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NATURE • AND- 
 CHARACTER.AT. 
 
 GRANITE. BAY. 
 
 BY DanielA .Goodsell. 
 
 — 
 
 NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS 
 
 CINCINNATI: JENNINGS St PTE. 
 
 MDCCCCI 
 
Copyright by 
 
 EATON & MAINS, 
 
 1901. 
 
DEDICATION 
 
 To my Wife and Children 
 
 who know the facts I herein set down, and knew 
 
 the characters herein described, and who 
 
 have learned with me to love 
 
 Granite Bay better than any 
 
 other spot on earth. 
 
Preface 
 
 HIS book has been written a 
 thousand miles from the 
 scenes it describes. It has 
 been justified to the writer, 
 by the pleasure of living over again the 
 summer life under winter skies, and by 
 that sense of "outing " which one enjoys 
 when engaged on matters remotely con- 
 nected with one's burdens and vocation. 
 Because remotely connected I have 
 hesitated to print it. But having found 
 some of the sketches of character re- 
 ceived with interest when read to several 
 large gatherings, I hope that others will 
 find them not uninteresting in print. 
 
 The book has not, however, been writ- 
 ten as an amusement chiefly. I have 
 
hoped that it might find warrant by some 
 measure of success in meeting these 
 aims, namely: 
 
 To show that a half acre near a large 
 city may become of absorbing interest 
 and intellectual profit to any one who has 
 ordinary powers of observation, small sci- 
 entific knowledge, and limited time. 
 
 To demonstrate to my younger breth- 
 ren in the Christian ministry that it is 
 well to study and affiliate with the plain- 
 est people among whom we live; these, 
 and not the favored, possessing chiefly 
 the characteristics which reward study, 
 namely, originality, unique experience, 
 true and self-sacrificing sympathy, and 
 the joys of growth and conquest. 
 
 In nothing has imagination added to 
 the characters or scenes herein sketched, 
 nor is the sequence of events anywhere 
 changed to heighten interest. The stud- 
 ies of character are true sketches of men 
 and women I know, or have known, for 
 some are dead. 
 
The chapter on "Mental Contents of 
 an Egg " and a very few of the observa- 
 tions on animal life appeared some years 
 ago in The Christian Advocate of New 
 York. The remainder here appear for 
 the first time. 
 
 No originality is claimed for the stud- 
 ies in natural history herein set down. 
 They only confirm the observations of 
 men of greater knowledge, wider experi- 
 ence, and ampler opportunity. It may be, 
 however, that such facts have not before 
 been gathered from so small an area; of 
 this, however, I can have no assurance. 
 
 . Such as they are, they have greatly 
 added to my conviction of the unity of 
 the kingdom of God, and of the mystery 
 of life and energy. 
 
 D. A. Goodsell. 
 
Contents 
 
 NATURE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE DRAWING OF GRANITE BAY 
 
 Location, Dimensions, Geology. The Carving Frost. 
 Cliff Growths. The Making of Peninsulas. Charac- 
 teristic Trees, Shrubs, Vines, and Wild Flowers. Au- 
 tumn Tints. A Racing River. Indian Kitchen Middens. 
 A Kindly Screen. Sun-Heated Rock Masses. The 
 Haunt of Many Birds and Small Animals. The Abun- 
 dance of the Sea. The Awakening in Spring. The 
 Chapel Bell. Alive at Last i 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE DRAWING OF granite bay— Continued 
 
 Surface Attractions. Deeper Joys. The Ways of 
 Sea Lovers. The Sea as a Stimulus to Expression. A 
 Vastness Other than Stellar. Contrasted with Moun- 
 tains and Great Cities. The Sea Restful. The Sea a 
 Bond. The Sea a Mother of Surprises. Species Out 
 of Place. The Barracouta. The Lumpsucker. Trop- 
 ical Sea Turtles 9 
 
CHAPTER III 
 the drawing of granite bay — Continued 
 Sea Fishermen. Certain Variety. The Secret of 
 Fascination. The Behavior of Different Fish. The 
 Fisherman s Gifts. Fishing by Reminiscence. A Pro- 
 cession of Smacks. Survival of the Fittest. The Sea a 
 Spur to the Imagination. The Surface and the Depths. 
 The Coal Tows 17 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 the drawing OF granite bay — Continued 
 Aspects of the Bay. The Moon wake a Personal 
 Matter. A Problem for Mathematicians. Ripple Belts 
 and Calm Belts. Fish Rips. Prophetic Signs. The 
 Amiability of the Sea. The Behavior of the Winds. 
 Waving Ground. Two Hurricanes and What Hap- 
 pened. The Massing of the Schooners. The Brauty 
 of Fog and Mist. Its Dangers 27 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 the drawing OF granite BAY— Continued 
 The Sweep of a Thunderstorm. How Seamen Meas- 
 ure Its Force. Photographing Lightning. An Old Con- 
 troversy Concerning the Moon. A Study of Southwest 
 Winds. Marine Effects and the South Wind. A Low 
 Tide Roar. Drift Treasures. Gathering Rockweed, 
 and Its Uses 36 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 the drawing of granite bay — Continued 
 The Coming of Wild Ducks. Hunting Dangers. 
 Acres of Coots and Oldwives. The Speed of a Wild 
 Duck. Wild Birds Know their Friends. A Great De- 
 parture. Pensioners and Their Ways. Loons or Great 
 Northern Divers. Puffins, Auks, and Snowy Owls. An 
 
 Aspiration 47 
 
 x 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 MENTAL CONTENTS OF AN EGG 
 
 A Sea Gull's Egg Chosen. Where Found. Condi- 
 tions of Investigation. The Gull Travels Three Hun- 
 dred Miles. Behavior On the Way. Instinct in Hid- 
 ing. Enormous Appetite. Development of Affection and 
 Companionship. Knowledge of Suitable Food. His 
 Habit of Dancing, and the Reason. The Natural Notes 
 of a Laughing Gull. Water over Depth. The Dressing 
 of His Feathers. Love of Play and Dramatic Instincts. 
 Testing the Gull for Various Emotions. Maturity De- 
 velops Unamiable but Interesting Traits. The Gull and 
 a Small Boy. The Gull and a Cat. Was it Reason? 
 How They Eat Shellfish. War on Rats. His Sad Fate. 
 A Bit of Philosophy 54 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE MIND OF A DOG 
 
 A Great Transition. The Sociable Spirit. The Se- 
 cret of the Dog. " Blood will tell." Development of 
 Physical Characteristics. What He Learned. Native 
 Gifts of Patience and Dignity. Holes in the Ground. 
 Behavior in the House. Ecstasy in Recognition. A 
 Natural Gymnast. Craft to Get His Wishes. Distin- 
 guishes between Different Preparations. An Interpreter 
 of Sentences. A Valuable Call Boy. Intelligence as to 
 Hours and Habits. The Growth of Courage. My 
 Mistake as to His Gifts. Why No Dog Attacked Him. 
 A Greyhound's Method of Fighting. Contempt for a 
 Collie. Love of Bathing. The Dog's Sense of Propri- 
 etorship. Recognition of Boundaries. An Act of Warn- 
 ing and of Justice. A Pathetic Ending 71 
 
 xi 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 SUBHUMAN NEIGHBORS 
 
 An Eminent Rascal. The Kingbird and His Ways. 
 A Seaside Tragedy. The Purple Grackle. Hated 
 of Other Birds. The Robin the Most Timid of the 
 Thrushes. Squirrels near a Nest. The Grackle and His 
 Nest Hiding. The Mourning Dove and Her Tricks. 
 The Humming Bird, Its Nest and Ways. The Waxwing, 
 or Cedar Bird. The Blue Jay a Handsome Scamp. 
 The Flicker and the Woodpeckers. The Song Sparrow 
 and His Cousins. Swallows and Martins. A Tricky 
 Youngster. An Old Superstition. The Warblers. The 
 American Canary. The House Wren. A Nest in a Queer 
 Place. The Whip-poor-will. The Kingfisher 86 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 subhuman neighbors— Continued 
 The Burial of a Dead Bird. Certain Owls and Their 
 Behavior. A Visit from Shore Larks. Herons and 
 Cranes. Snakes and Balls of Snakes — Certain Garter 
 Snakes. A Neighborly Black Snake. The Green Sum- 
 mer Snake. " Wipers." Turtles and Tortoises. An 
 Old Settler. A Tragedy Revealed. Flying Squirrels 
 and a Good Bed. The True Aeroplane. The Chip- 
 munk is Play Incarnate. A Visit from Minks. Not 
 Loved by Fishermen. Tenacity of Hold. The Drawing 
 of the Electric Light. Polyphemus. Cecropia and 
 Death's Head. The Coming into View of the Cicada. 
 How It Changed Its Form and Skin. How It makes Its 
 Characteristic Note. Who Knows How Long It Stays 
 under Ground ? Dragon Flies, Their Uses and Harmless- 
 ness. A Storm of Dragon Flies. A Winged Stomach. 
 Hornets and Their Nests. Not Bad Neighbors. Bum- 
 blebees Who Bore Wood and Tunnel Earth. The 
 
 Auger of a Borer ioo 
 
 xii 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 REMNANTS 
 
 The Charm of Country Life. The Value of Eyes. 
 The True Point of View. The Mimicry of Human 
 Life. War among the Ants. A " Short, Sharp, Deci- 
 sive " Battle. Mountain Climbing by a Toad. Toads Not 
 Voiceless. "And he fell into a pit." Pass to Human 
 Neighbors. A Twilight Hour. The Post Office and 
 Young People. The Joy of Conquest in Clearing and 
 Building. The Accumulation of Memories. Some 
 Who Have Been with Us. The Arms of Granite Bay. 
 The Routine of a Day. Taps from the Rock. A Quo- 
 tation from Bryant JI 3 
 
 CHARACTER 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE FISHERMAN 127 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE GIANT I4 1 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 *• SUGAR " J 53 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 OUR GENIUS io 4 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE HERMIT 173 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE MYSTERY I^S 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE SILENT MAN . 1 99 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE DOORKEEPER 2I1 
 
 xiii 
 
Illustrations 
 
 FACING 
 PAGE 
 
 A Gale from the South .«. . Frontispiece. 
 
 Great Masses of Rock. .. Photo by Maide Johnson. 4 
 
 Fishing by Deputy " Buel Goodsell. . 20 
 
 The Wooded Aisle " Maide Johnson. 28 
 
 The End of the Park. . . " Maide Johnson. 36 
 
 After the Hurricane.... *' Buel Goodsell.. 47 
 
 Gentleman Gad " Buel Goodsell. . 71 
 
 Gad and Frisk " Clai a Corey .... 84 
 
 Good-bye to the Season. " Buel Goodsell . . 113 
 
 The Cedar Gate " Maide Johnson. 127 
 
 The Fisherman's Fleet.. " Maide Johnson. 135 
 
 The Captains " D. A. Goodsell.. 141 
 
 The Giant " Unknown 147 
 
 "Sugar." " Unknown 153 
 
 The Rushing River " Maide Johnson. 157 
 
 Our Genius " Buel Goodsell. . 164 
 
 The Winter Rest of the 
 
 Boats " D. A. Goodsell. 171 
 
 The Hermit " Buel Goodsell. . 173 
 
 The Hermit's Thicket. .. " Maide Johnson. 179 
 
 The Doorkeeper " D. A. Goodsell.. 211 
 
 The Wire Bridge " Maide Johnson. 215 
 
 The Children at the 
 
 Doorkeeper's " D. A. Goodsell.. 219 
 
 xv 
 
"To live content with small means, to seek elegance 
 rather than luxury, refinement rather than fashion ; 
 to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, to listen to stars 
 and birds, to babes and sages with operi heart, to study 
 hard, think quietly, act frankly, speak gently ; in a 
 word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unseen, grow 
 up through the common — this is to be my symphony!" 
 
 — W. H. ClIANNING 
 
NATURE AT GRANITE BAY 
 
 (2) 
 
THE DRAWING OF GRANITE BAY 
 
 ESS than a hundred 
 miles from New York 
 Granite Bay opens 
 into the greatest 
 width of Long Island 
 Sound. Near a large 
 city, knowing it scant- 
 ily, it has been, until 
 just now, accessible only by a long aisle 
 of forest and hilly road. The trolley 
 car has found it at last, but fortunately 
 only touches it and is gone. 
 
 The bay is less than a mile wide, and 
 still less from its beach to the open 
 waters of Long Island Sound southward. 
 On fairest days the gravel cliffs of Long 
 Island are seen, and are not unlike, in 
 occasional glimpses, the cliffs of Dover 
 from Calais. Eastward and southeast- 
 ward the clearest air raises no shore. 
 The woods creep to the edge of the 
 cliffs. Stunted pines and hemlocks hang 
 
over the sea. As elsewhere in New Eng- 
 land the east wind and its ally frost 
 have carved the eastern faces of all 
 rocks into steepness and perpendicu- 
 larity. Ages of attrition have cut out 
 the softer spots, indenting the shore 
 with charming coves, walled inland with 
 lichen-covered rocks and with beaches of 
 pinkish sand. The juniper and whortle- 
 berry nestle in the fissures. The bay is 
 flanked by islands — some true islands, 
 yet others have finished their course as 
 islands. The little channels landward, 
 silted in, are now either salt meadows or 
 woods, rich in oaks, pines, and cedars, 
 with occasional hemlocks, birches, and 
 ironwood. The persimmon can be found 
 here by the side of the tulip and the 
 dogwood. Their tops are tented with 
 grapevines and Virginia creeper. Nor 
 is the poison ivy — that unamiable cousin 
 of the woodbine — wanting. Underneath 
 are patches of the partridge berry, 
 belted with gray moss, through which 
 protrude, in season, hepaticas, anem- 
 ones, saxifrage, and Solomon's Seal, 
 followed, as the spring passes into early 
 summer, by a wealth of columbine. 
 
In soggy places Jack is found in his 
 Pulpit, and the Dutchman's Breeches 
 swing in the wind. Here also a score of 
 ferns lift their crosiers and unroll into 
 the delicate maidenhair and silver leaf, 
 or the stalwart brake. Here also the 
 summer children trip over the dewberry 
 vines, or are caught by the thorns of the 
 raspberry, the blackberry, or the bar- 
 berry. Every sunbright spot is later on 
 gilded with golden-rod or purpled by 
 wild aster. The sweet and fragrant 
 clover, loved of Indians for baskets, 
 scents the air. 
 
 Autumn here splashes her most gor- 
 geous colors. Tree tops glow with the 
 blaze of the woodbine. The maples lend 
 their greens, yellows, and reds. The 
 sumach puts on its cardinal's hat. Later 
 the oaks pass from vermilion to sienna 
 and terra cotta. Islands and pinnacles 
 of evergreen protrude from a ruddy sea, 
 and the affluent color scheme is enriched 
 by the olive greens of ancient cedars. 
 
 Behind these islands a river races 
 
 southward between salt marshes and 
 
 granite walls. Once it followed a dozen 
 
 channels between the islands. Now it 
 
 3 
 
reaches the sea a mile from its former 
 mouths, after raging into foam over 
 sunken bowlders and drongs of rock. 
 
 On both banks one may find under- 
 neath the rich grass the kitchen middens 
 of the long-gone Indians. The sod is 
 undergirded by deep beds of shells. Pa- 
 tience finds arrowheads, stone hatchets, 
 and rarely a skull or thigh bone. 
 
 Here too are records of world build- 
 ing. The rocks and bowlders are gran- 
 itic, with veins of trap and quartz. 
 Behind the seaward islands a noble cliff 
 rises, rich in ferns and various in tree, 
 shrub, and flower. 
 
 Nature thus kindly screens the bay 
 and its shores from the icy north winds, 
 and grants luxurious and late growth. 
 The great rock masses are warmed to 
 the heart by the summer sun, and hold 
 the winter back until late December; but 
 equally, when chilled, delay the spring. 
 
 Surely the birds love this spot, coming 
 early and staying late. The bluebird 
 sings in February, the robin but a little 
 after. One may find, if keen of quest, 
 and within an acre's space, the nest of the 
 purple grackle, the brown thrush, the 
 
 4 
 
robin, the catbird, humming bird, song 
 sparrow, chipping sparrow, wren, flicker, 
 woodpecker, mourning dove, waxwing, 
 starling, phebe, and kingfisher. The 
 cedar thickets are so dense and rich in 
 berries that some brave robins linger in 
 midwinter. When the last cottager has 
 returned to city walls and city cares, 
 Bunny, the brown rabbit, whisks under 
 the verandas ; the partridge whirs by the 
 kitchen door ; into the late autumn the 
 minks steal the net-entangled fish. When 
 ice is in the bay and the " abounding 
 charity of the snow" on the land, the 
 winter visitor has found the flying squir- 
 rel nesting in his bed and wriggling into 
 life with the unexpected warmth. 
 
 Here also is the abundance of the sea. 
 The passing of the Indians has not ban- 
 ished the oyster from the rocks, the soft 
 clam from the river, the quohog from the 
 bay. The king crab buries his eggs on 
 the hot beach of June, and the blue crab 
 in the warm mud of August. In May 
 the lobster lurks in the fissures of the sea- 
 ward rocks. In the frosty spring the 
 fykes entrap the flounder and the frostfish, 
 and, in the autumn, the blackfish, striped 
 5 
 
bass, and hake. A mighty pound farther 
 out begins its catch in April with shad, 
 and the later months bring in sea bass, 
 weakfish, and the toothsome but savage 
 bluefish. 
 
 In early April the Granite Bay folk 
 wake from winter's torpidity. The sugar 
 snows are not melted before some cot- 
 tager appears to see if storms have spared 
 his home. Those who have wintered at 
 the bay now hunger for work, except 
 some who seem to be able to live without 
 money and without work. The groceries 
 begin to stock up. The butcher in- 
 creases his trips from once a week to 
 thrice. The fykes are mended, rehooped, 
 and planted near the ledges. Lobster 
 pots are piled by the beach and on the 
 sea wall. The axes thud all day, piling 
 up kindling wood for the coming cot- 
 tager. Our genius inspects and paints 
 the scores of boats, yachts, and launches 
 in his care, and rests himself by laying a 
 foundation or two, blasting rocks, repair- 
 ing plumbing, and putting into the wa- 
 ter a score of rowboats of this winter's 
 building. 
 
 By May those to whom absence from 
 
the bay means absence of full life begin 
 to move in. The stage with its blind 
 horses rolls lazily to Oldport, returning 
 full of eager people and weighty trunks. 
 The trolley cars multiply in number and 
 in trips. The cycles fly through the long 
 and budding forest. The Italian staggers 
 in under a vast basket of bananas. The 
 clam diggers, sunken to their armpits, 
 spade up the river bars. The smoke of 
 bonfires obscures the cleaning village 
 The florists bring their fragrant loads. 
 Servants come to put in order the houses, 
 already prim with new paint. 
 
 But it is not until June, with its perfect 
 days, that Granite Bay is wholly awake. 
 Then one may see merchants of widest 
 enterprise, manufacturers of world-known 
 fame, artists, poets, clergymen, greeting 
 each other by the sea wall. The school 
 vacation crowds the shore with children 
 and the bay with craft. On every rock a 
 fisherman sits. A line of rowboats dances 
 by the sea wall. The osprey dives for his 
 dinner, only to be robbed by the bald 
 eagle. A hundred times a day the king- 
 fisher springs his rattle ; as many times 
 the kingbird drives off the crow. No 
 7 
 
large steamer vexes these waters, no train 
 thunders at our doors. Uncursed by the 
 saloon, life moves on in neighborly kind- 
 ness. Childish glee is unabashed by con- 
 stable or policeman. The bell of the 
 chapel calls to week-day prayer and to 
 Sabbath worship. The electric light, gone 
 for the winter, is flashed on before the 
 summer solstice and punctuates the dark- 
 ness of our wooded roads. The float and 
 springboard are moored off the sea wall. 
 Bathers scream, laugh, and dive. 
 The summer has come. 
 
II 
 
 THE DRAWING OF GRANITE BAY 
 Continued 
 
 THOUSAND feel it to 
 one who asks why. 
 To most the attrac- 
 tion is in the cool- 
 ing breezes, the 
 refreshment of the sea 
 bath, the joy of fishing. These 
 are the surface delights which 
 draw the multitude to our bay. 
 
 But those who have summered there 
 for years feel more, very much more, than 
 these. In point of fact, the pleasures 
 mentioned are only a very small part of 
 the attraction which makes such feel 
 that those days are to be endured which 
 are not spent at the bay. 
 
 Those most strongly drawn by the sea 
 are seldom much in it or on it, but pine if 
 not near it. Such spend many hours in one 
 spot. They neither read nor write, but 
 gaze and watch. If they must take up 
 9 
 
book or pen, they must go in and shut 
 the sea out. 1 have talked with many 
 such dreamers and have, in some measure, 
 understood their life. Such feel that 
 there is something in the sea, as in some 
 great personalities, which always escapes 
 expression. Those who know best its 
 literature, the poems inspired by it, the 
 stories of life on it, the changes of his- 
 tory through great sea fights, feel more 
 deeply than others the inadequacy of 
 description. 
 
 Nevertheless all who love it must write 
 of it. Like other great loves, it must be 
 told. It is too mighty, too imperious, to 
 be kept to oneself. Income being so 
 great, it must find outgo. 
 
 So I write, hoping that others will read 
 into my lines that which I feel but cannot 
 phrase. 
 
 The sea gives an impression of vastness, 
 and that at hand, within comprehension, 
 and so without fatigue. From the first 
 gray of the dawn until the hour when 
 
 " The gaudy, blabbing but remorseful day 
 Is crept into the bosom of the sea " 
 
 it grants what no other vastness gives. 
 The star-sprinkled heavens, the reaches 
 
of telescopic space, daze the senses and 
 stun the mind. Fatigue follows short 
 sight of them. The time element comes 
 in to add to the burden of thinking. If 
 one be of religious turn, space and dura- 
 tion suggest the infinite and the soul is 
 benumbed and shrunken into littleness. 
 The globes have swung for so many aeons. 
 The light has been so long coming. The 
 suns drag into their blaze so many in- 
 choate planets. The orbits cross and 
 recross until only a master of numbers 
 can extricate any one from the many. 
 Thoughts of collision, changes of gravity, 
 ice belts creeping to hot equator, and 
 death congealing life are ever with him 
 who thinks of stellar space. The moon 
 shines peacefully only to those who do 
 not know her as a burned-out cinder. 
 An astronomer must have poise beyond 
 most or go mad with the unrest of the 
 spaces, times, motions, and questions. 
 
 The mountains are more restful. They 
 have limits when highest and broadest. 
 They are not older than our world. Only 
 here and there are the world-building 
 forces at work in them. They sit broadly 
 and firmly for the most part. Their form 
 
does not change in centuries. We find 
 them where our fathers found them. Their 
 streams issue from the same crevices. 
 The clouds, the winds, tribes, peoples, 
 nations, pass by them. They remain. 
 Inappreciably, rain, frost, ice, wear them, 
 but scores of years alone give a measure. 
 
 But, except at the summit, they limit 
 thought as they bound vision. They wall 
 in valleys, engendering a strenuous, nar- 
 row, lonely life. They separate neighbors 
 and nation. Man conquers them by vio- 
 lence. Years, drill, dynamite, are need- 
 ful weapons. To cross one must have 
 terraced road, switchback, loop, and 
 tunnel. There is ozone in their air and 
 wine on their heights. There is pano- 
 rama, but not detail. 
 
 They take us out of the world, sug- 
 gesting nothing of home or human inter- 
 course. 
 
 If lofty, they breed arctic life which 
 climbs in summer only to creep down 
 with longer nights. They know little of 
 spring or autumn. Of themselves they 
 are never soft and gentle. Mold and 
 forest give all they have of these except 
 that granted by the charity of mist. Un- 
 
like the sea, they cannot follow the tint 
 of the sky. They may be ruddy, but only 
 when at evening some eastward cloud 
 transmits the glory of sunset, or when 
 
 " Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day 
 Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops." 
 
 The blessing of the hills is stimulus. 
 They have no charity for wrecks, but 
 leave them frozen and unburied on their 
 breasts. 
 
 A great city is amusing, teaching, as- 
 tonishing in the complication of its life. 
 It draws by the concentration and babel 
 of resource. It depresses all but those 
 whose comfort depends on little things 
 and those whose good is evil. It is 
 only feebly and wastefully reproductive. 
 When a mother, it is a Moloch, destroy- 
 ing more than it creates. It condenses 
 vices as well as powers. It smothers 
 prophets and chokes devotion. 
 
 Here canyons of stone reduce the fir- 
 mament to a strip. Its sea is a vexed, 
 muddy, and sewer-soiled harbor. Its air 
 is sooty, rich in microbes and stenches. 
 Its poetry is never large. The city does 
 not write epics, only verses of society. 
 13 
 
It measures men by their accidents rather 
 than quality. Its gentleman is one who 
 behaves in a conventional way. It breeds 
 people who think it more honorable to 
 live on the accumulations and toil of 
 others than their own. It sacrifices mod- 
 esty to the decollete and slays honest 
 love in the interest of wealth and family; 
 wedding idleness to sloth, the drone to 
 the butterfly, and breeds degenerates. 
 The impost of vice fills its treasury; its 
 courts secrete and condone the sins of 
 the successful and well-placed. 
 
 The thinker by the seaside rests while 
 he ponders. Its salt quickens digestion 
 and invigorates appetite. He sleeps long 
 in the hush or music of the waves. The 
 sun parlor of the beach browns his pallor. 
 The moods of the sea prevent overdoing 
 while commanding him to exercise in its 
 gymnasium. The sea is affluent in sug- 
 gestion to mind and heart. One watches 
 the noiseless incoming of the tide and 
 feels no tumult as one sees its outgo 
 without despair. He w ? ho misses either 
 to-day is sure of both to-morrow. 
 
 Though "the sea's a thief w T hose liquid 
 surge resolves the moon into salt tears," 
 14 
 
it is also a mighty stimulus to hope. If 
 one is moved to rod and line, it is no 
 fished-out or forbidden presence, but free 
 to all with the plenitude of ocean life. 
 No matter how small your bay, or shal- 
 low, the tides creep to it, renew it, cool 
 it, warm it, fructify it. Defeated to- 
 day, you win to-morrow. Your chance 
 is not the gamester's. Your luck not 
 inevitable. 
 
 It is the mother of surprises. A pond 
 or brook is a poor, limited pasture where 
 species and numbers must be few. The 
 sea has a breadth of abundance in num- 
 bers and in kinds. No man can tell on 
 what abundance he may this day draw. 
 While this varies according to the season, 
 each so fringes the others that there is 
 really no close time at all. Nor can one 
 be certain of not meeting with waifs from 
 arctic or torrid belts. Thus at our bay 
 I have found the cod of the Arctic and 
 the barracouta of the Caribbean, and the 
 lumpsucker from I know not where. I 
 fancy this last was brought adhering to 
 the bottom of some ship. But this is 
 not probable, as, unlike the remora, the 
 lumpsucker does not fasten himself by 
 (3) 15 
 
his head, but by a modification of the 
 pectoral and ventral fins, not unlike the 
 leather sucker known to all boys. More 
 than once the fishermen have brought me 
 the edible turtles of the southern seas 
 caught in the pound or sleeping lazily on 
 the surface. 
 
 iG 
 
Ill 
 
 THE DRAWING OF GRANITE BAY 
 Continued 
 
 HILE the element of luck 
 is not wanting to the fish- 
 ermen in our bay, its 
 more abundant and varied 
 life and the change of 
 habitat according to season give an 
 uncertainty and interest the inland an- 
 gler cannot know. 
 
 Yet I agree with Dr. Van Dyke that 
 luck is, with many veteran fishermen, the 
 chief attraction. It is long years since 
 I have tried it myself, but I love to 
 watch them from my window. Such 
 know by the character of the bite and 
 behavior after hooking what fish is on. 
 But few, I fancy, can distinguish be- 
 tween the snap of a chequit or a bluefish, 
 or between that of the blackfish and the 
 eel. But behavior after hooking is very 
 17 
 
unlike. A good eel seems twice as 
 heavy and ten times as lively as a black- 
 fish, which outweighs him. So our fish- 
 ermen have a charming uncertainty as 
 to results, but not as to quantity; that 
 is, uncertainty as to what they will land 
 on any particular day. 
 
 The gift of knowing where to fish 
 seems to be equally shared by men of the 
 shore and of the city. The true fisher- 
 man is as much born as the poet. Thus 
 no one knows better where to go than 
 our railroad president. The rocks and 
 wrecks where blackfish abound, the tidal 
 runs for chequit and bluefish, the mud 
 and sand for flounders and eels, are all 
 open vision to him. Perhaps there is 
 something in the skill by which he 
 resembles the professionals in hat, 
 clothes, boots, and pipe which adds to 
 his luck. Our visitors feel certain of 
 luck when he invites them. Whether 
 his natural gift has been increased by 
 converse with some old master of our 
 shores I know not; but I do know that 
 he can teach the younger natives. 
 
