay clear cut, a deep-blue silhouette, 
 90
 
 The School Picnic 
 
 across the yellow dust of the road. The blos- 
 soms from the cherry trees fluttered down in 
 perfumed snow showers as the fresh spring 
 breeze stirred the branches. The scent of 
 lilacs mingled with the smell of doughnuts 
 from the basket you were carrying. The 
 waves in the bay were blue satin, with braided 
 edges of silver. 
 
 You started alone, but before you reached 
 the school yard you were one of a joyous 
 party. " Snuppy " Rogers was waiting for 
 you at his front gate between the box hedges. 
 " Oaks " Foster whistled between his fingers 
 and came tearing across the pasture lot. 
 " Crocodile " his dressed-up name was Sam 
 Crocker came hobbling, stone bruise and all, 
 through the lane by Simons's. You passed a 
 chirruping, beribboned party of little girls, 
 who giggled and whispered about you behind 
 their hands. You paid no attention to their 
 whispers ; you disdained girls then. 
 
 The yard was crowded. The wagons were 
 ready, the horses dozing by the poles. Im- 
 provised benches had been arranged in the 
 wagons by laying planks from side to side. 
 
 91
 
 Our Village 
 
 Some of the most calculating and forehanded 
 children were already roosting in desirable 
 places on the benches. Everybody had a 
 lunch basket or box ; everybody was talking 
 or laughing at the top of his or her voice ; 
 everybody, even the two teachers Mr. Band- 
 inann, who taught " upstairs " in the gram- 
 mar grades, and Miss Fairtree, who presided 
 " downstairs " in the primary were happy. 
 Everybody was care free that is, everybody 
 except Zephaniah Hackett. 
 
 Zephaniah was not care free well, hardly. 
 Just suppose that you, besides being janitor of 
 the schoolhouse and sexton of the Congrega- 
 tional church, were expected to provide ice 
 cream lemon and vanilla for one hundred 
 and fifty children, not to mention a dozen 
 grown-ups ; lemonade enough lemonade for 
 the same crowd ; had to attend to the loading 
 of the freezers, the lemons, sugar, glasses, 
 tubs,' and dishes ; had to see to all these things 
 and be responsible for them ; then suppose that 
 yours was a nervous temperament, and that, 
 being a bachelor, you had no children of your 
 own, and consequently were not used to hav- 
 92
 
 The School Picnic 
 
 ing them under your feet and crawling up 
 your back and shouting questions in your ear ; 
 wouldn't you be a trifle ruffled ? I guess you 
 would. During the years that have passed 
 since your last school picnic you have learned 
 to sympathize with Zephaniah. 
 
 Mr. Hackett's spare gray hair was tousled. 
 His specs slid down his perspiring nose like 
 boats on the water-chutes at Coney Island ; 
 and as fast as he readjusted them, they were 
 off on another coast. Tin spoons jingled 
 out of his overflowing pockets as he rushed 
 about. His vocal machinery needed oiling 
 already. 
 
 " Hi ! " he screamed hoarsely to his assist- 
 ant, Mr. Gabe Lumley, who was to drive one 
 of the wagons, " where's them washtubs go- 
 in' ? In your wagon ? Don't talk so foolish ! 
 Ain't the freezers in there? And the sassers 
 and cups and all? Where you goin' to stow 
 the folks? Cal'late you're runnin' a baggage 
 truck, do ye ? Yes, yes, yes, yes, YES ! I'm 
 a-comin', Mr. Bandmann. G'way from me, 
 you little loons ! Tramped on your foot ! Well, 
 get your feet out of the way! Ain't you got 
 93
 
 Our Village 
 
 the whole yard to put 'em in without oh, 
 Julius Caesar ! " 
 
 No, you wouldn't have been Mr. Hackett 
 for anything except the ice cream and the 
 lemonade. 
 
 The wagons fill; the benches are crowded 
 by giggling, squealing rows. The last strag- 
 gler comes tearing into the yard. Josiah 
 Dimick's boy? Not much. It is only for 
 regular school sessions that Natty Dimick is 
 late ; for picnics he is the first on the ground. 
 Mr. Bandmann rises from his seat beside Mr. 
 Lumley to take one last look. Zephaniah, 
 perched on the tailboard, wipes an agonized 
 forehead and opines that " Suthin's been for- 
 got; I know it. Always have that feelin' and 
 never knew it to fail to turn out so. Oh, zvhy 
 in time can't I get decent help ! Expect one 
 man to," etc. 
 
 The word is given. The wheels turn. We 
 are off! 
 
 Bradley's Grove is away up by Great Pond, 
 ever so far twenty miles, or or well, four 
 and a quarter, anyhow. The road, ruts six 
 inches deep, winds through the pine groves 
 
 94
 
 The School Picnic 
 
 and scrub oaks. From the bald spot at the 
 top of Myrick's Hill you get your last view 
 of the bay and the village. It is a pretty pic- 
 ture, that view, but you are too busy to no- 
 tice it. Sam Eldredge, on the rear bench, has 
 started a pinch going and it is your business 
 to " pass it along." 
 
 A steep hill, Myrick's! The horses have 
 to tug. What are we stopping for? Oh, 
 nothing much ! The tailboard has come 
 unfastened and Mr. Hackett has been 
 spilled into the dust. No harm done. Just 
 his luck, he says, as he clambers aboard. 
 " Might 'a' known that fool Gabe hadn't got 
 gumption enough to hitch up a tailboard. 
 Tain't his fault I ain't broke my everlastin' 
 neck." 
 
 The little " Woodchuck Lane " schoolhouse 
 has a "truck cart" full 
 of youngsters, their teacher 
 with them, waiting before 
 it. The wagon falls in 
 behind ours. At the next 
 corner a riot is plainly in 
 progress. No, not a riot; 
 
 95
 
 Our Village 
 
 merely the wagons from " Bassett's Holler " 
 and the school " up to the west'ard." The 
 procession is a regular caravan by now, and 
 the noise whew ! A tiny gray " cottontail " 
 hops into the middle of the road, takes one 
 look, and heads for tall timber. Wherever 
 he is going he certainly will break the record 
 for the distance. 
 
 More woods and woods and woods. 
 Then a clearing, and a plowed field. Then a 
 lone house, the house of Cyrus Bradley, owner 
 of the grove. Fortunate man! He could 
 have a picnic every day if he wanted to! 
 
 Cyrus is waiting by the rail fence, where we 
 turn off to go to the pond. He has let down 
 the bars already; a mean thing to do when 
 there are seventy boys each eager to perform 
 this important task. His luxuriant chin whis- 
 kers wave grandly in the breeze, " just like 
 buckwheat," so " Snuppy " Rogers whispers. 
 " Got a fine day for it, ain't ye ? " comments Mr. 
 Bradley. You bet you ! Three cheers for the 
 day ! Three cheers for Cyrus ! Three cheers 
 for the buckwheat whisk S-s-sh-h behave 
 yourselves ! 
 
 96
 
 * ' V - 
 
 The School Picnic ?-_~z^^- 'i 
 
 A narrow winding 
 through the pines, 
 their needles slap- 
 ping you in the face 
 as you duck under 
 them. Then a sharp 
 turn, and behold ! below you, shin- 
 ing in the sun, its waters alive and 
 dancing, its yellow beaches and 
 sand bluffs decorative and color-giving, green, 
 wooded hills hemming it in Great Pond, 
 with Bradley's Grove beside it. 
 
 Only a short ride now, but you don't ride. 
 Like " Foolish Sol " a local character who 
 used to carry packages from one town to the 
 other, running at full 'speed on the railroad 
 tracks you " can't stop for the train." You 
 pile out of the wagon and race, one of a whoop- 
 ing multitude, down the hill and into the grove. 
 The tall beeches reach out and cover you with 
 their green-sleeved arms, the noble oaks and 
 the birches, the latter spandy clean in new white 
 bark, pillar the high dome of quivering foliage. 
 On the pond and in the fields it is warm and 
 brilliant ; in the grove all is dusky coolness. 
 97
 
 Our Village 
 
 The wagons enter one by one. The passen- 
 gers mostly teachers and the big boys and 
 girls ; all the younger set got out when you 
 did alight. Mr. Bandmann descends, calm 
 and dignified. Zephaniah slips from the tail- 
 board and becomes hysterically busy. The 
 preliminaries are over. The picnic has begun. 
 
 There are so many things to do all at once 
 that is the main trouble. Mr. Hackett and 
 Gabe Lumiey are unloading the freezers and 
 tubs and dishes, an extremely interesting proc- 
 ess and one which you would like to watch. 
 But " Snuppy " is on hand to suggest an 
 excursion after yellowbirds' eggs in the thick- 
 ets by the shore of the pond ; and " Oaks " 
 Foster knows where there are likely to be 
 some swamp apples warty, watery excres- 
 cences, growing on low bushes, deliciously 
 green and indigestible ; and " Crocodile " 
 thinks it would be fun to go off " by ourselves 
 somewheres " and have a swim ; and " Dodo " 
 Salters has brought a fish line and proposes 
 trying for " punkin' seeds " and perch ; and 
 " Aw, what are we standin' round here for ? 
 Let's do somethin'." 
 
 98
 
 The School Picnic 
 
 The thickets are green and tangled and de- 
 lightful. No yellowbirds' nests in sight as 
 yet, but always sure to be some just a little 
 way farther on. The ground under foot is 
 soggy and wet. Off come shoes and stock- 
 ings. Now we can splash and wade and en- 
 joy ourselves. Here's a swamp apple ! Green ? 
 Certainly; but enough for one small bite 
 apiece. Just as it comes your turn to bite, the 
 worm inside sticks his head out. Never mind, 
 you're first on the next one. 
 
 A sheltered little cove, its sandy beach hid- 
 den by bushes, and the water so clear that you 
 can see the pebbles and fresh-water clams on 
 the bottom of the very deepest hole. Some- 
 times, at home, at bedtime, it takes you al- 
 most a half hour to undress ; now the slowest 
 member of the gang is naked and neck deep 
 in five minutes. Wheel but it's fine! You 
 swim, dive, do the " dog paddle " and the 
 " steamboat." Likewise you " sound," tread- 
 ing water and holding your nose, then sinking 
 until one groping toe touches the sand, when 
 you shoot to the surface, emerging with a sput- 
 ter and a triumphant yell of " S-o-o deep ! " 
 99
 
 Our Village 
 
 When you get back to the grove, prepara- 
 tions for dinner are in full blast. Zephaniah, 
 shirt sleeves rolled above his elbows, is mak- 
 ing the lemonade. He has a big, two-handled 
 squeezer and the yellow juice spatters in the 
 bottom of the washtub. It makes your mouth 
 pucker to watch him. The teachers and the 
 big girls are spreading cloths on the ground 
 in the largest clear space. Nonsense, of 
 course! What's the use of tablecloths at a 
 picnic? Why don't they have dinner now 
 now? 
 
 Well, they do at last. You gather about 
 the cloths, kneeling or sitting " tailor fash- 
 ion " on the moss and the leaves. Covers 
 come off the lunch baskets. Ah, these mothers 
 of ours! Who but a mother would spend 
 hours of a busy day in preparing stuffed eggs 
 and sandwiches and apple puffs and cake? 
 Cake? There are no less than seventy-five 
 different kinds of cake in those baskets and 
 boxes, and every kind light, feathery, and de- 
 licious. You eat it all, all you can get, but 
 you do not then appreciate the love and self- 
 denial animating the tired hands which made 
 
 100
 
 The School Picnic 
 
 it. Now you do, now when those hands have 
 been at rest for so many years. 
 
 You've eaten all you can possibly stuff and 
 have moistened the cargo with two tin cupfuls 
 of lemonade. Therefore you are ready for the 
 ice cream, which the ubiquitous Hackett is 
 dealing out. His is certainly a bully job 
 none better but, like all great men filling re- 
 sponsible positions, Zephaniah has his trou- 
 bles. 
 
