CHAPTER XTHE COUNTY

The “retired” sea-captain, if he had been too free-handed to grow rich, or had missed his chance of success through practising small shrewdnesses rather than large, often earned his living ashore as postmaster, or “deepo-master,” or he ran the tavern, or the village store that supplied the inhabitants with any obtainable commodity. In any case, as gentleman farmer or one of lower social rank, he fitted easily into the life at home which, in comparison with that of an inland town, was cosmopolitan by reason of constant interchange with countries beyond the sea. Men had a wider outlook: though they might never “go to Boston,” which was the minimum adventure of the community, they were familiar with far scenes discussed of an evening among the frequenters of post-office or store. And if all sailors did not become captains, though the contrary may seem to us to have been the fact, it was the exception when an able-bodied male had not gone at least one “voyage to sea.” The normal Cape Cod boy looked upon the ocean as his natural theatre of action. If he could wheedle his mother into consent, he was off at the tender age of ten, or as soon thereafter as might be, to serve as cabin boy with their neighbor the cap’n.It is even said of one child that by the time he had reached his tenth birthday “he was old enough not to be seasick, not to cry during a storm, and to be of some use about a ship.” From the galley he might be promoted to the fo’c’s’le; from there, if luck and temper served, to the quarter-deck. A captain’s letter to his little daughter tells us something of the relation between captain and crew. Discipline was strict, but “the old man” did not forget that they were all neighbors at home. “We have plenty of music in the forecastle,” he writes, “but I wish I had you all with me and the seraphine and then we could have a good sing. There is a violin-player and one of the best players on the accordion I ever heard, and they go it some evenings, I tell you, and have a regular good dance. They have their balls about twice a week, and I can hear them calling off their cotillion and having a merry time of it. I wish you could see them going it for awhile. Daniel plays the bones and a young man from Barnstable is the musician. I like my crew very much so far and hope they will continue the voyage and improve.”

As cabin boy, forem’st hand, able seaman, mate, or captain, on merchant vessel or fisherman, every man Jack in the village was pretty sure to have had his taste of the sea, and thereby was equipped to contribute his story to the common fund of anecdote. With truth he could say “I am a part of all that I have met.” And whether they had followed the sea for one year or forty, or vicariously through the experience of others, each of them had a tang of “theold salt”; and their home was set in the ocean as surely as if Cape Cod were another Saint Helena breaking the long Atlantic rollers that come sweeping down the world. Many a time, indeed, it must have seemed to swing to their stories like the deck of a ship, and the dry land under foot to be stable only because one was braced to its motion. For most of the men, all the sea ways about the world were as familiar as the village road around the ponds. Daniel Webster once wrote some friends in Dennis of a trial in their district when question arose as to the entrance of the harbor of Owhyhee: “The counsel for the opposite party proposed to call witnesses to give information to the jury. I at once saw a smile which I thought I understood, and suggested to the judge that very probably some of my jury had seen the entrance themselves. Upon which seven out of the twelve arose and said they were quite familiarly acquainted with it, having seen it often.”

Every boy had some grounding in the common branches of study at the schools which his Pilgrim ancestors had been at pains to establish; but given the three R’s, his education was expanded in the larger school of personal adventure. Rich gives a quick biography typical of the Truro fisherman: “Till ten in summer—a barefoot boy, tough, wide-awake—hoes, clams, fishes, swims, goes to the red schoolhouse taught by the village schoolmarm. After ten, on board a fishing vessel cooking for nine or ten men; at thirteen ahand; goes to the same schoolhouse three months or less every winter till seventeenor eighteen; graduates. At twenty-one marries; goes skipper; twenty-five buys a vessel and builds a house, or has been looking around the world to make a change. Whatever may be the experiences of after life, the early history of Cape Cod boys could be summed substantially as stated.”

This matter of an elementary education, in the early days, was frequently undertaken by men whose work was cut out for them to keep their own knowledge a little in advance of their scholars. There was Mr. Hawes, schoolmaster of Yarmouth in the later years of the eighteenth century, who gloried in the fact that

“The little learning I have gained,Was most from simple nature drained.”

“The little learning I have gained,

Was most from simple nature drained.”