 Nor is he overanxious to impart his 
 secrets. While taking other city men on 
 18 
 
occasion, he commonly goes alone, never 
 without reward. For this last our table 
 is often thankful. 
 
 Alas the changes of years! Once his 
 success would have made me wild to 
 learn where he goes. It might have 
 tempted me in extreme youth to follow 
 him, a maneuver which he well knows 
 how to defeat. 
 
 But years or something else have 
 changed all that. The fishermen come 
 and go, but I go not. Yet I have glad 
 reminiscences of cod, pollock, and halibut 
 on the Bull Ground, off Mount Desert; of 
 bluefish off Edgartown and Montauk ; of 
 porgies in Peconic Bay; of trout in the 
 Adirondacks and in Snake River, Idaho; 
 of mackerel off Seguin; and of striped 
 bass off Newport. On these I live, and 
 if my neighbors at the Post Office, gath- 
 ering at night, are too pronounced in 
 triumph, I am human enough to hum- 
 ble them by these great memories. I 
 know I never was a born fisherman, 
 because the fever has forever cooled. I 
 am no more guilty of the death of fish, 
 though I admit pleasure in the success 
 of those who share their abundance with 
 19 
 
me. I still enjoy the ardor of the small 
 boy, as the picture shows, and some- 
 times point out to these beginners where 
 something may be done. 
 
 So, comfortable in my chair, I watch 
 others when not wondering where that 
 smack, now in sight off the Cow and Calf 
 Rock, came from and whither she is 
 bound. The smacks pass daily east and 
 west; snug, strong, and swift, not always 
 to be distinguished from a yacht except 
 by the knowing. Commonly they carry 
 no foretopsail, but raise a staysail in its 
 place. 
 
 But never do they pass without 
 thought of their peril on the Banks, 
 where I have heard their bells as the 
 liner rushed by in the fog. Nor can I 
 keep out of my mind, even on fairest 
 days, the widows and orphans at 
 Gloucester; not even when the salt cod, 
 dear to all New Englanders, comes 
 creamed or in cakes to our table. 
 Every smack which passes our bay is a 
 survivor and conqueror of fog, gale, 
 collision, iceberg. 
 
 So the sea must be writ down as a spur 
 to the imagination. One cannot sit on 
 
 20 
 

 
 
 %' ^? 
 
 I' 
 
 
 j,JBg * "^ 
 
 « *"' - v i 
 
our rock without thought of all the bays, 
 sounds, estuaries, gulfs, seas, and oceans 
 over which we have sailed, to which our 
 bay is a threshold; sailing such as one has 
 traversed over again; making port once 
 more in Ireland, England, France, Spain, 
 Italy, Japan, Korea, China, and in the 
 Atlantic and Pacific harbors. Thankful 
 am I that land is now under my feet and 
 not the Umbria, in the roaring forties, nor 
 the Oceanic in a typhoon off Formosa, 
 nor the Haitati in the Gulf of Pechili. 
 The home ports suggested by the flags 
 crossing our bay evoke the steeples, 
 minarets, docks, wharves, and anchor- 
 ages which I have seen, ever in thank- 
 fulness for safety after weeks spent over 
 the forces of destruction, compelled, in a 
 modern steamer, to be the conditions of 
 security. 
 
 On that rock the imagination watches 
 the loading and unloading of cargoes. It 
 hears the boatswain's whistle ; the creak- 
 ing of the capstan; the puffing of the 
 steam winch; the shrieking of the siren: 
 the blare of the fog trumpet ; the swish 
 of water by the ship's side; the whistling 
 of the rigging, and the roar of the gale. 
 
 21 
 
It feels the first throb of the engine. 
 It clambers down the iron ladders of the 
 fire room and pays again its shilling for 
 a sight of the stokehole. It squints and 
 peers into the cold night with the officer 
 on the bridge. It clings to the safety 
 line, lurches into the forecastle and sleeps 
 with the sailors. It stands by the quar- 
 termaster, and watches the glass with the 
 captain. It hears the order to shorten 
 sail; screws on the storm doors against 
 the hurricane; starts into agony with the 
 cry of "man overboard!" and stares at 
 the rocket, the life buoy, and the boat. 
 It cheers with a thousand others when 
 the drowning man is rescued, or weeps 
 over the quick and watery burial if he 
 comes not back. It cringes again with 
 the thunder of seas on the deck, and 
 shivers once more in the icy winds 
 swooping down from Fuji Yama. It 
 bears me back to the soft airs I breathed 
 at Girgenti and the marvelous shores of 
 ^Etna and Vesuvius. Once again I see 
 the rocky windings of the coast of 
 Maine, the tidal waves of the Bay of 
 Fundy, the sand dunes of Cape Cod, the 
 gravelly cliffs of Montauk, the light-ship 
 
off Nantucket South Shoals, the sandy 
 mouth of the Rio Grande, the dome of 
 Rainier, the sawteeth of the Olympic 
 Range, the glaciers of the Selkirks, and 
 the forest islands of Puget Sound. 
 
 Thus glancing, leaping, but always 
 home coming, my quickened thought 
 travels the seas I have traversed. Our 
 bay has its close connections with the 
 greatest oceans. All this is mine and 
 I stir not from my rock. 
 
 Just as the sea invades the land 
 through the rivers so does its traffic 
 reach the markets of the interior. 
 Hourly seagoing tugs drag past our 
 harbor long lines of coal barges, no 
 longer the proud and independent ships 
 and steamers they once were, but para- 
 sites of a little but mighty boat. 
 
 Perhaps that empty tow dragging back 
 to New York is the very one I saw last 
 week from Cape Cod's highest light on 
 her way to Maine or nearer States. Her 
 coal is now driving the spindles at Lewis- 
 ton or Gardiner or sawing lumber at 
 Bangor. Perhaps that other long pen- 
 nant of smoke under the hills of Long 
 Island bears power to Boston's electric 
 23 
 
plant and New Hampshire's locomotives. 
 Some tons of that cargo may warm the 
 old homes of Emerson at Concord, Whit- 
 tier at Amesbury, of Lowell and Longfel- 
 low at Cambridge, whirl the spindles on 
 the Merrimac, or warm the gilded codfish 
 which hangs above the legislators of the 
 Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 
 
 Sitting there, imagination does more 
 than scan the surface. Without diving 
 bell or armor it walks the shallows and 
 the deeps. 
 
 There it stumbles on the familiar and 
 the unknown. 
 
 Overhead rush and circle vast schools 
 of menhaden coming from the outer sea, 
 chased by the shark, the herring hog, 
 and the porpoise ; racing from these 
 only to be encompassed by the purse 
 net. 
 
 The diving ducks flash by one's side, 
 rooting among the eelgrass for fiddler 
 crabs and coot clams. One treads on flat- 
 fish and flounders, buried all but the head, 
 and stamps out the sinuous trail of the 
 lamprey and the silver eel. The black- 
 fish bite off the barnacles from old wrecks 
 and the sides of rocks ; the sheepshead 
 24 
 

 crunches the young oysters; the starfish 
 throttles those of larger growth, contend- 
 ing with the drill already boring into their 
 hearts ; the periwinkle limps along on its 
 one horny sole ; the blue crab, point first, 
 paddles to its hiding place in the rocks ; 
 the lobster hooks itself backward to 
 some dead fish, seen by eyes on the end of 
 movable stalks ; the hermit crab drags 
 feebly along, as is the way with degener- 
 ates, its stolen house; the spider crab nips 
 the passing minnow; the king crab creeps 
 for egg laying toward the sun-warmed 
 beach. The weakfish snatches the killie; 
 the bluefish gorges both. The skate, 
 with waving wings, scoops out the soft 
 clam, while his cousin, the stingray, robs 
 him of his catch. A splash above, and 
 the talons of the osprey or the beak of the 
 kingfisher snatch some fish from your 
 side and, struggling into the air, are 
 robbed by the bald eagle. 
 
 There in the ooze one stumbles over 
 rusty cables; the flukes of anchors, speak- 
 ing of some wreck beyond the knowledge 
 of men. Glass bottles, old rubber boots, 
 are freckled with young oysters, the spat 
 setting only on smooth and polished sur- 
 25 
 
face. There too are shadowy spars hon- 
 eycombed by the teredo. If imagination 
 dares to follow the Sound courses, they are 
 known by the long trail of human bones. 
 Swinging in the tidal currents are veils 
 and fringes, of utmost delicacy of green 
 and texture, growing from wreck and 
 rock. Long ribbons of kelp with ruffled 
 edges, bladders and fronds of seaweed, 
 and pods of rockweed float out from their 
 bases with infinite variety of filament and 
 tint. 
 
 Up! out of the depths to fairer sights. 
 The sea is one vast slaughter-house, one 
 eternal war, but evermore the fecund 
 mother of various life. 
 
 Is there anything Shakespeare did not 
 know ? 
 
 " Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks : 
 Ten thousand men that fishes gnawed upon ; 
 Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl, 
 Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels, 
 All scattered in the bottom of the sea." 
 
 — King Richard III, act i, sc. 4. 
 26 
 

 IV 
 
 THE DRAWING OF GRANITE BAY 
 Continued 
 
 ARELY, very rarely, is our bay 
 perfectly calm. It is some- 
 times, and God be praised for 
 it, a sea of azure glass min- 
 gled with fire; of glass, 
 black and star sprinkled. 
 One can tell when wind is 
 coming by the round reflection of 
 the moon changing to a broad bar of 
 light flashing with golden wrinkles. 
 
 I was long puzzled to know why this 
 moonwake always followed as I walked, 
 ever, always between the moon and me. 
 I came to see that no two persons see 
 the same wake unless they both walk in 
 a line drawn through both to the moon, 
 and the rear one should then be tall 
 enough to look over the other's head. 
 Then the eyes of both would rest on the 
 27 
 
same wave facets and the same reflec- 
 tions in them. The moonwake one sees 
 is almost absolutely one's own. 
 
 Our bay is moody; seldom the same, 
 and never unless conditions of tide, 
 wind, cloud, and light are alike. Let 
 the mathematician calculate the prob- 
 ability of this! When do seaside forces 
 concur and coincide ? Some forces 
 change her face in ways our wisest fail 
 to understand. 
 
 From our perch on the rock we often 
 see a belt, miles long, of tiny waves, but 
 only a few yards wide, and very differ- 
 ent in aspect from the rip made by 
 schools of fish. This last is eagerly 
 looked for by the man at the masthead 
 of the purse net steamer. It will often 
 be perfectly calm on each side of this 
 ripple. 
 
 Again we see belts of glassy calm curv- 
 ing out from the Cut and extending a mile 
 seaward with good breezes on either side. 
 Neither the Fisherman, the Giant, nor the 
 Mystery of whom I write later could ever 
 give any reason for these. If they did 
 not know, who shall? The Long Captain, 
 who knows much and does not enjoy 
 28 
 
being ignorant of anything, has a theory, 
 but it is not wholly convincing to all, 
 not being according to all the observed 
 facts. 
 
 We are certain of but one thing con- 
 cerning these streaks. They prophesy a 
 change of wind. 
 
 Long ago I came to believe with the 
 Princess of Thule in the natural amiability 
 of the sea. That best of William Black's 
 stories is not at this writing accessible 
 to me. But I am sure she therein says: 
 " The sea would not hurt anybody if the 
 wind would let it alone." 
 
 From every quarter the wind ruffles 
 her, roils her, whips her, and threshes the 
 rocks with her. Without the wind she is 
 utterly placid, rising and falling silently 
 without so much as lapping the rocks. 
 
 Surely it is scandalous that the poets 
 conspire to abuse the sea. When did it 
 roll of its own accord ? What rage of its 
 own ever made the sea deaf, as King 
 Richard is made to say, adding to this 
 demeaning adjective the others, "rough 
 and rude." The sea would never roll a 
 wave if moon and wind would keep 
 hands off! 
 
 29 
 
At our bay the northwest wind handles 
 the meanest whip. Its strokes raise 
 welts like the Russian knout. It howls 
 down on us in puffs and squalls of sur- 
 prises and aggravations. Every moment 
 it seems as if failing and yet holds on for 
 three days ! In summer it shoots out 
 from a thunder cloud and in winter from 
 the white haze of snow squalls. This is 
 the wind which rattles our blinds, slams 
 our doors, upsets careless craft, and 
 compels tugs and schooners to salaam to 
 it until they have time to measure it. 
 
 From our perch we see its black patches 
 race over the waves and can follow them 
 until they careen a boat a mile away. 
 Yet the sailor cannot see them except as 
 they raise the headline of a squall. If 
 he is a true sailor, his mainsheet is never 
 fast while this vixen blows. 
 
 It is a vexatious wind, summer and win- 
 ter, and has a chill within. With its first 
 blast the mercury climbs down from 8o° 
 to 6o° in summer, and in winter from 6o° 
 to zero. In Texas Januarys, I have seen 
 her free citizens shirt sleeved and chair 
 tilted in summer ease at nine of the morn- 
 ing, and two hours later have found the 
 30 
 
wet road frozen. I like not this wind. 
 It tunes nerves to discords. All slack- 
 ened filaments are screwed up beyond 
 any possibility of concert pitch, so that 
 friends doubt friendship and consorts 
 pray for forbearance. All this in a sin- 
 gle hour. 
 
 The east winds are of a different tem- 
 per. Our captains tell this in their max- 
 im, "Run with the first of an easter and 
 the last of a nor'wester." The winds 
 from the east begin gently. Only once 
 in many years have I known a squall 
 from the east. That day the rocks were 
 crowded with people. Some women were 
 on Flat Rock, where they had no business 
 to be, for it is under four feet of water at 
 high tide. Two men past seventy were 
 on Scotch Cap. A small cloud rose in 
 the southeast, and out of this came a two 
 hours' gale of full force from its first mo- 
 ment. The older baymen saw the cloud 
 and came inside. But the newcomers 
 stayed out. Our oldest captain saved the 
 women with difficulty and drove before 
 the wind to safety. His son went out in 
 his launch into the boiling sea, got under 
 the lee of Scotch Cap, pulled the old men 
 (4) 3i 
 
on board with a rope, and brought men 
 and boat back. No other craft in the 
 bay could have done it. 
 
 Yet, in general, the east winds begin 
 mildly, gain force each hour, and roar 
 from twelve hours to three days; expiring 
 with a mighty gust into almost painful 
 quiet. 
 
 Except when mingled with the south 
 wind our boats have no fear of these at 
 Granite Bay. The long wooded point 
 forming the eastern boundary is a great 
 shelter. No winds have such weight and 
 force for things on land ; shaking our 
 houses; breaking down and blowing over 
 trees; whistling, screaming, and shrieking 
 around our corners; and bending our 
 hemlocks until their roots lift and lower 
 the ground in which they grow. I have 
 lost two great hemlocks by this process. 
 They were not overturned, but all the 
 finer root fibers were broken and they 
 died of anaemia. 
 
 Nor are we without experience of 
 mightier winds than these. 
 
 Three times in sixteen years and twice 
 in one week West India hurricanes 
 swooped down, and for twelve hours kept 
 32 
 
everyone awake and anxious. The wind 
 came strongly from the northeast, hauled 
 to the east and then to the southeast. 
 With it came the highest tide and heavi- 
 est sea ever known. When it passed the 
 sea wall was undermined, the houses on 
 the beach were drenched with water, and 
 where not lifted and turned about the 
 earth beneath them was washed out; the 
 lawns covered with sand. One boat after 
 another was smashed to kindling wood 
 against the rocks. In the Cut the yachts 
 and launches went ashore, men risking 
 their lives to save them. The ribs of the 
 Winnie may still be seen at low tide half 
 buried in the mud below the Fisherman's 
 house. On land no one could make 
 headway against the wind except by dodg- 
 ing from shelter to shelter. Outbuildings 
 lay on their sides and chimneys were lev- 
 eled to the roof. No man could hear his 
 neighbor in the roar of wind and sea. 
 Peninsulas became islands at high water 
 and hollows became lakes. 
 
 It is after such blows that we are re- 
 warded by some of our most beautiful 
 sights. During such weather the schoon- 
 ers hurry behind the breakwater at Old- 
 
 33 
 
port. The moment the glass begins to 
 rise and the wind shifts to the north- 
 west out they come in glorious proces- 
 sion in full sail and pass our bay. Thus 
 I have counted a hundred sail in close 
 order as of one command, but soon string- 
 ing out by difference of speed into a line 
 of twenty miles. This is only equaled 
 during the summer cruise of the New 
 York Yacht Club. It passes in August 
 with a hundred white wings and the finest 
 fleet of steam yachts in the world. In the 
 one case commerce masses her forces, in 
 the other pleasure. In the one fleet as 
 little is done for the comfort'of the sailor 
 as possible. In the other everything. 
 
 When will it be that the men who 
 dare for commerce and are the bonds of 
 civilization will be as well housed, as 
 well fed, and as honored as the servants 
 of pleasure ? 
 
 The east winds bring us the beauty of 
 fog and mist. 
 
 Sometimes an opaque wall shuts the 
 whole world out so that we lose our- 
 selves in it to find our nearest neigh- 
 bor. More often it softens all outlines, 
 limits distance, turns our thoughts inward 
 34 
 
and helps us in letting the great world 
 go by. 
 
 I know nothing more beautiful than 
 these fog effects. Often when it breaks 
 a single topsail will catch the sun, while 
 hull and other sails are invisible. Again 
 it will open to reveal a single vessel in a 
 circle of sunlit sea. It hides the black 
 and forbidding reefs, but lets the trees 
 stand out growing from a cushion of 
 vapor. Its suggestions are dismal only 
 when, in the night, it is condensed by the 
 cool roof and drizzles and drips from the 
 eaves. Then we hear the wail of the 
 siren on New Reef and the scream of 
 the horn on Faulkner's. The hoarse boom 
 of the Sound steamers mingles with these. 
 Safe in our beds, we who Know the chief 
 peril of the sea know the pilots are strain- 
 ing to catch the oncoming lights, whether 
 red or green, and the men at the watch 
 stations as eager and as anxious against 
 the bowsprit of some schooner as the bow 
 of some steamer. 
 
 35 
 
THE DRAWING OF GRANITE KAY 
 Cont in ue d 
 
 GAIN the fog lies low 
 so that all is clear 
 and blue above and 
 all gray and damp 
 beneath. Then we 
 see men at mastheads 
 watching for other mastheads, 
 and giving courses to the helms- 
 men by waving of right hand or left, 
 or by megaphone if the fog be too 
 dense. Out of a sea of fog these rise ; 
 no lower sail or hull in sight. It is 
 never more beautiful than when the 
 west wind rolls it over and sweeps it 
 away, strip by strip, revealing in turn 
 the bay, the islands, and the open sea. 
 
 Nothing is comparable to this move- 
 ment of the fog except the sweep of our 
 thunderstorms. We can see them over 
 the woods long before they come. In- 
 deed, the two peaks near Oldport divide 
 them as often as permitting them to 
 36 
 
reach us, one half moving southward 
 over Long Island, the other northward 
 to follow the Connecticut valley. The 
 thunderstorms are our active intense and 
 brief pictures; shot with lightning, tre- 
 mendously vocal, more sublime if not 
 more beautiful than other storms. They 
 are first promised by white domes of 
 cloud with slate color below, deepening 
 at the lowest to black. When greenish 
 black we get ready for dangerous wind 
 and expect severe lightning and hail. 
 The edge of the coming storm is sharp. 
 I have seen it rain at my barn while the 
 house was in bright sunshine. 
 
 But generally a rolling and irregular 
 cloud wrack swiftly heralds the wind. 
 If any white scud precedes it, we know 
 that it will be a dangerous squall. As 
 the black cloud line advances the blue of 
 the sea is blackened into wrinkled ink. 
 The air is heavy with rolling mist and 
 then driving rain. The lightning has 
 rarely struck near us. In twenty years 
 but twice in the Park. A tall ash and 
 equally tall pine show the lightning seam 
 on the northern side. On the lower land 
 of the beach it split a great elm from top 
 
 37 
 
to root. It has never within living mem- 
 ory seriously damaged house or occupant. 
 
 On one or two occasions I have used 
 the extremely favorable conditions to 
 photograph the lightning flash. After 
 the golden light shows in the west with 
 patches of blue the rear guard of tumul- 
 tuous vapor rushes by, leaving us in 
 sunlight, while all to the eastward is still 
 black with the storm. We are then able 
 to study with pleasure its rumbling and 
 rolling retreat. At dusk the camera is 
 put out facing the black wall of cloud 
 down which the lightning still shoots. 
 One negative shows two parallel streaks 
 of lightning with branches like twin trees 
 reversed. These white lines of light are 
 mimicked by black lines of the same 
 ramifying quality, but not sufficiently ex- 
 act copies to convince us that they are 
 shadows of the lightning on the clouds 
 behind. What these are I do not know, 
 nor do I recall any study of them by 
 electricians. But the black lines are 
 there. 
 
 During the march of these storms we 
 measure their probable force by the be- 
 havior of the vessels to the south and 
 38 
 
east. If they keep on their way in full 
 sail, we know that only a mild storm is 
 coming. When they take in their jibs 
 and head up to the wind we expect a 
 moderate squall. But when they let 
 everything down with a run, and anchor, 
 we are all solemn until the gust is past. 
 The men of the sea seem never to be 
 mistaken in their measurement of the en- 
 ergy of the storm. 
 
 Scientific men are in general very skep- 
 tical as to the moon's influence over the 
 weather. But it is now admitted that in 
 Long Island Sound, on the Connecticut 
 shore especially, the weather is greatly 
 influenced by the moon, and apparently to 
 a greater extent than elsewhere. No one 
 of our old salts can be made to believe to 
 the contrary. They say, "We shall have 
 no good weather until the moon quar- 
 ters," and this is confirmed by my own 
 observations. If bad weather comes on 
 shortly after the new moon, it stays with 
 us until the first quarter. When a storm 
 comes on the full moon it seems to have 
 difficulty in gathering its forces. It will 
 be violent thirty miles inland, but mod- 
 erate and often without rain at the shore. 
 
 39 
 
Again and again it has at the full moon 
 snowed all day, cleared when the moon 
 came up, and snowed the next day, 
 and this for three or four days together. 
 "When all men admit the influence of the 
 moon on the tides it does not seem 
 unreasonable that, either by direct influ- 
 ence or through the vast movement of 
 the tides, the weather should be affected. 
 There is a great difference in the qual- 
 ity and effect of the southwest wind on 
 occasion. Nor does it seem to depend 
 for these variations of effect on the 
 strength of that wind. For hours it will 
 blow with increasing force under a clear 
 sky, or at most with light cumulus 
 clouds, locally known as "gulf clouds." 
 Another day, when of equal force, it 
 brings with it a semidiaphanous bluish 
 haze, through w T hich, until the declining 
 sun, nothing at any distance is visible. 
 The horizontal rays near sunset gild and 
 penetrate this haze until, if it be not an 
 aid to vision, it is no longer an obstruc- 
 tion. Under these conditions w r e have 
 our finest twilights, preceded by ruddy 
 alpglow tints on the distant sails, the 
 gilding of all our eastward rocks so 
 4 o 
 
brightly that they seem banks and bil- 
 lows of old gold. 
 
 For the finest wave effects we look to 
 the south wind, which has full play over a 
 reach of twenty-two miles, entering our 
 bay unbroken by bar or reef. Mostly it 
 is so gentle that it raises only delicate 
 wrinkles. Sometimes it is a " whole sail 
 breeze," much loved for its steadiness by 
 our boatmen. 
 
 Five or six times a year, however, it is 
 very much something else, and lifts a surf 
 which would honor an ocean beach. It 
 has blown with such weight that the cot- 
 tager on the beach could not close his 
 door single-handed ; and if rain comes 
 with it, it is sure to trouble the housewife 
 with the water driven under doors and 
 windows. 
 
 While at high tide this south wind is 
 in some respects the least spectacular; it 
 is in other respects the most so. All our 
 rocks and cliffs are extended in a north 
 and south line, the southern end of 
 rock and cliff being perpendicular, as the 
 east face always is. The south wind 
 smashes the sea against these, throws it 
 high into the air, and carries it far inland. 
 41 
 
The first dash is in effect like that of a 
 submarine explosion, a green and white 
 dome; the second is of a like tinted 
 cloud curving over the rock and driving 
 inland, thinning, falling, vanishing. On 
 the opposite side of the bay between two 
 prongs of Church Point a granite cliff 
 thirty feet high runs east and west. It 
 is hidden from us by one of these wooded 
 prongs. When the south wind does its 
 best a vast fountain plays there. The 
 emerald foam leaps high above the trees 
 and sweeps over their tops. 
 
 It is then, too, that the south end of 
 Lovers' Island, wonderfully like the ram 
 of an ironclad, splits the surf into di- 
 verging rollers, which curve over and 
 rush on to strike Stanley Rock and leap 
 over into the little harbor behind. 
 
 Thrilling as all this is it is mostly 
 unwelcome to the beach folk. The 
 boats at the hauling lines are swamped, 
 smashed against the sea wall, and their 
 fragments buried in sand; and they count 
 themselves fortunate if some greater wave 
 does not leap over the wall, wash out 
 their posts undermine their foundations, 
 and fill the cellars with brine and sand. 
 42 
 
The struggle to save the boats well 
 over, such a gale brings out a crowd in 
 mackintoshes and rubber boots to watch 
 the maddest leaping of water I know, 
 except that of the Whirlpool Rapids of 
 Niagara. The sea wall runs east and 
 west at right angles to the general trend 
 of the coast, as do many small faces of 
 rock on both sides of the bay. Thus the 
 inward sweep of the surf is diverted 
 toward the middle of the bay, massing 
 itself there. It first strikes Half Tide 
 Rock, over which it lifts itself at full 
 tide in a great billow. Then, no obstruc- 
 tion in its way, it hurls its full force 
 against the sea wall once more, there 
 leaping upward and sometimes over the 
 roofs of the houses. 
 
 At low tide, as the bay is shallow, the 
 waves begin to break far out and roar 
 themselves in, white-crested, foaming, 
 and, to the eye, higher than at full tide. 
 They make up then in "the noise of 
 many waters " what they lack in real 
 power. The friction on the bottom so 
 diminishes their energy that they run 
 languidly up the sands, but the noise is 
 tenfold that at high tide. 
 
 43 
 
When the turmoil is over the beach is 
 an interesting but sorry sight. Wind- 
 rows of rockweed and eelgrass hide the 
 sand. Tons of small shells are en- 
 veloped therein. • One may then find in 
 this and in the crevices and hollows of 
 the rocks the beautiful silver and gold 
 shells, so frail that it would seem they 
 must have been ground to powder. Our 
 maidens then seek them, and on rainy days 
 string them into curtains and portieres. 
 
 Now is the time to search for the treas- 
 ures of the sea. I have found many times 
 the bony plates of the sturgeon, some of 
 the rarer starfish, and a flat coral-like disk 
 with a star on the upper side, evidently 
 a cousin of the echinus and starfish, as 
 they are cousins of each other. Its name 
 is, in common speech, "sand dollar;" in 
 science, Echinarachnius panna. There 
 one may often find the beautiful and per- 
 fect shells of king crabs, so small and 
 delicate that one is amazed that they sur- 
 vive the tumult of the "many sounding 
 sea." It is ever a puzzle that many such 
 come in unbroken, while larger shells and 
 the stronger claws of crab and lobster 
 are chafed, worn, and broken. The still 
 
 44 
 
harder clam and oyster shells are almost 
 always fragmentary, while millions of the 
 little coot clam shells, heavier by far 
 than the gold and silver shells, lie nearer 
 shore in rows by themselves. Almost 
 all these have a minute round hole 
 directly over the spot where the strong 
 closing muscle of the clam is attached, 
 showing the deadly accuracy of the 
 borer, whose drill kills so surely. 
 
 Broken oars, boat seats, trunks of trees, 
 boards, and planks lie up against the sea 
 wall, telling in part their own history. 
 If riddled by the teredo and spotted with 
 oyster spat, they floated long, sank to 
 the bottom, weighted down by the lime 
 or thin layer of shell with which the 
 teredo lines its circular tunnel through 
 the wood. Such have been driven along 
 the bottom to the shores. But if clean, 
 they are part of some deckload of lum- 
 ber from Maine or the Provinces. Such 
 come in smoothed and even polished by 
 the sand in which they have been washed 
 and rolled. 
 
 This kind of driftwood does not burn 
 with the beautiful colors shown by an- 
 other kind which reaches us more rarely. 
 