 " Hey ? Well, wait a minute, can't ye ? " 
 he inquires, brandishing a saucer in one hand 
 and an iron spoon in the other. " Hold on till 
 it's your turn ! I never see such a gang of 
 young hogs in my born days. All right ! All 
 right! Which'll it be lamon or vanilla? 
 Lamon, you said? There you be! Clear off 
 my feet! Mr. Bandmann, for the land sakes 
 make a couple million of these young ones 
 keep in line, can't ye ? " 
 
 You had a great scheme, product of " Croc- 
 odile's " inventive brain, by which you were 
 to obtain both kinds of ice cream. You were 
 to get the lemon first, swallow it as quick as 
 possible, hide your saucer and spoon in the 
 8 101
 
 Our Village 
 
 bushes and then line up once more, innocent 
 and bland, to be helped to vanilla; the sup- 
 position being that Mr. Hackett, in the rush 
 of his occupation, would not remember and 
 would think it was your first trip. It was a 
 good plan and might have worked if it had 
 not been for teacher. 
 
 However, you get enough quite enough. 
 You were there to eat and you have fulfilled 
 your destiny. Trifles, such as crawling cater- 
 pillers and investigating bugs, may annoy fin- 
 icky and foolish folks like women and girls 
 may even prevent their enjoyment of ice 
 cream and lemonade but a boy's appetite is 
 bug proof. If an insect is swallowed, so 
 much the worse for it, that's all. 
 
 After dinner is a more or less restful time. 
 You have no craving for that widely adver- 
 tised panacea which will do away with " that 
 full feeling after eating." To feel full is to 
 be full, and to be full is the proper and bliss- 
 ful state following a picnic meal. You loll 
 about and talk and laugh. The smaller girls 
 made wreaths of oak and holly leaves, ridicu- 
 lous contraptions with which they would dec- 
 
 IO2
 
 The School Picnic 
 
 orate you if you would let them. But you're 
 no sissy, like Gussie Ellis, the Sunday-school 
 superintendent's boy. His hair is curly and 
 he likes actually likes to play with girls. 
 Think of it ! 
 
 But Gussie is not the only boy at that picnic 
 who likes girls, evidently not. The big fellows 
 of sixteen or seventeen those in the back 
 seats of Mr. Bandmann's " upstairs " school- 
 room are talking or walking about with the 
 damsels in muslin and ribbons, girls old 
 enough, almost, to put their hair up, and 
 whose dresses reach their shoe tops. Cou- 
 ple after couple stroll away along the beach 
 of the pond or under the oaks. Softies ! 
 Wouldn't it make you sick! 
 
 Ah, well! there were picnics, picnics of a 
 later time, when you, too, strolled under the 
 trees with a being radiant in ruffles and rib- 
 bons. And you enjoyed it, too, even though 
 you were bashfully conscious of not knowing 
 what to say, and painfully aware that your 
 new shoes were a size too small. There was one 
 girl in particular whose eyes were as black 
 and deep as the water in the well at home and 
 103
 
 Our Village 
 
 with the same liquid sparkle in them. She 
 was slender and moved with the grace of a 
 blown dandelion puff. Her hair was brown 
 and tied with a blue ribbon. You stole that 
 ribbon and refused to give it back, in spite of 
 her not too strenuous protests. You said you 
 were going to keep it always. Goodness 
 
 knows where it is now., And when you met 
 her during " Old Home Week " last summer, 
 she looked as if she might weigh two hun- 
 dred pounds, and she said she wouldn't have 
 known you because you had grown so bald. 
 On the little knoll overlooking the pond, the 
 grown folks the teachers and Mr. Hackett 
 and Gabe are talking lazily. Zephaniah is 
 104
 
 The School Picnic 
 
 telling of other picnics in that grove, when he 
 was a boy, and later. He tells one story 
 which is a local tradition ; you have heard 
 your mother tell it. How, in the old times 
 when our village was the home of seafaring 
 men, retired or active, a gay party came to 
 Great Pond on a picnic. And a young sea 
 captain and his bride, a lovely girl, were there. 
 They, with some others, went out sailing on 
 the pond, the boat was upset by a sudden 
 squall, and her laughing, happy passengers 
 were thrown into the water. All were saved 
 but one, the beautiful young bride. She, it is 
 supposed, was pinned down by the sail, and 
 sank. " And," says Zephaniah, " when they 
 got her out she was drownded dead. And 
 I'll never get the sight of her husband's face 
 off my mind never ! " 
 
 It was a sad story, and sadder than ever 
 now, as the sun sinks and the shadows of the 
 hills beyond are thrown duskily on the water. 
 It makes you shiver although possibly the 
 swamp apples and sweet flag and lemonade 
 and ice cream with which you are freighted 
 are contributing toward your inward uneasi- 
 105
 
 Our tillage 
 
 ness. At any rate you do not complain when 
 the order is given to harness the horses for 
 the homeward ride. 
 
 The wagons move out of the grove. The 
 twilight deepens. Fireflies twinkle and dance, 
 like drifting sparks blown from dying fires, 
 amidst the thickets where you hoped to find 
 the birds' nests. You wouldn't go there now 
 for anything. The frogs begin their evening 
 serenade of warning, the little " pinkwinks " 
 furnishing the shrill soprano and the great 
 bull-throated chaps along the pond's edges 
 booming the bass. 
 
 Deep deep ! deep deep ! deep deep ! 
 Better go 'round! Better go 'round! 
 
 The stars are lighted up one by one. A 
 mist rises all about. The thought of the cozy 
 sitting room at home comes to your mind and 
 is attractive. 
 
 The woods are blots of blackness framing 
 the narrow ribbon of road. The breeze has a 
 damp, sweet, night odor. In the leading wag- 
 on some one begins to sing " Seeing Nellie- 
 Home," and the plaintive melody is taken up 
 106
 
 The School Picnic 
 
 along the line. Then follows " The Spanish 
 Cavalier " and " Tavern in the Town," and, 
 of course and always, " Home Again from a 
 Foreign Shore." 
 
 Our house, the back part of it, is alight and 
 inviting. You shout your good nights and 
 tumble out of the wagon. The side door, the 
 door under the lattice of wistaria and morn- 
 ing-glory vines, swings wide and on its thresh- 
 old stands some one who kisses you and asks : 
 " Well, did you have a good time, dearie ? " 
 
 Oh, me ! if just once more you might alight 
 at that door and be welcomed by that some 
 one. Would your answer then, even though 
 you were ever so tired and sleepy, be careless 
 or cross? No! no, indeed! But that door is 
 shut, forever and ever shut. 
 
 The last you hear from the wagons as they 
 rattle along the main road is Zephaniah Hack- 
 ett's wail from his perch on the last tailboard 
 of all. 
 
 " By thunder mighty ! I'm clean wore and 
 petered out. I wisht to the everlastin' there 
 wan't no such things as school picnics." 
 
 Zephaniah would have his wish if he were 
 107
 
 Our Village 
 
 living now. There are no more day-school 
 picnics in our village. There are picnics, of 
 course, there and all over this big country ; 
 your own boy is going to one next week and 
 is exultant. 
 
 " We're going to the big park, pa," he 
 crows. " And there are merry-go-rounds and 
 all sorts of fun. We are going in special trol- 
 ley cars. Hurrah ! " 
 
 He doesn't know any better ; he hasn't had 
 your advantages. So you smother your pity 
 and try to enthuse with him. But to picnic 
 in a park, after riding in a trolley ! Mercy on 
 us ! what is the world coming to ?
 
 OUR OLDEST INHABITANT
 
 OUR OLDEST INHABITANT 
 
 WHEN you were a small boy in our village 
 and " Snuppy" Rogers was your chum, 
 it happened that Snuppy 's father went away 
 out West, to a place called Chicago, on a visit. 
 His going created a sensation and developed 
 arrogance and boastfulness in his son and 
 heir. It is true that the men folks in our vil- 
 lage the majority of them were constantly 
 going to and arriving from places much far- 
 ther off than Chicago, places like Surinam 
 and Calcutta and Mauritius and Hongkong, 
 but this was because they were sea captains 
 and travel is a necessary bother pertaining to 
 that profession. To go to Chicago by rail, 
 III
 
 Our Village 
 
 and purely for pleasure, was different, vastly 
 different. Besides, Snuppy's father was not 
 a sea captain, being merely a wheelwright and 
 carriage painter, and was therefore neither 
 aristocratic nor " well off." " How those 
 Rogerses can afford it," was the prevailing 
 topic at sewing circle. 
 
 How they could afford it you may not at- 
 tempt to answer even at this late day, when 
 the person claiming to be Snuppy is portly 
 and bald and prosperous, with seven or eight 
 boys and girls of his own. But you distinctly 
 remember that when Rogers, Senior, returned 
 to our village he brought with him, among 
 other things, several copies of a then new 
 comic weekly, and in one of these copies was 
 an intensely humorous article concerning an 
 individual called " The Oldest Inhabitant." 
 
 The " oldest inhabitant " was represented in 
 the article and pictures as a red-nosed veteran 
 with sunken lips and a fringe of throat whisk- 
 er, who wore a tippet and a frowzy cap with 
 earlaps, and sat with cowhide boots braced 
 against the stove at the " store," where he 
 reeled off marvelous yarns concerning the 
 
 112
 
 Our Oldest Inhabitant 
 
 hard winter of '38 and the days when he could 
 " lick ary two men in the county and think 
 nawthin' of it." " They don't raise them kind 
 of boys nowadays," he proclaimed in queru- 
 lous challenge. Then he borrowed a " chaw," 
 helped himself to crackers and cheese at the 
 storekeeper's expense, and went on to deliver 
 a prevarication that filled a column and a 
 quarter, exclusive of cuts. 
 
 The other loungers in that comic-weekly 
 store winked at each other behind his back 
 and egged him on to other and loftier flights 
 of romance. A young man named Ezra Hay- 
 seed, who appeared to be a dreadful cut-up, 
 sewed his coat tails together behind his chair. 
 A kindred spirit put a bunch of firecrackers 
 beneath it. The oldest inhabitant's story con- 
 cluded with a burst of fireworks and lan- 
 guage, and the article ended as the other loaf- 
 ers were congratulating Mr. Hayseed and his 
 friend upon the success of their joke. As for 
 the oldest inhabitant, he departed, minus the 
 lower half of his coat, presumably to return 
 to the asylum for feeble-minded from which 
 he had escaped.
 
 Our Village 
 
 You and Snuppy enjoyed the article. Its 
 humor was of the knockdown variety and un- 
 derstandable, not like the things He said and 
 She replied to in that same periodical. You 
 wished there was an oldest inhabitant of that 
 kind in our village, so that you or this would 
 be safer some of the big boys who sat in the 
 back seats at school might sew and blow him 
 up. 
 
 But when you came to talk it over you ran 
 into a snag. 
 
 "Oldest inhabitant," said Snuppy. "Old- 
 est inhabitant ? Why, that must mean the old- 
 est man in town, like like Deacon Pepper. 
 Seems to me I heard pa call him that once. 
 Cracky! Nobody'd dast to blow him up." 
 
 You should say not. Deacon Pepper, tall 
 and whitebearded and bespectacled, who wore 
 a high hat and carried a gold-headed cane, 
 who was a pillar of the Baptist church! As 
 soon think of playing tricks on St. Peter. 
 And yet, as you learned by inquiry, Deacon 
 Pepper was our oldest inhabitant. 
 
 You spoke to Uncle Seth about it. Uncle 
 Seth was fifty-five or so, but you never would 
 114
 
 Our Oldest Inhabitant 
 
 have guessed it ; he was so jolly and lively and 
 full of fun. 
 