He had worked on the farm and managed his own schooling when the only textbooks were the Bible and Catechism. “When the Spelling Book was first introduced,” he remarks dryly, “the good old ladies appeared to fear that religion would be banished from the world.” Hawes, however, undertook the pursuit of the higher learning, and once had a sum set him in the “Single Rule of Three” that cost him three days’ work in the solving of it. “I went often to the woods and gathered pine knots for candles,” he remembers. “At this time I lived with my aged grandfather, who had a liberal education, but was in low circumstances, and I could learn more in his chimney-corner with my pine candle, in one evening, than I could at school in a week.” Discipline was administered by means of anapple-tree branch, and “as soon as the master retired from school, every instrument of correction or torture would by the scholars be destroyed.” In the Bible class, “while each scholar would mention the number and read one verse,” the master would be making pens, and the other children most likely “playing pins, or matching coppers.” Hawes, at the age of seventeen, had “advanced in Arithmetic about as far as Square and Cube Root,” and by his own industry “gained some knowledge of Navigation,” when the Revolution interrupted his studies, and, promptly enlisting, he served in the land force for three years, and then took to the sea. He sailed in no less than five vessels that were captured, but remarks that he was never prisoner more than two months running; and at the close of the Revolution he felt qualified to set up as schoolmaster ashore. His account probably gives an accurate picture of the public education of the day. “I commenced teaching school in Yarmouth,” he writes, “at seven dollars per month, and boarded myself, which was then about equal to seaman’s wages in Boston; and I occasionally taught town and private schools in Barnstable and Yarmouth, when not at sea. The highest wages I ever had was thirty-five dollars per month; and the last school I taught was in Barnstable, and was then in my sixtieth year. Now I will state my own method of school teaching with from sixty to ninety pupils, viz: The first and last hours were generally spent in reading, the middle hours in writing. Those in arithmetic would read with the others when they pleased. Havingone class in school, every scholar, at my word ‘Next,’ would arise and read in his seat, till I pronounced the word ‘Next,’ and I often stopped him in the middle of a verse. After reading around, I would order another book, more proper for the scholars present, as before, and then in four or five different books till the hour expired. Then I gave out the copies and made as many mend their pens as could. If they had no ink-stands, which was the case with many, I would send one after shells, and put cotton therein. The ink I found and charged it to the school. I likewise set at auction who would make the fire cheapest, say for one month, which would go at about one cent a day. While they were writing in the second form, I would hear the little ones read alone, who could not read in classes. Seventeen was the greatest number I think I ever had of them. When school was about half done one scholar was sent for a bucket of water,” and then, no doubt from one dipper, did they all, girls first, then boys, unhygienically drink. “Those in Arithmetic having books of different authors, got their own sums, wrote off their own rules, &c. If they wanted to make inquiries concerning questions,” Mr. Hawes goes on to say, “and the scholar next him could show him, I would request him to; if not, if I had time, I would explain the principles by which the sum was to be done. If he then met with difficulty, I directed him to take it home, and study late at night to have his answer in the morning. When I dismissed the school I would examine each one’s writing book.... I was too much in favor of theFriends’ principles to require any bowing, and left that discretionary with each scholar.”

In schools as rudimentary as this were trained the men whose energy was to accomplish the greatest prosperity of the Cape. A majority of the boys were too busily employed in helping to extract the family livelihood from the soil and the sea to be allowed studies beyond those useful for such a purpose; yet almost immediately the free schools were supplemented, at Yarmouth and Sandwich and Barnstable, by seminaries and academies, where Greek, Latin, French, and the higher mathematics were taught. In 1840 the Truro Academy was founded under the directorship of a wise teacher who raised the standard of education in all the towns about. And there was the Pine Grove Seminary, conducted by Mr. Sidney Brooks at Harwich, and beloved of its scholars: for Mr. Brooks not only encouraged learning, but was a promoter of innocent pleasure. His pupils were to remember Saturday excursions to Long Pond, sailing there in summer and ice-boating in winter; and Mr. Brooks permitted tableaux and dancing in the hall, even were there a brisk revival in progress at the meeting-house across the way. The pupils of Mr. Smith, of Brewster, who died in 1842, remember that he was “successful in making the dullest learn,” and also recall that “Ferula disciplinæ sceptrum erat.”

The elegancies of the Early Victorian era—French, deportment, fine needlework, sewing and embroidery, bead and shell work, the making of wax flowers, sketching in pencil and watercolors—weretaught the young ladies by private instruction. Their culture was continued in the Lyceum and Female Reading Society. Anne C. Lynch and Martin Tupper were the fashion; and they read largely literature commended in the “Lady’s Book,” to which every household with any pretension to gentility subscribed. Mr. Godey averred that his magazine should be “a shrine for the offerings of those who wish to promote the mental, moral, and religious improvement of woman. For female genius it is the appropriate sphere. It will contain a new and elegant engraving inevery number—also, music and patterns for ladies’ muslin work and other embellishments.” The Cape Cod female mind took on with some readiness this shining veneer, but its native vigor remained unimpaired; and women conducted their domestic affairs, or their social amenities at home and in foreign ports, as became the wives of their sailor husbands. At Barnstable and thereabouts domestic service was supplied sometimes by the village girls, sometimes by the Mashpee Indians. An old lady remembers her nurse Dinah, a tall, handsome creature belonging to the clan of “Judge” Greenough, who governed his people with wisdom and good sense; and she recalls a story of the days when the mail arrived by post-rider and an old squaw held up the embarrassed carrier to beg a ride. He permitted her to mount, but, putting his horse to the canter, hoped to shake her off before he reached the town. To no end: she clung like a leech, and called out cheerily, “That’s right, massa. Go it! When I ride I love to ride!” It is easy to bediverted by such anecdotes. With all their seeming primness, the people had a rollicking humor, of which countenances hidden in coal-scuttle bonnets and chins rigid in portentous stocks were no index.