 45 
 
These flames are due to the salts of iron 
 and copper from vessels fastened by these 
 metals. 
 
 The cottagers are saved the trouble of 
 cleaning the beach after a storm. The 
 thrift of the families near by brings them 
 quickly down to rake up and carry away 
 the great masses of seaweed and eel- 
 grass, which they use as direct fertilizers 
 or as absorbents. 
 
 This brings to mind one of the most 
 picturesque of our autumn sights. In 
 Connecticut no one can own land below 
 high- water mark except by grant from the 
 State. Below this well-defined line all is 
 common property. So that if your rocks 
 are rich in rockweed, a valued fertilizer, 
 you do not own a spray of it below 
 high-water mark where little or none 
 ever grows. Few of the cottagers wish 
 it, as it has a vile odor when decaying. 
 The shore people gather it after the cot- 
 tagers are gone. These follow the coast 
 rocks in large sharpies, hooking off the 
 weed and bringing it ashore in boats 
 loaded so deeply that they have but two 
 or three inches of freeboard. 
 4 6 
 

 
 
 
 r.' ... f ,; 
 
 
 
 aMUl^r 
 
 i 
 
VI 
 
 THE DRAWING OF GRANITE BAY 
 Co?itinttei 
 
 HE time for gathering rock- 
 weed is also the time for 
 shooting ducks, a diversion 
 of little pleasure or profit, 
 I fancy, to most, but very fascinating to 
 some and not without its dangers. For 
 several winters past one or two have lost 
 their lives off our bay by the swamping 
 of their boats. Some have been driven 
 off shore by the sudden and cruel north- 
 west wind and have been found frozen 
 to death under the sand hills of Long 
 Island. 
 
 It is true that occasionally a few black 
 ducks or even mallards are found in the 
 acres of coots and oldwives which lie off 
 the bay and come into shoal water to 
 dive for coot clams. Coots and oldwives 
 (5) 47 
 
have the flavor of decaying fish. Yet 
 these are eagerly pursued, and from 
 November to Apri. 1 the guns are banging 
 seaward from dawn to dusk. Sometimes 
 a line of boats is stretched across the 
 whole width of the bay. This is murder- 
 ous, for few ducks can pass alive the line 
 of fifty guns. 
 
 This, however, depends on whether the 
 shore folk have made the line. Almost 
 always some of the boats are manned by 
 those whose confidence is greater than 
 their skill. Not all who are good at a 
 target can hit a duck moving fifty miles 
 an hour. This is below their highest 
 speed. I have seen a flock of ducks in 
 the Hudson River keep pace with and even 
 pass the swiftest express trains. I recall 
 another measure of their speed. Many 
 years ago I spent a night with a keeper 
 in the lantern of the lofty Shinnecock 
 light, on the south Long Island coast. A 
 duck struck the thick plate glass on the 
 east side, cracked it badly, and lay out- 
 side on the platform a shapeless pulp 
 of flesh and feathers. 
 
 These clucks know their friends. No 
 shot is fired from my place with my con- 
 48 
 
sent. Hence the birds and squirrels fre- 
 quent it as they do my neighbor's grounds, 
 where they are as welcome. The sea 
 birds swim near our rocks fearlessly, but 
 keep away from other points. Early in 
 the morning they are sometimes within 
 fifty feet of the shore. It is a delight to 
 watch these masters of all weather, preen- 
 ing, stretching, and diving, and some- 
 times excitedly chattering ; for these wild 
 ducks do not quack, but have a far more 
 musical note, unlike any other birds I 
 know. 
 
 Appearing in October in small flocks, 
 they increase in numbers until January 
 and remain until May. They do not ap- 
 pear until the sailboats and launches are 
 housed ashore, and go when the boats 
 are launched again. Anyone who writes 
 the truth as to their numbers will be 
 thought imaginative by all who do not 
 know the facts. How many are there in 
 that patch I often see stretching over the 
 five miles from the Beacon to the Old 
 Light ? 
 
 Once I saw the departure for the sum- 
 mer of this acreage of ducks. For two 
 days, as if by understanding, they gath- 
 
 49 
 
ered off our bay. The numbers hourly 
 increased. The noise was incessant and 
 worrying. Suddenly there rose from the 
 center a black and white cone, point up- 
 ward, which widened at the base as those 
 farther from the center took wing. When 
 it had risen to perhaps a thousand feet 
 the point of the cone headed north- 
 west followed by .a V-shaped cloud, and 
 the summer saw them no more. Yet a 
 very few linger in out-of-the-way coves 
 all the season and are known as "pen- 
 sioners." They have been wounded be- 
 yond flight, but are still able to dive. 
 The verdant fancy they can be caught, 
 and chase them until they learn some- 
 thing. I was incredulous of what I was 
 told, namely, that ducks and loons learn 
 to dive at the flash of a gun and are out 
 of the way before the shot arrive. But 
 no man can doubt it who watches the 
 pensioners. They survive thus until em- 
 boldened by the coming of the flocks in 
 autumn and then may meet their fate. 
 
 The loon, or great northern diver, is 
 a frequent visitor, and more often in sum- 
 mer than in winter ; and, when seen, is 
 generally in the company of a pensioner. 
 50 
 
His jet black head and neck, his size, 
 and grayish body, make a good mark, if 
 one has skill to hit him. But I know no 
 one who has killed one in all these years 
 I have lived at the bay. If done, he must 
 be fired at from ambush. He dives so 
 quickly that he is gone before one sees 
 his going. 
 
 This bird is so wild that I have 
 never been able to explain the following 
 incident: 
 
 One was sunning himself on an accessi- 
 ble rock near my house. I went toward 
 him and touched his back before he slid 
 from the rock. He could both fly and 
 dive and was no pensioner. 
 
 Strange to say the loon is often caught 
 both alive and dead in the fish pound. 
 They paddle so close to the long fence 
 of net that there is not space to wind- 
 ward (they always rise toward the wind) 
 for them to take wing, so they paddle on, 
 following the line of net until within the 
 final labyrinth from which they can nei- 
 ther fly nor dive. As often as taken alive, 
 one must expect in handling them a 
 wound from that sharp bill. They are 
 found drowned, caught in the net by the 
 Si 
 
head when diving after some inclosed 
 fish or in the effort to escape. What 
 there is about our bay which repels hi 
 summer the sea gulls I do not know, 
 They abound all summer in the Oldport 
 Harbor, and in winter are abundant with 
 us. They are graceful but unmusical 
 neighbors, being never so noisy as just 
 before a storm. It may be that, following 
 human example, they only work for their 
 living when they must. Oldport Harbor 
 in summer is crowded with steamers, 
 schooners, and yachts, whose refuse they 
 fight for. They follow the steamers 
 closely, and passengers amuse them- 
 selves by tossing food to them. In win- 
 ter, however, vessels are few, and I sup- 
 pose they then visit our bay to pick up 
 shellfish on the beaches. With them ap- 
 pears an occasional puffin, and even rarer 
 migrant birds, such as the great snowy 
 owl, the snow bunting, and I have even 
 heard of auks. Work has never yet per- 
 mitted me to spend a winter there. It 
 is very probable that, if 1 could, I should 
 see other species which, having neither 
 commercial nor scientific interest to the 
 shore folk, are unnoticed by them. 
 52 
 
If the good God should ever give me 
 before the great transition comes the lit- 
 tle quiet in old age which I ask at His 
 hands, I may know more of these than I 
 do now. Often amid the Southern pines 
 and oaks, where the winter is almost 
 voiceless except for the sough of the 
 pine needles, the rattle of the brown oak 
 leaves, and the roaring of the wind, but 
 where the sun and warmth are very wel- 
 come, the longing to know my unknown 
 Northern winter neighbors becomes im- 
 perious. The more masterful voice of 
 duty has thus far kept me from the 
 quest. 
 
 S3 
 
VII 
 
 MENTAL CONTENTS OF AN EGG 
 
 WAS while summering 
 near Granite Bay, but not 
 yet knowing the joy of 
 that spot, that I under- 
 took to determine how 
 much mind may be locked 
 up in an egg. As I even- 
 tually selected a gull's egg 
 for this task, I embody 
 here the conclusions 
 reached then and formerly printed, con- 
 cerning the gulls, whose better acquaint- 
 ance has been since made at the bay. 
 
 It promised little to choose the egg of 
 any native or domestic bird. Only that 
 w T hich could be absolutely isolated from 
 its kind, and which could thus learn noth- 
 ing from imitation or example, could 
 serve the purpose. 
 
 Tor this reason I hit upon a sea gull. 
 
 54 
 
 
 ^P : 
 
 |ftjp 
 
 =Kssl 
 
 ■■■■^*^3r T 
 
 wSsfn 
 
 
 k^fil 
 
 M,i*>, — "O 
 
 §&# c 1 
 
It was very possible that an egg just 
 hatching might be found in Great Gull 
 Island, at the head of the Sound, or on 
 No Man's Land or Tuckernuck. Of this 
 I could not be sure. Recalling an ex- 
 perience in Maine in my youth, I went 
 there certain to find what I wanted. 
 
 Mount Desert was known to me when 
 the post office at Bar Harbor was in a 
 cigar box in a country store, and before 
 any of the modern life of that resort. 
 Nor were the outlying islands unknown. 
 Between two of them lay the "Bull 
 Ground," the best spot for cod, haddock, 
 and halibut known to local fishermen. 
 There I had persuaded myself that I was 
 following apostolic example. It is easy 
 to do that when inclination helps and 
 when luck is good. I do not know if my 
 friends and pilots of those days, Captain 
 John Quincy Adams Freeman and Cap- 
 tain Adoniram Judson Robinson, still live. 
 I would like to see them again, and mean 
 to talk it all over in the old schoolhouse 
 where, young then, we had much inter- 
 esting converse. Would they know me at 
 sight now, or I them ? Perhaps it is 
 better I should not go. 
 
 55 
 
With one of these, in the early sixties, 
 I landed on outer Duck Island and found 
 the outer ledges covered with gulls' nests, 
 from which rose a screaming and snowy 
 cloud of angry birds. Here I found in 
 the bank of earth above the ledges the 
 burrows of the stormy petrel, the mother 
 bird so brave that she would not leave 
 her eggs when the burrow was opened. 
 
 Thither I went in the third week of a 
 certain July, in the eighties, mentioning 
 this date that a measure of time for the 
 amazing growth of the gull may be in 
 the reader's mind. 
 
 The eggs were so closely placed that 
 it was difficult not to step on them. At 
 length I found one in which the chick 
 was just breaking through. He was 
 transferred to an Indian basket, helped 
 into the world, and was immediately car- 
 ried to the main island and thence by rail 
 to our summer home — three hundred 
 miles distant from his birthplace, and six 
 miles from the sea. 
 
 The cotton wool on which he lay was 
 
 vastly more comfortable than the rough 
 
 sticks against which this downy ball 
 
 would have rested had he not been ex- 
 
 56 
 
iled, He was not larger than a Brahma 
 chick of one day ; was covered wholly, 
 except his lower legs and bill, with ex- 
 quisitely soft down ; had bright blue 
 eyes, a long curved bill, and delicately 
 webbed feet. His color was exactly that 
 of the egg, and this was so much the 
 color of the rock on which it lay that, if 
 there had not been others, it could have 
 been mistaken for a waterworn pebble. 
 For months he invariably sat with his 
 breast against something gray ; never 
 once against anything contrasting with 
 his own tint. 
 
 From his capture until his death, more 
 than a year after, he did not see or hear one 
 of his kind. His appetite developed the 
 moment he was out of the shell, and there 
 was no waiting for strength. On steamer 
 and train he was quiet as to voice, but 
 alert even to liveliness on his wonderfully 
 slim legs. He took a bath in the state- 
 room basin, rapturously flirting the water 
 over himself and preening his down as if 
 he were a year old. 
 
 During the journey of three days he ate 
 three times his weight of fish. It seemed 
 as if his lower jaw must unlock, so large 
 
 57 
 
were the pieces swallowed — beyond any 
 visible capacity of throat. 
 
 A small pond and outgo of brook gave 
 opportunity at our home for his food 
 and his exercise. From the first he was 
 utterly without fear of us or, indeed, of 
 anything. He walked on the grass as if 
 civilization had always been familiar. 
 Anyone could pick him up, and he fol- 
 lowed us about, and came when he was 
 called by his name, Jumbo. 
 
 He jumped the house steps, investi- 
 gated the kitchen, and charged on the 
 house cat. He clung to the children, 
 played with them, and was effusive and 
 annoying in his affection. When the girls 
 stretched out on the grass he nestled 
 against their necks ; when they dug angle 
 worms he dragged his share from their 
 holes. He sometimes walked with me to 
 the market, a pleasure I was soon obliged 
 to forbid on account of the mob of small 
 boys he attracted, and because he stole 
 every scrap of meat within his reach. 
 
 No living creature except a dragon 
 
 fly could match him in voracity. The 
 
 children fished for him, and in twelve days 
 
 he ate one hundred and twenty roach of 
 
 58 
 
three inches in length. In one day he de- 
 voured sixteen roach, two frogs, and a 
 number of minnows. This was followed 
 by two days of apparent indigestion. On 
 the third day he was tempted with soft 
 clams, of which he ate seventeen promptly, 
 a peck lasting him only two days. As 
 he grew his appetite became more vari- 
 able, but on occasion, when weighing 
 little more than a pound, he would snatch 
 and swallow a half pound of meat in a 
 minute by the watch. 
 
 Instinctive knowledge of proper food 
 he had from his first day. Fresh fish, 
 lobster, clams, and oysters were always 
 welcome and only slightly preferred to 
 fresh meat. He was expert in catching 
 house flies. Grasshoppers, crickets, and 
 butterflies met his entire approval, but 
 never would he touch salt or tainted 
 meat. A live mouse was let loose near 
 him without thought of him. No cat 
 could have caught it more quickly. He 
 tossed it up, caught it by the head, 
 crushed it by passing its length through 
 his bill. Dropping it accidentally, he 
 took it up by the tail, dipped it in the 
 brook, and then swallowed it. 
 
 59 
 
Testing him as to vegetable food, it 
 was found that grapes and watermelon 
 were welcome. Fancying that this might 
 be due to their ruddy color, I tried him 
 with boiled red beet. This he promptly 
 rejected. 
 
 From the first he had a habit of danc- 
 ing in a most comical manner. Unfolding 
 his featherless wings, he hopped up and 
 down for minutes together. The devel- 
 opment of his wing feathers solved this 
 mystery. He was trying to fly. After 
 his wings were grown he always turned 
 toward the wind, leaping up until he felt 
 the current lifting him. He was an un- 
 conscious aeroplane. In this his habit 
 was the same as that of the wild duck. 
 
 For a long time he had but one note, 
 an exceedingly plaintive piping. Without 
 any possible help from his kind he de- 
 veloped two others. One was a laugh, a 
 real ha-ha-ha. This was the first knowl- 
 edge I had as to his species. He was a 
 Larus Ridibundus, or laughing gull. The 
 other note came under ludicrous condi- 
 tions. He picked up the children's pet 
 kitten by the tail and ran round the yard 
 with it, the kitten squealing and scratch- 
 60 
 
ing vigorously. The gull dropped it, 
 threw back his head and brayed pro- 
 digiously, a miracle of noise from so 
 small a source. Later on a friendship 
 sprang up between the two, and they often 
 of their own will nested side by side in the 
 same box. 
 
 During the day Jumbo carried his head 
 down and his neck extended, with a sub- 
 dued aspect, but as evening came on he 
 erected his head and walked proudly with 
 a strutting gait. I never detected the 
 reason for this, but noted that when he 
 saw us at the window he instantly re- 
 sumed his meek bearing, and kept up his 
 plaintive piping while we were in sight. 
 During the day he seldom tried his wings, 
 but was constantly trying them as the 
 day declined. This was probably the 
 only manifestation of the hovering in- 
 stinct possible under his conditions. 
 
 This brings to mind some of his most 
 interesting characteristics. After our re- 
 moval to our city home I had constructed 
 a pool in the rear yard in order to con- 
 tinue the study of his swimming instincts. 
 Up to this time he feared the water, and 
 paddled out when put in if he could not 
 61 
 
feel bottom beneath him. When his 
 tank was filled and he was thrust in he 
 was terrified, but only for a day. His de- 
 light in the water became immense. He 
 swam excitedly about, bobbing his head, 
 fluttering his wings, bathing thoroughly, 
 and then went to some sunny spot and 
 spent an hour at his toilet. He dressed 
 his feathers in a definite order. After 
 the bath he was always frolicsome. For 
 a long time he had a corncob at one end 
 of the yard and a cotton spool at the 
 other. For minutes together he would 
 throw one or the other into the air, catch 
 it and run ha-ha-ing about the yard. 
 Sometimes he dropped the cob into the 
 pool, went to a distance, flew to the cob 
 and bore it away as older gulls do fish. 
 In the same manner he snatched a clothes- 
 pin from the maid and ran around laugh- 
 ing while she chased him to no purpose. 
 
 I am sorry to be compelled to now de- 
 scribe some equally interesting but less 
 delightful qualities. Wondering if he had 
 some of the less charming human emo- 
 tions, I determined to test this by intro- 
 ducing to his acquaintance and premises 
 a gorgeously colored mallard duck. This 
 62 
 
was no sooner on his feet than the gull 
 had him by the head and led him around 
 as if assisting him to find a spot from 
 which he might depart. Failing in this, 
 Jumbo ceased to notice him except as to 
 bristling his feathers when the drake 
 came near. The pool was never large 
 enough for both at the same time. The 
 gull w T ould not permit the drake to -eat 
 the corn set out for him until some min- 
 utes had passed, though he never tried 
 to eat it himself or carry it away. 
 
 My pet, alas, had other human traits. 
 I placed a mirror against a fence where 
 he could see his own image. Instantly 
 his feathers bristled and he charged the 
 mirror furiously again and again. Meet- 
 ing with nothing to bite, he went behind 
 the mirror. Finding nothing there, he 
 walked away and could never be inter- 
 ested in his own reflection afterward. He 
 came to have a great aversion for a small 
 rubber tube which fed his pool, and which 
 writhed and twisted under the water pres- 
 sure. He fought this tube as if some live 
 thing until it was taken away. 
 
 I am sorry to say that his moral nature 
 failed as his size increased. He utterly 
 (6) 6 3 
 
ceased to be the sweet and playful pet of 
 his younger days. Whether it was innate 
 depravity coming to light or the demoral- 
 izing effect of a severe winter I do not 
 know. 
 
 But certain it is that the more wicked 
 he became, the more interesting he was. 
 Is it true, as some novelists say, that a 
 spice of wickedness is necessary to the 
 constitution of an interesting character ? 
 Let us hope that men and women may be 
 good as well as interesting. 
 
 He was still playful, but no longer 
 "sweet." To me personally he was 
 usually kind. I fear he took pains 
 to conceal from me the side of his 
 nature expounded emphatically by my 
 neighbors. I am still loth to believe 
 all some of them said of him. To 
 the last he came when I called, flew to 
 my hand, stood on my shoulder ; evil 
 overcame him only occasionally when 
 with me. But I fear that to strangers, 
 boys, and cats he was a fiend. 
 
 I was one day watching him when 
 
 trying his wings. A small boy dropped 
 
 suddenly from the fence to the ground. 
 
 The gull had him by the leg in an instant, 
 
 6 4 
 
and emulated the howls of the boy by a 
 vigorous screaming. "While the boy was 
 rubbing the pain out of the pinch the 
 bird made a survey of the boy with refer- 
 ence to a new hold. The boy started 
 homeward too late to escape a bite on the 
 tendon Achilles, the very best spot for a 
 firm hold. The gull held on while the 
 boy climbed. When at last Jumbo 
 dropped off he laughed outrageously at 
 the boy, who, from the top rail of the 
 fence, in a security like that of some 
 preachers behind a pulpit, exhausted a 
 vigorous vocabulary. 
 
 Just then, at another point, a neighbor's 
 cat dropped into the yard. The gull 
 charged the cat. The cat did not run, 
 but erected her hair and spat. The gull, 
 bristling, slowly walked toward her. The 
 cat jumped clean over him and was gone. 
 This was the only time I ever saw the 
 gull depressed by defeat. 
 
 From this on he had no patience with 
 children except my own, and with them 
 much less than formerly, except when 
 they brought him food. No dog sur- 
 passed him as a guard against cats. My 
 neighbor's setter dog fled ignominiously 
 6s 
 
when nabbed by the nose. Night music 
 ceased entirely on our fence. 
 
 He did one day what has always seemed 
 to me a bright thing ; more like reason- 
 ing than any other act of his I recall. I 
 had fed him with some soft-shell clams, 
 putting what remained in a paper bag 
 on top of a wood pile. Shortly after I 
 heard him laughing and whistling at the 
 kitchen door. He had brought a clam 
 from the wood pile and was asking to 
 have it opened. This was evident from 
 the fact that when it was opened for him 
 he flew to the wood pile and immediately 
 brought another. It was a case of rea- 
 soning as to ways and means. 
 
 In the wild state gulls will carry shell- 
 fish high in air and drop them on rocks. 
 Thus I have found sea urchin shells on 
 the top of Great Head, near Bar Harbor, 
 Maine, and have picked them up directly 
 after the gull dropped them. Jumbo's 
 performance was the more remarkable as 
 he asked help for what he could not do 
 himself. 
 
 Such things compensated in part for his 
 fiercer developments. My daughter was 
 tossing a small rubber ball, which bounded 
 66 
 
into the tank, where it filled with water. 
 The gull picked it up, squeezed it, squirt- 
 ing some of the water down his throat, as 
 the hole in the ball happened to be oppo- 
 site. He dropped it quickly, but when 
 my daughter went to get it he again took 
 it, running about, squeezing the ball, and 
 now squirting the water before him. 
 When empty he dropped it in the tank, 
 standing guard. Seeing my daughter 
 coming, he snatched and, to her horror, 
 swallowed it, but disgorged it in an hour, 
 as is the habit of his kind as to indigesti- 
 ble substances. 
 
 I am almost afraid to give further 
 proofs of his courage and voracity lest I 
 seem to pass the bounds of the credible. 
 
 Late in the spring, in digging up a 
 flower bed, a nest containing two half- 
 grown rats w r as uncovered — the gull was 
 at my feet looking for earthworms. He 
 killed both rats in a stroke on each head, 
 crushed them flat, and swallowed them. 
 The last was more than he could well 
 hold. It was a half hour before the tip 
 of the last tail went out of sight so that 
 he could straighten his neck and recover 
 himself. 
 
 67 
 
That autumn, his second, I lent him to 
 an artist who had monkeys, cats, and 
 crows for pets. The artist told me the 
 gull was master. While with him the 
 bird met his fate. Somehow he escaped 
 to the street, where he was shot by a 
 saloon keeper in the leisure between his 
 early morning mischief to men and his 
 noon endeavors. 
 
 Was this mind different from the human 
 mind in kind, or only in degree ? We 
 know human minds by the inspection of 
 our own. This bird's mind we can know 
 through the dissection of his brain and 
 the activities of his organism. Romanes 
 has shown us how, as to other minds, we 
 infer what is in them by our knowledge of 
 our own mental movements. It was never 
 clear to me that what seemed in this bird 
 like conscious choice was necessarily so. 
 It has long been settled that nervous 
 mechanism with ganglionic centers is suf- 
 ficient to produce the appearance of co- 
 ordinated movement and of choice. 
 
 But it is plain that all the possibilities 
 
 of a gull were present in the Qgg; all the 
 
 habits, peculiarities, and capacities of his 
 
 kind. He never saw or heard another 
 
 68 
 
gull. But he was intensely and wholly a 
 gull, and nothing else. 
 
 His instincts were sufficient to deter- 
 mine his proper food; to bathe and dress 
 his feathers; to secrete himself by lying on 
 or near some object of similar tint; to 
 soften with water that which he could not 
 otherwise eat; to recognize as rivals and 
 enemies birds not of his kind; to catch 
 and throw objects as wild gulls do; to 
 turn toward the wind in the beginning of 
 flight; to acquire all the characteristic 
 gull notes; in short, without example or 
 teaching, to become a well-ordered sea 
 gull. 
 
 Yet, as Mivart teaches that reason must 
 be denied to the cat, so I must deny rea- 
 son to this bird. Yet it is hard to be- 
 lieve that all he did was without delibera- 
 tion or self-consciousness. Did he only, 
 as the philosophers put it, "sensibly cog- 
 nize external things, but not intellectually 
 perceive their being"? Did he "feel 
 relations between objects, but not appre- 
 hend them as relations"? Did he "re- 
 member, but not recollect " ? Did he 
 "seek pleasure without deliberately 
 making pleasure his aim " ? 
 69 
 
Again I say this was difficult to believe 
 of this knowing bird. He appeared to 
 have all the passions we know and in 
 very human proportions. Pride, anger, 
 jealousy, hate, ambition, dramatic in- 
 stinct, affection, he surely had. Yet it 
 must be that his share of the soul of the 
 world was less than human. 
 
VIII 
 
 THE MIND OF A DOG 
 
 E CAME to us in a crate 
 a gift from Omaha, 
 valued as to contents at 
 fifty dollars. He was 
 principally legs when we 
 first saw him. Earlier it 
 may be that these were 
 not so out of proportion with his body, 
 and that he could play without getting 
 them tangled ; but this was impossible 
 now. The last six weeks had gone to 
 legs. His long nose was chafed through 
 his ardor in seeking acquaintances in the 
 express car and on express truck. This 
 ardor diminished as he grew older, reach- 
 ing such pass finally that he recog- 
 nized no one outside the family without 
 permission. This was not due to any 
 ingrained aristocratic feeling, but to a 
 deep sense of his duty to the members 
 of the family, and to the fact that what 
 71 
 
strength he had must be in reserve for 
 their use. 
 
 He was a thoroughbred greyhound, 
 slate colored, with all the regulation 
 white points, a star on his breast, and the 
 tip of his tail white also. There was no 
 doubt great promise in his ancestry, and 
 promise in his ample and awkward out- 
 line. From the overgrowth of his legs 
 he was awkward as a cow. Yet from the 
 first day he had that noble statuesque 
 way of sitting peculiar to his kind, the 
 forepaws extended before him, his hind 
 legs close to his side, and his whip of a 
 tail carefully aligned. 
 
 The naming of any member of a family 
 requires thought and consultation. It 
 was only after much of both that we 
 reached unanimity as to the name Gad. 
 The final reason is a family secret. The 
 name was not, however, a family name; 
 nor was it in any way derogatory to the 
 son of Jacob and Zilpah. 
 
 Everybody's dog is the best and smart- 
 est in the world. As a unit in this 
 everybody I proceed to prove that mine 
 was. It makes no difference whether he 
 be thoroughbred, cur, or " benchleg," the 
 72 
 
universal fact is "Love me, love my 
 dog." 
 
 Here in Tennessee no law against dogs 
 can be passed. It is fatal to the future 
 of the legislator who proposes it. The 
 cities and towns would like it; some of 
 the farmers who lose their sheep desire 
 it; but the man of the mountain and the 
 cabin will have none of it. Hence waste 
 tracts and few sheep. Can the influence 
 of the dog be better shown ? 
 
 Does not the reason lurk in this, that 
 the dog's devotion to his master begets a 
 sense of oneness which exists in no other 
 subhuman relation ? 
 
 Hence it is the other dog which is 
 always to blame for a fight ; and if he 
 snaps, it is because he is teased. I think 
 it is something of the same feeling, in- 
 creased also by fear of commercial loss if 
 good reputation be gone, that makes 
 every owner of a skittish horse speak of 
 him "as gentle as a kitten." More than 
 once have I been upset and damaged by 
 these kittenish horses. It is, of course, 
 possible that in horse talk the owner may 
 use this phrase much as David Harum 
 did when he recommended the horse 
 
 73 
 
which would stand without hitching 
 Kittens can bite, scratch, spit furiously, 
 and have running fits, which last I know 
 to be true of a horse. 
 
 Named and fed, Gad was shut up for 
 the night in the barn. But as he had 
 been for five days and nights on the train 
 and constantly in human society, I was no 
 sooner ready for sleep than his loneliness 
 overcame him and he lifted up his voice 
 in lamentation. The volume of this wail 
 suggested that his throat had grown to 
 the length of his legs. Phebe has a fac- 
 ulty for sleep to the measure of genius. 
 She has denied thunderstorms in the 
 night because she did not hear them. 
 But Gad waked her. Her imperative 
 tone was excusable. After lights ap- 
 peared in neighboring houses, and I 
 thought I saw the railroad president 
 loading his gun, I brought him into the 
 house. 
 