 " Yes," said Uncle Seth, " Deacon Pepper is 
 our oldest inhabitant now. He's nearly ninety. 
 Before him it was Parson Simpkins. I re- 
 member " 
 
 Uncle Seth's remembrances of Parson 
 Simpkins were many and various. He re- 
 membered the Sundays of long ago the old- 
 fashioned Puritanical Sunday or " Sabba' 
 Day," as grandma used to call it. The Sab- 
 bath that began on sunset of a Saturday and 
 ended, so far as its strict observance was con- 
 cerned, at dusk on the day following. Before 
 the little meetin' house on the hill had been 
 modernized and fixed over. When its high, 
 pews had doors to them, and the minister went 
 up a winding stair to reach the pulpit. When 
 a sermon was expected to last an hour and a 
 half or the congregation thought it was not 
 getting its money's worth. When there wasn't 
 any Sunday-school. When a fiddle and a bass 
 viol furnished the instrumental music and 
 Elder Ryder led the singing, beating time with 
 his tuning fork.
 
 Our Village 
 
 He remembered when Cap'n Sam Berry, 
 who made his money swapping glass beads 
 and empty bottles for copra and pearls over in 
 the South Seas, presented the church with the 
 new organ. He remembered the row that en- 
 sued, a division that came near to splitting the 
 society in twain. How Deacon Issachar Snow 
 " riz right up " in his pew to denounce the in- 
 novation. 
 
 " Ain't it enough," demanded Issachar, " to 
 have fiddles and such squealin' in the sanc- 
 tuary without drowndin' the hymn tunes with 
 the devil's pitch pipes? Do you s'pose the 
 Almighty likes to hear such bull's bellerin'? 
 Organ! Might as well have a pianner and 
 play dance music ! " 
 
 But the organ came, and years afterwards, 
 when you went to church, Deacon Issachar's 
 granddaughter played it. 
 
 Uncle Seth liked to tell of the old Sabbaths. 
 How the meeting house was crowded and the 
 sheds were filled with " teams," and carryalls 
 and chaises stood all about the churchyard. 
 How Nathaniel Baker's family nine chil- 
 dren, eight of them boys used to trudge 
 116
 
 Our Oldest Inhabitant 
 
 barefoot all the way from ' 
 the west end of the town, 
 three good miles, carry- 
 ing their shoes and stock- 
 ings in their hands, and 
 then put them on be- 
 fore going into meeting. 
 They always took them 
 off again when they came 
 out, for Nathaniel was a poor man and shoe 
 leather cost money. 
 
 It was a solemn occasion when Parson 
 Simpkins came to a house for a pastoral call. 
 There were prayers, of course, and reading 
 from the Scriptures, but, before these, " re- 
 freshments " were served fruit cake and sev- 
 eral other kinds of cake, and invariably for 
 the " grown-ups " a dram of New England 
 rum from the decanter in the parlor closet. 
 " The parson's closet," they used to call it 
 then. To you this part of Uncle Seth's story 
 was the most fascinating of all, because it 
 sounded so wicked. Since Parson Simpkins's 
 day total abstinence had become the rule in 
 our village. Only the no-accounts, like the 
 9 117
 
 Our Village 
 
 proprietor of the billiard, pool, and sipio par- 
 lors and his regular customers, ever drank liq- 
 uor. They usually " had a jug come down " 
 before the Fourth and at Christmas, and the 
 selectmen were busy and the town lock-up 
 occupied for the week following. 
 
 You listened to Uncle Seth's yarns with in- 
 terest, but your mind was busy with a per- 
 plexing problem. There was something you 
 didn't understand. 
 
 " Uncle Seth," you interrupted, " Mr. Zach 
 Taylor, down to the Neck, is older'n Deacon 
 Pepper, ain't he ? Why ain't he the oldest in- 
 habitant ? " 
 
 " Humph ! " grunted Uncle Seth. " Yes, I 
 cal'late Zach is a year or two older; but no- 
 body thinks of calling him the ' oldest inhabi- 
 tant.' I don't know exactly why, nuther, but 
 they don't." 
 
 That was true, they didn't. " Old Zach " 
 was a character in his way, but he was always 
 Old Zach, nothing more. Our village liked 
 to talk about Old Zach, liked to tell stories 
 about him how, when the wife with whom 
 he had lived and fought for fifty odd years 
 118
 
 Our Oldest Inhabitant 
 
 died, and he was too poor to give her fit- 
 ting burial, some of the kind-hearted towns- 
 people raised a purse, bought a handsome 
 coffin, and decorated the tumble-down shanty 
 with flowers. Next day they called to cheer 
 the bereaved one in his solitude. They found 
 him striding up and down before the door, his 
 face lit up with pride. 
 
 " I tell ye," cried Old Zach, seizing the 
 hand of a sympathizer, " that was a d n good 
 funeral, and I'll bet the old woman is tellin' 
 'em so up aloft." 
 
 No, Old Zach's was not the head to in- 
 herit the crown of " oldest inhabitant." And 
 " Old Howes/' though he lived to be nearly 
 one hundred, never wore it. When Old 
 Howes was eighty he could stand in one cran- 
 berry barrel and jump from it into another 
 was willing to do it, too, provided the reward, 
 in the shape of a drink or a chew, was forth- 
 coming. He wore white whiskers, stained a 
 vivid yellow about the mouth, and had been 
 to sea in a ship so big you could " heave a 
 dog through the hawse holes." 
 
 "Did you ever do it, Mr. Howes?" asked
 
 Our Village 
 
 one interested juvenile who had listened to 
 this statement. 
 
 "Do? Do 'what?" 
 
 " Why why, heave the dog through ? " 
 
 " What in time would I be doin' that for ? 
 S'pose a man don't have nawthin' to do 
 aboard ship but chuck dogs around ? " 
 
 " But you said " 
 
 " Hush up, or I'll heave you out the win- 
 der!" 
 
 Nobody ever spoke of Old Howes as the 
 oldest inhabitant. Nor of " Old Higgins " 
 either, for that matter. In fact, the latter 
 celebrity was most commonly nicknamed " Old 
 Beauregard," for reasons unexplained, and he 
 drove a more or less white ox in a more or 
 less green chaise. It was " Old Beauregard " 
 who entered the shop of a local merchant a 
 newcomer in our village and unacquainted 
 with its characters and asked for a plug of 
 tobacco. Receiving it, he turned and started 
 for the door. 
 
 " But but," stammered the storekeeper, 
 " haven't you forgotten to leave the money ? " 
 
 " Money ! " snorted Old Beauregard, with 
 1 20
 
 V 
 
 Don't talk to me about money these hard times!'"
 
 Our Oldest Inhabitant 
 
 withering scorn. " Don't talk to me about 
 money these hard times ! " 
 
 Then he departed with the tobacco. 
 
 It was Old Beauregard also who made anx- 
 ious inquiries of this same storekeeper, assert- 
 ing that he wanted to find " a good, respon- 
 sible man to borrer ten dollars of." He died 
 at the age of ninety- four, proudly boasting that 
 no person in the country owed more than he 
 did. But he was never the oldest inhabitant. 
 
 And to no woman was the title given. This 
 includes Aunt Hannah Cahoon, who lived to 
 be one hundred and three, who smoked a pipe, 
 and believed in signs and omens openly pro- 
 claimed her belief to the minister, at that 
 and whose gravestone in the no'theast corner 
 of the Methodist burying ground is still 
 pointed out to strangers. Uncle Seth could re- 
 member Aunt Hannah when she was younger. 
 Could remember her sister, who was a "Jump- 
 ing Come-Outer," a sect whose religious fer- 
 vor manifested itself in sudden and unex- 
 pected seizures, during which the ecstatic 
 devotee leaped and shrieked and pranced. 
 
 Once when Abitha, this was the sister's 
 
 121
 
 Our Village 
 
 name, had, in the midst of a Saturday's bak- 
 ing, been " seized " and was performing in 
 the front yard, to the scandal or amusement 
 of the neighbors, Hannah calmly emerged 
 from the kitchen door, carrying a bucket. She 
 went to the well, drew the bucket full of icy 
 water, and then poured its contents over her 
 " Come-Outer " sister. 
 
 " There's a time for all things, Abbie," she 
 observed, " even for religion ; and Saturday 
 mornin' is bakin' time. If that don't make 
 you remember that them pies of yours are 
 burnin', I'll go fetch another bucket." 
 
 Aunt Hannah was locally famous for this 
 and for many other eccentricities, but while 
 she was yet alive, and her tongue the terror of 
 the neighborhood, Cap'n Abel Doane, a mere 
 infant of eighty-six, was our oldest inhabitant. 
 An illusive honor this, and the rea- 
 sons which led to its bestowal hard 
 to analyze. In Deacon Pepper's case, 
 you would have decided that, to be 
 our oldest inhabitant, one must be 
 dignified and church-go- 
 ing, a member of the 
 
 122
 
 Our Oldest Inhabitant 
 
 majority party in politics, and, probably, a 
 selectman. 
 
 But Cap'n Doane, though dignified enough 
 to hear him blow his nose as he marched 
 up the street was a warning for low people 
 and underlings to clear the way was dis- 
 tinctly not church-going, and in politics was 
 always on the opposite side of the fence. 
 During the war he was the local " copper- 
 head," and was more than once " shivareed " 
 by the patriotic loafers and small boys. He 
 couldn't have been elected selectman, and he 
 knew it ; therefore he was a perennial candi- 
 date. He opposed all popular measures in 
 town meeting and championed all unpopular 
 ones. He was most cordially hated, but was 
 universally respected, and lived his lonely life 
 out in his own gruff, hard way. And when 
 he died, his funeral was attended by nearly 
 every person in the village, and there were 
 some present who wondered where, now that 
 he was gone, their winter fuel was to come 
 from or the money necessary for their chil- 
 dren's shoes and clothes. He had thrown his 
 charity at them, as he might have thrown a 
 123
 
 Our Village 
 
 bone at a stray dog, but no one but themselves 
 and he knew that it was thrown. 
 
 Now, as you look back at our village's choice 
 of its oldest inhabitant, it seems to you that 
 Cap'n Eben Bailey graced the position best of 
 all. He is the ideal by which you measure 
 all the others. And yet Cap'n Eben was not 
 dignified and " churchy " like Deacon Pep- 
 per, nor rich and arrogant like Cap'n Doane. 
 Cap'n Eben wasn't even a sea captain 
 though he had been one but only a store- 
 keeper, and not a very prosperous store- 
 keeper, at that. People didn't take their hats 
 off to him, as they did to the deacon, and they 
 didn't fear him, as they did Cap'n Abel. But 
 among all your memories of 'our village there 
 isn't one of an ill-natured, unkind word spoken 
 by rich or poor concerning Cap'n Eben Bailey. 
 
 Time had been when Cap'n Eben was de- 
 clared to be " one of the smartest, likeliest 
 young shipmasters that ever trod a deck." He 
 went to sea, as cabin boy, when he was thir- 
 teen. At nineteen he was first mate of an 
 Australian clipper. At twenty-two he com- 
 manded that same clipper. He took as pas- 
 124
 
 Our Oldest Inhabitant 
 
 senger the first American consul from the 
 United States to Melbourne. He and the con- 
 sul became great friends during the voyage, 
 and the friendship lasted until the latter's 
 death. This consul liked Australia so well 
 that he decided to make it his home, and he 
 and Cap'n Eben corresponded for many years. 
 
 When he was thirty-five Cap'n Eben mar- 
 ried one of the prettiest girls in our village; 
 years younger than he, she was, but everyone 
 said how lucky Susannah Coffin was to get 
 such a fine husband. Susannah's people made 
 a great wedding for her a church wedding 
 something unusual in those days and then 
 she and the captain left our village on the 
 packet for Boston, where they were to go 
 aboard Cap'n Eben's ship and set sail on a 
 honeymoon voyage to Batavia and Samarang 
 and Singapore, and goodness knows how 
 many other queer-sounding and outlandish 
 places. A number of friends of the bridal 
 couple went with them to Boston to say 
 good-by. 
 