Manners were at their finest and best, and the expression of them often bears a charming simplicity of thought if not of word. Such is Mr. Freeman’s memory of an old lady who had been kind to him. In a footnote of his history he corrects a deplorable error in the text: “We were led, by intelligence communicated in good faith by one whose relations to the person gave to his announcement the assurance of authority, to state that a venerable and most estimable lady was deceased. We are grateful that it is an error. Long may that excellent woman survive, the admiration of her friends. We have remembered her with respect ever since the day she loaned to us, then a little boy, a beautifully illustrated Natural History, kindly proffered with commendations and other encouraging words; and had we the skill of a limner, we could now portray those features marked with intellectuality and benevolence when, with attaching manners, she made her little friend so happy.” Freeman says elsewhere: “If the manners of the age were simple, they were not rough; nor was the rusticity of the less influential devoid of that polish which the few who gave tone to society, unassuming and unenvied, diffused among the masses.”

All through the clipper-ship era, the importance of the Cape steadily grew. She built ships at her own wharves and docked them there, and in the eighteen-fortiesshe even had her own custom-house at Barnstable, although it cleared but one ship, and the building was turned into a town hall. Wharves, harbor improvements, lighthouses were built where they were most needed. In 1830 the Union Wharf was built at Pamet Harbor by the toil of the shareholders in the enterprise, each of whom held but one share and each of whom must wheel his proportion of sand to fill the bulkheads. A committee was appointed to supervise the work and see that there was no shirking; and Rich tells us that some of the younger members of the company were “willing to work harder than wheeling sand” to invite the charge of shirking and fasten that charge upon some man “who felt that neglecting his duty was nearly a crime.” At any price they must have their fun, and lampooned certain bumptious members of the company in doggerel that followed them to their grave. In 1825 a flint-glass factory that became famous for its beautiful output was founded at Sandwich—“glass-works to improve its sand,” is Thoreau’s gibe. The salt-works flourished, there were several cotton and woollen mills, banks and insurance companies and newspapers were established. But the Civil War put an end to this expansion: vessels that were destroyed then or had rotted at the wharves through disuse were never replaced; and in any event the war had but given thecoup de grâceto trade by sailing ships that the development of steam and rails was sure to weaken. Cape Cod soldiers who had followed the sea returned from the war to find their business gone, and many energeticmen had to look elsewhere for careers. They found them; and there is hardly a great city in the country that does not owe something of its prosperity to these men and their children. It is interesting that to-day the old determination to succeed in the circumstances offered is reviving, and men are beginning to see that they need not travel far afield to make a living. There is one of the best intensive farms in the State at Truro; a model farm of twelve thousand acres is being developed at the other extremity of the Cape; there is a great duck-raising farm, and asparagus farms at Eastham. And why should not sheep-raising be revived on the moors of Truro, and Eastham become a granary once more?

Those men who remained at home after the Civil War became again, for the most part, farmers and fishermen, and the humble native cranberry was to do as much for their prosperity as had the salt-works for their fathers. Back in 1677 the Massachusetts colonists who had taken it upon themselves to coin the “pine-tree shillings,” sought to appease the displeasure of King Charles by sending him, with two hogsheads of samp and three thousand codfish, ten barrels of cranberries. But it was not until 1816 that their cultivation was seriously undertaken. Then Henry Hall, of Dennis, first succeeded with his artificial “swamp”; four men of Harwich closely followed, and the business grew until thousands of acres were developed, and, crowded on the Cape, it worked out to larger scope in Plymouth County. The picture of these swamps, flat as a floor, intersected by drainageditches, surrounded usually by wild hedges that teem with color, is one of the most familiar to the Cape. In winter, when they are often flooded, they add countless little lakes to the number summer gives us; or their vines offer the smooth red of eastern looms to brighten the pale northern scene until spring turns them green once more. A new swamp shows gleaming sand through the regular planting of the vines; on one that “bears,” crimson berries, in early autumn, hang thick on the glossy dark-green runnels. And then the swamps are charming centres of activity: women in bright sunbonnets, men in soft shirts and caps, move swiftly on their knees up the roped-off aisles as they scoop the berries into shining tin measures, and a good picker earns a considerable number of dollars in the day. There is the sound of talk and laughter, and the patter of berries as they are “screened” of refuse and swept into barrels. The sun brings out the last tint of color, the atmosphere is like a crystal goblet of heady wine: it is the homely festa of the Cape at its most beautiful season of the year.