 Human society was all he craved. On 
 a rug in the corner, after turning round 
 three times, as is the habit of prairie 
 wolves in treading down grass for a bed, 
 he stretched himself on his side and was 
 quiet until morning with one slight excep- 
 
 74 
 
tion. Doubt as to whether we were still 
 in the house led him about midnight to 
 put his cold nose on Phebe's hand. The 
 observations which followed, though en- 
 tirely ladylike, had the element of sur- 
 prise in them, and awakened doubt in my 
 mind whether Gad had not better have 
 been left in the barn. Yet he won his 
 way to her heart so fully the day after 
 that always, until we lost him, he slept in 
 the house, free to wander, which he sel- 
 dom did, and then only when some noise 
 required investigation. 
 
 I write of him as " Gentleman Gad" 
 because from his puppyhood he had the 
 manners of a gentleman. Little training 
 was necessary as to his behavior in the 
 house. His blood told. Greyhounds are 
 commonly thought unintelligent, as com- 
 pared, for instance, with collies. I can- 
 not conceive of greater intelligence, loy- 
 alty, and obedience in a dog than Gad 
 showed. He certainly understood much 
 that we said, and knew when we were 
 talking of him though his name was not 
 mentioned. 
 
 That season at Granite Bay brought 
 him to eight months of age, not yet 
 75 
 
mature, but well grown and as beautiful 
 and graceful as a dog can be. His nose 
 elongated, his chest deepened, the mus- 
 cles of his mighty thighs stood out, his tail 
 grew in length, curvature as to the whole, 
 and with a particularly pretty curve at 
 the tip. He accumulated an impressive 
 mouthful of teeth. Not once did he snap 
 them or growl at any member of the 
 family. All the neighbors and the little 
 children came to love him. With stran- 
 gers he permitted only brief familiarity, 
 keeping himself chiefly for us. 
 
 Never but once did he harm any live 
 thing except intruding cats and imperti- 
 nent dogs. He killed a nestling which 
 had fallen from a tree to the grass. He 
 was then very young, and was whipped. 
 The next week he found another, which 
 he fenced in with his paws until it was 
 restored to its clamorous mother. 
 
 It was highly necessary to train him to 
 distinguish between the cats of our imme- 
 diate neighbors and disreputable vagrants 
 of that order ; soon accomplished as to 
 the distinction, but developing a compen- 
 sating intensity of pursuit as to all of un- 
 known ownership. As I was not fond of 
 76 
 
seeing these manifestations of his severer 
 nature I commonly screened them from 
 vision by going into the house when I 
 saw that he was bent on the banishment, 
 if not worse, of unknown cats. Hence 
 I am not in a position to state what 
 happened. 
 
 His bearing toward lesser dogs at this 
 time was rich in patience and dignity. 
 He paid little attention to them unless 
 I invited him to do so. They found it 
 well to go home then, but went unhurt. 
 Dogs of his size hesitated to come into 
 the yard on seeing him. He took his 
 naps where he could see all who came to 
 the gate. He looked steadily at such, 
 partly raised himself, growled with a depth 
 and vigor proportioned to their nearness. 
 Not one resisted the final vigor of his 
 protest against invaders. 
 
 It was difficult to cure him of digging 
 holes in the garden. Bones were very 
 precious, and he could not think of wast- 
 ing them or of sharing them with curs of 
 low degree. It was not polite to take 
 them into the house. He must, there- 
 fore, bury them. His mighty paws hurled 
 the earth ten feet behind him, and a min- 
 77 
 
ute was sufficient for a great hole. Not 
 naturally aware of the value of flowers 
 and shrubs, it had to be taught him by 
 pointing out the hole, the ruined plants, 
 and by earnest exhortation, by the exhibi- 
 tion of a whip, and once by the sting of 
 it. He learned to avoid the flower beds, 
 but as to other places the temptation 
 overcame him to the last. But his bear- 
 ing always betrayed him if he had been 
 digging, even when we had not seen it. 
 He went about meekly, with a depreca- 
 tory air — had a marked tendency to 
 retirement. When we said, "Gad, you've 
 been digging a hole!" his spirits utterly 
 sank, and he would crawl at our feet 
 until forgiven. 
 
 Not allowed to be in the dining room 
 while we were at meals, he lay just out- 
 side with a sharp eye on our procedure, 
 and knew as well as we when we were 
 nearly through. When sitting on the 
 floor his head reached far enough above 
 the table to eat handily from a plate. 
 No one could be less greedy. He would 
 wait until a napkin was tied round his 
 neck and eat piece by piece and drop 
 nothing. 
 
 78 
 
We could not take him South with us. 
 During the four months of our absence he 
 passed from large puppyhood to full dog- 
 hood. We were not a little anxious to 
 see if he would know us on return. He 
 heard my footsteps while still shut in the 
 house, nearly burst the door in his effort 
 to reach me, put his paws on my shoul- 
 ders, raced around the yard, jumped all 
 the fences, and " bayed a deep-mouthed 
 welcome." When Phebe came he climbed 
 into the carriage in his joyful frenzy. 
 
 After this he became more stately in 
 bearing and was of wonderful agility. At 
 my command he would leap the fences, 
 but not often otherwise. He now devel- 
 oped more fully that sense of ownership, 
 while on our place, which some dogs never 
 seem to acquire. He almost never left 
 the place unless to accompany some 
 member of the family. He would go 
 with a guest when permitted. He per- 
 fectly understood "You may go," "You 
 cannot go." If permitted to go, his joy 
 and eagerness were touching. The put- 
 ting on of a hat made him tremble with 
 expectation until asked to go. Then with 
 a mighty leap he cleared the veranda, 
 (7) 79 
 
was over the fence, and waited at the foot 
 of the hill. This compelled us to believe 
 that he went as far as he could in order 
 to be sure that he would not be sent back. 
 He knew the difference between prepara- 
 tions for a walk to the village and for a 
 journey. Trunks and traveling bags 
 made him as unhappy as hats and canes 
 made him glad. 
 
 It was about this time that he learned 
 to call the children, who slept up stairs, 
 and afterward his mistress, who slept down 
 stairs. Where he lay down at night we 
 commonly found him in the morning. 
 He waited for me to bid him rise; fol- 
 lowed me about in my morning's prepara- 
 tions. When I said, " Go and call the 
 girls " he raced up stairs, wedged the 
 door open with his sharp nose, and never 
 came down until he was patted and 
 caressed. What an air of duty well done 
 he bore then ! He understood perfectly 
 the difference between "Go and call the 
 girls" and "Go and call Phebe." He 
 made no mistake whichever was said 
 first. 
 
 This summer he was promoted to sleep- 
 ing on a lounge, his long legs having 
 80 
 
been often stepped on while he slept on 
 the floor. But he never sought the 
 lounge until told to go there, and would 
 not leap upon it unless the cushion was 
 turned over, exposing its leather side. 
 He learned not to do this in a day. 
 When lying on the floor I would say as 
 to a person, "Gad, it is time for you to 
 go to bed." He would go instantly to 
 the lounge. If the leather side was up, 
 he promptly took his place; if not, he 
 waited until the cushion was turned. 
 
 When full grown he was fearless as to 
 other dogs of any size, as he was far 
 from being when a puppy. In his youth 
 he depended on his speed. I shall never 
 forget the behavior of a cross and heavy 
 dog who hid behind a box which Gad must 
 pass on his way to the village. I noticed 
 that Gad was watchful, but could see no 
 reason. He walked stiffly by my side. 
 There was a rush from the box which 
 nearly tripped me. The big dog leaped 
 for Gad. But Gad was not there. He 
 was running homeward as only a grey- 
 hound can. The big dog was the picture 
 of astonishment and disappointment. 
 
 No dog attacked him after he was full 
 81 
 
grown, but all kept at a respectful dis- 
 tance. I had supposed him too good to 
 fight ; too amiable ! I wondered that 
 some dogs acted so queerly in his pres- 
 ence. One collie in particular would 
 wade into the sea up to his neck and hiss 
 at him. Gad walked to the water's edge, 
 turned his back on him, threw some sand 
 at him, and walked stiffly off in contempt 
 of such a coward. 
 
 Greyhounds are seldom good water 
 dogs. But Gad was actually fond of 
 bathing and of swimming, and would on 
 hot days stand for a long time immersed 
 save his head. He delighted to be in the 
 water with the young people. Once, 
 when we had left him with the Fisherman 
 on the island, he swam across the Cut 
 and was found on our veranda. He was 
 as happy as possible in a boat, sat steadily 
 in his place, and more than once swam 
 after the boat when left behind. 
 
 I have said that I did not understand 
 why the other dogs seemed to fear him. 
 I supposed he did not fight because he 
 was too amiable and because he never 
 showed hurts from fighting. So for 
 years I thought him above it by reason 
 82 
 
of the dignity of his nature. But I was 
 set right by the Long Captain, who told 
 me Gad was the worst fighter in town! 
 When another dog snarled at him he 
 never bit at leg or throat, but leaped into 
 the air, came down to fix his terrible 
 fangs on the other dog's loins, and this 
 was the end of the battle. I confess to 
 both pain and pride in hearing this — 
 pain that I did not know as much as I 
 thought I did, and pride that, seeing he 
 did fight, he was able to secure quiet for 
 himself when with me by these private 
 contests, forced, of course, upon him. 
 
 My neighbor the railroad president 
 had a small, obese, venerable, but most 
 faithful and affectionate black and tan ; 
 dear to everybody for his devoted attach- 
 ment to the ladies of the family. I have 
 known him when crippled with rheuma- 
 tism, and asleep when they left him, to 
 follow over the six miles between their 
 city home and the bay. As they rode all 
 the way he came not by scent, but by 
 conviction that, if not at home, they must 
 be at the bay. 
 
 This dog could not bear that his 
 young mistresses should show Gad much 
 83 
 
attention. He snarled every moment he 
 had to endure it. Having as keen a 
 knowledge of the boundaries of his mas- 
 ter's property as Gad had, the oresence 
 of any other dog in his preserve grieves 
 him greatly. 
 
 Now the peculiar thing is that Gad 
 took no notice of Frisk's resentment 
 when Gad was on Frisk's premises ; ap- 
 parently he thought it well within Frisk's 
 rights to behave as he did. His mis- 
 tresses warned Frisk to behave or he 
 would be paid off some day. 
 
 The young ladies were coming for a 
 call, Frisk with them. Gad went out to 
 welcome them. Frisk snarled on Gad's 
 premises. Gad shook him, set him down 
 unhurt, and walked stiffly off with an air 
 of magnanimous virtue. 
 
 I wish we had not left him the last 
 time. The Fisherman and his good wife 
 were as kind as possible. If Gad could 
 not be with us, I knew he would have 
 wished to be with them. He mourned 
 for us when we were gone. He was 
 much cheered by a visit from our grand- 
 son, as the picture shows, but he pined 
 and fretted and developed pneumonia. 
 8 4 
 
The Fisherman's wife said, weeping: " He 
 was not like a beast, but a human being." 
 A physician attended him. Consumption 
 followed. When I came in the spring 
 he was a skeleton, unable to rise. The 
 doctor lifted him to his feet. Gad stag- 
 gered across the room, put his head be- 
 tween my knees, after his old loving fash- 
 ion, fell down from weakness, but kept 
 his eye on me with just the tip of his tail 
 wagging. A few days after he died when 
 I could not be with him. 
 
 Neither my tears then nor heartache 
 now make me ashamed. So passed out 
 of our sight the stanchest friend, bravest 
 protector, most loyal guard, most loving 
 companion, and intelligent servitor, not 
 human, we ever had. His human good- 
 nesses were so many that we still speak 
 of him as ''Gentleman Gad," and only 
 now have found one exactly like him to 
 take his place. 
 
 8s 
 
IX 
 
 SUBHUMAN NEIGHBORS. THEIR WAYS AND 
 TRIALS 
 
 HAVE already detailed, in 
 part, the conditions which 
 make our bay the resort 
 of many varieties of birds. 
 That intolerable nuisance, 
 the English sparrow, has 
 not yet reached us in force 
 — nor will he until more of 
 our seven score houses are 
 open in the winter. When 
 he comes, as he must, now that the trol- 
 ley brings us, as we have not been for 
 years, in close contact with Oldport, so 
 increasing the number of winter resi- 
 dents, we shall lose some of our varieties. 
 We have good hope, however, that the 
 purple grackle, which abounds with us, 
 may keep him away. It would seem 
 that if other birds can endure this wise 
 and handsome scamp, they might put up 
 with the English sparrow. Moreover we 
 86 
 
count on the kingbird, who nests with us, 
 and is fully able to keep crows, black- 
 birds, and English sparrows in order. 
 
 I know of no two ounces of vitality- 
 containing as much courage and leader- 
 ship as the kingbird. The crow, twenty 
 times his weight, holds him in dread and 
 flies from him in terror. The crow has 
 only to come within sight during the 
 nesting to be attacked by this mite of 
 energy. I have seen him lead a flock of 
 blackbirds in pursuit of the crow, and 
 they give the crow literally a lively time. 
 They overtake him, pick at his eyes, pull 
 out his tail feathers, and probe him from 
 beneath, until I have seen him turn on 
 his back, and fall almost to the ground, 
 striking upward with his claws and beak. 
 
 We sorely miss a kingbird who nested 
 for years in a pine tree which overhung 
 the sea. The nest was in the outermost 
 fork of the trunk and not fifty feet from 
 the house and forty above the water. 
 There we could see the eggs from above 
 and watch all the faithful care which the 
 young received. It was a pretty sight, 
 when the young were large enough to fly, 
 to see the mother entice or push them 
 87 
 
out of the nest and lead them along the 
 tree trunk to the rock. Then with a 
 morsel of food in her bill she called 
 them up to other trees from which it 
 was safe to teach them flight. But a 
 cat captured one brood in our sight, 
 sneaking out to the nest in the twilight. 
 The next year they nested there again. 
 But that fall the tree was wrenched to 
 death by a gale and they are finally gone. 
 
 The grackle is almost as much of a 
 marauder as the crow. Great is the 
 wrath of the thrushes, robins, catbirds, 
 and cedar birds when one comes near 
 their nest. The robin is with us much 
 more timid than* the brown thrush and 
 the catbird. This last slate-colored, un- 
 musical but alert creature is easily the 
 bravest. Together they generally are 
 able to protect their nests. 
 
 But the appearance of a squirrel creates 
 the greatest excitement in our bird colo- 
 nies. We have with us the gray squirrel, 
 the red, the flying squirrel, and the chip- 
 munk. The entire colony pounces and 
 pecks at these with a most discordant 
 din. The squirrels scold violently as we 
 pass, and thus have their revenge. If a 
 
grackle has a nest in a tree, two things 
 are noticeable: the nest is absolutely hid- 
 den and no eggshells or ordure are ever 
 allowed to fall on the ground beneath. 
 I have seen these carried in the bill of the 
 mother bird and dropped into the sea. 
 This is the habit of every blackbird near 
 us. But we can often find a robin's nest 
 from below, both by sight and by the 
 delicately blue half shells which have 
 fallen beneath. The robin is a faithful 
 parent. I saw a mother robin pull a fat 
 earthworm out of its hole and put one 
 end of it in a young robin's mouth. Five 
 times the youngster choked by reason of 
 the wriggling of the worm. Each time 
 the mother pulled the worm straight until 
 the worm was swallowed. 
 
 The mourning dove has not wholly 
 abandoned us, though less frequent than 
 formerly. Their nests are quite low down 
 and are fairly well concealed. The moth- 
 er bird, when one is too near, will drop 
 from her nest and flutter and tumble 
 along, as* the partridge will, in order to 
 distract attention and invite pursuit. If 
 one stops at the moment the mother falls, 
 the little ones can often be seen above 
 89 
 
curiously peering over the edge of the 
 nest. 
 
 Our great wealth of wild and cultivated 
 flowers secures us the presence of many 
 humming birds, but not of more than two 
 varieties. Of all the nests I know not 
 one is so well concealed nor so artistic as 
 that of the ruby-throated humming bird. 
 It is placed on a fork of twigs, is not more 
 than an inch and a half in diameter; may 
 often be reached from the ground, but is 
 always very difficult to find. It is made 
 to resemble, to a marvelous degree, a 
 knot or gall. The outer surface is plas- 
 tered with specks of gray lichen and 
 green moss, and is not easily distin- 
 guished from other warts on the tree. 
 The eggs are about the size of the small 
 white bean of commerce, and I have never 
 found more than two in a nest. 
 
 Protected by our good will, these fairies 
 of the air are tame almost beyond belief. 
 Easily startled by any sudden motion, 
 they often come within a foot's distance, 
 sucking the honey of the flowers. Some- 
 times they hover in the air, turning the 
 head from side to side; peering with a 
 saucy look, and so close that one could 
 90 
 
strike them, if quick enough and de- 
 praved enough. Many will tell the new- 
 comer that the humming bird never 
 alights except on its nest. This state- 
 ment is incorrect. In flight their very- 
 short legs are hidden under their feathers. 
 They seem legless. But they often stand 
 on the fence rail and on firm branches. 
 Their feet have small prehensile power, 
 and their legs seem little more than a 
 half inch in length. 
 
 One of our prettiest neighbors is the 
 waxwing, or cedar bird — in shape a copy 
 of the blue jay, but one third his size, 
 quaker drab in color, and as quiet in 
 manner. He comes last of all from his 
 winter home, and is seldom seen before 
 July, when the cedar berries are tender, 
 but well formed. Being found chiefly in 
 flocks, it is only occasionally that w T ith us 
 a separated pair builds its nest. He is 
 the dandy among our birds — always 
 sleek, smooth, unruffled, and to the last 
 degree particular about his clothes. His 
 crest gives him an aristocratic air with- 
 out truculence. 
 
 This is very much more than can be 
 said for the blue jay, who is with us dur- 
 91 
 
ing the spring and autumn migrations. 
 Handsome as he is and welcome for the 
 flashes of blue he makes among the trees, 
 I am sincerely glad that he visits us 
 rather than abides. Like all the crow 
 family, to which he belongs, he has an 
 unmusical voice. Of this he cannot be 
 aware, as he is incessantly vocal and as 
 incessantly quarrelsome. He makes his 
 arrival known at break of day, and night 
 alone quiets him. 
 
 I will not say that we have all the 
 woodpeckers, but very few species known 
 to New England are absent -from the 
 pine creeper, which is only a distant rela- 
 tion, to the flicker, who seems to be an 
 aristocratic and differentiated cousin. 
 This handsome bird we see only near day- 
 break, and then rarely. Known also as 
 the high-hoe and clape, he is much prized 
 by bay hunters for his bright yellow tail 
 feathers and the patches of red, which 
 give him a touch of gorgeousness. 
 
 From morning to night we hear in sea- 
 son the tapping of the woodpeckers. 
 They seem to be indifferent to position, 
 sometimes working with head up and as 
 often with head down. I fancy we owe 
 92 
 
no bird greater gratitude. His constant 
 warfare on insects is our security for our 
 forests and fruit trees. The few holes 
 he bores are nothing to those made by 
 the worms and insects he devours. And 
 he is such a gymnast one could spend a 
 day in watching him. 
 
 I am not sure the song sparrow is more 
 charming than his plain little and almost 
 voiceless cousin, the chippy. Both nest 
 with us. If ever there is an ounce or 
 two of condensed ecstasy in the world, it 
 is the song sparrow on a fence picket 
 pouring out his delight over his little 
 brown mate in the grass below. While 
 not as friendly as the chippy, he loves to 
 be near the house. But never can he be 
 coaxed by crumbs to your feet. 
 
 But the chippy is friendliness personi- 
 fied. If there be no cat, he will, if one 
 is quiet, come to your feet for crumbs. 
 I had one which would alight on my 
 knee. Its nest was in a honeysuckle 
 vine not five feet from the ground nor 
 ten from the house. He is about the 
 most diligent husband and parent I 
 know, and is more solicitous about the 
 security of his children when leaving the 
 
 93 
 
nest than most. He gathers food and 
 feeds his family faithfully. These last 
 he feeds when they are full grown. 
 
 The swallows are abundant with us, 
 but with the exception of the chimney 
 and barn swallows I have not followed 
 them to their nests; and as I never kill 
 them I cannot name the species except 
 from their most visible characteristics. 
 They keep up their twitter over the sea 
 from late spring to early fall, and are as 
 angular and changeable in the track of 
 their flight as the insects they chase. 
 
 The most interesting thing about them, 
 which I look for every summer, is the 
 feeding of the young birds after leaving 
 the nest by the parents. A long rope 
 stretches from my dock through a pulley 
 tied to a stake whose top is always above 
 water. Almost to a day each year 
 broods of young swallows stand apart on 
 this rope and are fed all day by the 
 going and coming parents. These young 
 birds are able to fly to and from the rope, 
 but do not yet seem of full speed and 
 certain command of wing. 
 
 The mother bird, if it be she, seems to 
 intend to feed them in rotation, begin- 
 
 94 
 
ning with the outer one to left or right. 
 There can be no doubt of this, as I have 
 seen it many times. As she comes near 
 they all flutter and chirp, but only one 
 gets the food. But she is thoroughly 
 fooled if the youngsters change places. 
 From this I conclude that she knows her 
 brood as a brood, but not as individuals. 
 The young know their own mother. For 
 while all the broods will twitter when any 
 mother comes near, all but one cease 
 when the mother reaches her own. 
 
 Whether it be intentional or not I 
 cannot say, but the little fellows seem to 
 change places w T ith rascally purpose. 
 Thus they will fly out a few feet and re- 
 turn, particularly the one who has just 
 been fed, and he never returns to the 
 same spot, but moves up and down the 
 line according to the position of the last 
 one fed. In this way last summer I saw 
 one get the portion four times in succes- 
 sion. The next time the mother fed the 
 one below him. 
 
 I have found among some of the na- 
 tives here, as did Dr. Abbott in New 
 Jersey, a belief that swallows hibernate in 
 the mud. But no one gives proof of it. 
 (8) 95 
 
It is not credible from their structure. 
 Dr. Abbott discredits it and ascribes their 
 wet appearance, when first seen, to their 
 habit of huddling together on a roof or 
 branch during a rain, head on to a storm. 
 I am very far, in these pages, from 
 giving a full list of the birds seen on or 
 above our place. Considering that this 
 is but a half acre in extent, it is surely 
 proved to be rich in bird life by that 
 which has already been narrated. All 
 those mentioned have been seen and 
 studied either on the place itself or 
 within sight from it. Of the smaller 
 birds, the warblers, I have not sufficient 
 knowledge to distinguish all the species. 
 But several of them nest in our trees. 
 The American canary is a most charm- 
 ing neighbor in appearance and in note. 
 Golden yellow, with black cap and wing 
 patches, he has a true canary chirp, but 
 not a canary song. His flight is wave- 
 like, and his sweet note is sounded as he 
 rises toward its crest. The cowbird often 
 intrudes her egg in the yellow bird's nest. 
 Sometimes the nest and eggs are then 
 abandoned, and a new nest built above it 
 as a second story. 
 
 96 
 
Of all my bird neighbors the little 
 active, not to say fussy, wren pleases me 
 most. He loves the protection of man, 
 and builds his nest in the queerest places. 
 Thus one built elaborately in the top of 
 the lantern which screens our electric 
 yard light! He could just squeeze in 
 between the upright cylinder and its 
 hood. The heat from the bulb below 
 was welcome for warmth and dryness, 
 and they had a happy season until the 
 father or mother somehow worked down 
 into the interior of the lantern and flut- 
 tered to death unseen before morning. 
 They are the soberest in attire, the most 
 industrious, the bravest, and in quantity 
 most songful of our smaller birds. 
 
 There are too many people about in 
 summer for the whip-poor-will to nest 
 near us, but they often rest lying low 
 upon the top rail of the fence, and have 
 the instinct of lying where their colors 
 correspond with their surroundings. They 
 are up and off at the least alarm, and sel- 
 dom sound their characteristic note when 
 within sight. One who found a nest near 
 by told me it was no nest in any true 
 sense — a stick or two and the bare rock. 
 
 97 
 
A family of kingfishers have dwelt for 
 many years on our cliff, and are with us as 
 early and late as any. They disappeared 
 for one season, the nest having been dug 
 out by a lawbreaker. It was astonishing 
 how much we missed their rattling cry 
 and their constant passing by the house. 
 They suddenly reappeared and burrowed 
 near the old spot. 
 
 The kingfisher is not so sure of sight 
 in diving as is the fishhawk. The latter 
 drops like a plummet from a considerable 
 height and rarely fails to emerge with a 
 fish in his claws. The kingfisher flutters 
 a while, as if uncertain, drops slowly into 
 the water, and quite often has his dive 
 for nothing. When successful his fish is 
 in his beak. He has a curious habit of 
 quieting his fish before swallowing it. 
 I have seen him many times carry it to a 
 pine near by, pass it along through his 
 bill until he had it by the tail, and then 
 "slat," to use a boy's word, its head 
 against a limb until the fish is stunned. 
 No swifter bird except the duck visits us. 
 His shyness makes the study of his habits 
 difficult. A crest which he elevates in 
 excitement of any kind gives the appear- 
 
ance of a head disproportionate in size. 
 Sometimes in flying toward the house 
 he unexpectedly sees some one on the 
 veranda. Then he suddenly changes his 
 course upward and literally climbs the 
 air with feet and wings. 
 
 I recall that in China the kingfisher is 
 a far more brilliant blue than with us. 
 Indeed, he gives an impression here of 
 being slate-colored rather than blue. But 
 in Eastern Asia he is intensely and bril- 
 liantly blue. The Chinese and Koreans 
 use bits of his feathers to give color to 
 their jewelry. Thus I have a Korean 
 hanging butterfly broach. The body is 
 of silver gilt, touched with the blue of the 
 kingfisher's feather and the wings of jade. 
 
 Dr. Abbott found in his neighborhood 
 that some kingfishers swallowed their fish 
 without killing, and others had the habit 
 before described. With us. I have never 
 seen him do otherwise than stun and 
 probably kill the fish. His one note 
 seems to be precisely like that of the 
 turning rattle which was in my youth a 
 favorite toy, and which, in larger form, I 
 have seen used in Holland by peddlers of 
 some sort. 
 
 99 
 
X 
 
 SUBHUMAN NEIGHBORS. THEIR WAYS AND 
 
 trials — Continued 
 
 ERY rarely have I found a 
 dead bird; never, in fact, 
 but once in fourteen years. 
 It is probable that sick 
 birds hide away from their 
 kind and die in places of 
 difficult access. As such spots are also 
 the haunts of snakes, weasels, minks, 
 and other flesh-eating creatures their 
 bodies are quickly found and destroyed. 
 
 But this one case was sufficiently re- 
 markable. On a walk through our woods 
 I found a crow blackbird lying on his 
 back stiff and dead. As it was in an 
 open place I left it to see what happened. 
 At nightfall it had sunk into the ground 
 nearly one third its height. I could 
 then find nothing to account for this. 
 Fearing it would wholly disappear before 
 morning, I drove a stake down near it. 
 
 IOO 
 
The next morning it was half buried, 
 and I saw then what had done it. 
 Winged ants, as they appeared to be, 
 were excavating the earth from under- 
 neath, piling it up at the sides for the 
 whole length of the bird. Had it not 
 been for the stake, it could not have 
 been found at all the next day. The 
 ground was smooth. There was no 
 mound. The surplus earth had been 
 carried away, and it was so thoroughly 
 covered with leaves and small twigs that 
 I was compelled to believe that these 
 had been replaced to prevent detection. 
 It had been a quiet night, and the mass 
 above the bird was equal in quantity to 
 that which lay on the undisturbed 
 ground. The bird was still there, as I 
 found, but most decently and quickly 
 buried. Whether secreted for food or as 
 a place of deposit for the eggs of the 
 insects I could not determine. 
 
 Several varieties of owls stay with us, 
 and some apparently all the year. I 
 presume that the little owls which haunt 
 a cedar near us are of the variety known 
 as the saw-whet. They do not screech, 
 as did the little owls I knew in my boy 
 
 IOI 
 
days on the borders of the Adirondacks. 
 They do not seem to be much disturbed 
 if we are near, but make a hissing sound 
 as if simply scolding. It is said they 
 live chiefly on the larger insects, par- 
 ticularly moths. 
 
 I have seen specimens of the great 
 horned owl and of the snowy owl in the 
 hands of hunters. One was yet alive 
 and giving his captor a hard fight. 
 
 Only twice have the shore larks to my 
 knowledge visited us. A large flock re- 
 mained four weeks last summer, making 
 their headquarters in a maple tree at no 
 great distance from the house, and again 
 this summer. 
 
 Many times, particularly in autumn, 
 the "whir-r-r" of the partridge startles 
 us. He becomes neighborly only when 
 the pretty berries w r hich bear his name 
 redden our woods. Not for some years 
 has " Bobwhite " whistled for his mate. 
 Possibly he is finally gone since the 
 houses are so many. 
 
