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FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
BOOKS BY 
 
 flDars IS. Mailer 
 
 THE WOOD-CARVER OF 'LYMPUS 
 
 A DAUGHTER OF THE RICH 
 
 THE LITTLE CITIZEN 
 
 SANNA OF THE ISLAND TOWN 
 
 A YEAR OUT OF LIFE 
 
 FLAMSTED QUARRIES 
 
 A CRY IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 MY RAGPICKER 
 
 THROUGH THE GATES OF THE 
 
 NETHERLANDS 
 OUR BENNY 
 
FROM AN 
 ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 BY 
 
 MARY E. WALLER 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE WOOD-CARVER OF 'LYMPUS," "A CRY IN 
 THE WILDERNESS," " FLAMSTED QUARRIES," ETC. 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
 
 1914 
 
.A 57 
 
 Copyright, 1914, 
 By Mary E. Waller. 
 
 All rights reset ved 
 
 Published, April, 1914 
 
 APR -6 1914 
 
 Setup and electrotyped by J. S. Cushing Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
 Presswork by S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
 <AT 
 
 •CI.A371221 
 
Go 
 
 DR. JOHN SHACKFORD GROUARD 
 
 OF 
 
 THE ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. Arrival i 
 
 II. By Wireless n 
 
 III. Beach Plum Jelly and Some Practical 
 
 Deductions 26 
 
 IV. Roots, Subsoil, and Landed Estates . 34 
 V. The "Pass" 59 
 
 VI. Outlook 71 
 
 VII. Certain Moods of the Moors ... 91 
 
 VIII. My Mail 102 
 
 IX. A Literary Molokai 127 
 
 X. By Way of Contrast 142 
 
 XI. At the Edge of the World . . . . 157 
 
 XII. A Private View 165 
 
 XIII. The Winds 176 
 
 XIV. Little Gardens by the Sea .... 188 
 XV. Low Tides 206 
 
 XVI. High Tides 231 
 
 XVII. Searchlights 249 
 
 XVIII. The Gulls and Aviation 269 
 
 XIX. Deep-sea Soundings 274 
 
 XX. Beacons 295 
 
FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 ARRIVAL 
 
 As work interpreting life has taught me, as life sus- 
 tained by work has given me. 
 
 I. 
 
 September, 1909. 
 
 My first breathing spell in nine years ; and 
 during these nine years I have worked steadily, 
 like a dray-horse, in the harness of necessity. 
 Not once in all these years has that necessity 
 loosened so much as a check-rein, — and there 
 has been much uphill work, — to ease me 
 mercifully till to-day. 
 
 No wonder I am sitting here in the kitchen of 
 this island home, half-dazed, partly numb, and 
 wholly dumb save for the sound of this pencil 
 moving over the paper. I look out against a 
 
2 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 blank of dense, white fog that curtains the one 
 window. What is beyond it ? 
 
 The boat on which we came was late. The 
 weather was so thick she was forced to feel her 
 way into the harbor. The wharf was ghostly ; 
 the small crowd of people on it mere phantoms ; 
 the streets apparently deserted, and the border- 
 ing trees loomed fantastic in the mist. What a 
 night to arrive, unknowing and unknown, on this 
 Island Outpost in the Atlantic ! 
 
 2. 
 I have been getting my bearings this first 
 morning. The fog has lifted. To the south, 
 west, north, are billowing moors. They lie 
 uniformly dun beneath the unbroken gray of 
 low-hanging skies and, undefined in outline, 
 blend with them at the horizon. 
 
 3- 
 
 I was up early and away to the moors just 
 beyond the house. I found I was in a world 
 of strange and wonderful perspective, for I 
 looked out on a gently undulating sea of varied 
 
ARRIVAL 3 
 
 green and brown grasses, necked here and there 
 with the foam of the wild carrot blossoms. In 
 the foreground a flock of small, gray, white- 
 breasted birds was flying restlessly and songless 
 from green crest to brown crest, rising at inter- 
 vals with a curiously uncertain swing to soar 
 into the brooding gray depths above them. 
 
 I recognize their mood, that of ante-migra- 
 tion : restless, songless, transiently homeless. 
 Many humans experience this. I know that I 
 have more than once. 
 
 4- 
 
 On this third day the sun is shining. I have 
 been out on the moors again this afternoon and 
 I find myself in another world, a world of spa- 
 cious light and marvellous nuance of neutral 
 tints : soft grays, warm browns, dark greens 
 underflushed with a hint of red in the huckle- 
 berry patches. As I stood on one of the higher 
 swells, the spirit of me suddenly felt untram- 
 melled, free to breathe great breaths in the spa- 
 cious lightness of the softly moving air. Below 
 me the crooked moorland road, rutted deep in 
 
4 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 sand, led to the town. The huddle of gray roofs 
 and stacks of gray, deep-throated chimneys 
 shone silver gray in the clear sunshine. 
 