From the beginning of the nineteenth century the towns were drawn into increasingly close connection with the larger world. The mails came to them first a-horseback, then by stage, then by the railway which gradually nosed its way to the tip of the Cape. Telegraph followed railway, and then, until the late war, the great Marconi station and the cable talkedwith countries oversea. Freeman reflects upon the blessings of rapid transportation in his day when “we are now, in 1859, in more intimate and close contact with Berkshire and even Maine, in fact with New York and Pennsylvania, than the Cape was with Plymouth during all the time that it remained the seat of justice. It is easier from the extremest town on the Cape now to visit Boston and return, than it was once to perform the necessary act of domestic preparation by carrying a grist from Sandwich to Plymouth to be ground. Nor have we forgotten that important character, the post-rider, who took the entire mail in his saddle-bags (and lean they were too) and occupied the week in going down the Cape and returning. The clock could not better indicate the hour of 5P.M., than did the regular appearance of Mr. Terry on his slow, but sure and well-fed horse (the horses of the Friends are always well kept and sleek, and possibly their capacity for swiftness of locomotion was never put to the test) with his diminutive saddle-bags that seemed to challenge the observation of every one touching the question of their entire emptiness, every Friday afternoon. The facilities now afforded by railroads, stage-coaches, cheap postage, &c., contrast strangely with former times.”

THE MEADOWS

Mr. Swift, in his “Old Yarmouth,” tells us something of those facilities: “The all-day’s journey from Boston to the Cape is remembered with recollections of pleasure, in spite of its inconvenience and wearisome length. Starting at early dawn, and the parties made up of persons of all stations and degrees ofsocial life, the stage coach was a levelling and democratic institution. The numerous stopping places, along the route, gave ample opportunity for the exchange of news, opinions, and to partake of the good cheer of the various taverns.” The liquid portion of that “good cheer,” by the way, was only too liberally distributed, and in 1817 no less than seventeen retailers were privileged to quench the thirst of northern Yarmouth. Such abuse led to reform; and a temperance society was founded whose pledge was not too exacting: no member, “except in case of sickness, shall drink any distilled spirit or wine, in any house in town except ... the one in which he resides.” And the town voted “not to approbate a retailer, but to approbate one taverner for the accommodation of travellers.”

Thoreau, on his famous journey to the Cape, when inclement weather forced him to coach between Sandwich and Orleans, was pleased not at all in respect of the utilities of the towns, but bears testimony, as a philosopher, to the extenuating attributes of their inhabitants. The opinion has been quoted often, and is worth quoting again: “I was struck by the pleasant equality which reigned among the stage company, and their broad and invulnerable good humor. They were what is called free and easy, and met one another to advantage, as men who had, at length, learned how to live. They appeared to know each other when they were strangers, they were so simple and downright. They were well met, in an unusual sense, that is, they met as well as they could meet, and did notseem to be troubled with any impediment. They were not afraid nor ashamed of one another, but were contented to make just such a company as the ingredients allowed. It was evident that the same foolish respect was not here claimed, for mere wealth and station, that is in many parts of New England; yet some of them were the ‘first people,’ as they were called, of the various towns through which we passed. Retired sea-captains, in easy circumstances, who talked of farming as sea-captains are wont; an erect, respectable and trustworthy-looking man, in his wrapper, some of the salt of the earth, who had formerly been the salt of the sea; or a more courtly gentleman, who, perchance, had been a representative to the General Court in his day; or a broad, red-faced, Cape Cod man, who had seen too many storms to be easily irritated.” In short, Thoreau’s Cape-Codders were cosmopolitan creatures, men of the world that he was so ready to despise.

Until the railway was continued “down the Cape,” travellers there were far more likely to make their journeys to and from Boston by the packets than by stage. “For fifty years,” writes Swift, “the arrival and departure of the packets was the important topic of North side intelligence, which was communicated promptly to the dwellers on the South side, that they might govern themselves thereby in arranging their business or their travels.” There are pretty stories of voyages on the packets: of the little girl, wide-eyed with expectation, in big bonnet and mitts, and a flowered bandbox for luggage, who is entrusted to thecaptain for safe delivery into the hands of her kinsmen in Boston. One old lady, whose histrionic sense developed early, remembered that once when she was visiting Boston as a child there was a smallpox epidemic. “I couldn’t help laughing,” said she, “to think if I had got it and died, how grand it would have been to be brought home by the packet, me on board sailing up the harbor with colors half-mast.” There were young ladies setting out for their finishing-school in the metropolis. And on any trip there was sure to be a deep-water captain starting out to “join his ship” at Boston or New York for the longer voyage overseas; beside him, perhaps, his wife companioning him as far as she might, and when he had sailed returning to the children and the three years on the farm without him. Then, when his ship had been spoken by a faster sailer, and was due to “arrive,” she would go up to the city and wait sometimes through anxious weeks until it was sighted down the harbor. Nor were they likely to be idle weeks. “I am so busy I do not know how to stop to write except it is absolutely necessary,” she might write to the little flock at home. “It is a great misfortune to have such a busy mother, but you must make the best of it. I am improving every moment in sewing, looking forward to September when father’s home for my leisure.” And, joy to read, she has decided to let them come to town. “You must come by packet, and you better not make any visits except to grandmother as you will need all your time to prepare. Susan must have all her petticoats fresh starched; Joseph must gethis whitewashing done and his garden in perfect order. We shall want lots of potatoes if father is at home next winter. How does my flower garden flourish? Fix up the pigstye as I want it ready when I get home. Fasten the gates strong so the cattle cannot get in, and see to the water fence. Susan need not fetch a bonnet-box unless it rains when she goes to the packet. Hang your bonnet up on board and wear your sunbonnet. Put the things which you will need to put on when you get here in the leather bag. Remember if it is evening, stay on board all night unless there is some one on board you know to go with you. You may think you know the way, but there have been a great many changes since you were here, and the city looks very different in the evening to what it does in the daytime.” There are portraits of Susan and Joseph taken on this momentous visit: elusive daguerrotypes set in elaborately worked gilt frames. Joseph, in roundabout and Eton collar, and with the determined mien befitting a future master of ships, is seated by a table ornately covered. The other half of the old stamped-leather case, that may be securely clasped by a brass hook, is occupied by Susan: Susan shy, yet determined, too, clutching at the same table, her wool dress cut for the display of childish collarbones, her thin little arms twitched slightly akimbo by their short tight sleeves; but her necklace is picked out with gold, her cheeks with pink, and Susan’s wide-set eyes under the primly parted hair look at you straight, undaunted by the great world.