 The night heron, trailing his long legs, 
 passes over at dusk, "quawking" on 
 his way. The white crane and the blue 
 are sometimes seen stalking the lonely 
 
marshes across the bay; but close study 
 is difficult ; they of all our birds are 
 hardest of approach. 
 
 The snakes, all harmless, seem to like 
 us better of late. Instinct is more im- 
 perious than knowledge, and few escape 
 death. The garter snakes ought not to 
 be killed ; they lay their eggs in our 
 flower beds ! They never have been 
 seen here rolled up into a hissing ball. 
 Two such masses I dispersed with a 
 stick, many years ago, on the edge of a 
 wood in Bay Ridge, Long Island. A 
 black snake crawled over my daughter's 
 foot while she was picking wild violets. 
 She knew him to be harmless and went 
 on with her work. 
 
 The beautiful green summer snake has 
 been more frequently seen than the black 
 snake, but has not been visible the last 
 few years. 
 
 Of lizards we see but one species, pos- 
 sibly nocturnal, called by the country 
 people a "wiper," and generally found 
 under the edge of a flat, half-buried rock. 
 
 Having no fresh water on our side of 
 the bay, the speckled turtle is seldom 
 seen, but some box tortoises are picked up 
 103 
 
every summer. One marked by a date 
 cut in his under shell forty years ago has 
 been found twice in sixteen years. Slow 
 as these are they sometimes run on the 
 tragedies of life. On raising a large, flat 
 rock an empty shell was found so firmly 
 wedged in an angle that it could with 
 difficulty be dislodged. The box tortoise 
 never appears until the dewberries and 
 strawberries are ripe. On these and on 
 earthworms he is believed to feed. Some 
 hold that he is one of the scavengers who 
 remove the bodies of dead birds and 
 small animals. 
 
 Elsewhere the fact is mentioned that 
 he who makes a winter visit to his cot- 
 tage may find a flying squirrel nesting in 
 the hair or cotton of his mattress. This 
 actually happened to my next-door neigh- 
 bor, the railway president. The intruder 
 escaped to the attic, from which he was 
 drummed out and shot. The flying squir- 
 rel is drowsy by day, but astonishingly 
 frisky as night comes on. In him also 
 nature anticipates the aeroplane. He 
 spreads out the membrane which con- 
 nects his legs on both sides and shoots 
 fearlessly as far as forty feet from tree to 
 104 
 
tree. In intelligence they are as much 
 below other squirrels as they are below 
 the chipmunk in pure fun and playfulness. 
 This last seems to have no sobriety of 
 purpose unless when the nuts are ripe. 
 He does then give himself to honest 
 labor for a while. But the greater part 
 of his life is given to play. This is his 
 end of being, and whether on tree or 
 fence he is master of tag and "hide and 
 go seek." Our hickories keep the squir- 
 rels near us. Under the same rock where 
 the box tortoise was caught and starved 
 was a squirrel storehouse containing a 
 bushel of walnut shells. The squirrels 
 know too much to have nest and store- 
 house on the same spot. 
 
 For the first time we caught sight, this 
 last summer, of the pretty and agile mink. 
 The fishermen had often complained that 
 their fykes were cut and fish eaten by 
 minks, but none had ever been seen by 
 us. One warm afternoon three came 
 racing along the foot of our fence, our 
 neighbors following the unusual sight. 
 I was in their way. They crawled under 
 the fence, dashed past me where I could 
 not reach them, and hid under some loose 
 105 
 
stones in the cellar. They were some- 
 what larger than a rat, jet black, and 
 with straight, bushy tails. At home in 
 the water as on the land, they are the 
 most agile, secretive, and courageous of 
 our smaller animals. Those who passed 
 me hid themselves among the leaves and 
 bushes in front of my neighbor's house, 
 and could not be made to stir until al- 
 most stepped on. It is to be suspected 
 that they had visited the Long Captain's 
 gill net; that the alert fox terrier near 
 there was on the watch for their landing, 
 and that they avoided him by taking an 
 unaccustomed track. He would have had 
 a bad quarter of an hour if he had at- 
 tacked them. They simply cannot be 
 shaken off, but hold until dead. They 
 have a villainous trick of pulling young 
 ducks under water, and can bite fatally 
 before a full-fledged duck can take to 
 flight. 
 
 Our woods and flowers harbor a full 
 quota of butterflies, moths, grasshoppers, 
 crickets, cicadas, and katydids. Since 
 the electric light, polyphemus, Cecropia, 
 and death's-head moths have stunned 
 themselves against the window. 
 106 
 
Whether it was the annual, the thirteen- 
 year, or the seventeen-year ''locust," or 
 cicada I do not know; but the park and 
 a pine tree gave me the rare pleasure 
 of watching their emergence from sub- 
 terranean life, and their birth from the 
 pupa to the imago state. They fastened 
 their foothooks so firmly in the rough 
 bark of the pine that the pupa cases 
 remained for days. These cases were 
 ripped down the back by the pressure 
 from within, the cicada crawling feebly 
 out with legs perfect, but the wings 
 strangely crinkled and folded. As these 
 dried they seemed to stretch and unfold 
 of themselves. When fully dry the cicada 
 was off in an arrowlike flight, and, if a 
 male, began beating his tambourets on the 
 first branch he reached. 
 
 The story must probably be accepted, 
 for it has much authority behind it, that 
 the cicada, in the pupa state, spends 
 thirteen, and one species seventeen, years 
 in subterranean life. It is admitted that 
 there is an annual species also, and that 
 the life of all the species is, in the sun- 
 light, very brief. 
 
 But who has verified it by watching 
 107 
 
one individual or even one colony for 
 all that time and is certain of identifi- 
 cation? An equally wonderful story is 
 told of them, before entering the ground; 
 namely, that they do not crawl down the 
 trunk, but leap without injury from twigs 
 many feet from the earth and immedi- 
 ately bury themselves, and that this is the 
 only way they leave the trees. I wish I 
 knew whether the wind was blowing the 
 day this was seen, and whether, while the 
 observer was watching these jumpers, 
 some one else was scanning the trunk 
 of the tree. Something very like them I 
 saw climbing down a hemlock in my own 
 grounds. 
 
 If one wishes to ascertain how the 
 cicada makes his characteristic noise, 
 squeeze him gently and feel the vibra- 
 tion of a horny drumhead in his side. 
 Within his body can be found as good a 
 specimen of a hollow sounding-board as 
 nature or art can show. 
 
 No one, country bred, can fail to recall 
 the terror inspired by the appearance of a 
 dragon fly, or "devil's darning needle," 
 among a group of children. We firmly 
 believed in those days that he could sew 
 1 08 
 
up eyelids and lips, and that on small 
 provocation. He is as uncanny in the 
 larval condition as he is swift, big-eyed, 
 and voracious as a mature insect. Boys 
 know him as "alligators, " digging him out 
 from under stones in brooks and ponds, 
 and count him the best bait for bass. 
 
 He does not seem to fly, but to dart, 
 the motion of his wings being so swift as 
 almost to seem at rest. His eyes have 
 lenses, I know not how many, and consti- 
 tute the chief part of his head, projecting 
 generally beyond his shoulders and so 
 permitting him to see in an entire circle. 
 His jaws are great for his size, and can 
 nip the finger sharply, but he has neither 
 sting nor poison, and if one alights near 
 or on a person, it is pleasant and instruct- 
 ive to watch him. If he be not the 
 most voracious creature on earth, I do not 
 know his equal. He is a cannibal, feed- 
 ing chiefly on insects, and is a true mos- 
 quito hawk. From thorax to the end of 
 the body he is just a long, straight stomach 
 — an animated, jawed, w r inged, and big- 
 eyed stomach — digesting as rapidly as he 
 eats and eating as fast as he digests. No 
 doubt those we see are of several species. 
 
 IOQ 
 
More than seventeen hundred are known, 
 some with wings of seven inches span. 
 Happily no such terror visits temperate 
 climates. 
 
 I had read of dragon-fly storms or mi- 
 grations, but never expected to see one. 
 But the unexpected always happens. Sit- 
 ting under our hemlock, I was looking 
 seaward when a score of dragon flies shot 
 by. In an instant they were followed by 
 a long stream, twenty feet wide, which 
 poured over the fence and passed on into 
 the woods for over ten minutes. As these 
 are met sometimes at a considerable dis- 
 tance at sea I must believe that they had 
 crossed Long Island Sound, as was evident 
 from their line of approach. 
 
 Every year w 7 e have a colony of hornets, 
 who never trouble us unless we trouble 
 them, and whose ways are a delightful 
 study. There is a small cave in the cliff 
 on which the house stands. Here, one 
 year, well within its edges, thoroughly 
 sheltered from the rain, they built a great 
 nest. They are the original paper mak- 
 ers, and the quantity in a nest is surpris- 
 ingly large when the various layers are 
 separated and spread. The wall is some- 
 
times nearly two inches thick with layers 
 a quarter of an inch apart. The nest 
 must be both warm and dry. No nests 
 with us are occupied more than once. 
 Our colony built a second time under the 
 eaves of the barn in a far more exposed 
 and inconvenient place. Their first nest 
 in the cave withstood the storms and 
 easterly gales of two seasons. To the 
 heaviest winds we have it was wholly 
 exposed. 
 
 We had to pass the second nest within 
 two feet when going to the second story 
 of the barn. Only once did the hornets 
 resent this, and that when a trunk high up 
 on a man's shoulder may have jarred the 
 nest. They are persistent and annoying 
 if one has anything sweet in the hand 
 or is eating fruit. They return boldly 
 when brushed away. One must either 
 strike them dead or change place to be 
 rid of them. 
 
 We have certainly two kinds of "bum- 
 ble," or humble, bees. The last name is 
 not at all descriptive of their mental atti- 
 tude, and, I fancy, the first is the true 
 name given from the loud hum their 
 strong wings produce. One variety has 
 (9) in 
 
its nest in the ground. Its young are 
 truly largest when first hatched, a fact 
 observed as parallel or coincident with 
 some graduates of high rank. The other 
 kind bores holes in the sheathing of the 
 buildings and often makes a tunnel many 
 inches in length. He ought to be of close 
 kin to the borer worm, for which on our 
 fruit trees we must keep constant watch. 
 Like the teredo, or sea worm, his mouth is 
 a true auger, the mandibles being so hard 
 as to "click" when struck by the blade 
 of a knife. As, like the teredo, he grows 
 as he travels we are often only able to 
 find the point of entrance by his chips or 
 sawdust. 
 
XI 
 
 REMNANTS 
 
 HE charm of country life 
 surely does not consist for 
 all in reverie, in hammock 
 lounging, or unconventional 
 existence. No doubt country pleasures 
 are revealed to varying tastes, and no 
 one is large enough to enjoy them all. 
 Fortunately, as tastes change with the 
 years, new delights are visible, and if one 
 by ill-health or age is less mobile, the 
 country will still bring something of its 
 intense interest to one's feet. Thus it 
 was with our crippled but happy friend 
 the Doorkeeper, of whom the reader will 
 know more later. Thus it is with all 
 who have eyes to see. 
 
 Variations of eyesight from the nor- 
 mal are unfavorable to some of the pleas- 
 ures herein set forth. A nearsighted 
 friend of mine, whose introspection 
 amounts to genius, called my attention 
 to the physical basis for an observer* 
 113 
 
"No nearsighted man, aided by the best 
 lenses, can observe or be prepared for 
 observation by the attraction of his at- 
 tention as can the man of normal eyes. 
 He might do something with a micro- 
 scope, but nothing demanding a wide 
 outlook." 
 
 But it is not wholly a matter of eyes. 
 One must have been brought to feel 
 himself an animal before he takes much 
 interest, apart from profit, in the less 
 than human life of the world. Some- 
 thing must have brought him to see how 
 closely he is himself related to this, and 
 also have some measure of how far he is 
 above it, to enjoy such things as any 
 country spot may show him. It is prob- 
 ably true that the liking for such studies 
 must be born with one, for in this respect 
 my experience shows that the boy is 
 father of the man. 
 
 The mimicry of human life by lower 
 creatures goes on everywhere. If the 
 reader's patience lasts until the Giant is 
 known to him, he will note some wise 
 observations on this point from that 
 worthy. 
 
 So I have seen when watching the bat- 
 114 
 
ties of armies of ants in our roadway. 
 There seem to be reconnoissance, attack 
 in mass, individual and independent bat- 
 tle, taking of prisoners, wounds, death, 
 and the rage of war. The soldiers know 
 friend from foe; they touch antennae and 
 instantly part or fight. Looting of a 
 kind worthy of the forces in China fol- 
 lows. Whatever the other nest has is 
 taken by the conquerors. 
 
 One day a mud wasp, electric blue in 
 tint, was caught in a spider's web on our 
 veranda. The spider, as heavy as the 
 wasp, reconnoitered, felt him to be dan- 
 gerous, circled round him looking for a 
 chance to spring, and found it. Tiger 
 leap could not be as quick nor more fierce. 
 He had the wasp by the throat. While 
 struggling the wasp curved up his abdo- 
 men and stung that of the spider, who 
 shivered, let go his hold, flattened, and 
 dropped dead from his web. The wasp 
 shook himself free, buzzed angrily off 
 and as angrily back, as eager to mutilate 
 the fallen foe as the old Sioux squaws our 
 soldiers. 
 
 Below my house is a cliff nearly verti- 
 cal with occasional crevices and nearly 
 
ten feet in height. A toad began climb- 
 ing it. No mountaineer was ever more 
 skillful or patient. The action of his arms 
 and legs was wonderfully human. One 
 hand reached out for a new hold on 
 crevice, grass blade, or twig. On this he 
 tried his weight, then stretched up the 
 other hand, then one foot, then the 
 other, until a little shelf was reached. 
 There he lay panting and limp for ten 
 minutes. Once more climbing he reached 
 the top laboriously, rested on the summit, 
 and then hopped to the garden, where he 
 buried himself in the earth except his 
 head, and refreshed himself with flies and 
 small moths. The common toads are 
 not voiceless. On the Fisherman's Is- 
 land there is an open cistern with 
 boarded sides and a plank leading to the 
 bottom. All the toads on the island 
 seemed to have gotten in, but were unable 
 to climb out. They made a most mourn- 
 ful noise, resembling the note of the tree 
 toad. Their behavior suggested a ship- 
 wreck and panic among men. All could 
 have escaped one at a time, but the 
 crowd behind pushed the advance guard 
 off until they in turn were pushed off 
 116 
 
and the many floating on their backs with 
 outstretched limbs prophesied the death 
 of most. They were there to deposit 
 their spawn. 
 
 Much more might I write of my sub- 
 human neighbors at Granite Bay. But I 
 must pass to the human neighbors and 
 discourse of them, and I trust not without 
 charity. Most of those whose ways will 
 be set forth have gone on to the majority. 
 Whether they have lived without lesson 
 for others the pages devoted to them will 
 show. To me they were of perennial 
 interest, as they are now of loving 
 memory. Much that they knew of fish 
 and fowl, of sea and land, appears in my 
 account of them. They were my masters 
 in the craft of the wood and the sea. 
 
 Very very dear to me is the memory 
 of those twilight hours when young voices 
 have beguiled me from w r atching the fad- 
 ing gold and the deepening purples of 
 the coming night, and their sad sugges- 
 tions, into another and more enlivening 
 study. The coming of the evening mail 
 finds all our young folks, in their best of 
 seaside attire, gathered at the post office 
 or near it. I do not see that so many 
 117 
 
need go so far as the mail is concerned. 
 Older people sometimes suggest that four 
 need not go to bring home three letters. 
 Such have forgotten their youth. Others 
 rejoice in the vigor and beauty of the 
 young life there. Gay, bright, kaleido- 
 scopic, merry but never boisterous, they 
 form charming groups, and as a whole 
 an equally charming picture. We are 
 not without young men at our bay. 
 They are masters of all manly sports, and 
 our girls are not far behind them in skill, 
 but have learned how to be athletic with- 
 out being unwomanly. 
 
 It is at this gathering that plans are 
 made for the next day and sometimes 
 plans for life. I have noticed that when 
 the mail is delivered fours dissolve into 
 twos, and if it be moonlight, stop to rest 
 on the rocks, for it is at least a quarter of 
 a mile to the farthest house ! To such 
 the longest way round is the shortest way 
 home! I can see now, in my mind's eye, 
 some of these twos walking hand in hand 
 in life's work and joy and in far distant 
 cities. The post office evening hour is 
 revered in Baltimore, Austin, Knoxville, 
 Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and I know 
 
not in how many more. It has been 
 so long used that its observance is of 
 traditional force and dignity. It is well, 
 if any older people go by mistake at that 
 hour, to be willing to walk home alone. 
 
 Granite Bay is dear to me and mine; 
 the one spot on all the earth we call 
 home. To it we turn with loving mem- 
 ory whether on one continent or another. 
 Not alone for what it has done for us, 
 but for what we have been able to do in it. 
 
 Some few spots there have been made 
 ready by nature for a home. But most 
 of us have had to conquer wild and rug- 
 ged nature into our present measure of 
 civilization. We have forced the forbid- 
 ding bowlders into cellars and retaining 
 walls. When not buried in hollows we 
 have piled them into foundations, chim- 
 neys, and first stories. Trees and flow- 
 ers grow now where rocks cumbered the 
 earth. Thither we have brought woods 
 from many lands, and tiles, bricks, and 
 marbles from the oldest civilizations. 
 Some of us have known it so long that 
 we have grown since our first knowledge 
 from maturity to the youth of old age. 
 Those who have played there as children 
 119 
 
are now bringing their children to renew 
 their former joys. 
 
 There we have known the delight of 
 building as we could until we could build 
 as we would, rewarding economy by con- 
 venience and comfort. There, while na- 
 ture is prodigal with her wild roses, lau- 
 rels, and dogwood, we gather flowers and 
 fruit from that which we have ourselves 
 planted, as pure a pleasure as humanity 
 knows. Some of these were brought by 
 hands we shall never grasp again on 
 earth. It is there that precious friends 
 now with God have sat at my table and 
 broken bread with me. The sainted 
 Ninde, "who was not for God took him," 
 looked out on our bay. Many phases of 
 life, many measures of gift, have there 
 come to vision and enlargement. 
 
 Here Richard Hovey, unequaled as a 
 writer of sonnets, was my next-door neigh- 
 bor. At the middle of the bay Ella 
 Wheeler Wilcox still sings her glowing 
 songs, and makes the Bungalow a lit- 
 erary center. Physicians, lawyers, "bish- 
 ops and other clergy," professors, artists, 
 bankers, railway magnates, manufactur- 
 ers, merchants, statesmen in esse and 
 
 120 
 
posse, divinity students, Yale and Har- 
 vard boys, delight to come. The dress 
 suit cannot be made to fit here. The 
 yachting cap, the straw, or light felt ban- 
 ish the silk or opera hat. Duck displaces 
 broadcloth. The neglige of tennis or 
 golf is universal. The arms of Granite 
 Bay consist of a field demi azure, demi 
 vert, with tillers, oars, fishing rods, crab 
 nets, racquets, and golf sticks rampant. 
 Our conveyances are yachts, launches, 
 sailboats, sharpies, canoes, and rowboats. 
 Time is measured by the meals and the 
 mail. In no place is it more difficult to 
 recall what day of the week it is, except 
 Sunday, whose blessed hush we still in 
 good measure know. 
 
 The days are so full that at nine the 
 windows begin to darken; at ten only the 
 street lamps glow. We are never without 
 musicians. At ten a bugler sounds "taps" 
 from some projecting point, and he must 
 be ill or in love who is awake after that. 
 
 The early morning divides the charm 
 with the moonlit nights. The daylight 
 bleaches the blackness over the eastern 
 woods, and before the sun is up the fish- 
 ermen are on the rocks or at the nets. 
 
The selectman, or his brother, the Long 
 Captain, passes in their swift launch, tow- 
 ing the barge towering with lobster pots. 
 Their father, hale at seventy-eight, heads 
 for the eastern passage, sculling his 
 scow, on whose length the long clam 
 tongs rest and vibrate. The milkman 
 comes in his skiff and climbs the long 
 stairs which scale the cliff. One by one 
 the chimneys send up their delicate 
 plume from burning wood. The children 
 wait for breakfast by gathering shells or 
 playing tag on the beach. Conch shells 
 and fog horns call the anglers home to 
 breakfast. The jingle of the stage bells 
 speaks of the unfortunates who must go 
 back to-day to a burdened world. A lit- 
 tle later the maiden with her book, em- 
 broidery, and cushion takes her place on 
 the rocks for the morning. The weary 
 and the feeble sling their hammocks on 
 the verandas or under the trees ; the en- 
 ergetic strive in the tennis court or alley. 
 The housemother wrestles with a long 
 line of grocers, marketmen, and fruit ped- 
 dlers, while the housefather looks on with 
 delight in the incoming abundance. 
 
 Noon is sacred here to eating. Nor is 
 
our weak nature above the charm of the 
 siesta. Afterward, if the tide is creeping 
 up the beach, the bathers dot the sea, 
 screaming for fun as loudly as if stabbed 
 or bitten. Some, followed by a boat, cover 
 the half mile to Half Tide Rock and back. 
 Steady heads over steady feet stand on the 
 top of wharf piles for that second before 
 they plunge into the sea. A little steamer 
 with a preposterous whistle splits our 
 ears with her call for passengers. 
 
 As the sun westers the maidens appear 
 in the fluffiest and prettiest they have. 
 The young men follow with some evidence 
 of condescension to convention in collar, 
 coat, or tie. Then the visiting begins, 
 with its delightful nothings of badinage 
 and talk. Thus the twilight hour, dear 
 to all lovers and to all meditative souls, 
 returns. 
 
 And so summer is passed — the time 
 of some men's severest toil and of others' 
 completest rest; of nature's creative, ma- 
 turing, and soon fading energy. 
 
 September's first week sees some gone, 
 not willingly, but that the children may 
 be in school. Those who can, when they 
 are wise, linger until the leaves fall. 
 123 
 
Then our bay is lonely. Sky and sea 
 are gray with November clouds. We are 
 not despairing: 
 
 "Yet one smile more, departing, distant sun! 
 
 One mellow smile through the soft, vapory air, 
 Ere o'er the frozen earth the loud winds run, 
 
 Or snows are sifted o'er the meadows bare. 
 One smile on the brown hills and naked trees, 
 
 And the dark rocks whose summer wreaths are cast, 
 And the blue gentian flower that in the breeze 
 
 Nods lonely; of her beauteous race the last. 
 Yet a few sunny days, in which the bee 
 
 Shall murmur by the hedge that skirts the way, 
 The cricket chirp upon the russet lea, 
 
 And man delight to linger in thy ray. 
 Yet one rich smile and we will try to bear 
 The piercing winter frost and darkened air." 
 
 So we pray with Bryant, and seldom is 
 our prayer denied. The Indian summer 
 has delights worth waiting a year to see. 
 
 When the snow falls the last fly south- 
 ward, and we are of them. 
 
 O Granite Bay, may we come again! 
 124 
 
CHARACTER 
 AT GRANITE BAY 
 
 
XII 
 
 THE FISHERMAN 
 
 O ONE but himself, unless 
 it be his ever-industri- 
 ous and still comely wife, 
 knows with precision 
 when our Fisherman first 
 came to the bay. I have 
 never asked him or de- 
 sired to ask him. He is so much a part 
 of us; of our village and landscape; of 
 our meetinghouse and waterscape, that 
 we all wish to think of him as having been 
 always here. 
 
 I have never heard our oldest inhabit- 
 ant speak of a time before the Fisherman 
 came. It is true that in the month of 
 May some sloops and sharpies reputed to 
 be his come in from some harbor farther 
 east. They keep coming with fish all 
 summer. I seem to have heard of a farm 
 (10) 127 
 
of his somewhere alongshore to the east- 
 ward. It has even been reported that he 
 has ferried cows across the Cut which he 
 had driven from this farm, and that he 
 has been known to leave the island and 
 go east as often as twice in one year. 
 This story is in the air, and of it, as it 
 were. One may believe it or not. I pre- 
 fer not mainly because Phebe and I will 
 not give any other bay a shadow of right 
 to claim him. We do know and stoutly 
 maintain that he is peculiarly and dis- 
 tinctively, and of right ought to be, a fea- 
 ture and fixture of our bay. 
 
 I always have a feeling of having missed 
 something the day I do not meet him; a 
 sense of incompleteness haunting the 
 evening hour. Inspecting this, I find it 
 due to the fact that our paths have not 
 crossed that day, and that we have net 
 had our chat at the crossing. This must 
 not be so to-morrow; and I stand at the 
 cedar gate at ten of the morning, and 
 am seldom without the sight of his tall, 
 round-shouldered figure and his strong 
 and weather-beaten face. He is on the 
 way to the post office. 
 
 Let it be known, once for all, that at 
 128 
 
Granite Bay going to the post office is an 
 eminent social function. It was so be- 
 fore we had a post office, and mail twice 
 a day. In the old time the grocery man 
 and the butcher used to bring the letters 
 over from Mealford in a cigar box. Now 
 that we have our own office, and the mail 
 comes with much certainty, something of 
 the charm of the old days when we never 
 knew when the mail would come is gone. 
 When one had nothing to do, and this was 
 then and still is the principal occupation, 
 it served as a motive for gathering at the 
 grocery and remaining there until dinner 
 called us home. Promptness and regu- 
 larity have taken away the excuses made 
 by the men for staying so long when go- 
 ing for the mail; but the habit still re- 
 mains with some especially if there is any 
 wood to cut. 
 
 Of the importance of this function in 
 relation to our young people there has 
 already been discourse. But now I am 
 confined to the assertion of the necessity 
 of going to the post office as it is related 
 to those of us who have family cares. 
 
 In the summer we old people affect 
 chiefly the morning delivery. It is then 
 129 
 
that, sitting on boxes and barrels, we 
 exchange our rheumatisms, our sick cows, 
 the scarcity of clams, and other calamities. 
 It is then that one of our most mature 
 matrons cheers us with a minute account 
 of all the ulcers, tumors, and cancers in 
 the township, who has them, whether 
 they run in the family, how long they 
 have been at work, and how soon in 
 her opinion they will finish. It is at 
 the post office, if it be early in the sea- 
 son, that we who have been gone all win- 
 ter catch up with the troubles of those 
 who have stayed behind, and thus hook 
 on to the lives from which we have been 
 for some months cut out. 
 
 Letters of importance and packages of 
 weight come chiefly in the morning, and 
 it would do anyone good to see the ma- 
 ture and solid company then gathered, of 
 which the Fisherman is a chief unit. From 
 him we have the wisest prophecies of the 
 weather, the time of high and low water, 
 whether weak, black, or bluefish are 
 running now; whether crabs are in the 
 Cut; whether eels will pot; whether jelly- 
 fish will foul fykes this w r eek; whether 
 there will be mossbunkers for lobster 
 130 
 
bait; whether the set of oysters in the 
 river promises well for October. 
 
 As the farmers about chiefly fertilize 
 from his mill he can tell who has put in 
 turnips and buckwheat, where cabbages 
 are likely to be found in September, and 
 what effect the weather is likely to have 
 on late potatoes. 
 
 As he buys coal by the cargo for his 
 engine his views of the probable price of 
 coal next fall are strongly desired by 
 many, and form an important factor in 
 the economics of many homes. 
 
 He knows also whether there will be 
 service in the chapel next Sunday, who 
 the preacher is to be, and whether he is 
 interesting or not. On this last point he 
 knows more than he will tell, for he holds 
 that we ought to go to church to worship; 
 that the dullness of the preacher has 
 nothing to do with our duty. On this 
 point we hold him behind the times. But 
 his father and mother believed this, and 
 he believes it and teaches it both by 
 speech and silence. 
 
 It is seen from these considerations 
 how important it is for all of us that the 
 Fisherman should go to the post office 
 131 
 
daily himself, and how we feel like labor- 
 ing with him if he ever sends his hired 
 man. 
 
 Our Fisherman seldom fishes now, but 
 is the cause of much fishing by others. 
 Everything is grist which comes to his 
 mill, and a large grist conies daily. It is 
 when the fishing boats are at his dock 
 that he commands attention, not to say 
 reverence. 1 have seen him catch a shark 
 six feet long by the tail and sling it from 
 the sloop to the tank ten feet above. His 
 handling of herring hogs is a joy, while 
 his maneuvering with a sturgeon of five 
 hundred pounds is an eminent and aes- 
 thetic delight. In the arrival of all fish- 
 ing boats he has part. 
 
 But whether it is because he is now 
 turned of sixty and has become a man of 
 substance, and has been elected to our 
 sanitary board, it is yet quite true that he 
 seldom goes out to the fish pound him- 
 self. Genial and even talkative on most 
 subjects, he keeps his own affairs to him- 
 self, as was the way of his forbears. 
 