 There were no cables in those old times, 
 which so many call " good " without mean- 
 125
 
 Our Village 
 
 ing it, and months and 
 months passed during 
 which our village went 
 about its business and 
 only remembered Cap'n 
 Eben and his bride oc- 
 casionally. But at last 
 came letters to the Coffins 
 and the Baileys, letters from Batavia. The 
 ship had reached that port safely, the voyage 
 had been pleasant, both were well and would 
 write again from Singapore. 
 
 Then for a long time nothing was heard, 
 and when, after the anxious waiting, news did 
 come, it was sad enough. Somewhere in the 
 Java Sea the ship had been struck by a ty- 
 phoon. She emerged from the vortex of this 
 storm, battered, dismasted, and sinking. The 
 officers and crew took to the boats, but the 
 waves were still high and the wind and rain 
 not yet over. It was night and very dark and 
 the boats became separated. In Cap'n Eben's 
 boat, with him, were his wife and four sea- 
 men. 
 
 Some time during that night, and without 
 126
 
 Our Oldest Inhabitant 
 
 warning, a giant wave caught the boat under 
 the stern and pitch-poled her, end over end. 
 She floated, bottom up, but of those who had 
 been in her only two came to the surface and 
 seized her keel. Cap'n Eben and a young 
 sailor. The others had been thrown far from 
 the boat and had gone down at once. 
 
 In the letters, written by kind-hearted Eng- 
 lish-speaking people at Singapore, which told 
 all this, were also written fragments of the 
 story of that night and the next day as nar- 
 rated by Cap'n Eben's companion, the sailor. 
 The frantic skipper, thinking that perhaps 
 his wife might have risen beneath the over- 
 turned boat, dived repeatedly. He was nearly 
 exhausted when morning dawned over a roll- 
 ing, oily sea and with a fiery sun beating down 
 upon the heads of the two men. 
 
 At three o'clock that afternoon they were 
 picked up by a Dutch trading bark bound up 
 the Madagascar Straits. The sailor was in 
 fairly good condition, considering what he 
 had endured, but Cap'n Eben was suffering 
 from partial sunstroke and was raving. Now, 
 the letter said, he was being cared for at 
 127
 
 Our Village 
 
 Singapore and was gaining in strength, but 
 his mind seemed to be gone. He remembered 
 little and was like a child. 
 
 And like a child he was brought home a 
 year later by a brother of his dead wife, whom 
 the families had sent on for the purpose. His 
 brown hair had broad gray streaks in it, and 
 he would sit for hours on the porch before 
 his home, gazing dreamily at the elm trees 
 across the road and speaking to no one. 
 
 Little by little his faculties returned, but he 
 never was the energetic man he had been and 
 he never went to sea again. He was always 
 glad to see callers, but he never mentioned 
 his dead wife or the shipwreck. That por- 
 tion of his life had been, apparently, wiped 
 from his memory. 
 
 It was at this period that he began reading 
 the Bible ; reading it and accepting and inter- 
 preting its every line with a literal earnestness 
 which was odd, to say the least. When his 
 sister died he mourned for her in sackcloth 
 and ashes, as David mourned for Absalom. 
 They found him dressed in old gunny bags, 
 seated on the family ash heap, and though this 
 128
 
 Our Oldest Inhabitant 
 
 would have been funny enough in anyone else, 
 no one laughed at Cap'n Eben. 
 
 Long afterwards, when you knew him, he 
 was bent and white-haired and very deaf. But 
 his kind old face was as calm and sweetly 
 
 placid as that of a saint. Of his eccentricities 
 but one remained : he believed that he should 
 live forever on this earth. 
 
 "-If ye believe in Me," had said the Man 
 
 of Galilee, " ye shall never die." And surely 
 
 Cap'n Eben believed in Him. No one, not 
 
 even the minister, who was suspected of " ad- 
 
 129
 
 Our Village 
 
 vanced ideas," ever attempted to argue the 
 cap'n out of his conviction of a material im- 
 mortality. It couldn't have been done, in the 
 first place, and, if it could, who had the heart 
 to shatter such a beautiful dream? 
 
 The sights and smells of Cap'n Eben's 
 stuffy little store linger with you yet. The 
 calico and dress goods were piled beside the 
 cigar and tobacco show case. There were 
 jars of striped stick candy and pink and red 
 peppermint on the shelf above the tea chest. 
 The splint-work photograph frames, made by 
 the captain's grandniece three years before to 
 tempt possible buyers of Christmas gifts, and 
 never sold, were displayed artistically by the 
 box of prunes. In winter a big stove was 
 planted in the middle of the room, and when 
 you entered, mentally running over the items 
 of your errand " Half a pound of tea, a yard 
 of black tape, a quart of yellow-eyed beans, 
 and fifty cents' worth of brown sugar " you 
 were likely to find that stove surrounded by 
 a circle of ancient mariners who had known 
 Cap'n Eben in his prime and had not forgot- 
 ten him in his age. 
 
 130
 
 Our Oldest Inhabitant 
 
 O for an all-embracing memory which could 
 have held and retained the yarns told about 
 that stove, yarns of adventure afloat and 
 ashore in places that are merely dots and 
 names upon the map of the world ! Here was 
 " material " for you, at first hand, and told 
 with a nautical twist which brings the salt 
 taste to your mouth even now. But the yarns 
 are gone and the old skippers who spun them 
 have gone, too, on the longest voyage of all 
 the voyage we shall all take, and for which 
 our passages were booked the day we were 
 born. 
 
 And Cap'n Eben, despite his firm belief and 
 the plain statement of the Good Book, set sail 
 upon that voyage twenty years ago. There 
 must have been an error in his logic some- 
 where, but at least he never knew it. " I feel 
 sort of tired, Huldy," he said to his grand- 
 niece one evening. " I guess I'll go aloft and 
 turn in." And when, at breakfast time next 
 morning, the girl went up to call him, she 
 found that she was too late the call had 
 come during the night, and he had answered 
 "Aye, aye ! " as a seaman should.
 
 Our Village 
 
 Last summer, when you were talking with 
 the portly person who so brazenly claimed to 
 be the Snuppy Rogers you used to chum 
 with, the subject of " our oldest inhabitant " 
 drifted into the conversation. 
 
 " Hum ! " you said reflectively. " I wonder 
 who is oldest inhabitant now ? " 
 
 " Why," replied Snuppy, " I don't know. 
 Let me see. I guess I guess it's Mr. Seth 
 Crosby. Yes, I remember that they do call 
 him oldest inhabitant now." 
 
 Mr. Seth Crosby! Uncle Seth! The old- 
 est inhabitant! Nonsense! And yet as you 
 hurriedly do a sum in mental arithmetic, the 
 answer is uncontrovertible. Uncle Seth is 
 eighty-eight. 
 
 But Uncle Seth the oldest inhabitant? 
 Why, it doesn't seem possible. Then you 
 remember that you yourself are nearly f 
 Ss sh! Let's talk about something else.
 
 TEACHER 
 
 10
 
 ar> 
 
 TEACHER 
 
 THE schoolhouse in our village was on the 
 main road, directly opposite Cap'n Daniels's 
 store. In your younger days you accepted its 
 location as a proof of wisdom on the part of 
 the selectmen or the school committee, or who- 
 ever was responsible for placing it there. In 
 Cap'n Daniels's store, and nowhere else in 
 town, could be bought two " jaw breakers " 
 for a penny, big " jaw breakers " at that, 
 round, flavored with peppermint, and harder 
 than the rock of Gibraltar. One of these 
 grapeshot, scientifically inserted in the left 
 cheek, gave to a youngster the appearance of 
 a severe case of one-sided mumps and the joy 
 
 135
 
 Our Village 
 
 of two hours' slowly dissolving sweetness. 
 These were the chief charms of " jaw break- 
 ers," they were cheap and they " lasted long." 
 In that store, also, one might purchase al- 
 ways provided that the financial consideration 
 was forthcoming a peculiar kind of molasses 
 stick candy, thickly coated with chocolate. 
 When one of the " gang " happened to be in 
 funds to the extent of, perhaps, two cents 
 earned by the going of errands, by the selling 
 of bones and old iron to the junk man, or ob- 
 tained by diplomatic appeal to the generosity 
 of a relative the procession of the elect 
 formed in the school yard and marched ma- 
 jestically across the road, through the bat- 
 tered doorway and up to the cap'n's little 
 show case, where, beneath the cracked panes 
 mended with strips of brown paper and mu- 
 cilage, were displayed delectable dainties in 
 various stages of age and gumminess. The 
 moneyed individual of the party produced his 
 two-cent piece ; rapped peremptorily on a par- 
 ticular pane and shrieked for Cap'n Daniels 
 was extremely " deef " " Gimme two o' 
 them, please ; them there." Then, having pro- 
 136
 
 cured the chocolate-covered chunks, it re- 
 mained only to distribute them in " bites," the 
 size of each bite being limited by the pressure 
 of the owner's thumb nail on the stick. To 
 bite close up to the thumb nail was fair and 
 aboveboard ; to attempt a " hog bite " was 
 considered ill mannered. 
 
 Besides candy, Cap'n Daniels sold slates 
 and pencils and penholders and sponges and 
 " T. D." pipes fine for hayseed and sweet 
 fern and elastic for slingshots and marbles, 
 and goodness knows how many other necessi- 
 ties of boy life. Therefore it was a graceful 
 though rather obvious act of kindness to build 
 the schoolhouse directly opposite such a depot 
 of supplies. Then, too, wasn't the School- 
 house Pond only a hundred yards away? 
 Where could you have skated during recess 
 and noon hour if they hadn't put the school- 
 house where it was? 
 
 That pond was a luxury. A few months 
 ago a friend of yours, who is principal of a 
 big city school (another evidence of the de- 
 pravity in taste brought about by the years ; 
 there was a time when you would have 
 137
 
 Our Village 
 
 scorned to own a teacher as your friend), 
 showed you through the mammoth new build- 
 ing over which he presided. He was proud 
 of that building. It had forty rooms or 
 so, each bigger than either " upstairs " or 
 " downstairs " in the school at our village, 
 and there was an assembly room, and a big 
 gymnasium, and a room in which the scholars 
 who lived some distance off, and in stormy 
 weather brought their lunches, might eat them. 
 Then they could play in the gymnasium if 
 they wanted to. 
 
 The principal boasted loudly of the gymna- 
 sium and the lunch room, but you didn't think 
 much of them. You used to carry your lunch 
 or your dinner ; nobody in our village called 
 the noon meal " lunch " but you didn't need 
 any particular room to eat it in. No, sir ! you 
 ate your boiled eggs and pie and doughnuts 
 and cookies at the edge of the Schoolhouse 
 Pond, if it happened to be winter and no snow 
 on the ground, and it took 
 you maybe ten minutes to 
 cram the whole meal into 
 your system. Then, as your 
 138
 
 Teacher 
 
 skates were already on, you tossed the tin pail 
 up on the bank and shot out upon the ice, 
 to glide and " scull " and do the " outer edge " 
 and the " roll," until the bell warned you that 
 the time had come to return to common frac- 
 tions and the boundaries of the Territory of 
 New Mexico. 
 