The captains of these packets that ran out of everytown on the north shore of the Cape had their fun racing one another from port to port; it is probable some money was lost or won on the results. Barnstable, even, produced a ballad to immortalize some of the contestants:

“The Commodore Hull she sails so dullShe makes her crew look sour;The Eagle Flight she is out of sightIn less than half an hour,But the bold old Emerald takes delightTo beat the Commodore and the Flight.”

“The Commodore Hull she sails so dull

She makes her crew look sour;

The Eagle Flight she is out of sight

In less than half an hour,

But the bold old Emerald takes delight

To beat the Commodore and the Flight.”

Other packets had the romantic names of Winged Hunter and Leading Wind; the Sarah of Brewster was as familiar to her people as “old Mis’ Paine” or “Squire Freeman.” Truro had the Young Tell, the Post Boy and the Modena. The Post Boy may be said to have been queen of the bay, luxuriously fitted out in mahogany and silk draperies, and with a captain who had the reputation of knowing the way to Boston in the darkest night, and being able to keep his passengers good-natured in a head wind. Passengers by the Post Boy knew the quality of their company, and that the run to Boston could never be so long as to exhaust the fund of stories. “Each told his experience, or listened with interest or pleasure to the rest, and all sought with unaffected goodnature to please and profit.”

No picture of the Cape could be complete without some accent upon its men of the learned professions.Teacher, doctor, parson, and lawyer might or might not have shared the universal experience of the sea: it depended, usually, upon whether they were importations or native products. But certainly the memory of them adds another note to the richness of the general hue. We have met good Deacon Hawes, the Yarmouth schoolmaster, and the more elegant Sidney Brooks, of Harwich: they exemplify, perhaps, the two types of early teachers. Young collegians, working their way through the university, were for a later generation; and very well, for the most part, did they train the boys and girls of the district schools. They were absurdly young, some of them lads not yet in their twenties; but they imparted knowledge with the same clear-minded determination with which they were pursuing their own education. Schools of the best quality that offered, the people of any time were bound to have: Truro, as early as 1716, placed schoolmaster before politician. They engaged Mr. Samuel Spear “for the entire year” for the consideration that he should receive forty pounds salary and “board himself”; then, “determined to save in some way what they were compelled to spend for schools,” they voted to send no representative to the General Court, “because we are not obliged by law to send one, and because the Court has rated us so high that we are not able to pay one for going.” Later Mr. Spear served Provincetown as minister.

Of the early physicians Doctor Abner Hersey, of Barnstable, was, perhaps, the most famous. He came there from Hingham in 1769 to study medicine witha brother, who, however, died within the year of his arrival. Very likely the general knowledge he had picked up in that short association, supplemented by his native judgment and common sense, his keen observation and power of correct deduction, served his patients as well as would a more exact training in the science of the day. He became the leading physician of the Cape, and on his regular circuit through the towns, the sick were brought for his healing to every crossroads and centre. He was brusque and uncertain in temper, and was, withal, eccentric. Freeman judges him “subject to hypochondriac affections.” “He rejected alike animal food and alcoholic stimulants; his meals were fruit, milk, and vegetables. Contemning the follies of fashion, his garments were peculiar to himself—his overcoat to protect him in travel was made of seven calfskins, lined with flannel.” As a further precaution against the searching winter winds his chaise was entirely enclosed with leather curtains, pierced by two loopholes for his eyes and the reins. There is evidence that his bed was heaped high with “milled” blankets which he manipulated, up or down, in accord with the temperature. He was just, benevolent, shrewd, and his name lived after him. By his will he left five hundred pounds to Harvard University to endow a chair of anatomy and surgery; and after his wife’s death the residue of his estate was to be held for the thirteen Congregational parishes of the county, the income distributed in due proportion to the size of his practice therein. And there opened the door of temptation to the devout: for this sum,amounting to some four thousand pounds, was to be managed by the deacons and the income expended for such sound doctrinal books as Dodridge on the “Rise and Progress of the Christian Religion,” and Evans on “The Christian Temper.” But the deacons made such good cheer at their annual meetings, which held over sometimes for two or three days at the comfortable tavern of Mrs. Lydia Sturgis in Barnstable, that little of the income was left for the purchase of godly literature. The matter became something of a scandal, and after the lapse of thirty years the court settled the estate and distributed the principal among the several parishes.