 That he is a man of substance is purely 
 an inference from the extent and variety 
 of his possessions. He owns a point, an 
 132 
 
island, a peninsula, a salt marsh, a sea 
 beach, and a fish pound; a summer 
 house, a winter house, a chapel, and three 
 cottages gladly tenanted by the same 
 families year after year. Of boats he has 
 I know not how many since the hurricane 
 hurled his Winnie against the foot of 
 his cliff. His horses and cows are as 
 good sailors as himself. Who has not 
 seen them climb into his great scow and 
 stand like statues, while he, with a single 
 oar, sculled them across the Cut ? 
 
 I admit a doubt as to his being a man 
 of substance, thrown by his being in- 
 cessantly at work, and his wife with him, 
 and this at a time of life when most of 
 us have slowed down the engine and en- 
 dure much rest. 
 
 It must be that he has inherited the 
 New England religion of work, and that 
 he has lost the ability to idle. I some- 
 times think so when I see him leap into 
 a cargo of fish deep to his waist and 
 scoop them out as no other can. This 
 idea grows on me when I find him, 
 though employing twenty men, hoeing 
 his own wonderful sweet corn on the 
 island, the readiness of which for our 
 133 
 
tables constitutes a distinct event in our 
 season. It is further developed when we 
 see him on his way to Oldport with a 
 heavy load of shad, weak, or bluefish, 
 according to the season. It is not di- 
 minished when we find him painting his 
 cottages with his own hand, shingling 
 his roofs, papering the walls, or hanging 
 the curtains for the coming tenant. It 
 becomes almost a certainty that he is not 
 well to do when he saws the hard dis- 
 carded hickory pound poles we covet for 
 our autumn fires, and wheels them to 
 his neighbors, anxious for their wonder- 
 ful glow in the days of the east wind. 
 
 The doubt becomes a conviction when 
 we see him shouldering a two-hundred- 
 pound sack of fertilizer and hurling it 
 into the scow, where his brace of Polacks 
 wrestle with it. 
 
 It is pleasant to us who dream the 
 summer away to find him always sympa- 
 thetic toward the habitues of the ham- 
 mock and the veranda chair. Plainly he 
 does not despise us. He looks as if he 
 would use both hammock and chair if 
 he could. But the sense of something 
 undone, which is his besetment, restrains 
 134 
 
him and he rushes on to find a new task 
 for his bending but unbroken strength. 
 
 From this point of view he appears 
 to the best advantage on a week day. 
 Vestless, coatless, and, let it be spoken 
 softly, sometimes shoeless, he is every- 
 where and at all times a terror to the 
 shirk, but a helper to all who have a care 
 or are under burden. 
 
 Who has not asked him for a man to 
 help to the barn the heavy winter stove 
 and found the Fisherman coming himself 
 and making light of its weight ? Who, 
 wishing a hickory pole set for the hauling 
 line of his skiff, has not seen him drive it 
 into the mud with his own weight ? What 
 maiden, eager for a portiere or window 
 curtain of old net, has not had him for 
 an escort to the beach where it is spread, 
 and has not shamefacedly been compelled 
 to permit him to carry it to her skiff ? 
 
 What idler, needing hammock cord, has 
 not drawn on his stock, hunted down 
 by himself in the many places he might 
 have put it ? The genius of order was 
 only partly present at his birth. She was 
 there for what he could do for others, 
 not for what he is to do for himself. 
 135 
 
I like to watch his expression when he 
 is under burden or has difficulties to con- 
 quer. It is then hard as iron and firm as 
 granite. 
 
 So some walking delegate found it who 
 tried to convince his fishermen that they 
 were not well paid and well treated. 
 
 At least this is reported to be so. If it 
 were as told to me, I should like to have 
 been there on the dock when it happened. 
 Not that I can ever justify the unlawful 
 use of force. But if one is determined 
 to use strength unlawfully, it is interest- 
 ing to be on hand and sec it used. 
 
 It seems that the fishermen thought 
 themselves well cared for until this well- 
 dressed idler in behalf of labor invaded 
 Fish Island and declined to leave at the 
 Fisherman's invitation. As I have said, 1 
 did not see what happened, though the 
 vigor of the narration, given me in whis- 
 pers and after dark, leaves a clear picture 
 in my mind. 
 
 Must I tell it ? One hand (O, can it 
 be?) seized a coat collar. Another (I 
 shrink to tell it) grasped the seat of the 
 man's trousers. The man shot into the 
 air, following the parabolic curve of all 
 136 
 
projectiles, landing on all fours in the 
 soft mud of the Cut ! Knowing the 
 Fisherman as I do, I partly believe this 
 narration to be true. 
 
 One day a woman, uninvited, came on 
 his dock to watch the landing of the fish. 
 Somehow she pulled the signal cord of 
 the engine. The heavy car of the incline 
 struck her. The Fisherman heard her 
 shriek and turned, knowing then for the 
 first she was there, to see an arm torn 
 from its socket and the woman white 
 unto death. What fiery energy of help 
 he gave ! His arms carried her to the 
 boat. He drove it across the Cut. He 
 carried her to the hotel. He became 
 responsible for board and care. He 
 visited her daily and saw her saved. 
 
 Yet all that winter he brooded over her 
 disfigurement, as if he were to blame, and 
 was near insanity. All the more when 
 the husband haled him into court for 
 damages for which he was in no way re- 
 sponsible. Yet, because he had no for- 
 bidding sign on the dock, the law held 
 him responsible, though the judge gave 
 only twenty-five dollars damage because 
 of the woman's contributing carelessness. 
 137 
 
The thousand it cost the Fisherman did 
 not trouble him. The ingratitude and 
 the lost arm were his burden. This was 
 the only time we were not glad to see 
 him, but the coming of spring brought 
 the old smile slowly back to the drawn 
 and agonized face. 
 
 One day — and the surgeon told me this 
 — one of his men, a reckless but faithful 
 Irishman, slipped on all fours into a tank 
 of boiling fish. When I saw him, after 
 weeks of agony, I found him with a 
 trained nurse at the Fisherman's expense, 
 in the Fisherman's best room, and on the 
 Fisherman's best bed. 
 
 It is such things we know that make us 
 glad to see him in the chapel on Sunday. 
 The years have softened the sounds of 
 this world to him. So he sits well for- 
 ward that he may miss no word. I fancy 
 from his manner that in the old days he 
 was a faithful scholar in the singing 
 school. Every note has its full time, 
 every word exact pronunciation. It is a 
 serious and weighty matter he has on 
 hand. He is to worship through song.* 
 He is responsible for his portion of the 
 bass. As becomes an elderly man, he 
 138 
 
must give it strict attention. So, strong, 
 clear and not unmusical, his voice leads 
 that part, his shoulders marking vigor- 
 ously the cadences. The ministers who 
 know him often ask him to pray. No 
 one of them has a more reverent manner, 
 worthier vocabulary, nobler rhythm, or 
 more aspiring soul. 
 
 It is at church that he is at his best in 
 dress and cheerfullest in manner. I will 
 not admit that his bearing at great wed- 
 dings is more so. There are some of 
 Oldport's town-born folk of bluest blood, 
 whose summer landlord he is, who ask 
 him to their weddings at church and re- 
 ceptions at home. He goes and his wife 
 with him. He has unconscious dignity 
 and his wife unconscious ladyhood. He 
 knows no dress suit nor she a train. 
 But men of light and leading are glad to 
 know him, and women of academic in- 
 heritance find her sincere, motherly, and 
 well-bred. 
 
 For a generation almost he has lifted 
 the collection in our chapel, counted it, 
 disbursed it, and no "one thinks an audit- 
 ing committee necessary. Close by his 
 unsavory mill I have caught him weeding 
 139 
 
out charming mounds of flowers. He 
 excuses himself by saying, "These are 
 my wife's pets." As if, dear old pre- 
 tender, we did not know his own delight 
 in bloom. He sees all the flowers on 
 your place or his. Of late he has built a 
 greenhouse. "My wife must have some- 
 thing to brighten her winter." 
 
 Now that his son has graduated with 
 honor at Yale, both in the humanities 
 and in law, and has married a wife, and 
 become a judge we hope our Fisherman 
 will take life more easily. I doubt if he 
 can. The spirit of work possesses him. 
 Yes, he will work on until rest surprises 
 him. How that may be he cares not. 
 He has heard his Master say, "Leave thy 
 nets and follow me." 
 140 
 
XIII 
 
 THE GIANT 
 
 H ME! only one of the 
 
 three in the photograph 
 
 is now living. I 
 
 have just heard of 
 
 the death of the 
 
 Giant, and I wish I 
 
 could have been with 
 
 him and have put some flowers on 
 
 his grave. 
 
 You may see him in the picture sitting 
 on the rock and holding a drill which 
 another captain has just struck with a 
 sledge. The other was not a captain at 
 all, but some neighbor stopping for a 
 chat. 
 
 If any think it odd that captains of the 
 sea should be drilling and blasting rocks, 
 they do not understand the genius of 
 New England. That consists in being 
 ready to do anything to make an honest 
 141 
 
living. If the season has passed for 
 sailing a boat .and fishing, the season 
 has come for blasting rocks, laying foun- 
 dations, trimming trees, grading roads. 
 My captains could do one as well as 
 the other, and much beside. 
 
 The Giant was surely hindered from 
 being more than he ever became by the 
 difficult conditions of his boyhood. His 
 mind was as strong as his body, and, best 
 of all, he had character of rough nobility, 
 sturdy independence, and fast-anchored 
 integrity. His head was large — forehead 
 broad and high, chin square in strength. 
 His nose must some time have had a 
 blow on the bridge, for it was slightly 
 flattened and was below the strength of 
 other features, yet no proof of weakness 
 whatever. 
 
 Physically he was a mighty man ; 
 mightier even than the Fisherman, and 
 quietly chuckled over his strength when 
 not angered in using it by the weakness 
 or unwillingness of others. Nothing 
 brought light to his eye more quickly 
 than lifting weights which palsied other 
 men. I fancy he would have lived 
 longer if he had not been a prodigal in 
 142 
 
energy. He was well on in the sixties 
 when he slept his life away. Death 
 wrestled hard with him for a year before 
 he was conquered. 
 
 He had been a seaman, a soldier, and 
 was head fisherman at the pound when I 
 met him. I was rowing out to see the 
 fish. He stood in the stern of a large 
 scow sculling against the wind with one 
 hand on a long oar, while two other men 
 sat on the thwarts doing nothing. A 
 mighty, quiet power was in his wrist, or 
 white water would not have piled up 
 under the bow. 
 
 It was as characteristic of our Giant as 
 of our Genius that he did things without 
 seeming to draw on his strength. There 
 was no stress, strain, fuss, or noise, only 
 quiet power. His voice and laugh were 
 big as his body, and he needed no meg- 
 aphone to roar an order across the bay. 
 A slow poke or an idler alone brought 
 out that roar. Of education he had little 
 more than something of the " three R's," 
 otherwise his life must have been differ- 
 ent. But he observed closely and quick- 
 ly, remembered all he said and heard, 
 and knew fish and their ways better than 
 (11) 143 
 
anything else. He reasoned from fish to 
 men, as we shall see, and did it well. 
 
 The hickory poles on which the pound 
 nets are strung are forty-five feet long and 
 weigh one hundred pounds. He handled 
 them as if switches. It was a fine dis- 
 play he gave of agile strength when he 
 picked up one, raised it to the perpen- 
 dicular, dropped the pointed end to the 
 bottom, planted it with two or three 
 dexterous lifts and twists and drove it 
 six feet into the mud with his weight. 
 Then he fastened an oar crosswise to the 
 stake, and stepping on the oar, he waved 
 back and forth above the water until his 
 weight imbedded the stake beyond the 
 power of waves to move it. Then leap- 
 ing on the scow, he would seize another, 
 and so all day extend the fence toward 
 the deep waters of the Sound until the 
 half mile of it was finished. 
 
 He was most himself when the nets of 
 the pound trap had to be pursed up and 
 the fish brought to the surface. Heavy 
 itself, heavily water-soaked, enclosing 
 tons of fish, and dragged down often 
 with jellyfish and seaweed, his mighty 
 hands lifted the meshes inch by inch 
 144 
 
until one by one the slide rings on the 
 poles were high enough to tie. He knew, 
 before I could see a fish, by the color of 
 the Water, as it seemed, how many fish 
 were there. His spirits rose and strength 
 seemed to grow as the fish began, in full 
 view, to race around the net, and when 
 the net was wholly pursed and the fish 
 splashed and circled he was as radiant as 
 he was nimble. 
 
 While the sloop was drawing along- 
 side he entered the enclosure in his boat 
 and stunned the larger sharks and all 
 sturgeons by a blow on the nose. Any- 
 thing of no more than three hundred 
 pounds weight he caught by the tail, 
 either with his hands or a slip noose, and 
 slung it over the net above him into the 
 sloop's hold. Then with an immense 
 scoop net he shoveled out the smaller 
 fish with sure aim. 
 
 I am afraid he sometimes swore at 
 some fish for which his aversion was in- 
 tense. Naturally he hated the venomous 
 stingray, but not more than he did the 
 harmless lamprey eel. This last he would 
 not touch, much less eat. Yet I remem- 
 ber how in my boyhood the farmers on 
 145 
 
the Housatonic pursued them with pine 
 torches at night, and hooked them up as 
 most desirable spring delicacies. There 
 was something about the lamprey's dark 
 flesh and lack of bone which went against 
 him. 
 
 This brings to mind one of his most 
 noticeable peculiarities: he could stand 
 waist deep among stale menhaden, but 
 sickened and fainted at odors only mod- 
 erately offensive to most. 
 
 One autumn, after fishing was over, he 
 came to build a fence for me, and I be- 
 came better acquainted with his odd gen- 
 ius. It was then, after shyness wore off, 
 that he discoursed to me of men and fishes. 
 
 "Drat sculpins, I say. When they 
 are not all mouth they are all spines. 
 Most of the time they are both! They 
 are like some women, always shooting off 
 their mouths and sticking pins into peo- 
 ple. And as for lampers (lampreys), I 
 am glad they don't come round but once 
 a year. They are long and smooth and 
 wriggly. I am glad they come early and 
 we soon get shet of them. They're 
 neither fish nor eels, and they've got black 
 meat, and where they ought to have back- 
 146 
 
The Giant. 
 
bone they've only got gristle! I calls 'em 
 lawyers, I do! They're like some of those 
 shysters that sneak round, smooth and 
 soft and tonguey, and it's ' Mister, I would 
 be pleased to be of some service to you,' 
 and all the while he is planning to cost 
 you money and trick you out of your 
 property, like that fellow that put up the 
 husband of the woman who was hurt on 
 our dock by her own fault, after the 
 Fisherman had spent hundreds of dollars 
 to take care of her. I don't want no 
 such lampers about me. 
 
 "I wonder what cunners is made for? 
 They're always 'round when you don't 
 want 'em, keeping decent fish away, 
 stealing your bait. You can't scale 'em, 
 and they don't skin any easier. They've 
 got their teeth on their lips (a fact). 
 They're like some folks 'round here that 
 can't think of anything only something to 
 eat! They're never around when there's 
 work to be done, but always on hand 
 when there's eatin' goin' on. Let a 
 clam into the water and there's sure to 
 be a cunner. Set your table and see if 
 them gluttons don't smell it. 
 
 "I tell you I like a blackfish. He's a 
 147 
 
gentleman, he is; always well dressed in 
 black. When you get one he's worth 
 something. He don't carry round no 
 more bones than he ought to, like shad 
 and bunkers. Look at the eye of him! 
 No sneak about him! He's just honest! 
 If he don't like your bait, he lets it alone 
 and goes off and chews barnacles. If he 
 likes it, he don't nibble and pretend to be 
 delicate. He just takes hold and comes 
 up on your line surprised but willin'. In 
 the winter time he sleeps like a gentle- 
 man with his eyes shut and a veil over 
 them. He likes cool water and cool 
 weather. If you want to find him in 
 summer, you must go out where the water 
 is deep and invite him to come up. He 
 ain't like a bluefish or succamaug (they 
 calls 'em sea trout down South), up and 
 down and all around in everybody else's 
 territory, and eatin' up other fishes. He 
 ain't no cannibal. He lets his kind alone 
 and lives on barnacles, coot clams, and 
 fiddlers. We had a man down here once 
 who was a regular succamaug ; he never 
 stayed on his own land or hunted his own 
 birds, he just lived on other people. You 
 could not leave a rope-yarn about but 
 
he'd pick it up. He was so mean he 
 would run other people's eelpots and 
 lobster traps. He was a real succamaug, 
 he was. 
 
 "Them flounders takes me. They're 
 good enough to eat when they get the 
 mud out of them. But who squshed 'em 
 flat and put their eyes on top of their 
 head ? They are like some kind of pious 
 people — I don't mean no offense — always 
 with their eyes rolled up to heaven, but 
 not missing anything on earth, I tell ye. 
 Religion's good when it is a good kind, 
 but I reckon a man's got something to 
 do beside looking pious. He's just got 
 to be pious, and that ain't in being squshed 
 flat and looking good. It's in being a 
 man, and lookin' straight at your face, and 
 being what you pretend to be and nothing 
 else. 
 
 " I ain't fond of shirks [sharks] ; but, as 
 the old woman said of the devil, he's a 
 master hand at attending to his own busi- 
 ness, and has got the tools to do it with." 
 
 Thus he had worked out the resem- 
 blances between men and fishes. His 
 theory of their unity, while not Darwin's, 
 served him a good purpose. You must 
 149 
 
not think he stopped work to talk. His 
 tongue was no more busy than his ham- 
 mer and saw. 
 
 He was nearly sixty when he bought 
 his little place at the head of the cove, 
 and set out to pay for it. It was an old 
 house and the ground was stony. After 
 he bought it he seldom worked for others 
 except while fishing. His strong, stern- 
 faced but kindly wife took in washing, 
 worked in the garden, cared for pig and 
 cow and a hundred chickens, while the 
 Giant was on Fish Island. On Saturdays 
 the fishermen went home at noon privi- 
 leged to carry home such edible fish as 
 they liked. So we saw him footing it 
 heavily by to work the day out on the 
 place he loved. How happy the two 
 were in having a home of their own! We 
 would all have gladly helped them. Their 
 sturdy, almost savage, independence made 
 it difficult. If any succeeded, they were 
 sure to see the Giant or his wife, before 
 the season closed, bringing a basket of 
 apples or a pair of chickens, and leaving 
 them with the message, "Keep 'em, we 
 have so many we want to be rid of 'em." 
 
 The last year he fished he worked as 
 150 
 
hard as ever. The house would be paid 
 for by that season's work. It was plain, 
 though, that the Giant's strength was 
 weakening. "I ain't good for nothin' any 
 more. I just putter round. " Yet he had 
 still the strength of two men. But it 
 was a panting strength, soon gone. The 
 fall found him clear of debt, but his feet 
 were swollen and breath scant. I found 
 him kneeling by a chair, his head resting 
 on his arms. In this way he could sleep 
 a little. He rallied in the spring, but 
 when the horn called the fishing crew he 
 could not go. He came to see me one 
 day, halting to rest many times by the 
 way. The Fisherman did not forget his 
 faithful Giant, but came to my house and 
 ferried him to the island to dine with his 
 old comrades. 
 
 The next autumn shut the cottages. 
 A thousand miles away I heard he was 
 failing rapidly. I received, on the border 
 of the Indian Territory, a letter from the 
 Fisherman's son saying, "The Giant is 
 praying and seeking peace with God, and 
 asked me to write for your prayers." 
 Assuredly I felt that the good God would 
 hear him as soon as me. But I prayed 
 151 
 
for him there with tears and loving mem- 
 ory. I wrote him that I loved him, had 
 prayed for him, and doubted not he would 
 be heard of God. 
 
 As I write these words I know not if 
 my letter reached him before his death. 
 But I heard that God came to him in 
 peace and saved my rough, untutored, 
 but honest and manly friend with the 
 great salvation he has promised to those 
 who walk uprightly. 
 
 This last summer I saw his widow. 
 She received me without tears, but with 
 a heartbreak in her voice. "He had to 
 go," she said, "just when we had paid 
 out and had got ready to live. But we 
 gave him a funeral, the boy and I." With 
 that she brought me the funeral bill. 
 "O, you need not look surprised. I 
 had $120 saved from washing, and the 
 boy had $27, and the bill is $145, and 
 paid; and the minister had $5 for coming. 
 We don't want something for nothing." 
 
 And if I had it in my power, I would 
 carve on the Giant's tombstone these 
 words of the Fisherman's son: "I never 
 in all my life learned anything bad from 
 the Giant." 
 
 152 
 
'Sugar.' 
 
XIV 
 
 SUGAR 
 
 HE was a pretty little girl of 
 ten when I first saw Gran- 
 ite Bay, her features set for 
 so young a child, with a 
 too mature expression, but 
 still childish and assuredly 
 pretty. 
 
 I cannot now recall 
 whether I first saw her on 
 the marsh searching for fiddler crabs, 
 barefooted, muddy, but smiling, watch- 
 ful, and intent on her work ; or whether 
 it was at the funeral of a playmate, 
 clean, nicely dressed, but tender, sad and 
 sobbing. Both pictures seem of one 
 date after these years, and I fancy were 
 nearly synchronous. 
 
 Her father's house absolutely hung over 
 the river, with a foundation against which 
 the swift tides washed. It was not a nice 
 
 153 
 
house then, and it is not now, but better 
 than in the old days. Her father was an 
 old soldier with a deep bullet dent in his 
 upper forehead. I know not whether the 
 ball was stopped by the bone. Perhaps 
 the evil men said of him was the out- 
 come of a bullet groove through his head 
 and the spoonful of brain which went 
 out with it. 
 
 After all it is not necessary to ac- 
 count for the father. The shore, be- 
 fore it becomes a summer resort, draws 
 queer characters. As no two bays are 
 alike, so the fishermen of each bay are 
 different. They can no more endure a 
 crowded neighborhood than could the 
 early Western pioneer. They melt away 
 in a few years after cottages come. 
 
 I may not say fully how queer the 
 father was. He is dead now, after two 
 years of insanity and paresis. But, 
 whether good or bad, responsible or not, 
 he had a certain genius. His land, 
 chiefly rocks and woods, but with many 
 cultivable spots, never to my knowledge 
 knew either plow or hoe. Yet he was 
 never without money and never without 
 a half dozen dogs, chiefly setters and 
 154 
 
pointers, whose noses were never dulled 
 by overfeeding. 
 
 That excellent woman, Phebe, to 
 whose wisdom I owe much to this 
 day, attributes to these dogs the disap- 
 pearance of several steaks, one roast of 
 beef, one setting of eggs, and an entire 
 pumpkin pie. To this night she hears 
 them at the ice-box and laments my lack 
 of energy in not driving them away. 
 
 But as it is generally midnight when 
 she thinks she hears them, and not being 
 absolutely certain that any dogs are there, 
 and being certain that if they are there 
 now they will be gone by the time I get 
 there ; and being not entirely unaccus- 
 tomed to these apprehensions, I com- 
 monly do not rise and investigate. 
 
 The father seldom worked at his trade 
 of plasterer. For those he liked he 
 would work, but liking many was not his 
 gift. He was seldom without some 
 wretched derelict of drunken humanity, 
 who slept in the barn, dug the clams 
 which were always for sale, and split the 
 wood which he sometimes had. 
 
 But this same father was a master with 
 a gun. Woodcock, quail, squirrel, and 
 i55 
 
partridge he found when others failed. 
 He did not often hunt in company. He 
 was essentially solitary except for wife, 
 daughter, and the hobo who happened to 
 be with him. 
 
 He had considerable reputation as a 
 pugilist. I am not in the way of know- 
 ing the truth of this except that I once 
 saw a neighbor of mine, as queer as the 
 father, going home after an interview 
 with him. His eye was black and his 
 nose cut. He was also replacing one or 
 two teeth. As the men were alone dur- 
 ing the interview we never knew its occa- 
 sion, inspiration, or duration, or in fact 
 had that adequate information to which, 
 as neighbors, we felt entitled. 
 
 The mother had her peculiarities also. 
 Half blind, she stumbled around the 
 place and did most of the work which 
 was done, which did not appear to be 
 great in quantity or effectiveness. 
 
 Into such surroundings fate projected a 
 little girl so sweet to the father's eye 
 that he named her " Sugar," and called 
 her so to womanhood. Her first ten 
 years were before I knew her. Of these 
 the neighbors speak with kindness as of a 
 156 
 
\ 
 
pretty tomboy who knew no reason why 
 she could not play all the games and do 
 all the dares of the boys One told me 
 that she would also swear, like the tra- 
 ditional pirate, on sudden provocation, 
 but added, "She always recovered her- 
 self and clapped her hand over her mouth 
 trying to prevent it." 
 
 But after the days of the fiddler crabs 
 or the funeral her personality made her a 
 chief figure at the bay. She was of the 
 Sunday school, the prayer meeting, and 
 the Sabbath service, neat in dress and 
 clean to daintiness. She neither courted 
 notice nor declined it. Her air was of 
 knowing her worth and that there could 
 be no question of it. Everyone passed her 
 house on the road to the bay, and many 
 have heard her shrill wrath over profane 
 and indecent language. Her father in 
 this regard walked meekly in her pres- 
 ence. He was not one moment safe 
 from her rebuke, nor did others attempt 
 it more than once. 
 
 As she entered her teens the place 
 began to "slick up." The rubbish heaps 
 diminished or disappeared. The dogs 
 kept more to their kennels; the house 
 
 157 
 
knew a coat of paint. There was a gen- 
 uine sensation for three years when an 
 organ, a sewing machine, and piano suc- 
 cessively arrived. Lace curtains came to 
 the windows, which now knew a weekly 
 washing. 
 
 Yet Sugar did not grow into a spurious 
 fine lady. You could see her digging 
 clams on the bar, or loading and deliver- 
 ing wood, piling it if you would let her 
 do it. As to boats, she rowed like a 
 fisherman and sailed like a Deer Islander. 
 
 Somehow the old box wagon gave place 
 to a top buggy, and in the neatness and 
 glory of a healthy young womanhood 
 she often drove her subdued but radiant 
 father to Oldport, full mistress of a frac- 
 tious horse and paternal behavior. I 
 heard this story one day from a neigh- 
 bor who knew us both. She was walk- 
 ing along after her jaunty fashion in 
 Oldport's principal street, when some 
 loafer hissed an insulting word in her ear. 
 She had him by the arm in an instant, 
 and after horsewhipping him, handed him 
 over to the policeman and told him she 
 would be on hand when she was wanted. 
 This was very like her, 
 158 
 
More and more those who had busi- 
 ness at the house found it best to see 
 her first, whether in need of clams, kin- 
 dling wood, ducks, or woodcock. Yet she 
 always said, "You can have it if father 
 is willing;" or, "I must see mother first." 
 It is to be suspected from what I have 
 heard that she was her father's- boy as 
 well, as his girl, and did some things not 
 supposed to be within the range of a 
 woman's accomplishments. Thus it is 
 said that a strange young man, none 
 other would have dared it, attempted to 
 borrow without permission, and after be- 
 ing forbidden, one of her father's boats. 
 I can believe what I heard, namely, that 
 in flying hair and bare feet she leaped 
 over the wall, threw the youth into the 
 mud, fastened the boat again, and stopped 
 forever such raids. It was also whispered 
 to me that the young man put salt pork 
 on his eye, and bound his head with a 
 bandanna handkerchief. As I did not see 
 this I refrain from stating it. 
 
 It is possibly six summers since we 
 
 began to see a young engineer much in 
 
 her company, and to rejoice that another 
 
 love was coming into her life. The wed- 
 
 (12) J 59 
 
ding was not long delayed. By this time 
 the mother was almost wholly blind, and 
 the father's old wound opened, and they 
 could not possibly have lived without 
 Sugar. The daughter was not lost in 
 the wife. She only took another life 
 under her wing. But like a matron, with 
 a strong arm between her and the world, 
 she was now more domestic, and found 
 time to soften and sweeten the strong 
 and shrill voice of her singing maiden- 
 hood. She further found time to freshen 
 and order aright the old home. She was 
 perhaps, as fitting a matron's dignity, a 
 trifle more commanding in the direction of 
 the family life, and even went so far that 
 a flower bed appeared on the rocks be- 
 tween the house and the river, while a 
 box of geraniums flamed in the window, 
 and a new and wider veranda fronted the 
 house. 
 