 So when your friend boasted of his mam- 
 moth building and its gymnasium, you smiled 
 in a superior fashion and thought : " This is 
 all right, so far as it goes, perhaps, but where 
 is your Schoolhouse Pond ? " 
 
 There were " grades " innumerable at this 
 city school. In our village the school was not 
 divided into grades, but into halves. The 
 lower half that where the little chaps learned 
 their little " C-A-T Cat," and so on up to 
 " Meg's Race for Life," in the Fourth Reader 
 was called, by reason of its location, 
 " downstairs." The upper half where your 
 education progressed until you were able to 
 declare with certainty that " All Gaul is di- 
 vided into three parts," and recite without 
 looking at the book, " It had been a day of 
 triumph at the capital. Somebody or other, 
 
 139
 
 Our Village 
 
 returning with victorious eagles, had amused 
 the populace," etc. that half was, of course, 
 " upstairs." High school there was none. 
 Students completing the upstairs courses and 
 graduating on " last day " usually went to 
 work. Those who yearned or whose parents 
 yearned for higher education might attend 
 the " academy " at Edgewater. 
 
 Teachers at our school were, like the divi- 
 sions, two in number. A female taught 
 downstairs; a male upstairs. The downstairs 
 teacher was, generally speaking, a native of 
 our village; the upstairs candidates came 
 usually from beyond township limits. They, 
 the upstairs teachers, were pretty likely to be 
 young fellows just out of college, who in- 
 tended practicing law or medicine some day, 
 and, by teaching, were trying to earn and 
 save money enough to begin their professional 
 studies. When one had accomplished this feat 
 or thought he had he departed and a new 
 one took his place. 
 
 One reason why the position of teacher up- 
 stairs was so seldom accepted as permanent 
 by the men who filled it was the salary. And 
 140
 
 Teacher 
 
 yet this salary was considered princely by 
 many of the voters in our village. It was 
 more than the majority of the stay-at-homes 
 were able to make, and it was paid each month 
 in good hard cash. As for you and the rest 
 of the scholars, you regarded it with awe and 
 envy. In fact, the salary was rated much 
 higher than the pedagogue's intellectual quali- 
 ties; witness the quatrain enthusiastically 
 chanted by boys well out of hearing of the 
 schoolhouse : 
 
 " Oh, Power above, send down your love 
 
 Upon us all, poor scholars, 
 With a great big fool to teach our school, 
 And they pay him sixty dollars." 
 
 That is, sixty dollars a month during the 
 teaching season. And, after all, when you 
 consider that " teacher " might lodge at the 
 Widow Cummings's, in a room overlooking 
 the bay, said room being furnished with a 
 corded bedstead and a feather bed smothered 
 under a " log-cabin " quilt, a " diamond " 
 quilt, a " rising-sun " quilt, and other quilts 
 and comforters ; with a crayon enlargement of 
 141
 
 Our Village 
 
 Grandpa Cummings and a spatter-work motto 
 on the wall ; with a blue-flowered wash bowl 
 and pitcher on a pink-flowered " commode " ; 
 when you consider that he was privileged 
 to enjoy the cultured conversation of Miss 
 Beasley and the rest at the table, and that 
 all these luxuries were his for three dollars 
 paid the widow each Saturday night then 
 a wage of fifteen dollars weekly doesn't seem 
 so bad. No wonder he could save money ; 
 particularly as " jaw breakers " and Cap'n 
 Daniels's store seemed to tempt him not in 
 the least. 
 
 When grandma went to school an experi- 
 ence to which the old lady never failed in ref- 
 erence whenever you chanced to complain of 
 your own educational trials she didn't have 
 " no fine place, all fixed up pretty so's it ought 
 to be a delight to study your lesson book in 
 it." No, indeed ! She attended the old " dees- 
 trict school," and the old " deestrict-school " 
 building, a tumble-down ruin in your day, still 
 stood on the lane leading to the railroad sta- 
 tion. Having climbed in at the sashless, pane- 
 less windows several times, you have a fair 
 142
 
 Teacher 
 
 idea of what the district school 
 of grandma's youth must have 
 looked like. 
 
 It was small, very small, 
 and perfectly square. The 
 floor sloped on three sides 
 down to the platform where 
 the teacher's desk used to be. 
 The big boys and girls sat in the back seats 
 just as they did in your school, for that matter 
 and the little ones in front. There were long 
 benches instead of individual chairs. And, by 
 the way, the exterior of the building was a 
 dingy brown. The " little red schoolhouse " 
 we hear so much about may have existed 
 somewhere, but apparently not in our village. 
 
 " Perfessor " Dingley taught the deestrict 
 school when grandma was a girl. No med- 
 ical student was the " professor." School- 
 teaching was his trade, and its practice in- 
 cluded much physical as well as mental labor. 
 To undertake the guidance of a youth old 
 enough and big enough to " go a-fishin' " on 
 Banks voyages during the summer months 
 and attain an education in the winter time 
 
 143
 
 Our Village 
 
 must have required a good deal of main 
 strength along with the will power. 
 
 Professor Dingley's hobby was mathemat- 
 ics. He loved to wrestle with abstruse prob- 
 lems, and figures were his playthings. Often 
 and often, according to grandma, he would 
 become so wrapped in an arithmetical puzzle 
 as to forget the school entirely. While he sat 
 at his desk, his head on his hands, the scholars 
 would raise Cain, whispering, throwing spit- 
 balls, and " carrying on " generally. In the 
 midst of the chaos old Dingley would come 
 out of his trance. His eye would light upon 
 some one of the most energetic performets. 
 Then, without warning and directly at the of- 
 fender's head, would be hurled the arithmetic 
 book, the heavy ebony ferule, or whatever 
 happened to be nearest the irate teacher's arm. 
 And for the next five minutes the professor 
 would rage up and down the aisles, smiting 
 right and left, and leaving bumps, tears, and 
 studious attention in his wake. The attain- 
 ment of knowledge at the deestrict school 
 must have been a splendid preparation for the 
 stern battles of life. 
 
 144
 
 Teacher 
 
 It was at the old school, while grandma was 
 in the lower classes, that Laban Gore made 
 his undying reputation as a public speaker. 
 Friday, of course, was " speakin' pieces day," 
 and Laban had struggled to commit to mem- 
 ory a flowery oration delivered by some great 
 man upon the occasion of the presentation of 
 a flag to a company enlisted for the War of 
 1812. Master Gore's name being called, he 
 arose and shuffled to the platform. Bowing, 
 he turned a blanched but freckled face to the 
 expectant audience. 
 
 " ' Take the banner ' " began Laban ; 
 " barner " was the- way he pronounced the 
 word, and it was accompanied by a rigid, 
 right-angle thrust of a clenched fist. 
 
 " ' Take the barner ' " repeated Laban, 
 shooting out the fist once more. " Er er 
 ' Take the barner' " 
 
 He paused and gulped feverishly. 
 
 " Well, sir ? " observed old Dingley. 
 
 " Er er ' Take the barner' Er er 
 er * Take the barner ' " Another pause, 
 more gulps, another gesture, and " Er er 
 
 ' Take the barner ' " 
 
 145
 
 Our Village 
 
 " We-1-1 ? " drawled the professor, his voice 
 rising. 
 
 " ' Take the barner ' " shrieked poor La- 
 ban. "'Take the barner' 'Take the 
 the the barner ' " 
 
 " Take your seat ! " roared Dingley. " Re- 
 main after school and I'll try and find some- 
 thing else for you to ' take.' " 
 
 Laban's declamation was probably the most 
 successful ever delivered in our village, if the 
 enjoyment of his hearers and the unforgeta- 
 bleness of his remarks are taken into con- 
 sideration. Everybody called him " Barner 
 Gore " after that. 
 
 On this same Friday James Collins your 
 great-uncle Jim recited the poem beginning, 
 " Oh, sailor boy, sailor boy ! " so beautifully 
 that tears came to the stern gray eyes of old 
 Dingley, and the little girls down in front 
 wept. It was a poem of shipwreck, and the 
 poor sailor boy, its hero, was drowned. 
 
 Afterwards, when Uncle Jim, only twenty 
 
 years of age, and first mate at that, went down 
 
 with his ship off Cape Hatteras, people said 
 
 the poem was a prophecy. But poor Laban 
 
 146
 
 Gore, bos'n on that same ship, was drowned, 
 too, and no one spoke of the " barner " ora- 
 tion as a prophecy or implying a presenti- 
 ment. 
 
 During your three years of scholastic labor 
 downstairs, Miss Serena Fairtree was teacher 
 of that division. She was sweet and kind and 
 long-suffering, and her most severe punish- 
 ment was to shut the offender up in the dark 
 closet where the stove wood was kept. On 
 that very " last day," when you said farewell 
 to the primary books and other infantile puer- 
 ilities, Miss Serena said farewell also. She 
 had accepted a better position over in Ostable, 
 where she taught for one term and then mar- 
 ried the chairman of the Ostable school com- 
 mittee. Miss Olivia Simpson was her suc- 
 cessor downstairs. You, as a full-fledged 
 upstairs freshman, with all 
 the privilege of that ex- 
 alted station including the 
 right to leave the yard at 
 recess without asking permis- 
 sion and to go all around the 
 schoolhouse instead of being ~-* 
 147
 
 Our Village 
 
 confined to the " boys' side " you grinned 
 sarcastically at Miss Olivia's odd garb and 
 stern masculine demeanor. You congratu- 
 lated yourself that " that old maid " wouldn't 
 have the chance to boss you. This premature 
 crow of triumph would seem to prove that 
 Uncle Jim's gift of prophecy was not hered- 
 itary in the family. 
 
 " Specs " Bandmann was your first upstairs 
 teacher. " Specs " wore eyeglasses hence his 
 name and was so dignified and pompous that 
 he bent backward when he walked. His prin- 
 cipal accomplishment was the ease with which 
 he could lift a boy out of a seat over a desk 
 and into the aisle with one " yank " of his 
 good right arm. He treated big, lubberly 
 Obed Ginn whose inexplicable nickname 
 was " Sumach Bitters " ; " Bitters," for short 
 that way once, and " Bitters " behaved him- 
 self thereafter during " Specs' " term. But 
 " Specs " resigned in the spring to enter the 
 Harvard Medical College, and, when school 
 opened in the fall, Mr. Lyon was the new 
 teacher. 
 
 If ever a man belied his name as it was 
 148
 
 Teacher 
 
 pronounced Lyon was that man. There was 
 nothing suggesting- the king of beasts about 
 him. To speak of him as lamblike would be 
 doing young mutton an injustice, for lambs 
 are supposed to skip and gambol occasionally, 
 and our Lyon lacked the spirit to do anything 
 so energetic. He was little and meek and 
 very, very well-meaning and well-behaved. 
 The committee engaged him because of his 
 learning. His knowledge of Greek and Latin 
 so dazzled them that they forgot to ask con- 
 cerning his ability as a disciplinarian. 
 
 My, but you and the shameless crew up- 
 stairs made poor Lyon's life miserable! It 
 took the " big fellers " from the west end of 
 the village the fellows who only attended 
 school in the winter and " worked out " sum- 
 mers just two days to discover that the new 
 teacher was an easy victim, quite incapable 
 of managing even a modern kindergarten. 
 And, after the big fellows made this discov- 
 ery, the little ones helped to profit by it. 
 Caesar, what a bedlam that schoolroom be- 
 came ! " Spitballs " flew in showers, whisper- 
 ing was done openly, feet were shuffled, books 
 11 149
 
 Our Village 
 
 were dropped, bent pins were fired from elas- 
 tic catapults. Lyon, nervous little creature, 
 would lose control of his temper and shriek 
 and threaten, but, as his threats were never 
 carried into effect, they were only so much 
 more amusement for the committee on tor- 
 ture, which in this case was a committee of 
 the whole. 
 
 " Stop that noise ! " the poor fellow would 
 shout, alluding to a low humming, like that 
 of a swarm of bees, which was filling the 
 apartment. 
 
 "Hum-m-m!" 
 
 "Stop it, I say!" 
 
 " Hum-m-m-m! " 
 
 " I tell you STOP ! I know the guilty par- 
 ties. I have my eye on them ! " 
 
 "HUM-M-M-M!" 
 