Doctor James Thacher, who studied with Hersey and served as a surgeon in the Revolution, died, in 1844, at the age of ninety. Doctor Leonard, of Sandwich, born in 1763 and practising for sixty years, had the enviable reputation of being patient with chronic invalids, prompt in epidemics or “occasional” diseases—in short, a good Christian and a good doctor. He was succeeded by his son, who links up the profession, in the memory of the living with Doctor Gould, of Brewster. Vast, kindly, skilful, sympathetic with his patients to his own hurt, rather silent, who can forget him on his errands of mercy as he drove from house to house or town to town in the “sulky” that was so exact a fit for his bulk the wonder was he must not always carry it upon his back as the snail his shell. It was an ordeal then for a child to be stood on a chair and have that Jovine ear applied to back and chest in lieu of a stethoscope. “Have you aphial?” inquired Jove of the parent after one such test. Later a terrified infant was abstracted from the depths of a broom-cupboard. “O mother, mother, what is a phial?” cried the victim of his fears.

The early parsons were often, as we have seen, of a fine type—English university men usually, who had travelled far in their quest of freedom. They were perforce, in the new country, farmers as well as clergymen, and one of them, the Reverend John Avery, of Truro, practised, in addition, the arts of doctor, lawyer, and smith. It is written of him that he “manifested great tenderness for the sick, and his people very seriously felt their loss in his death.” He came to them in 1711, and lived active, beneficent years among them until his death in 1754. These Cape pastorates frequently covered a great span of years. In its first century the West Parish of Barnstable had but two ministers. In 1828 died the Reverend Timothy Alden, of Yarmouth, after a tenure of fifty-nine years. Alden was more truly of the soil than many of his brethren, as he was in direct line from John of the Mayflower. He was a man of wit in the choice of his texts: “Where no wood is, there the fire goeth out,” brought forth on the Monday his stipulated firewood that had been lacking; and to a critic he gave answer on the following Sabbath: “The word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.” Mr. Freeman remembers that Alden was the last to wear the Revolutionary costume. As late as 1824 he saw him at an ordination: “his antique wig conspicuous, in small clothes, with knee andshoe buckles, and three-cornered hat lying nearby—objects of interest to the young.” “He sat there as sometimes stands a solitary, aged oak, surrounded by the younger growth of a later period. It was to us the last exhibition of the great wigs and cocked hats; it left also impressions of a bygone age long to be remembered.”

The pastorates of Mr. Avery, Mr. Upham, and Mr. Damon, of Truro, covered one hundred and eighteen years. It was Mr. Upham who rebated fifty pounds of his salary during the hard times of the Revolution, and gave further evidence of public spirit by travelling to Boston to aid in adjusting “the prices of the necessities of life.” His people were ready to raise one hundred dollars for his expenses. Mr. Upham “left behind him a poem in manuscript, the subject of which was taken from the Book of Job. He was ever attentive to the real good of his people, and exerted himself with zeal and fidelity in their service.” The Reverend Jude Damon was ordained in 1786, and some notion of the festivity may be gathered from the fact that Captain Joshua Atkins was voted forty dollars (Spanish Milled) to defray the expense of entertaining the council. Mr. Damon was voted two hundred pounds “settlement,” and, annually, seventy-five pounds specie, the use of the parsonage, fifteen cords of oak wood, three of pine, and five tons of hay delivered at his door. And Mr. Damon’s comments upon certain of his parishioners, deceased, are preserved for our pleasure in his private memoranda. One Mary Treat, dead at ninety-five, “came from Englandat the age of fourteen, and was a person of fine mind and robust constitution. She gave me a tolerable account of London and Westminster bridges, and likewise observed that the distance from Dover to Calais was so small that in a very clear day linen might be seen from one place to another.” Samuel Small was “a pious and good man whose great desire was to be prepared for another and better world and to have an easy passage out of this.” Of the Widow Atkins her “usefulness and activity in sickness and midwifery will be remembered, and her memory will be embalmed with a grateful perfume in the minds of all who were within the circle of her acquaintance.” Another “had a taste for reading both sacred and profane history.” Another, of enterprising spirit, was “greatly prospered in his secular affairs, tender-hearted to the poor.” Vivid little portraits flash out from his page: the husband, “tender and affectionate, as a father distinguished for his talent of governing his children, tempering indulgence with prudence; as a neighbor pleasant and obliging, as a magistrate he was a peacemaker, as a deacon of the church he magnified his office. He came to his grave in full age, like a shock of corn cometh he in season.” Mr. Damon himself was beloved for his tolerance and sweet spirit: of a welcome guest one could say no more than “I would as soon see Mr. Damon.” But his memoranda reveal that Mr. Damon had a keen eye. Of one female parishioner who in her last illness “frequently expressed her desire to be with her Redeemer,” he remarks, “It is to be hoped she was as really pious asshe seemed.” And of one deceased “professor” he wrote that he “was possessed of good abilities and powers of mind. These were, however, much eclipsed by his selfish spirit and avaricious disposition.” To Mr. Damon’s cure belonged a local astronomer, unlettered and untaught, a dreamer, who loved the stars. He knew them all and called them by name, and, meeting with scant sympathy in his star-gazing, scorned not the humblest disciple. “I swear,” he had been known to exclaim, “half the stars might go out of the sky, and nobody here would know it, if it wasn’t for me and Aunt Achsah.”