 It was about this time, if memory holds, 
 that her blind mother stumbled into the 
 whirlpool near the dyke, where some have 
 fallen beyond rescue. Sugar went after, 
 headfirst, held her mother up until both 
 were swept to a quiet eddy, and so 
 dragged her mother back to life. 
 160 
 
Then an autumn came on, bounteous 
 in fish and high in wind. Sugar's hus- 
 band with a friend went out in a skiff be- 
 yond the bar. Late that day the boat 
 came ashore empty but for a single oar. 
 How it happened only God and the angels 
 know. Sugar, wild-eyed and tearless, 
 and the father after her, haunted for days 
 beach, bar, and cove. I do not know if 
 she or another found him. I like to 
 think that love had its reward. But 
 when the father saw the swollen horror 
 which drifted ashore his breaking mind 
 went out. Ever after he was sometimes 
 a brooding and sometimes a noisy trouble. 
 So the blind mother and the bedlam fa- 
 ther sat together in the kitchen, and Su- 
 gar cared for both. 
 
 I had not seen her from her wedding 
 day until after the tragedy. She now had 
 hard lines about her mouth, and was a 
 trifle less careful in dress. She wore a 
 look of defeat, but not of despair, aging 
 her a little. She never spoke to me of 
 her trouble. She became a very busy 
 woman, as is fitting when there is only 
 one pair of arms to care for three. So 
 we saw her digging clams again, loading 
 161 
 
and delivering wood, carting stone and 
 earth pried out and dug by her own hands. 
 Her father came home from the asylum 
 only to waste a bushel of oats on a ten- 
 foot patch, and to drivel and rage as is 
 the way of his sort. He went quietly 
 back when Sugar went with him. She 
 told me of his slow decay. With the 
 charity of love she said: "Papa was al- 
 ways very good, but, do you know, he 
 has become very religious. He talks all 
 the time about God. Wasn't it a funny 
 thing he said to me, ' Sugar, I have wor- 
 shiped God. Sugar, you've been my 
 God!'" He was not as crazy in this as 
 his daughter thought. 
 
 So this wild man became gentle at last. 
 A thousand miles away I hear he is dead, 
 and I wonder how Sugar and the blind 
 mother get on these wintry days. 
 
 Often I have feared that poverty might 
 breed despair, and that her burdens might 
 rush her with a sudden plunge into the 
 depths she has always been so near. A 
 thousand pities if having had such strength 
 it should at last fail. 
 
 If failure comes, let charity abide. It 
 will only prove how hard it is to rise per- 
 162 
 
manently above environment, and how 
 much we all owe, as to conduct, to the 
 homes in which we live and the society 
 in which we move. 
 
 But I will believe she will keep her feet, 
 and show, with faults and relics of imper- 
 fect training, that the strong and good 
 fiber is victorious. 
 
 163 
 
XV 
 
 OUR GENIUS 
 
 HAVE already spoken ot 
 our Genius. Whether in 
 his case it is the absorption 
 of our atmosphere or an 
 inheritance I do not know, 
 but that he is a genius 
 no man who knows him 
 doubts. 
 
 One may well and easily 
 absorb handiness by living 
 in New England. The Connecticut Yan- 
 kee has as distinct a gift for doing many 
 things well, and doing all he does with 
 small expenditure of strength, as the old 
 Greeks had for art. 
 
 Many think that the Yankee loves work 
 for work's sake. I must be permitted to 
 hold a different opinion. His inventive 
 genius is the outcome of his indisposition 
 to work hard. On this account he dreams 
 164 
 
out a machine which will do the work for 
 him while he looks on and whittles. 
 
 This particular Yankee was born in 
 Sweden, and never saw this country until 
 his old boyhood or young manhood. En- 
 dowment and atmosphere both have prob- 
 ably entered into the rich quality of his 
 genius. We of the bay think we have 
 never met anyone quite like him. Of 
 middle height and now nearing middle 
 age, his own hands, empty when he came, 
 have wrought out a growing competency 
 for his simple home. For twenty years 
 past, with the exception of a brief stay 
 among Texas sawmills, he has repressed 
 the Viking wander spirit and remained 
 with us at the bay. 
 
 When we first knew him, sixteen years 
 ago, he was running the engine in the 
 fish mill on Fish Island. He had then as 
 now the art of never seeming busy, but of 
 being always at work; of never looking 
 for anything, but of always knowing where 
 everything is. Quiet even to gentleness 
 in manner, seldom speaking unless spoken 
 to, his answer always begins, at least to 
 me, with a " prevenient " smile. To this 
 day his English, as good as anybody's, 
 165 
 
carries with it a hint of Sweden, and 
 is not without added piquancy on this 
 account. 
 
 A wide forehead, strong nose, and 
 square jaw crown a sturdy frame with 
 broad shoulders. A vigorous mustache, 
 really of unusual vigor, compensates for 
 thinning hair. No day is so full as to pre- 
 vent his going for his New York daily, 
 and no one who employs him ever thinks 
 of his losing time by his going. 
 
 I find it not a little difficult to put this 
 man on paper. The last remark concern- 
 ing his going for his paper will perhaps 
 do for a starting point. That is it. He 
 works when he pleases, how he pleases, 
 and as long as he pleases, and everybody 
 is content. No one thinks any suggestion 
 as to time or method necessary. Nobody 
 watches him except for the pleasure of 
 seeing him work, and no one takes ac- 
 count of his time. No one who knows 
 him questions his bills either as to time 
 or material. Undergirding all the rest 
 is his genius for honesty. I have paid 
 him hundreds of dollars for all sorts of 
 work, never without pleasure, never with 
 thought that there had been any sloven- 
 166 
 
liness, carelessness, or inaccuracy on his 
 part. I have sent him, when a thousand 
 miles away, a rough sketch and told him 
 to work it out, and arrived to find the 
 job of wood, brick, or stone well done 
 and on time, and if there were any change 
 from the original plan, it was to its bet- 
 terment. 
 
 In mentioning the materials above I 
 begin the catalogue of his accomplish- 
 ments. We of Granite Bay desire no 
 better worker in wood. He can build a 
 house from sill to roofboard, and give us 
 joy in the way he handles heavy timbers 
 and puts them into place. He is so 
 much in alliance with nature's forces that 
 gravity works for him as his foreman. 
 AVhen others tug, strain, and shout he 
 slides, roils, and slips quietly into place. 
 His eye is almost as accurate as his rule. 
 I am not sure that he does not cut his 
 stuff by visual measurement. It is a real 
 joy to see him go up a ladder. I say 
 "go up" advisedly instead of climb. 
 There is no climbing about it. Pipe in 
 mouth, a long board under one arm, two 
 or three tools in the other hand, he walks 
 up the rounds perfectly balanced with no 
 167 
 
hold but his feet, and as steadily as if on 
 a grand staircase. 
 
 It often happens that the house he 
 erects rests on stone walls he has built, 
 and is warmed through fireplaces and 
 chimneys, every one of whose bricks he 
 has laid up. If the owner would have 
 that house finished in paneled. and pol- 
 ished oak, the doors and windows gar- 
 nished with the finest hardware, our 
 Genius can do the panel work, polish it, 
 and fit the hardware to a nicety. 
 
 I am not sure that his gifts have not 
 clearest exposition when building a stone 
 wall out of the rough and ill-faced gran- 
 ite hereabout. No scamp work on shift- 
 ing sand or yielding clay for him. The 
 trench goes to the rock, or if that be too 
 deep below the frost line, it is filled to 
 the surface with broken stone, grouted 
 with cement. Then with bar and roller 
 the great stone masses fall into place 
 and stay there. He never tries a stone 
 to see if it will fit. He sees its fitness 
 in the heap. So the wall rises and length- 
 ens, bound by headers and held by mor- 
 tar, until, when finished, its face is fair 
 and its solidity like the rock itself. So I 
 1 68 
 
praise this man as Carlyle did his stone 
 mason father. He does his work well, 
 and smiles as he looks at it, saying, "I 
 guess you will find it there to-morrow." 
 
 At the foot of our cliff is a wall built 
 on rocks shelving toward the sea. For 
 five years it has suffered assault and bat- 
 tery from great waves hurled by two hur- 
 ricanes. It has been washed and leaped 
 upon by tons of water from tides which 
 submerged half of it. No stone has been 
 washed out nor has a dollar been spent for 
 repairs. 
 
 The house built, it must have its 
 plumbing. Drain pipes must be run over 
 the cliff and screened in crevices against 
 offense to the eye. Our Genius departs 
 with his planes and trowels and returns 
 with his pipe-cutter, threader, solder, and 
 charcoal furnace, and does all the plumb- 
 ing so well that no man can fault it. 
 
 The drive of the sleet-bearing east 
 wind compels us to paint often and 
 heavily. Before the plumbing has begun 
 the Genius has primed, second-coated, 
 and trimmed the house in colors which 
 harmonize or contrast, as you prefer. 
 
 The house complete, the furnace is to 
 169 
 
be erected and pipes carried to those he 
 has built in the walls. Behold our Genius 
 laying the brick foundations, setting and 
 cementing fire-pot, putting on the dome, 
 surrounding all with the skin of galvanized 
 iron, connecting the smoke-pipe, and 
 sending the smoke up a chimney into which 
 he has dropped neither brick nor mortar. 
 
 Now the grounds must be graded and 
 road built and macadamized. Here our 
 genius is in full strength. One more trip 
 to his home and he appears with drill, 
 tamp, scoop, hammer, and blasting 
 powder and fuse, and the woods echo 
 with blasts which do not need renewal or 
 multiplication. 
 
 A home without a boat here loses half 
 its delight. Must we go to the boat- 
 builders of Oldport for it? Nay! Tell 
 our Genius what is wanted. Be it skiff, 
 dory, sharpie, catboat, knockabout, 
 sloop, smooth or clinker built, if he has 
 not already built during the winter, he 
 will begin it for you now and rig it in any 
 way you wish. But you had better take 
 his advice as to her rig if you wish speed 
 or carrying power. 
 
 If you are very ambitious, and demand 
 170 
 
a swift naphtha launch with any form of 
 motor, are there not such launches faster 
 than all the others and built by him now 
 running on our bay before your eyes ? 
 
 When the house is done, and the furni- 
 ture in, the natural depravity of inani- 
 mate things appears. The pump will not 
 draw, the stove smokes, the window 
 sashes need loosening, the sewing 
 machine will not work. Our Genius is 
 master of them all. The steam engine 
 on the island is obstinate in declining 
 to work, the hydraulic pump stops, the 
 boiler must have a patch, a new vat must 
 be set. Mindful of his first American 
 home, the Genius drops everything and 
 sets all to rights in the briefest time. 
 
 Last fall the Fisherman must have a 
 greenhouse and conservatory. Who laid 
 the stone foundation, raised the brick 
 wall, laid the tile floor, set up the frame, 
 glazed the sash, made the putty, painted 
 the whole, put in the hot-water furnace, 
 joined all the hot-water pipes, made all 
 the trays, and turned over to its owner 
 as good and pretty hothouse as need be? 
 The Genius. He is not perfect. He can 
 be gruff. He has learned some of the 
 171 
 
bad words in the language of wrath, but 
 he is an honest and truthful man. If he 
 promises to come, he comes when he 
 promises. He is a good, strong lesson 
 in truthfulness and fair dealing. In these 
 one must be as he is or he will work no 
 more. 
 
 117 2 
 
XVI 
 
 THE HERMIT 
 
 ACK of the park, across 
 the flat where the sea once 
 flowed, and up a steep and 
 rocky hill on the island in 
 our rear, you may see 
 what is now a neat cot- 
 tage over whose porch 
 vines clamber, and be- 
 fore which flowers bloom, 
 the foot of this hill and on both sides 
 of the steep road ferns thrive marvelous- 
 ly, and he has a poor eye who cannot dis- 
 tinguish six or seven varieties. 
 
 To the south the hill is thickly wooded 
 and tangled with bittersweet, sumach, 
 blackberry, and barberry. Underneath, 
 the wintergreen, loved of the children, 
 shows its glossy leaves always, and in 
 the autumn its aromatic and vermilion 
 
 berries. 
 
 173 
 
The ridge, beneath whose crest the cot- 
 tage stands, lies between the bay and the 
 river, so that one has them both in sight 
 and with few steps to either. 
 
 A row of cottages now crowns this 
 ridge, the highest view point near the 
 bay. From this it appears landlocked 
 and grants an outlook different from any 
 other. Of late a little colony of Germans 
 build to the southward over the cliffs of 
 the river. But when I first knew the 
 Hermit he had no neighbors to speak of 
 or to speak to. For the last he had small 
 desire, and not much for the first, and 
 one might w r alk the whole length of the 
 lower road, even down to the Fisherman's 
 Point, and never see for the tangle either 
 house or Hermit. 
 
 It was not then much of a house, and 
 the Hermit was not much of a house- 
 keeper. Around lay an extraordinary 
 litter. Garden tools, clam rakes and 
 tongs, eelpots and spears, lobster crates, 
 and crab nets w 7 ere mixed and mingled 
 marvelously. Yet there was an artistic 
 touch in it all, unintended wholly, but 
 growing out of the gill nets, fyke nets, 
 killie seines, hung from tree to tree or 
 174 
 
spread at length on the grass. Such 
 things carry the sea with them even when 
 used in inland decoration. An eel spear 
 might be the scepter of Neptune himself. 
 
 Around the house, wherever a flat 
 place could be found, the Indians once 
 camped and roasted their shellfish. This 
 became soil after centuries, and, though 
 thick with shells, is deemed the best we 
 have in productiveness and resistance to 
 drought. 
 
 There is certainly no home, and seldom 
 is there anything approaching order, 
 where no woman is. The interior of the 
 Hermit's house was simply indescribable. 
 It was not from the dirt, for the Hermit 
 was too much of a gentleman to have 
 filth about him. But I doubt if there 
 were an unbroken plate or saucer, cup, 
 table, chair, or bureau which was whole. 
 Not often could anyone catch a glimpse 
 of this interior. The Hermit was quick 
 of ear and received his visitors outdoors. 
 
 The shell patches were well cultivated, 
 producing more than he needed. So, 
 rarely, but yet occasionally, he would offer 
 what he had for sale, but more often wait 
 for a purchaser. Like all coast folk he 
 (13) ' i7S 
 
was savagely independent, and, like the 
 rest, felt he was doing a favor to anyone 
 purchasing of him. 
 
 Commonly he was arrayed as in the 
 picture, and was always a striking figure. 
 A woolen skullcap with a wide visor 
 shaded a face with strong and long New 
 England features, the adjective "long" 
 appertaining with emphasis to his nose. 
 The last gave character to his whole face. 
 It was penetrating, but not impertinent; 
 it was prominent, but not insinuating. It 
 drooped without heaviness at the point, 
 suggesting economy of resource without 
 parsimony. A striped cotton shirt partly 
 revealed a hairy breast. Woolen trousers 
 and high rubber wading boots, with tops 
 rolling downward, completed a fitting cos- 
 tume for the lank figure. 
 
 In some unknown place he kept a 
 town-going suit, which we never liked to 
 see. It meant that his thirst was on and 
 that he would not be found among us for 
 days, and must be looked for in Oldport, 
 a town which never did him any good, as 
 it does not to some others. 
 
 One might have known him a hundred 
 years and not have heard him speak of 
 176 
 
his past or of his family. Indeed there 
 was a dignity about him which made even 
 the shore folk chary of asking questions. 
 But shore folk have their own way of 
 absorbing information, and come to clear 
 opinion about everybody, and something 
 was known of him and communicated to 
 me ; perhaps equally to others, but of 
 this I know nothing. 
 
 Of the life and produce of the sea he 
 was most knowing. His skiff was in the 
 river and his scow in the bay. From 
 these his innumerable implements drew 
 his livelihood. When soft clams from 
 the river palled hard clams from the bay 
 satisfied. When eels did not pot his 
 fyke gave him flounders, frostfish, hake, 
 and striped bass in due season. When 
 the law was off he hooked oysters from 
 the rocks in the river. His surplus 
 brought him the money he was never 
 without. A few groceries met his wants, 
 tobacco being, I fancy, a large portion 
 of the money cost of his livelihood. He 
 never entertained company ; needed no 
 favors, even if it had been his disposition 
 to receive them. 
 
 The camera caught him whittling a 
 177 
 
tholepin on the way from his scow to his 
 cabin. Though he saw it, it is doubtful 
 if he knew it was taking him. There 
 might easily .have been a scene. On oc- 
 casion he drew on an emphatic pictur- 
 esque and hot vocabulary. No effort was 
 made to conceal the camera. It was in 
 the early days of the snapshot. The im- 
 portance of explaining to him its func- 
 tions was not apparent as an imperious 
 necessity. Yet he glanced at it long 
 enough to give his characteristic attitude 
 and his somewhat severe and suspicious 
 expression. 
 
 Let me do him justice. Seeking no 
 acquaintances, asking no attention, to a 
 few he was genial and talkative. For a 
 very few he would work on rare occasions 
 at sawing wood, trimming trees, or lay- 
 ing stone wall. 
 
 For the last he had the hammer of 
 Thor. Its head was of twenty pounds 
 weight, and he handled it with pride as 
 other men did theirs of half the weight. 
 His more than sixty years sat lightly on 
 him and until the end came, and to the very 
 end he had the instincts of a gentleman. 
 
 To those who hailed him familiarly as 
 178 
 
"Cappen Bill" he made short answer. 
 But to those who called him Captain, 
 sounding his surname, he touched his 
 cap and answered fully. He was notably 
 polite to young girls who knew how to 
 address him, and he distinguished sharply 
 between "gals" and young ladies accord- 
 ing to their manner of saluting him. "I 
 don't call them ladies. They are only 
 gals. They don't know how to speak to 
 an old man." For such as he liked he 
 opened the secrets of the woods and put 
 them on the trail of arbutus, jack-in-the- 
 pulpit, prince's pine, and maidenhair fern. 
 For such he gathered wintergreen berries, 
 bringing them in grape-leaf cups, as he 
 also did the delicious wild strawberry. It 
 was to the houses where such lived that 
 he went first to offer his best of sea food 
 when in the mood to sell. I recall that 
 once, when a wild nor'wester exposed 
 flats rarely bare, he found some enormous 
 soft clams, delicious when baked, and not 
 at all common. He brought them past the 
 entire village to offer them to the young 
 girls who were habitually polite to him. 
 
 So reticent was he that I never knew 
 whether he gained his title of Captain 
 179 
 
from having commanded some sloop or 
 schooner or from having lived long by 
 the sea. As the shore folk do not use 
 the title lightly, and granted it to him, it 
 must be that he was once a commander. 
 
 He certainly had all the arts of the able 
 seaman. He could rig and splice beauti- 
 fully. His moods were such that one 
 could have his services only infrequently. 
 So the Mystery, written of elsewhere, of 
 equal skill and easily accessible, if not 
 hovering about, was the more often em- 
 ployed. 
 
 I do not know how many years he 
 lived in the Cabin on the Hill, nor is the 
 whole story of his life mine. There was 
 a tradition of his having been soured by 
 a disappointment in love. But this story 
 attaches somehow to all hermits, and 
 hence doubt. Yet it may be. But it is 
 against it that he was no sharper of 
 speech as to women than as to men. 
 Some great and early shock to his faith 
 in humankind he certainly had had. 
 This accounted for the road to his confi- 
 dence being so hard that few could reach 
 it. Of mankind in general his opinion 
 was poor enough. He thought the birds 
 180 
 
and beasts better company and more 
 
 trustworthy. . 
 
 There are always depth and strength in 
 such natures, as well as a touch of the 
 Pharisee. No man shuts himself away 
 from his kind without feeling himself, at 
 some one point at least, better than most. 
 There is almost always also in such a 
 poetic vein of vast size and value— for 
 instance, in Thoreau. This man was a 
 Thoreau on a small scale, and with some 
 few habits which men have told me 
 Thoreau had not. The Hermit had 
 keenest enjoyment in nature, from the 
 rainbow to the dewdrop, from the sky to 
 the sea. In fact it may be that a capac- 
 ity for delight in such things uncon- 
 sciously draws such natures, otherwise 
 rough, to the seaside, and holds them 
 there.' To this must be added, as per- 
 haps the controlling force, a more pro- 
 saic fact, namely, the ease with which 
 life can be supported by a sea offering 
 its market by the side of land fairly 
 
 fruitful. 
 
 That the Hermit had had a good an- 
 cestry and good training appeared from 
 occasional outcropping in speech and 
 181 
 
conduct. He challenged men frequently 
 to say that he ever wronged anyone but 
 himself. This leads to my touching as 
 delicately as I may the fact, sad always 
 and everywhere, that he was mastered 
 sometimes by an hereditary or invited 
 enemy, who led him whither he would 
 not wish to go. 
 
 In such conditions he became talkative 
 and sought the company of men, there 
 being no stronger proof that he was not 
 himself. But the man remained in him. 
 He had no maudlin excuses for himself ; 
 no tale to tell, as another had, of being 
 driven to it by wrongs done him. He 
 knew he was doing wrong, and said so, 
 but fired a salvo to his conscience by say- 
 ing: " Anyhow, I don't hurt nobody but 
 myself. I just hurt myself, nobody else." 
 This was true. We never knew him to be 
 in any brawls. 
 
 So for years we lived near him, meet- 
 ing him daily, finding him scrupulously 
 honest and truthful. If he made a prom- 
 ise, he kept it. It was not easy to extract 
 a promise ; but, given, it was sacred. 
 Even when shaken by his enemy he more 
 than once has come to say: "You see I 
 182 
 
ain't fit for nothin*. I'll come as soon as 
 I am." 
 
 One winter pneumonia caught him 
 alone in his cabin. Glad we are to know 
 that some of his blood cared for him. 
 We loved him well enough to fear that 
 he might be ill for days and none know it 
 until found dead. 
 
 The season was a lonely one until 
 we became accustomed to his absence. 
 More than one with the best the 
 world can give mourned him with tears. 
 Those of us who are older felt then, as 
 we feel now, that our bay is poorer since 
 the Hermit died. His cabin is trans- 
 formed. It is clean, pretty, and shelters 
 nice people. But I doubt if any honester 
 soul will ever look out of its windows or 
 a stronger nature watch the sunrise from 
 his hill. Once or twice each season I 
 climb there to help memory bring him 
 back. But all is so changed that mem- 
 ory finds it hard to adjust the place to him 
 or him to the place. More fully can I 
 bring him back in the path he wore 
 through the thicket to his boat and on 
 the rock where he mended his net. 
 Thicket and rock you may see in the 
 183 
 
picture of the Hermit. Alas that such 
 things seem to outlast the men who have 
 made them worth a thought! But slight- 
 er things than rocks and groves outlast 
 men. There is immense pathos to my 
 mind in the photograph, the shadow pic- 
 ture, of a dead man. The shadow of the 
 Hermit has outlasted him by ten years. 
 184 
 
XVII 
 
 THE MYSTERY 
 
 T WAS not some hidden 
 crime nor some skulking 
 malefactor, but a neighbor. 
 The thoughtful know 
 that each man is a mystery 
 to himself and that others 
 are to him. Few, very few, 
 characters are so trans- 
 parent that he who runs, 
 and can therefore have no 
 more than a glance, can read. 
 
 I knew the Mystery well ; perhaps as 
 well as anyone not of his family ; keep- 
 ing close to him, of purpose, for ten 
 years, always learning something, meet- 
 ing surprises ; often discouraged, declar- 
 ing I would have no more to do with 
 him ; constantly taking him up again ; 
 drawn by his cleverness in things useful ; 
 attracted by the complexity of his make- 
 rs 
 
up — and at last coming to love him after 
 a fashion despite many reasons for dis- 
 like if not detestation. It may be that 
 curiosity or a small touch of scientific in- 
 quiry were more operative than aught else 
 through these years in holding me to him. 
 I will not contradict any who think so. 
 
 I know of no one of my neighbors who 
 was safe from his criticisms. A stronger 
 word might find justification. Certainly 
 he spared not me nor mine. All the evil 
 he spoke of others was, I doubt not, as 
 much the product of his diseased imag- 
 ination as that he said of me and mine. 
 If one believed him, there were no good 
 people in the neighborhood. Kindnesses 
 shown him, rescue from painful condi- 
 tions, put no lock on his tongue. Yet he 
 would be unjust who should say he could 
 not be grateful, as he also who should 
 say he could not be kind. I cannot, 
 therefore, praise him for invariable and 
 strenuous veracity as to others, nor could 
 much that he said about himself be re- 
 ceived without salt. 
 
 On hearing him talk, his air of truth- 
 fulness, his multiplicity of detail, his ac- 
 curate and flowing supply of vocables, 
 186 
 
gave him an appearance and persuasion 
 of truth fit to deceive any. Nor is it to 
 be doubted that he was sometimes precise 
 even exact, in statement. Of this all 
 men had proof. Yet he exhaled an at- 
 mosphere of incredulity among those who 
 knew him, and only those who did not 
 know him would accept much that he said 
 and nothing whatever as to the character 
 and conduct of his neighbors. 
 
 Did I therefore think him hopelessly 
 and of purpose mendacious ? No ; others 
 thought him so, but I dared not. 1 he 
 mystery is in the why of this. 
 
 No handier man except the Genius lived 
 among us. He was chiefly a house paint- 
 er and none deny that he was a rapid and 
 excellent workman. He could paint faster 
 than any painter who did not talk, and 
 talk faster than anyone who did not paint. 
 Brush and tongue wagged on together 
 It is affirmed that when alone he talked 
 to himself. There was on him and in 
 him a necessity of speech. He was a 
 night and day factory of statements. It 
 alone, there was a slower market for his 
 product With others he thought there 
 would be a ready one. So he talked until 
 187 
 
rebuked, and after that still talked on, tak- 
 ing up what he fancied would be a more 
 attractive subject, and always with a bear- 
 ing of equality with any. 
 
 He was really, for his position, a man 
 of more than ordinary intelligence. Never 
 so penniless as to be without a daily paper, 
 he remembered all the news and the sub- 
 stance and personnel of the advertise- 
 ments. He had read many books, and 
 would often surprise us by his correct use 
 of the names and drift of American 
 authors. 
 
 He had seen countless plays and could 
 hit off the characteristics of the chief 
 actors of the last quarter of a century. 
 It will appear later that he had some sort 
 of a religious vein, not very large nor 
 well defined, nor of close ethical con- 
 nections, nor rarely dominant, but it was 
 there. 
 
 He must at some time have been in the 
 army, for he belonged to a veterans' asso- 
 ciation and drew a pension, indicating 
 total disability. Possibly his genius for 
 romance was effective in securing this 
 last. All the ten years we knew him he 
 was able-bodied, except when temporarily 
 188 
 
weakened of his own choice. Yet he 
 claimed to have frequent hemorrhages 
 and heart trouble. No one can say he 
 did not. The medical examiners who 
 passed him for a pension ought to know. 
 But he neither lived nor worked as if he 
 had either. 
 
 He claimed to have sailed around the 
 world both in whaling and merchant ves- 
 sels, and to have visited all the great 
 ports. It may be, but who can know ? 
 To do him justice let me say that when I 
 brought some whaling harpoons and lances 
 from Nantucket he named them correctly 
 and was most intensely interested. 
 
 In climbing he had the steadiest hands 
 and head and almost prehensile feet. 
 He walked the whole length of the ridge- 
 board of a large house, paint pot in one 
 hand and brushes in the other. He 
 climbed trees like a cat, and went to 
 heights and trusted himself on limbs 
 where we dare not look at him. 
 
 He was the best of help in rigging and 
 sailing a boat. It was this gift which 
 first made me acquainted with him. The 
 halyards of a sharpie had parted and run 
 out of the masthead block. The mast was 
 189 
 
too slender to climb or bear the weight of 
 a man. So he brought the boat to the 
 foot of our cliff, and climbed where I 
 thought no foot could hold. With one 
 hand on the fence he stretched out toward 
 the mast, caught it, sprang it in, threw 
 the bight of a rope round it, and handed 
 me the slack. After reeving the block he 
 said, " Let go the slack." He was stand- 
 ing between me and the mast and I could 
 not see that the halyards were still in his 
 hands. The spring of the mast jerked 
 him off the cliff. I turned away faint. I 
 thought him hurled into the water or on 
 the rocks thirty feet below. I tremblingly 
 looked over. There he was, standing on 
 the forward deck of the sharpie looking 
 up and smiling. He had held to the rope 
 and slid down to the deck. Whether this 
 was accidental or a performance gotten 
 up for my benefit I do not know. He 
 said it was a close call, but the grin on 
 his face led me to think it might be a 
 dare-devil display of his agility. Who 
 could doubt after this that he had been a 
 sailor ? He had all the sailor's accom- 
 plishments from making an end splice to 
 splicing the main brace. He boxed the 
 190 
 
compass glibly, was truly weatherw'ise, 
 and his walk was of the sea. 
 