 5- 
 
 One of the untranslatable September days. 
 It is impossible to render its effect on body, 
 mind, and soul, either in words, colors, or tones. 
 For the time being one may absorb infinity in 
 the intersecting planes of thought, tone, color; 
 but the word that would translate, the land- 
 scape that would picture, the harmony that 
 would reveal, are mere circumscribed instru- 
 mentation for its expression. Still, circum- 
 scribed as are our powers, we can reach certain 
 interpretations. I find suggestions of such a 
 day as this in one of Homer Martin's landscapes, 
 in two lines from Lanier's "Hymns of the 
 Marshes", in an adaptation, or rather, I should 
 say, in an interpretation by Tschaikowsky of a 
 "Prayer" by Mozart. 
 
 6. 
 I have taken my first drive this afternoon. 
 I went about five miles towards the one-time 
 
ARRIVAL 5 
 
 fishing hamlet of 'Sconset. The perspective 
 of the long, yellowish white road was lost in 
 haze. To the right the moors darkened into 
 an expanse of dwarfed pines ; to the left the 
 dull red of the cranberry bogs filled a great 
 hollow, hundreds of acres in extent. On its 
 farthermost edge the blue-gray smoke from 
 burning peat-stacks trailed with scarcely per- 
 ceptible motion out to sea. 
 
 As I looked, I was aware of a sudden blur- 
 ring of the daylight ; without warning, a tidal 
 wave of fog rolled in from the Atlantic. In 
 a moment everything loomed gigantic; all 
 dimensions were indeterminate. Then I felt 
 a cool, refreshing moisture on my face, and all 
 around and above was blotted out save for a 
 strip of the yellowish white road before me. 
 
 I turned homewards and faced a blank ; 
 only the road, like the straight line of duty, 
 was visible a little way ahead. 
 
 7- 
 This old house, gray and weather-beaten, is 
 an architectural freak. One half of the first 
 
6 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 floor is only one room deep, but that depth 
 is fully forty feet, or rather, I may say, it is 
 seven miles deep ! For from its four eastern 
 windows there is a harbor extension of miles 
 to the "haulover". As I sit at the dining- 
 table I look out and down over gray roofs, 
 huge, square, gray chimneys, over marshy 
 meadows bordered by a line of young willows, 
 and between bites I may see the trim yachts 
 at anchor, the old collier-schooners making 
 slow sail to the wharves, the daily steamer 
 rounding the Point, or the fleet of fishing boats 
 tacking irregularly across the Upper Harbor. 
 
 8. 
 Sometimes I find myself wondering where 
 I am. Not in America, I say to myself. There 
 is more than a hint of some of the fishing vil- 
 lages of the Scotch coast of the North Sea — 
 Newhaven, for instance. It needs only the 
 appearance of those transplanted Scandinavian 
 fishwives, with their amplitude of short skirts, 
 their bare arms akimbo, their creels of fish, to 
 convince me I am far more than thirty miles 
 
ARRIVAL 7 
 
 away from the continent of America. What a 
 swing they have, those fishwives of Newhaven ! 
 What a superb carriage : head erect, shoulders 
 and back flat, lithe hips, sturdy calves, and a 
 stride of thirty inches ! I can hear their reso- 
 nant voices crying, "Caller herring". 
 
 9- 
 
 I went down town to-day to hire a carpenter, 
 buy some provisions, make acquaintance with 
 the trades-people, and try to begin to feel at 
 home. And what a town it is, with its glint of 
 bright harbor waters down the vista of the elm- 
 shaded main street that slopes to the east, and 
 its magical moorland glimpses from every sur- 
 prising turn and twist of lane and alley, of high- 
 way, cliff, and shore ! 
 
 I must set about making my old house com- 
 fortable, wholly livable-in, and as lovable as I 
 can for the long winter before us. 
 
 10. 
 
 It was well for me that a series of south- 
 west rain-storms set in last week, otherwise 
 
8 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 this house would not have been settled for two 
 months. 
 
 My ample, forty-foot living-and-dining-room 
 in one is satisfactory. I have lighted the fire 
 on the hearth this evening and drawn the cur- 
 tains close. The room has the look of a white- 
 painted cabin of a ship. Near the door that 
 opens into the narrow hall the ceiling is sup- 
 ported by a curious eight-sided pillar with a 
 Byzantine capital ! Now, however did that 
 thought find its way to this particular house 
 on this particular island ? 
 