The pastorates of Mr. Dunster, Mr. Stone, and Mr. Simpkins in the North Parish of Harwich included its transfer to Brewster, and covered a span of one hundred and thirty-one years. Mr. Dunster married Reliance, daughter of Governor Hinckley, who is said to have been baptized on the day of the memorable “swamp fight” that ended King Philip’s War, and received her name in “token of firm reliance in Divine Power” held by her mother for the safety of the father who was fighting that day. Mr. Stone, in 1730, inveighs against “a sad failing in family government—a wicked practice of young people in their courtships which I have borne my public testimony against”—an allusion, no doubt, to the ancient betrothal custom of “sitting-up.” There are interesting cases of parish discipline recorded. In Mr. Dunster’s time, “the church met to hear a charge examined against a sister, brought by another sister in the church, the pushing her out of a pew, and hunchinganother in time of divine service in the meeting-house.” And as late as 1820 a committee was appointed “to keep the meeting-house clear of dogs, and to kill them if their owners will not keep them out”; boys, likewise, the committee were to “take care of and keep them still in time of meeting.” No light task, we may guess, where the boys were segregated in a balcony apart as if for the special incitement of mischief; nor were boys the only ones who were irked by those long services. It was the sexton’s duty to turn the glass at the beginning of the sermon, which must be ended with the sand, and Freeman remembers the “early preparation for a determined stampede from the meeting-house the moment that the benediction was pronounced. Coats were buttoned, canes and hats were taken in hand, pew-doors were unbuttoned, and diligent and full preparation was made for a general rush to ensue as soon as the closing Amen should begin to be articulated by the minister. And such a babel of tongues and noisy scattering of devout worshippers as followed was memorable.” Nor is it remarkable that men should have welcomed the Amen as a blessed release when pews must have been stools of penance for a full-bodied sailor, or for a child whose short legs must dangle unsupported, so narrow was the seat, so hard and straight did the back rise therefrom. Mr. Freeman recalls other points of the service, that of the choir “tuning their voices—often with the aid of the bass viol and sometimes violin, during the reading of the psalm,” and the slamming of the hinged seats of the pews when thecongregation rose for the prayer. It would have been papistical then to kneel in the house of God, and a man addressed his Maker stoutly upon his feet; the monotony of the service was further varied, when the last hymn was given out, by standing with backs to the parson as if, his contribution duly delivered, full criticism might be turned upon the choir.

Mr. Simpkins steered Brewster through the troubled times of the Embargo War, and aided with his intercession the deliberations of the town as to paying war tribute to the British. Grandmothers of not many years ago could tell stories of Parson Simpkins, a stately gentleman for whom the best New England rum was kept on the sideboard to cheer his parochial calls. But the parson, on such visits, was not infrequently the herald of disaster: for when a ship arrived with captain or seaman missing, drowned or dead in some foreign port, the minister was first notified, and even if his call were only for pleasure, the wife or mother who saw him coming would have a pang of dread, and the neighbors say: “There goes Mr. Simpkins—bad news for some one.”

One of the last of these long cures, running through thirty-five years, was that of the Reverend Thomas Dawes, worthy successor of his prototypes, a fine, scholarly gentleman of the old school. The rounded periods of his sermons were sometimes applied to the case of his parishioners with a directness that offended sensitive ears, but is valued rightly in the stock-in-trade of many an urban preacher of to-day. “We ofBrewster,” he would roll out with melodious emphasis.His reading of hymn and Scriptures was a remembrance to be treasured, his presence in the pulpit a benediction, and who that had seen him there could forget the shining glory of his face as he “talked with God.” For the children of his parish, through a long season, he made Saul of Tarsus a living personality, and the coasts of the Mediterranean as familiar to them as Cape Cod Bay. He illustrated his instruction by crayon sketches in color, and the scholars saw how Gamaliel’s pupils were grouped about their master’s feet; they knew how a man should adjust his phylactery; and though there were derision of the High Priest’s countenance, there was no confusing the style of his breast-plate with that of a centurion. As he aged, the good pastor became something of a recluse. He loved his books, and through the years amassed in his little study a collection that was typical of the best in his day and generation, with a queer alien blot now and then: for it was said that he could never resist the blandishments of the canvasser and the appeal of the book in his hand. Dying, he left his treasure intact to the village library; nor did he see the necessity for any such stipulation as old John Lothrop’s that his books were only for those who knew how to use them.