 But I never heard him name the mas- 
 ters he sailed with nor the ships he sailed 
 in, though he claimed to have shipped 
 once as a first mate. It is safest to con- 
 clude only that he had been to sea. All 
 the rest may have been the work of that 
 form of imagination which leads some 
 men to claim that any experience of yours 
 is far less remarkable than any one of 
 theirs. I have known others beside the 
 Mystery who had this gift. 
 
 He was as fearless as skillful in han- 
 dling a boat, and was often taken as pilot 
 by those less skillful than himself. Some- 
 times, as the picture shows, Granite Bay 
 has, when the south wind blows, a surf 
 like the ocean. It was hard to keep the 
 Mystery at work then. If he could bor- 
 row a sailboat, he would alone delightedly 
 butt into the seas with only a handkerchief 
 of a sail, or if he could find only a row- 
 boat, he would ride the combers in that. 
 We thought him born to be drowned, but 
 he died in his bed. 
 
 Calm seas found him willing to work, 
 and he was a marvel for work about a 
 (14) 191 
 
house. He loved all plant life; surrounded 
 his poor home with flowers. He could be 
 trusted implicitly to bed plants as no man 
 can who does not love them. If there 
 was no painting to do at painter's wages, 
 he would do laborer's work for laborer's 
 wages. If one needed help at a picnic — 
 oysters roasted, clams steamed, table set, 
 dishes washed — or if one needed a cook 
 for a day, he was as skillful as he was 
 ready. 
 
 In fact it was suspected that this kind 
 of work was particularly pleasing to him, 
 as he then had opportunity to exercise his 
 gifts of narration to new acquaintances. 
 These on such occasions and all others he 
 ardently sought. * 
 
 It is to be admitted, as with some 
 other great men, that he preferred mono- 
 logue to dialogue provided he was the 
 monologist. Never troubled with bash- 
 fulness or shy from conscious incompe- 
 tence for any theme, he would, when aid 
 to a picnic, pick up all the names in a 
 moment, at once begin talking, attend 
 faithfully to what he was paid for doing, 
 and really get more enjoyment out of the 
 affair than anyone else. His was a dou- 
 192 
 
ble, yea, a treble delight. He had picnic 
 company, picnic food, and picnic pay. 
 
 In some mysterious way he could pro- 
 vide on short notice the material for a 
 shore dinner, from the succulent clam from 
 the river to the stew of eels from the Cut. 
 His facility in this respect was connected, 
 in some uncharitable minds, with a predi- 
 lection for nocturnal activities, and a too 
 intimate knowledge of the habits, meth- 
 ods, and haunts of some of the fishermen. 
 In slower minds it may be that his suc- 
 cesses could only in this way be accounted 
 for. Facility is a mark of genius, and so 
 I leave the consideration of the Mystery's 
 gift as a providence. 
 
 It would be difficult to prove that he 
 was a good husband and a wise father, 
 but he certainly loved his family, unless 
 all the accepted proofs of love must in 
 his case go for naught. No father could 
 walk more proudly with his pretty chil- 
 dren or kiss more ecstatically his dump- 
 ling of a baby. That his love was real 
 I must believe from this, that the children 
 delighted to be with him. 
 
 As I have said he often, if he was to be 
 believed, had "hemorrhages." At least 
 193 
 
this was the most frequent excuse he sent 
 up to me when he failed to come to work. 
 But as these were usually preceded by 
 visits to Oldport I must fear that the 
 word was a euphemism sometimes for that 
 form of prostration which follows experi- 
 menting with " spiritus frumenti." Yet 
 may not charity hold that he thought to 
 save his self-respect and some measure of 
 the regard of his neighbors by a fiction ? 
 A man has to be low down who frankly 
 admits in good, plain English that he was 
 drunk. Yet here is the mystery of the 
 sophistication of conscience that one 
 should think himself less tainted by a lie 
 than by drink. 
 
 It was after these " hemorrhages " that 
 he would think himself dying and send for 
 me to pray with him. I never failed to 
 go. Not that I could feel that his moral 
 fiber was strong enough to make either 
 penitence or prayer long helpful. But 
 certainly he mourned his infirmity with 
 tears, and, though claiming to be sick 
 when sending for me, did not conceal the 
 real cause after I reached him. 
 
 But the boy w T ould say, " Father has 
 had a hemorrhage and wants you to come 
 194 
 
and pray with him." Perhaps the father 
 wanted the boy to think well of him as 
 long as he could. 
 
 One day there came a crash in his home 
 affairs. He returned from work to find 
 wife and children gone. Few blamed her 
 for going, if many blamed her for the 
 occasion of her going. Never have I been 
 more puzzled over a man. He had left 
 his family many times alone for months in 
 the winter. Nor do I know that of his earn- 
 ings he sent the wife so much as a cent. 
 But no true-hearted and faithful husband 
 could be more agonized over the wreck 
 of a home, or more appalled at an im- 
 measurable calamity. He was as humili- 
 ated as if he had given no occasion, and 
 as indignant as if he had always been 
 blameless. It was pitiful — pitiful to see 
 him and hear him — the more as one could 
 not wholly sympathize with him. 
 
 Yet the following months were no worse 
 than before. The blow seemed to stagger 
 him first and then sober him. He worked 
 hard, saved some money, sold his house, 
 proposed to get another home elsewhere, 
 and went away from the bay ; so that for 
 two years we lost sight of him. 
 
 195 
 
It was in the spring, I think, that he 
 came to tell me he had a home again; 
 that his wife was with him; that both 
 had pledged themselves to lead Christian 
 lives ; that they had knelt together at the 
 altar of the church. He was clean, well 
 dressed, and happy, and for once talked 
 an hour without speaking evil of anyone. 
 I am not ashamed to say I had hopes of 
 him, though few had, and most smiled 
 when they heard his tale. But God is 
 good and allows no man to die without, 
 at some time, a clear sight of himself. 
 The Mystery had had such a revelation 
 from above. This undergirded my hope. 
 I saw little of him that summer, but when 
 I did he said, "We are still holding on." 
 
 The winter came, and when in the far 
 South I heard he was dead ; that once 
 more he had failed, and that pneumonia 
 following exposure had taken him off. 
 
 I was sorry then and am sorry still. 
 There was little to love in him. His 
 faults were many, his virtues few. Most 
 felt glad, and rightly, when he moved 
 from our bay as adding to its comfort and 
 removing a care. I cannot claim more of 
 charity than others. Possibly I missed 
 196 
 
him as a subject of study ; possibly I had 
 something of the "empty armness " which 
 those have who drop a long-time burden; 
 possibly something of a Christian's sorrow 
 that prayer and patience seemed to end 
 in flat failure. 
 
 Somehow I still remember him kindly. 
 There was an abounding cheerfulness; an 
 amazing nimbleness of mind and body; a 
 readiness to do a kindness; an undying 
 love for his children; an occasional sorrow 
 for wrongdoing. These were mingled 
 with baser clay. What was his early en- 
 vironment ? What his ancestry ? What 
 strange and wayward cells from long-dead 
 men were in him ever contending with 
 better matter from a better source ? I do 
 not know and now never shall. I cannot 
 explain him nor wholly account for my 
 liking him. For years he was a mysteri- 
 ous fact, as is my sadness in seeing him 
 no more. 
 
 I recall, as possibly my last sight of 
 him, that on an evening of wonderful sun- 
 set, when the ruddy and gilded heavens 
 were reflected in the expanse of the bay, 
 he came to the edge of our cliff and stood 
 there, turning alternately from the east- 
 197 
 
ward glory of the sea to the westward 
 glory of the sky. As the light faded he 
 went silently away. 
 
 May not God's mercy find some place 
 for one who could be stilled by s'ich a 
 sight, and in whom ''the elements were 
 so strangely mingled " ? He came into 
 the world not by his own choice and went 
 out of it by his own fault. Is it not well 
 that there is One, and he a Father, who 
 knows all ? 
 
 198 
 
XVIII 
 
 THE SILENT MAN 
 
 HERE the house stands I 
 will not say, lest those 
 who wish it in summer 
 may fear to take it. But 
 I know the house forever, 
 and was in it when what I relate of the 
 Silent Man and his family happened — 
 events which did not then end in death, 
 but something worse. 
 
 It was late in November. Indian sum- 
 mer was past. The chestnut burrs lay 
 empty on the ground. The last robin 
 had gone. The reds of the maples had 
 dulled into brown. Only a few leaves 
 hung lifelessly from the twigs. A freeze 
 had left the oak leaves crisp and rattling 
 in the wind. Here and there in sunny 
 places the purple asters were still in 
 bloom, but the spires of golden-rod and 
 plumes of clematis were now simply fluffy 
 199 
 
and wind-driven down. Cottage owners 
 were making their final visits before win- 
 ter, putting under cover everything which 
 could be damaged. • 
 
 The Genius had gotten the yachts and 
 launches ashore on the last perigee tide 
 and was housing them. The Mystery 
 was oystering in the river, there being 
 now no call for his brush. The Fisher- 
 man had discharged his crew and sent 
 away his last schooner load of oil. The 
 Long Captain had taken in his lobster 
 pots and was thinking that his fyke had 
 better come in also. The chill of coming 
 snow was in the air. There was ice on 
 the verandas and ice in the gutters. It 
 was high time to have things in order, 
 and that was why I was there. 
 
 I do not know when the Silent Man 
 came to the bay. Certainly before I did, 
 for his house was then built and his fam- 
 ily there. I had to make his acquaint- 
 ance, for not otherwise would he have 
 spoken to me. If anyone learned where 
 he came from and how he happened to 
 have money enough to build that house 
 and another one, it was not from him nor 
 from his equally reticent wife. There 
 
 200 
 
was a rumor that the money was hers, 
 but none claimed to know, not even the 
 Long Captain, who, as all men know, has 
 facilities and gifts for acquiring knowl- 
 edge. There were two pretty children, a 
 boy and a girl, neatly dressed and be- 
 speaking a careful mother. 
 
 The man was worse than silent. He 
 was gruff. Few persisted in trying to 
 know him. The shore folk are suspicious 
 of the uncommunicative. They know 
 what they are doing, and to them it is a 
 violation of decency if a newcomer does 
 not promptly tell where he came from, 
 how he got his money, how much he had 
 before he built his house, and how much 
 he has now. The Silent Man said nothing 
 on these points, and was straightway un- 
 popular for this as for his general surli- 
 ness. I always speak guardedly of what 
 I do not see. Hence I state as a rumor, 
 and not as a fact, that it was the Silent 
 Man who had that painful interview with 
 Sugar's father, and that it was he who 
 passed me after dark nursing a black eye 
 and resetting some teeth. While I admit 
 that the substance or the occasion of that 
 interview will now never be fully known, 
 
 201 
 
I fancy that a part of it was the voicing 
 of local resentment toward a man who 
 could move himself and his belongings to 
 the shore and give out no reasons, culti- 
 vate no acquaintances, nor tell where he 
 got his money. While I cannot approve 
 the nature of the protest, it was quite 
 within probability that it should occur. 
 
 It was only a short time after he came 
 that he was voted to be lazy as well as 
 silent. Some of his critics have that rep- 
 utation, but feel it to be highly unjust. 
 All men need long periods of rest to 
 enable them to meet the greater strains 
 and stress of life. Some shore folk gener- 
 ously understand this and fear that they 
 have not rested enough to meet possible 
 strain, and so keep on resting. I doubt 
 if they ever heard this couplet, but it is 
 the quintessence of their philosophy: 
 
 " He who worketh always, working without rest, 
 Never thinks his greatest, never does his best." 
 
 Now, when one has rested long enough 
 to think his best but not to do his best, 
 what must one do but keep on resting ? 
 If, by three months' waiting on summer 
 visitors, the shore folk can earn enough 
 to scrimp through the other nine months, 
 
why should they work ? If they have not 
 enough for the whole winter, are there 
 not ducks to be shot and clams to be 
 dug? May not oysters be had for the 
 
 pulling ? 
 
 Moreover, it is very fatiguing to wait 
 on summer people. They expect to find 
 what they need early or late, and actu- 
 ally hammer at the grocery door at eight 
 in the morning. No wonder shore peo- 
 ple are disturbed by such behavior! 
 Hence I hold that our people were right 
 in calling the Silent Man lazy, since he 
 worked no harder in summer than in win- 
 ter. He went on his own way, and at 
 his own speed, and was never without 
 money summer or winter. 
 
 The Silent Man was short and thickset, 
 his wife long and lean. She wore a sub- 
 dued air, as if a battle had been fought 
 and she had not won. A ghost of a 
 smile had been seen a few times on her 
 face. The two together could gloom any 
 company in five minutes. No one heard 
 of any trouble between them. Both were 
 capable of keeping it to themselves if 
 there had been any. 
 
 The Silent Man soon caught the fever 
 
 203 
 
of summer business and built a large 
 house, with a ball room up stairs and a 
 place for various games below. I am 
 certain, as I look back, that I 'never 
 heard of any dancing there nor saw any 
 one playing games there. I have seen 
 the Silent Man playing by himself, mute, 
 solemn, but content. In the autumn he 
 closed this house and moved back to his 
 cottage. 
 
 Returning from the post office in the 
 fall before mentioned, I saw the Silent 
 Man, hatless and coatless, gesticulating 
 violently from his veranda in some regu- 
 lar but unmeaning fashion. He excitedly 
 asked as I passed, "Do you know the 
 meaning of this sign ?" I answered that 
 I knew some signs, having been in a col- 
 lege secret society and in my youth 
 knowm some other brotherhoods. " Then 
 what does this mean ? " He was touch- 
 ing his thumb with the fingers of the 
 same hand successively. "I do not un- 
 derstand it." "Why in thunder don't 
 you understand it ? Everybody round 
 here understands it, and I'll make you 
 understand it, you dumb head, you." 
 
 The Silent Man had gone mad. His 
 204 
 
wife was cowering at the window, the 
 children sobbing behind her. It was no 
 time to run, even if that had been safest. 
 So I fell in with his humor, went toward 
 him, said I might understand the sign if 
 we could talk it over in the house. For 
 the wife's sake I took this risk. Asking 
 him to go up stairs and get his coat, I said 
 to the wife, "Do you know what is the 
 matter with your husband ? " "Why, no. 
 Is anything particular the matter ? He's 
 been acting queer lately, but he's always 
 had queer spells." "Why, madam, he is 
 insane and dangerous. You must have 
 protection." With that she beckoned me 
 across the room and pointed out three 
 bullet holes in the door. "He did that 
 this morning," she said ; "but he's been 
 firing his pistol around lately, and I did 
 not think much of it." 
 
 By this time he had come down with 
 his wife's bonnet and shawl on, and said 
 he was going to town. We persuaded 
 him to take off his things and wait for 
 dinner. I did not wish to stay and I did 
 not dare to go. Just then the Mystery 
 went by, and I called him in to watch 
 while I telephoned for the First Select- 
 205 
 
man and the Town Physician. The Mys- 
 tery was no coward and came promptly in, 
 and began his ceaseless talk and beguiled 
 the maniac into something like quiet. 
 
 The doctor's verdict was that he must 
 go promptly to the asylum as a very dan- 
 gerous lunatic, but the selectman must 
 act first. 
 
 Waiting for him, we began the most 
 agonizing watch I ever expect to stand. 
 While one kept his eye on the Silent Man, 
 now reversed as to his habit and talking 
 incessantly, or beguiled him into another 
 room, I secreted his pistol, his clasp knife, 
 and shotgun. He hourly grew more vio- 
 lent toward his wife, who sat motionless 
 in the corner, dazed with fear, and keep- 
 ing the children behind her. 
 
 What a task it was to persuade her to 
 go to the Mystery's house ! She had 
 lived so much alone that it seemed easier 
 for her to face her crazy husband than to 
 knock at a strange door. But the Mys- 
 tery offered to go with her, and we had 
 less to face when she was gone. We 
 three stood watch in there all day long 
 without food, until it seemed that our 
 bedlamite must be asleep and one could 
 206 
 
go and get food for all. I ate in a mo- 
 ment in my house near by and hastened 
 back with food for the others. The door 
 opened ; this was what I saw: the wife 
 had come back with her children and had 
 gone up stairs. There her husband had 
 stripped her, dressed her in his own 
 clothes, while he put on her hat and 
 shawl. There they sat at the dining 
 table, he in a roaring frenzy holding a 
 nauseous mess to her mouth and shout- 
 ing, ''Drink, drink, or I'll kill you!" 
 The Fisherman was holding him from be- 
 hind, the blood from the maniac's blows 
 running down the Fisherman's face, but 
 holding him so tightly that he could only 
 yell and swear. I opened the door 
 toward the Mystery's house. The woman 
 and the children screaming ran for their 
 lives. 
 
 Whereupon the crazy man quieted 
 down and ate up the Fisherman's supper. 
 While he was at this the windows and 
 doors were locked up stairs except the 
 door of one room. The Long Captain 
 coming in, we three forced our charge 
 up stairs and locked him in. 
 
 For a few moments all was quiet, and 
 (15) 207 
 
we thought it safe to let the Fisherman 
 and the Long Captain go for help during 
 the night. Though they went out on tip- 
 toe, the Silent Man heard them and in 
 an instant broke the lock of his door. I 
 could neither run nor wrestle with him 
 on the stairs. It was a quick thought to 
 snatch the horsewhip and be ready for 
 him at the foot of the stairs. He saw I 
 was there and hurled down a tempest of 
 boots, firewood, chairs, and bureau draw- 
 ers, and began to come down himself. I 
 know I must have been afraid, at least I 
 think I was ; but not too afraid, as he 
 had nothing in his hands, to pretend I 
 was not and thrash the stairs with the 
 whip and shout, "I'll whip you within an 
 inch of your life if you come down." He 
 halted. That was my time. Thrashing 
 the air, I went up two steps. He went 
 whimpering back to his room. By this 
 time the Fisherman returned, and we bar- 
 ricaded the staircase with the furniture 
 thrown down until the lunatic's strength 
 could not force a passage. 
 
 So we waited and watched, feeling our 
 prisoner secure. 
 
 It was early evening and full moon, all 
 208 
 
the more brilliant for the sprinkle of 
 snow which had fallen, when we heard a 
 crash, a sound of feet on the roof, and 
 then a thud on the ground. It was only 
 a second to the south door. We caught 
 sight of the madman racing naked 
 through the woods toward the Mystery's 
 house, the Mystery after him. He out- 
 stripped pursuit, though chased by the 
 Fisherman, the Long Captain, and myself. 
 
 He burst in the door, and in that mo- 
 ment shocked away forever the last gleam 
 of sense from his wife's dazed brain. 
 Never again was there a sign of intelli- 
 gence or interest in anything. He had 
 escaped by breaking the window, walking 
 over an icy roof, sliding down a veranda 
 post. When his wife saw him there was 
 an awful scream, and then mental death. 
 
 We were near enough to prevent harm. 
 Strapping him and roping him, we led 
 him back to his house. The outburst 
 had quieted him. The watch ended with 
 the morning. Early the selectman and 
 constable came with a hack and bore him 
 away from our bay forever to the com- 
 pany of the crazed. 
 
 He is still living, a weak and muttering 
 209 
 
wreck. The wife is dead; the property 
 gone in the education of the children. 
 
 At the final break-up there was, as is 
 often the case in New England, a vendue, 
 or auction sale. Nothing he had could 
 bring cheerful memories. But I bought 
 his pretty set of chisels, in a neat box for 
 the children's sake. And as I fashion 
 with these brilliant blades a toy or boat 
 for my grandchildren that dreadful night 
 and day come back. Nay, such an expe- 
 rience needs no reminder. 
 
The Doorkeeper. 
 
XIX 
 
 THE DOORKEEPER. 
 
 HE was sitting, when I first 
 saw her, in the doorway of 
 the little abandoned chapel 
 in the park, whose bell now 
 summons us from the steeple 
 of the chapel on the beach. 
 
 The chapel where she sat 
 was built when few came to 
 the bay, and when the park 
 was a wilderness of rocks and thorns. 
 The clerical school-teacher who built it 
 had a good eye. The chapel sits loftily 
 on a ledge and must be reached by rough 
 stone steps. You may see her in one pic- 
 ture sitting in the porch with the cross 
 above her, her nurse in the deep shadow 
 of the doorway. 
 
 Born, almost, with rheumatism, she 
 could walk but little, and to climb into a 
 carriage was beyond her. Sometimes she 
 could be lifted on her cushioned chair 
 
into a business wagon. There were al- 
 ways arms eager for this task. But it 
 was far easier for her to travel in a cush- 
 ioned wheelbarrow, as she did the day the 
 children escorted her on a visit to Phebe. 
 
 She was a maiden lady of past fifty, 
 from one of the best Eastport families, and 
 still so fair of face that we wondered 
 she had lived alone until we knew her 
 story. From youth her joints had 
 stiffened. Sudden movement was ago- 
 nizing. Choosing her own way and time, 
 she could walk a little, and her crippled 
 but beautiful hands were always busy 
 with some kindly work. 
 
 No one could be better company for 
 old and young, being always cheerful and 
 sometimes gay. Her laughter made 
 others laugh. It was so merry one joined 
 in it without knowing why. Expressions 
 chased each other over mobile features, 
 answering your word before her nimble 
 but always kindly tongue. The children 
 and young people said she was " great." 
 The old and the burdened loved to talk 
 with her of the deep things of God. 
 Neat to daintiness always, she sometimes 
 dressed in quiet elegance. 
 
She would not let the great world pass 
 her by. She was a great reader of pa- 
 pers and books, reading from her lap 
 more often than permitting them to be 
 read to her. The head Fisherman, who 
 owned the chapel, said to me: "I don't 
 care whether she pays rent or not. It 
 is pay enough to see her there on the 
 porch." His busy wife, the busiest 
 woman I ever knew, always had time to 
 cross the wire bridge to see if the Door- 
 keeper lacked anything. But it was hard 
 to give her anything. She wished to pay 
 her own way, and to avoid all kinds of 
 dependence. 
 
 She knew the trees about her as if hu- 
 man friends, and recognized their voices 
 as the wind whispered or roared. No 
 hepatica, anemone, Solomon's seal, or 
 columbine could bloom where she did 
 not see it, nor a bud swell without her 
 notice. The delicious light green tips 
 of the growing hemlock branches, the 
 brown of the autumn oaks, the new and 
 bearded pine tufts, the autumnal yellows 
 and reds of the Virginia creeper and rock 
 maples raised her to ecstasy. I have 
 heard her praise God aloud for the beauty 
 213 
 
of the rainbow and of the white manes on 
 the inrushing breakers. 
 
 Her seat on the porch gave her a wide 
 outlook over the sea. And she knew 
 every skiff and catboat. She mothered 
 all the young folk who passed on their 
 way to bathe or fish. 
 
 What she could do for herself no one 
 was permitted to do for her. The full 
 strength and strongest hands of others 
 often did less. She ought to have been 
 fidgety, cross, and morose. She suffered 
 so much we would have forgiven her if she 
 had been. But she was not. She never lost 
 sight of the love and beauty in the world. 
 She came to the chapel before the spring 
 snows were melted, almost with the first 
 bluebird. She lingered until ice drove 
 the ducks from the harbor. 
 
 Her young heart nourished its youth on 
 the sounds and sights of the sea and the 
 woods. The squirrels were intimates. 
 The phcebe bird and the wren built their 
 nests over her head. The robins and 
 song sparrows came to her feet for crumbs. 
 She was no friend to that handsome 
 rascal, the blackbird, who steals the eggs 
 of other birds. I have seen Bunny, the 
 214 
 
brown rabbit, run from her visitors, but 
 play near her fearlessly when alone. 
 
 The fishermen from the island brought 
 their best to her, and she thanked them 
 in such sort that they wanted to come 
 again. 
 
 Her mind rested on the blessings she 
 had, not at all on those denied her. In 
 the ten years we knew her she never once 
 lamented the absence of anything from 
 her life. In fact she never seemed to 
 lack anything. Her life was affluent in 
 pleasure. Outwardly of the simplest, she 
 had means enough to live nicely, not 
 without diminishing her capital. This 
 did not trouble her; she only said, "God 
 will call me before it is all gone." And 
 He did. 
 
 That was a great day, the day of the 
 children and the wheelbarrow. How 
 bright it was with her wit and laughter! 
 She took command; marshaled the forces. 
 A small boy with a colonial flintlock gun 
 six feet long was the advance guard. 
 Then followed tw r o by two others with 
 Korean jingals and Chinese spears. The 
 girls came on with a Chinese chime of 
 bells, shengs, and trumpets, and twang- 
 215 
 
ing a Japanese samisan. The older girls 4 
 who helped her down the stone steps, 
 staggered with laughter as she poked 
 fun at her infirmities. Throned at last on 
 a wheelbarrow easy with pillows and gay 
 with Indian blankets, she cried, " For- 
 ward, march ! " when shaded by an enor- 
 mous Japanese umbrella. 
 
 The amazing din drew in other small 
 boys. Men working on the road pounded 
 their shovels, some following after with 
 their wheelbarrows. So with thirty in 
 escort she was wheeled up the hill to visit 
 Phebe, and in the only vehicle she could 
 endure. "And all this," she said, "to 
 help on a crippled old woman." There 
 was no man, woman, or boy who would 
 not have been there to honor her if they 
 had known it. 
 
 Not all of us were able to give the rea- 
 son for the pleasure we felt in being near 
 her. The Fisherman spoke for us all in 
 saying, "If she should lose her last pen- 
 ny, she shall never lack anything." The 
 young girls talked over their love matters 
 with her as if she were the mother. She 
 was as happy in their happiness and as 
 pleased in seeing lovers walking together 
 216 
 
as if she had the joy herself. "I can tell 
 a girl who knows she is loved. There is 
 a queenliness — a conquest in her walk," 
 she said. Certain it is that our fairest 
 maidens were often on her porch, nomi- 
 nally reading to her, but more often talk- 
 ing with smiles and blushes about " him." 
 When I observed this I better understood 
 why so many wanted to go and see the 
 Doorkeeper. The Doorkeeper knew so 
 much and never told. 
 
 She was not only of the stuff of which 
 saints are made, but already unconsciously 
 a saint. She was learned in the help and 
 hope of the Christian faith. God was no 
 nearer to the prophets than to her. She 
 told me that when wakeful with pain God 
 was nearer in the night than in the day. 
 "God," she said, "cuts off his universe 
 in the daytime by a curtain of light." 
 She asserted that God could be more 
 easily seen in the country than in the city. 
 "Man intrudes himself in the city, God 
 reveals himself in open spaces and among 
 the trees." So she fearlessly watched all 
 nature's tremendous forces at work : the 
 lightning, the gale, and the sea, confident 
 in her Father. 
 
 217 
 
She had thought, not learnedly, but 
 deeply and truly, on the question of suf- 
 fering. "My Lord suffered more in a 
 moment than I in a lifetime. So great a 
 nature must have been lonely." Eternal 
 life was certain and full to her. "My 
 soul is not crippled, only my body. I am 
 penned in my chair, but my soul goes 
 everywhere. My tongue is poorer than 
 my thought. When I am released I shall 
 be free for the first time. So I must fit 
 my spirit for the coming life. If I can be 
 loving and patient here, I shall have 
 something to take with me there." 
 
 It was rarely she would open her heart 
 like this, and never to one who followed 
 not her Lord. To all others she was just 
 a cheerful, patient lady, interested in 
 everything and everybody. She knew a 
 struggling soul by intuition, and to such 
 talked freely. 
 
 I did not at the time understand all 
 she meant when she said, "God may 
 have more discipline for me." Later on 
 we knew that a cruel and mortal disease 
 had come. But then we were talking of 
 the coming of the spring after the winter 
 had gone. She said quietly, "I shall not 
 218 
 
The Children at the Doorkeeper' 
 
be here when the spring comes. I am go- 
 ing to the Fisherman's house for the win- 
 ter. I want to die here. But I want to 
 stay in the chapel until the cold drives 
 me out." All this as cheerfully as if plan- 
 ning to go to Oldport for the winter. 
 
 Never would she say "Good-bye" to 
 
 anyone. When Phebe and she parted 
 
 "with tears, as both knew for the last 
 
 time, it was only "Good-day, dear, until 
 
 we meet again." 
 
 A month later I came back to the bay 
 for a few hours. She was at the Fisher- 
 man's, and lay near a window where she 
 could see the chapel and the sea. Pallid, 
 wasted, helpless, a great soul looked from 
 her eyes. She was beyond speech. But 
 her countenance was of the mount with 
 God. 
 
 She was gone in the spring. The win- 
 ter's snows had not melted when the eter- 
 nal spring came to her. 
 
 Since then the chapel has had no ten- 
 ant. The Fisherman does not care to rent 
 it. To him, to us all, it is sacred to her 
 who often said, "I had rather be a door- 
 keeper in the house of my God, than to 
 dwell in the tents of wickedness." 
 219 
 
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