 To hum with one's mouth closed, and with 
 eyes studiously fixed upon a book, is a knack 
 easily acquired. As for knowing the guilty 
 parties well, everybody was a guilty party, 
 and when Lyon stamped down one aisle it was 
 as silent as the tomb. He rushed away to lo- 
 cate the sound in another aisle, and, behold,
 
 Teacher 
 
 it was not ; while behind him it began again 
 louder than ever. 
 
 The leaves of his books were stuck together 
 with chewing gum or mucilage. Some one 
 put a live mouse in his desk. One reprobate, 
 who is ashamed of it now, filled the hollowed- 
 out wooden seat of his armchair with water./ 
 Mr. Lyon happened that morning to be wear- 
 ing a pair of very thin summer trousers his 
 only pair of winter ones being mended by 
 kind-hearted Widow Cummings and after he 
 sat down in that icy water, to rise with en- 
 thusiastic promptness and energy, he shivered 
 through the forenoon session. In the after- 
 noon he attempted to chastise " Bitters " Ginn, 
 and not only did not succeed in accomplish- 
 ing the feat, but suffered the humiliation of 
 having his ferule taken away from him and 
 of being told by " Bitters " himself to " run 
 along and set down, like a nice little boy." 
 
 That evening he was heard weeping in his 
 room by Mrs. Cummings's servant girl. Next 
 morning he came to the school accompanied 
 by Squire Benijah Penniman, chairman of the 
 school committee. Squire Penniman made us a
 
 Our Village 
 
 ,. s.[ -\_ little speech. Unlike 
 his usual speeches, it 
 was brief and very 
 much to the point. 
 
 " We gen'rally fig- 
 ger, the committee 
 does," concluded the squire, " to 
 have proper order and obedjunce 
 to discipline in the schoolrooms of this town. 
 And by mighty, we caVlate to have 'em fare! 
 Next week the reg'lar April vacation ought 
 to begin. Downstairs'll ha\e that vacation. 
 Upstairs won't. You'll stay here and study 
 your lesson books, and them that don't study 
 'em '11 hear from me from me. D'you un- 
 derstand ? " 
 
 We understood. Cap'n Benijah had been 
 skipper of an Australian clipper in his day 
 and had handled mutinous crews before. 
 There was sullen silence until he departed ; 
 then the turmoil broke loose worse than ever. 
 Cheat us out of our vacation, hey? Maybe 
 we might have to come to school, but study 
 and "obedjunce to dis/>line" these were dif- 
 ferent. Various plots were laid and schemes 
 152
 
 Teacher 
 
 hatched. " Bitters " and his friends were the 
 ringleaders in all these. Mr. Lyon's life dur- 
 ing the coming fortnight bade fair to be more 
 strenuous than ever. He would not lack en- 
 tertainment, at any rate. 
 
 But on Sunday morning he was not at 
 church. The corner pew with the pillar in it, 
 which he had taken because it was cheap and 
 no one else liked it, was empty. You heard 
 Mrs. Cummings tell Abitha Doane, after 
 meeting, that " Teacher ain't feelin' a mite 
 well, poor little man. He's in bed now, all het 
 up and feverish, and if he ain't better when I 
 get back home I'm goin' to have Dr. Pen- 
 rose in. Them dreadful young ones at school 
 have worried him sick, that's what's the trou- 
 ble. It's a shame! good and well-meanin' as 
 he is." 
 
 You should have been repentant and con- 
 science-stricken on hearing this piece of news. 
 You are now, as you think of it. But then, 
 shameful to relate, your most dominant senti- 
 ment was hope. If teacher was sick, why 
 why, then there couldn't be any school on 
 Monday. You might get the vacation after 
 153
 
 Our Village 
 
 all. Hooray! You hastened to spread the 
 tidings. 
 
 Sure enough, on Monday morning Mr. 
 Lyon was not at his desk upstairs. Being as 
 methodical in some things as he was unprac- 
 tical in most others, it had been his custom to 
 enter the school yard precisely at quarter to 
 nine, as the janitor was ringing the " first 
 bell." But now he came not. There were all 
 sorts of rumors afloat he was very sick, he 
 was threatened with typhoid, he might die 
 " Bitters " Ginn said he hoped he would. 
 
 Five minutes to nine. The " last bell " was 
 ringing. Some of the weaklings, actuated by 
 force of habit and vague fears, went up to the 
 schoolroom and took their seats ; but the ma- 
 jority remained in the yard and joined in the 
 song which " Bitters " was leading : 
 
 "An eagle flew from north to south 
 With Solomon Lyon in his mouth, 
 And when he found he had a fool 
 He dropped him at the upstairs school." 
 
 " Once more," yelled the choirmaster ; " and 
 holler it good and loud ! " 
 154
 
 But we did not " holler." A buggy drove 
 up to the hitching post and two people got 
 out. One of these people was Squire Penni- 
 man and the other was Miss Olivia Simpson, 
 the downstairs teacher. 
 
 " Go into that schoolhouse, the whole crew 
 of you. Lively now ! " roared the squire, in 
 his quarter-deck voice. We obeyed orders 
 and were lively. 
 
 " Now then," growled the committeeman, 
 standing by the teacher's desk and glaring at 
 the pupils, " this school'll come to order. Si- 
 lence, aft there! D'you want me to come 
 down to you ? " 
 
 The question was addressed to the rebel- 
 lious " Bitters," who had shuffled his feet. 
 The shuffling stopped in the middle of a 
 scrape. 
 
 " I s'pose," continued Cap'n Benijah, " that 
 you thought because your outrageous actions 
 had made your teacher sick yes, he's sick, 
 poor fellow, and likely to be wuss I s'pose 
 you thought they'd be no school for this com- 
 ing fortni't, after all. There will be. Miss 
 Simpson is going to take Mr. Lyon's place. 
 155
 
 Our Village 
 
 She'll teach you and you're to mind her. And 
 just remember this," he added, in an ominous 
 growl ; " me and the committee are backing 
 her up. Miss Olivia, you can take the ship 
 the school, I should say." 
 
 To be handed over to a woman ! To be put 
 in charge of a downstairs teacher! The in- 
 dignity of it! The school set its teeth and 
 glared at the big, raw-boned female who 
 stepped to the front of the platform. Let her 
 wait only just wait! What had been done to 
 Lyon wouldn't be a circumstance to what was 
 coming to her. 
 
 Ah, well, as grandma used to say, " you 
 can't most always sometimes tell." What we 
 did to Miss Olivia Simpson isn't worth men- 
 tioning. What she did to us is well worth 
 the mention, but would fill a book. You may 
 condense it by saying that, before the first 
 week was over, that schoolroom was as calm 
 and peaceful as the Schoolhouse Pond on a 
 June morning. 
 
 And she had her own ways of achieving re- 
 sults. The manner in which she squelched the 
 mighty " Sumach Bitters " Ginn was a tri- 
 156
 
 Teacher 
 
 umph. " Bitters " came to school on the sec- 
 ond morning armed with a perfect battery of 
 mammoth spitballs, prepared the night before ; 
 he had both pockets of his jacket full of them. 
 
 The first of these projectiles whizzed across 
 the room and spread-eagled on the blackboard 
 over the " girls' side " with a sticky " spat." 
 Everybody laughed; that is, everybody but 
 " teacher." 
 
 " Obed Ginn," observed Miss Olivia, " you 
 may go to the board and clean that off." 
 
 " Bitters's " reply to this command was the 
 declaration that he " wan't cleanin' up spit- 
 balls much these days." He had done some 
 preparatory boasting to the effect that he'd 
 make the " old gal set up and take notice." 
 He didn't give a durn about losing a few re- 
 cesses. 
 
 But Miss Olivia made no mention of for- 
 feited recesses. She did not even answer her 
 rebellious pupil. She sat down at her desk, 
 wrote a few lines, inclosed them in an envel- 
 ope, and handed the envelope to one of the 
 smaller boys in a front seat. The boy de- 
 parted with the note. Miss Simpson called 
 
 157
 
 Our Village 
 
 for the recitation by the first class 
 in arithmetic. " Bitters " grinned 
 triumphantly. 
 
 Perhaps to grin then was 
 good judgment on his part. At 
 any rate, he grinned no more 
 / that day. The messenger hav- 
 ing returned, a knock sounded 
 on the door leading from the coat 
 room, and Miss Olivia announced 
 that some one without desired to 
 speak to him, Obed. " Bitters " ad- 
 journed to the coat room and the 
 door closed after him. 
 
 Then from behind that closed door 
 came sounds, various and animate, sounds sug- 
 gestive of a thrashing machine in full opera- 
 tion, accompanied by yells and protests in the 
 well-known voice of " Sumach Bitters." The 
 school was intensely agitated, but teacher 
 didn't seem even interested. She continued to 
 question the first class in arithmetic. 
 
 After a time the sounds ceased. Then the 
 door opened and Obed Ginn appeared. He 
 was disheveled, his fat face was red and tear- 
 
 158
 
 Teacher 
 
 stained, and the torn collar of his shirt was 
 gripped by the sinewy fingers of Mr. Felix 
 Ginn, his father. Felix was six feet four 
 inches in height, and his shoulders brushed 
 either side of the doorway. In his free hand 
 was the frazzled remnant of an apple-wood 
 switch or rather of what had been the small 
 limb of an apple-tree. 
 
 " Here he is, marm," observed Ginn, senior. 
 " I cal'late he'll mind yer for a spell, anyway. 
 If he don't, you send for me again. I'm 
 workin' right over here on Cap'n Bangs's 
 cranberry swamp, and that's handy by." 
 
 From that time on " Bitters " was an ex- 
 tremely mild dose. 
 
 At the end of the two weeks, during which 
 the downstairs scholars played and the up- 
 stairs studied, it was generally supposed that 
 Mr. Lyon, having recovered from his illness, 
 would return to his teaching. He did, but it 
 was to the teaching of the primary, the down- 
 stairs room. Miss Olivia Simpson continued 
 to preside upstairs. 
 
 " Humph ! " grunted Squire Penniman, as 
 he made the announcement. " I told you the 
 
 159
 
 Our Village 
 
 committee cal'lated to have order and obed- 
 junce to proper discipline up here, didn't 1 ? 
 Well, we've got just them things, thanks to 
 this lady. The downstairs scholars 'pear to 
 have sense enough not to act like babies 
 that's why we give 'em the teacher that's usu- 
 ally given to young men and women. And 
 you, acting like babies, and spiled babies at 
 that, you get the baby teacher. And when 
 you need spanking, I rather guess she can 
 give it to you." 
 
 For two years after that Miss Olivia con- 
 tinued to teach upstairs and Mr. Lyon down- 
 stairs. And during these two years the Sew- 
 ing Circle and the Good Templars' Society 
 and the Ladies' Shakespeare Reading Club 
 whispered and surmised and guessed and 
 wondered. Then the mine was sprung. Both 
 teachers resigned simultaneously. They had 
 been engaged for months and were to be mar- 
 ried immediately. 
 
 Squire Benijah Penniman, when he heard 
 the astounding news, voiced the prevailing 
 sentiment. 
 
 " Well, by mighty ! " exclaimed the squire. 
 160
 
 "That beats all, don't it? And yet I don't 
 know. Olivia's one of them women that's 
 made so by mistake. She's too much of a man 
 herself to want to tie up with a real male crit- 
 ter, and that's why she took a notion to Lyon. 
 She can boss him and earn money for him, 
 and he can take care of the plants and do the 
 mending. Humph ! Well, I'll bet she did the 
 proposing." 
 
 Mr. Lyon is a minister of the Gospel now. 
 And a successful one, too, so they say. There 
 is a shrewd suspicion that, although he may 
 write his own sermons, his wife edits them. 
 And she is president of the Church Ladies' 
 Aid, and a member of the parish committee. 
 Likewise she usually leads the prayer meet- 
 ing and acts as assistant superintendent of the 
 Sunday-school. And that Sunday-school is 
 the best behaved one in the State where it is 
 located. 
 