The temporal affairs of these good men not infrequently needed mending, nor, as time went on, were the clergy usually recruited from among the natives: Cape Cod men, pursuing their vocations by land and sea, were likely to depute to aliens the less lucrative cure of souls. Versatile Mr. Avery, of Truro, seems tohave come out well in the struggle and to have bequeathed a tidy fortune to his heirs. But Jonathan Russell and Timothy Alden, as we have seen, needed to have a care to their firewood; and Oakes Shaw, the successor of Russell and father of the great chief justice, even had recourse to the constable to adjust the arrears of his stipend. Mrs. Shaw, debating with her son his choice of a profession, was betrayed into some ironical appreciation of the clergy which she was quick to regret. “I hope you will not mistake your talent,” wrote she. “I could name several that took upon them the sacred profession of divinity, this profession so far from regulating their conduct, that their conduct would have disgraced a Hottentot. Others we have seen in various professions who have been an ornament to the Christian religion. I was not aware till I had just finished the last sentence that you might construe it into a discouragement of entering upon the study of divinity. This is not my intention, for I do most sincerely hope that you will make it your study through life whether you ever preach it or not.”

Her son chose the law, and gave us one of the two great men, both of them lawyers, whom the Cape has produced. Palfrey quotes one who went so far as to affirm that “no spot has made such a gift to the country as Great Marshes in Barnstable.” There lived James Otis, chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas in the troubled times of the Revolution, and there James Otis the patriot was born. James Otis, the younger, when he grew to maturity, removed to Boston,but he may be counted a son of the Old Colony and an inheritor of its genius. He was far more than a fiery orator whose eloquence was the inspiration of other men’s work; but on a flood of enthusiasm induced by that eloquence he was carried into the House of Representatives. “Out of this election will arise a damned faction,” commented a royalist judge, “which will shake this province to its foundation.” His prediction fell ludicrously short of the event. Otis conducted the patriots’ cause with such “prudence and fortitude, at every sacrifice of personal interest and amidst unceasing persecution,” that the “History of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts” can declare that: “Constitutional government in America, so far as it is expressed in writing, developed largely from the ideas expressed by James Otis and the Massachusetts men who framed the Constitution of 1780.”

And the man who more than any other in Massachusetts was to perfect their work, who stands beside the great Marshall in the history of American jurisprudence, and by the wise decisions of a temperate mind established the flow of justice through the channel of the common law, was also a native of Great Marshes. There, in 1781, when the work of the earlier patriots was accomplished, Lemuel Shaw was born. Slowly, irresistibly, by sheer force of worth and capacity, he advanced to fame. He was graduated from Harvard, he entered the law, and for twenty-six years practised his profession in Boston. At one time and another he served in the General Court, he was firewarden,selectman, a member of the school committee, and of the constitutional convention of 1820; and in 1830, when he was appointed chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court, his sane inheritance, his tempered judgment, his wide experience of law and of men, had forged a mind perfectly adapted to his opportunity. In his thirty years upon the bench he enriched incalculably the sparse records of the common law. In the opinion of a fellow jurist, “The distinguishing characteristic of his judicial work was the application of the general principles of law, by a virile and learned mind, with a statesman’s breadth of vision and amplitude of wisdom to the novel conditions presented by a rapidly changing civilization.” The Pilgrims had brought here and practised the Anglo-Saxon conception of such freedom as is commensurate with justice to all. “They brought along with them their national genius,” wrote Saint John de Crèvecœur in his “Letters from an American Farmer,” in 1782, “to which they principally owe what liberty they enjoy, and what substance they possess.” It was the great American jurists who developed and adapted that conception of justice for the due guidance of the new nation.

Shaw lived in Boston, but, unlike James Otis, he never gave up his hold upon his native town. He loved the village roads and Great Marshes and the sea. And, curiously, as if again the magic of the sea’s charm persisted in the fortunes of its children, Shaw’s daughter married Herman Melville, the author of “Typee” and “Omoo.” Shaw was fond of children,and used to drive his little granddaughter about Boston in his old chaise; there is a story of his being caught by a visitor at a game of bear with the children. But he could be stern enough on the bench; and a sharp practitioner, complaining of his severity, was tartly reminded by a fellow lawyer that “while we have jackals and hyenas at the bar, we want the old lion on the bench with one blow of his huge paw to bring their scalps about their eyes.”

Shaw spoke again and again at local celebrations on the Cape. At one such banquet he might have proposed, or answered, the toast to “Cape Cod Our Home: The first to honor the Pilgrim ship, the first to receive the Pilgrim feet; the first and always the dearest in the memory of her children everywhere.” But it was at Yarmouth that he expressed best, perhaps, the loyalties of his great heart: “There is not one visitor here male or female whose heart is not penetrated with the deep and endearing sentiment, at once joyous and sad, which makes up the indescribable charm of home.”

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