 You have lost track of many of the old 
 teachers. But " Specs " Bandmann's name 
 appears in the papers occasionally. He is 
 ably filling an appropriate position superin- 
 tendent of a large insane asylum. You are 
 161
 
 Our Village 
 
 willing to bet that his preliminary training 
 with " Bitters " and the other " big fellers " in 
 our upstairs school has been of service to him 
 in dealing with the violent patients.
 
 A CHRISTMAS MEMORY
 
 A CHRISTMAS MEMORY 
 
 IT was coming. Already the breath of it was 
 in the air. When you went down to Dan- 
 iels's after a pound of currants and a quarter 
 pound of citron you and Gyp you could 
 feel it in the wind, blowing across the snow- 
 covered fields and over the frozen salt mead- 
 ows. The breakers, 'way off yonder along 
 the outer bar, where the white ice cakes ended 
 and the deep-blue water began, sang it to you. 
 The rows of little icicles strung along the 
 apple-tree limbs like the fringe on grandma's 
 cashmere shawl the one pa brought home 
 from sea and which she kept in the spare 
 room bureau drawer, packed in camphor, be- 
 cause it was too nice to wear clicked against 
 12 165
 
 Our Village 
 
 each other as the boughs swung back and 
 forth, and sounded like the sleigh bells you 
 used to dream about before you grew up and 
 knew what was what concerning Santa Claus. 
 It was coming ! You had to stop in the snow 
 and grin for sheer joy. 
 
 Down at Daniels's it was very much in evi- 
 dence. The real store was over at Orham, 
 five miles off, but Cap'n Daniels wasn't so old 
 or nearsighted as not to see his duty and do 
 it, after a fashion. The candy jars on the 
 counter were filled with brand-new striped 
 sticks. The cover was off the big box of 
 prunes just in from Boston. Where the case 
 of O. N. T. cotton used to stand, by the end 
 of the pipe and tobacco show case, a space 
 had been cleared, and there was a collection 
 of jackknives and thimbles and " housewife's 
 companions," and monkeys on sticks that 
 jumped up and down when you worked them, 
 and tin horses and carts, and some baby dolls 
 for ten cents, and and lots more. 
 
 And farther on there were some tidies that 
 Aunt Tryphosa Daniels had knit, and some 
 splint-work photograph frames that Susan T. 
 166
 
 A Christmas Memory 
 
 had made splint work was so pretty and so 
 easy to do and more really expensive things, 
 including two plush books with " Album " in 
 tin letters on the covers. The albums weren't 
 new, however ; Cap'n Daniels had bought them 
 three years before and hadn't yet been able to 
 sell them. No wonder ! they cost a dollar and 
 a quarter a piece. Who wanted to spend that 
 much money here at home, when you could go 
 to Orham and have such a big assortment to 
 choose from? 
 
 " You tell your folks," says Cap'n Daniels, 
 adjusting a pair of specs he used two pairs, 
 one " nigh-to " and the other " fur-off " 
 " you tell your folks to home that when they 
 want to buy their Christmas presents this year 
 they ain't got to hitch up no team. Tell 'em 
 to come and see me. You tell 'em that, now, 
 will you? Keep your hands out of them 
 prunes." 
 
 Grandma was in the kitchen when you got 
 back. The breath of the coming was there, 
 too, and its odor was spicy and warm and 
 sweet. The cook stove was red hot, pretty 
 near. When you wanted a quick, hot fire you 
 167
 
 Our Village 
 
 put in pine. When you wanted a fire to keep, 
 and to bake with, you started with the pine 
 and then loaded in the heavy oak chunks. 
 You knew all about it. Why shouldn't you? 
 Didn't you have to fill the oilcloth-covered 
 wood box every morning? And who, if not 
 you, piled the double rows on each side of the 
 potato cellar? pitchy stick pine on one side, 
 and oak, with the moss on the bark, on the 
 other. 
 
 Grandma was making fruit cake. When it 
 was done, she would frost it with some stuff 
 like sugared cement or wall plaster, and put 
 the loaves in the tin box in the parlor closet. 
 
 " Gramma." 
 
 "Well, Jimmie, what is it? Don't bother 
 me more'n you have to. I'm awful busy." 
 
 "Can I have just one currant?" 
 
 " No, you can't. Well, just one then. Land 
 sakes ! Is that what you call one ? Clear out 
 of this kitchen, quick." 
 
 " Aw, there ain't nowheres to go." It was 
 Saturday, and therefore " no school." 
 
 " Why don't you go skating? I saw the 
 other boys going; Eddie Rogers and all." 
 168
 
 A Christmas Memory 
 
 " Aw, my skates ain't any good." 
 
 " No good? Why, Jimmie Snow, how you 
 talk! You ain't had those skates but two 
 year, and " 
 
 " Yes, but they don't wear that kind of 
 skates any more. Old heel plates ! Always 
 have to be digging 'em out. Oak-legs I 
 mean Sammie Foster has got a pair of Ice 
 Royals. Ain't they bully, though ! Just have 
 to put 'em against your shoe and push a thing 
 in a little mite of an iron thing and they're 
 on. No heel plates, nor screws, nor straps, 
 nor nothing. Say, gramma ! " 
 
 " Urn-hum." 
 
 "Say, gramma! Gramma!" 
 
 "Well, well! What is it?" 
 
 " Won't you and grandpa get me a pair of 
 Ice Royals for Christmas? Aw, please." 
 
 " No, no. 'Course not. How many times 
 are you going to ask that ? " 
 
 " Aw, say, gramma ! Sammie Foster's got 
 'em, and Snuppy Rogers's folks are going to 
 give him some, and " 
 
 " I can't help it. Tim Foster's made money 
 out of his cranberries this year, and your 
 169
 
 Our Village 
 
 gran'pa's bogs didn't bear hardly anything. 
 That kind of skates cost two dollars and a 
 quarter, and that's a lot of money these hard 
 times." 
 
 " Please, gramma. I won't ask for a thing 
 else if you'll only get them. Not one least 
 little mite of a thing. Aw, please." 
 
 " No, no. Run along out of here." 
 
 " But Oaks and Snuppy'll have 'em. Please 
 do, gramma. I won't ask " 
 
 " Well, well ! we'll see. Do clear out and 
 let me alone. I don't know whether I've put 
 pepper or cinnamon into this cake; I snum 
 if I do ! " 
 
 You " hooked " another fistful of currants 
 and departed, feeling, on the whole, hopeful. 
 " We'll see," was encouraging. And besides, 
 how did she know what the skates cost, 
 if 
 
 Grandma called after you as you were leav- 
 ing. She wanted to know if you wouldn't find 
 the twins and see what they were up to. She 
 " cal'lated " they were over at the Rogers's. 
 And would you be sure and ask Clorinda 
 Rogers not to forget to send her the receipt 
 170
 
 A Christmas Memory 
 
 for the pudding sass. Any time before Tues- 
 day night would do. 
 
 The twins were at the Rogers's. They were 
 watching Mrs. Rogers Snuppy's ma make 
 
 evergreen wreaths for the church. There was 
 to be a Sunday-school Christmas concert on 
 the very next evening. That showed you how 
 close at hand was the coming. Only one 
 two three four more days and then! 
 171
 
 Our Village 
 
 You were to speak a piece at that concert, 
 you remember. " In the solemn midnight," 
 was it? Or " Somebody's Mother"? 
 
 " The woman was old and ragged and gray, 
 And bent with the chill of the winter's day." 
 
 Perhaps that was it. And one of the twins 
 was to speak, " Hang up the baby's stocking." 
 The children were not to take part in the 
 regular morning service that Christmas. The 
 year before, when the new minister was very 
 new, they had done so. The girls, all in their 
 " Sunday-go-to-meeting " gowns, and happy, 
 were in the gallery on one side of the organ, 
 and the boys, in hated starchy collars and a 
 generally wretched and rebellious state, were 
 on the other side. And when it was very still, 
 after the prayer, the girls piped up shrill and 
 clear : 
 
 " Watchman, tell us of the night, 
 What its signs of glory are." 
 
 And the boys answered back with: 
 
 " Traveler, o'er yon mountain height, 
 See that glory beaming star." 
 
 And so on. 
 
 172
 
 A Christmas Memory 
 
 All the fathers and mothers and the Sun- 
 day-school teachers, who were in the secret, 
 thought it " so cute " and " perfectly lovely." 
 But old Deacon Mayo, who hadn't known 
 it was coming and was asleep, jumped half 
 out of his pew and made even the minister 
 laugh. The deacon all but called a parish 
 meeting in consequence. ' 'Twas a healthy 
 state of things if divine service was to be 
 made a show of by a lot of play-acting young 
 ones." 
 
 That evergreen smelled more Christmassy 
 than anything else more, even, than grand- 
 ma's kitchen. You and Snuppy had gathered 
 it, up in the pines by Scudder's pond. You 
 knew the place, of course, and you scraped 
 away the snow and there it was, fresh and 
 bright as could be. And you brought home 
 " hog-cranberry " vines with berries on them, 
 and maybe a little holly from a bush you knew 
 of. But holly was scarce. 
 
 Snuppy's ma your own ma had died when 
 the twins were born ; just before your pa was 
 lost at sea said that Eddie, which was Snup- 
 py's dressed-up name, had gone skating. So, 
 
 173
 
 Our Village 
 
 after a while, you 
 took the twins on your sled 
 and went up to find him. 
 
 And there, where the 
 v , melting snow had made a long 
 
 string of puddles among the 
 stubs of last year's cornstalks, were Snuppy 
 and Oaks Foster and " Peeler " Davis, and 
 more of the " gang." And the talk was all 
 of the coming. 
 
 " I was over to Orham with pa yesterday," 
 says Oaks. " And Mullett's store's full of the 
 rippingest things. Just heaps and heaps of 
 'em. And there's the bulliest magic lantern, 
 with pictures to show. You hang up a sheet, 
 and Aw, it's great! And I teased pa, and 
 I bet I'll get it for Christmas." 
 
 " Get out ! Bet you don't. Why, magic 
 lanterns cost barrels of money! You won't 
 get that, Oaks; don't be trying to show 
 off." 
 
 But down in your envious heart you bet 
 that he would get it. Why couldn't grand- 
 pa's cranberry bogs bear as well as other peo- 
 ple's? It shook your confidence in religion, 
 174
 
 A Christinas Memory 
 
 somehow. Grandpa was a " professor " in 
 prayer meeting, and Oaks's pa swapped 
 horses and didn't go to church, and even 
 played with cards or so it was reported. 
 The kind of cards gamblers use, too ; not those 
 with letters on them, like your Logomachy 
 set. 
 
 So you talked and speculated and wished 
 all the way home. And so you did the next 
 day, during the sermon. And when grandma 
 asked you for the text, you had forgotten it, 
 and she begged to know what end you 
 thought you were coming to. 
 
 When Sunday, concert and all, was over, 
 and you went to school on Monday morning, 
 it was just the same. The general atmos- 
 phere of hot stove, wet rubbers, and damp 
 slates was much as usual, but in through the 
 windows poured the December sun, cutting 
 long, gold-powdered lanes through the dusty 
 air. Just like the glory from heaven that 
 streamed down upon the shepherds, as it was 
 pictured in your " Story of the Bible." And 
 girls and boys fidgeted, and whispered, and 
 absentmindedly missed in their lessons. And 
 
 175
 
 Our Village 
 
 teacher didn't scold, for she, too, was absent- 
 minded. There was that young man who 
 came over from Harniss on Sundays ; the one 
 with the lavender trousers and black " Clay 
 diagonal," who drove the fast horse. What 
 would he bring her for this, the last Christ- 
 mas before 
 
 Even the " Injun camp " up in the scrub 
 back of Peeler Davis's barn was corrupted by 
 the disturbing influence. You had a fire 
 there, and boiled potatoes in a tin kettle real- 
 ly boiled 'em, just as Dick Lewis or Old Bob 
 Kelley, the trappers, might have done. Bars 
 and buffler! think of it. But now, instead of 
 burning anyone at the stake, or following rab- 
 bit tracks and pretending them to be those of 
 grizzly bears, you stood around the fire and 
 mused and guessed and hoped. 
 
 There was precious little fun in scalping a 
 fellow, when he interrupted the operation to 
 observe : 
 
 " Oh, say, Tinker ! Did you hear what Ben 
 Sears is going to have? An air gun. Yes, 
 sir ! One that shoots shot. We must let him 
 join the tribe ; then maybe we can take it 
 
 1*5
 
 A Christmas Memory 
 
 sometimes. Aw, cracky ! 
 Don't you wish you was x 
 him? " 
 
 You and the other 
 noble redmen strolled 
 home through the dusk, 
 bragging about the 
 wonders that were to be yours, and loudly 
 pitying little innocents, like the twins, who 
 didn't know any better than to believe in 
 Santa Claus. 
 
 But the twins didn't need any pity. They 
 gloried in their ignorance and shouted de- 
 mands and supplications up the fireplace, sure 
 that Santa, listening at the chimney top, would 
 hear and take notes. They sat, wide-eyed, as 
 grandma read them how : 
 
 " He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle, 
 And away they all flew like the down on a thistle." 
 
 They heard the sleigh bells and the pranc- 
 ing hoofs already. Your lofty air of conde- 
 scending superiority was entirely wasted on 
 the twins. 
 
 Grandpa came home from Orham on Tues- 
 177
 
 Our Village 
 
 day, just before dark. The sleigh was filled 
 with brown-paper parcels. Most of these 
 were intrusted to you to carry to the house. 
 
 " And don't you touch a thing, sonny ; un- 
 derstand? And go in the front door so's the 
 twins won't hear you. Put the bundles on the 
 bed in our room and send grandma up there 
 right off." 
 
 " But, grandpa, this ain't all. What's those 
 others? And what's that big one you've got 
 under your coat ? " 
 
 " Never you mind. Trot right along. And 
 see here! don't you tell gramma you see me 
 with anything else. If you do I'll I don't 
 know's I won't skin you." 
 
 So you went tiptoeing in at the front door, 
 the door so seldom used that to open it seemed 
 strange even to you. And when you had dis- 
 appeared, grandpa hurried to the tool box 
 in the back kitchen, where he deposited the 
 big package, the heavy shawl that grandma 
 had long coveted but didn't " feel right to 
 afford," and the little box containing the jet 
 earrings shaped like daisy blossoms. And 
 meanwhile grandma, upstairs in the bedroom, 
 178
 
 A Christinas Memory 
 
 was hastily locking up the almost finished 
 " double-knit driving mittens " that were to 
 keep grandpa's toil-roughened hands warm 
 later on. 
 
 The old house was filled with secrets. Closet 
 doors were locked and bureau-drawer keys 
 had flown. It was all mysterious and creepy 
 and splendid. 
 
 Down at the post office which was Dan- 
 iels's store under its other name the crowd 
 waiting that evening for the mail to be sorted 
 was larger than usual; and it had to wait 
 longer, too. When the depot wagon drove up 
 to the door and the carrier entered with the 
 bulging leather sack, Cap'n Daniels resigned 
 the tidy and album trade to Aunt Tryphosa and 
 disappeared into 
 the little room be- 
 hind the frames 
 of letter boxes. 
 Occasionally you 
 caught glimpses of _^ 
 him holding a 
 small package to 
 the light, and peer- 
 
 179
 
 Our Village 
 
 ing doubtfully at the address through his 
 " nigh-to " glasses. 
 
 " Now hold on, all hands ! " commands the 
 cap'n, pushing up the slide of the distribut- 
 ing window. " Don't everybody shove and 
 holler. There's a whole mess of these 'ere 
 bundles." 
 
 He proceeds to read the names on the wrap- 
 pers, stammering and hesitating and stopping 
 occasionally to wipe his spectacles. One by 
 one the packages are claimed. Oaks Fos- 
 ter gets one and leaves in triumph. The 
 school-teacher's name is called and her young 
 brother steps forward to receive a neat oblong 
 box tied with red ribbon. You get three ; one 
 for yourself and one for each of the twins. 
 The postmark was Eastboro Aunt Susan's 
 folks, of course. 
 
 And at last, it was here, the night when 
 " all through the house " and the rest of it. 
 The twins, wild with excitement, were packed 
 off to bed. To sleep ? Well, not for tfie first 
 hour, at any rate. 
 
 Half past eight. You took the candlesticks 
 from the kitchen mantel. 
 180
 
 A Christmas Memory 
 
 " Good night, gramma. Good night, gram- 
 pa." 
 
 " Good night, Jimmie. Shut your door 
 tight, and go right to sleep." 
 
 It was cold, mighty cold, up in the little 
 bedroom with the window under the eaves and 
 the painted bunches of flowers on the bedstead 
 and bureau and washstand. The feathers felt 
 soft and snug beneath you, and blankets and 
 the " log-cabin " quilt warm above. The wind 
 talked and whimpered around the window. 
 Outside it was all white and shiny and still. 
 You must go to sleep quick because that 
 would bring the morning. But you simply 
 couldn't sleep. Why was it necessary for the 
 night before Christmas to last a million years ? 
 How about those sheep jumping the wall? 
 One two three . . . twenty-six twenty- 
 seven . . . forty-one forty-two . . . for " 
 
 You know now you didn't know it then 
 that down in the dining room the brown- 
 paper packages were piled on the floor and 
 grandpa was cutting the strings. The stock- 
 ings not the twins' own stockings: oh, no! 
 they were too small ; but a pair of grandma's 
 13 181
 
 Our Village 
 
 were hanging by the mantel. Little by lit- 
 tle they grew warty and dropsical and shape- 
 less. 
 
 Grandpa undoes another package. Grand- 
 ma, standing with the candle in her hand she 
 is just about to light it looks on. 
 
 " He'll be awful tickled with them skates," 
 says grandpa musingly. " Land sakes ! he'd 
 ought to be; they cost enough." 
 
 " Yes, I know," replies grandma. " But I'm 
 so glad you got 'em for him. Seems to me 
 that that 'twould have pleased James so. He 
 set such store by that boy." 
 
 " Maybe he knows about it, Mary. Maybe 
 he does." 
 
 " Maybe so." 
 
 A silence, and then the candle was 'lighted 
 . and the door closed. 
 
 The old house shut 
 its eyes. The wind 
 sang and whistled. 
 The icy sleigh bells on 
 the apple-tree boughs 
 clinked and chimed. 
 The stars shone bright 
 182
 
 He'll be awful tickled with them skates.'"
 
 A Christmas Memory 
 
 and clear, just as they must have shone over 
 Bethlehem. 
 
 " Gramma ! Gramma ! " 
 
 " Well, what is it ? I can't hardly hear my- 
 self think, them children make such a racket." 
 
 " Gramma, sit down a minute and let me 
 show you. See; it's just like I said: all you 
 have to do is put it against your foot and push 
 in this little lever thing. There ! " 
 
 "Do you like 'em?" 
 
 " You just bet! " There is a little shake in 
 your voice, a quiver of pure, unadulterated 
 happiness, such as comes not too often in a 
 lifetime. Grandma hears it, and her specta- 
 cles grow misty. Her boy's boy! She takes 
 off the spectacles and wipes them. 
 
 Your own eyeglasses grow misty, now, as 
 you think of it. 
 
 Ah, hum. . . . Well. . . . Merry Christ- 
 mas! 
 
 (i) 
 
 THE END
 
 TWO GOOD NOVELS. 
 
 Cy Whittaker's Place. 
 
 A Novel of Cape Cod Life, by JOSEPH C. 
 LINCOLN, Author of " Mr. Pratt," " Cap'n Eri," etc. 
 27 illustrations by Wallace Morgan, colored inlay 
 on cover. I2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 Cape Cod life, as pictured by Joseph C. Lincoln, is de- 
 lightful in its homeliness, its wholesomeness, its quaint sim- 
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 whom an old bachelor, Cy Whittaker, adopts. Her educa- 
 tion is too stupendous a task for the old man to attempt alone, 
 so he calls in two old cronies and they form a " Board 
 of Strategy." A dramatic story of unusual merit then de- 
 velops, and through it all runs that rich vein of humor which 
 has won for the author a fixed place in the hearts of thousands 
 of readers. Cy Whittaker is the David Harum of Cape Cod. 
 
 The Whispering Man. 
 
 A Detective Story Worth While, by HENRY 
 KITCHELL WEBSTER. Frontispiece. 12010. Deco- 
 rated cloth, $1.50. 
 
 A detective story you ought to read. Something alto- 
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 To those who have tired of the ordinary type of detective 
 story, we commend this different novel as most refreshing. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.
 
 AN UNUSUAL NOVEL. 
 
 Old Wives for New. 
 
 By DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS. i2mo. Cloth, 
 $1.50. 
 
 The title of Mr. Phillips' new novel is a daring 
 one. The story itself is just as daring, but never- 
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 shows us why their married life was a failure. 
 
 " Things about women which have never seen the light 
 of day before." St. Paul Pioneer Press. 
 
 " Comes near being a second Balzac." 
 
 Los Angeles Times. 
 
 "One of the most thoroughly interesting books that 
 has been written in many a long month." 
 
 St. Louis Republic. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.
 
 NOVELS BY ROBERT W. CHAMBERS. 
 
 SPECIAL MESSENGER. Illustrated. J2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 
 A romantic love story of a woman spy in the Civil War. 
 
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 "The Younger Set" is a novel of the swirl of wealthy New York society. 
 The hero, forced out of the army by domestic troubles, returns to New York 
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 But new complications intervene and are described with what the New York 
 Sun calls Mr. Chambers' " amazing knack of narrative." 
 
 THE FIGHTING CHANCE. Illustrated. Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 One of the most brilliant pictures of wealthy American society ever painted; 
 one of the most interesting and appealing stories ever written ; one of the most 
 widely read of all American novels. 
 
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 Mr. Chambers has written most delightfully, and in his charming satire 
 depicts the plight of five society girls and five clubmen. 
 
 IOLE. Illustrated. Cloth, $1.25. 
 
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 If you looked squarely into a mirror and saw your PROFILE instead of 
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 been adopted. 
 
 . "It would be but an unresponsive American that would not thrill to such 
 relations." New York Times. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 
 
 433
 
 STORIES FOR YOUNG READERS 
 
 JOURNEYS OF THE KIT KAT CLUB. Illus- 
 trated. 8vo. $2.00 Net. 
 By WILLIAM R. A. WILSON. 
 
 A beautifully illustrated volume filled with interesting and salient 
 features of English history, folk-lore, politics, and scenery. 
 
 BUTT CHANLER, FRESHMAN. Illustrated. 
 
 I2mo. $1.50. 
 
 By JAMES SHELLEY HAMILTON, Amherst "06. 
 College sports are always a subject of interest to young readers, 
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 "The story is breezy, bright, and clean." The Bookseller, New 
 York. 
 
 WILLIAMS OF WEST POINT. Illustrated. I2mo. 
 
 $1.50. 
 
 By Lieut. HUGH S. JOHNSON. 
 
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 red blood in his veins will pronounce it a corker." The Globe, 
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 By WALTER CAMP. 
 
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 J2mo. $1.50. 
 
 By JOSEPH A. ALTSHELER. 
 
 This story deals with the further adventures of the two young 
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 434
 
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