 It looked familiar. I knew I had seen it 
 somewhere long before in my mind's eye ; it 
 took about the ten-thousandth part of a second 
 to place it. Elizabeth of German Garden fame 
 reports one like it in her home. I have utilized 
 it by having a few octagonal shelves built around 
 it for my books. I unpacked them to-day and 
 put them in their wonted places. They make a 
 brave showing and add both cheer and color. 
 I say "wonted" because I always give my books 
 congenial companions. 
 
 This particular post-bookrack is filled with 
 
ARRIVAL 9 
 
 what appears to be a hodge-podge of lives, 
 autobiographies, poems, memorials, letters, 
 dramas, books of travel — yet what good fel- 
 lowship is among them ! 
 
 Ferns fill a western window; and here and 
 there in a window hanging, a chair cushion, in 
 my writing-pad, I have added a touch of color : 
 fine Venetian red. All about are the things 
 — our New England word for special posses- 
 sions — with which I have lived ever since I 
 knew the meaning of "things". 
 
 There is little space on the low walls for 
 my pictures, for the great room has eleven 
 windows looking to the east, north, west, and 
 four doors, one of which opens on a large porch 
 facing the harbor. However, I have hung in 
 the vacant places some old engravings which 
 have become a part of my life, — have, indeed, 
 influenced it largely in certain directions be- 
 cause I have lived with them since my child- 
 hood. One, above the narrow mantel over 
 the fireplace, is the "Boston and its Harbor", 
 the proof, from the drawing by Hill. It has 
 the true Turnerian atmospheric effects in its 
 
io FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 skies. I can recall no painting of town or 
 city in foreign lands one half as beautiful to me 
 as this picture, not even Vermeer's "View of 
 Delft" in the Mauritshuis at the Hague; for, 
 beyond the harbor, it shows me the city of my 
 birth, the familiar spires of Park Street and the 
 Old South, of the Old North Church and, across 
 the Charles, the shaft of Bunker Hill. It is 
 all my own, my Boston ; therefore I love it. 
 Beneath it on the same narrow mantel are my 
 "Carlyle ivies". 
 
 And here I sit in the lamplight and firelight, 
 thirty miles at sea, happily idle for a time, 
 listening to the rush of rain against the windows 
 and to the beneficent winds from the Atlantic, 
 moisture-laden, that, bearing in from their 
 wide ocean haunts, seem to cut great swaths of 
 sound in their sweep over the moors. 
 
II 
 
 BY WIRELESS 
 I. 
 
 It clears tardily after the week of rain and 
 fog. From an old churchyard on the moors 
 I watched to-night for the setting of the sun. 
 An unbroken wall of slate-colored cloud rounded 
 the horizon and extended nearly to the zenith. 
 The moors lay dark beneath it ; no shifting 
 line of light, no ray of brightness anywhere 
 visible. There was no wind. Suddenly, with- 
 out the herald of a change, in the horizon's 
 west, the dark gray cloud-postern burned as 
 with the incandescent head of a huge battering- 
 ram, and the sun, vastly dilated, distorted, 
 glowed rayless in the breach for the space of 
 ten seconds as it sank. 
 
 That cloud-wall reflected no more light than 
 if it had been made of asphalt. I could but 
 
 ii 
 
12 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 wonder if its breadth extended halfway to the 
 Bahamas, if its depth touched the rarefied 
 regions of the upper air. 
 
 The dusk fell ; it seemed only the engulfing 
 of day in that cloud. In the moorland bury- 
 ing-ground the ancient headstones, aslant, 
 showed ghostly gray. 
 
 As I turned homewards I caught a wireless 
 message from over the ocean. Clear and 
 definite it was, for in the darkness the trans- 
 mission is better than by daylight. I inter- 
 preted and visualized it. The time, the place, 
 started the current; in the fractional part of a 
 second I am afar — in Italy ; in Florence, on 
 the hill overlooking it, by the church of San 
 Miniato, just at sunset, among the many graves 
 in the long grass. 
 
 Beneath me lies the beloved City deep in 
 the chalice of the surrounding hills touched at 
 the moment with amethyst; its dome, turrets, 
 bell-towers, upreaching from the purple mists 
 of Arno like the exquisite pistil and stamens of 
 a flower. 
 
 The old church and the hill whereon it stands 
 
BY WIRELESS 13 
 
 are still radiant in the light of the sun just sink- 
 ing below the horizon. The graves are half 
 hidden among the long grass that undulates 
 softly in the gentle but steady wind. On each 
 grave is a tiny lantern. I wait there till they 
 are lighted, a few minutes after sundown. Oh, 
 those many, many little grave-lights on the hill 
 of San Miniato ! How they twinkle and flash 
 from their lowly quiet among the waving grass 
 as the breeze swings them to and fro ! To me, 
 they are like the happy greetings of earth- 
 revisiting souls. I know they will twinkle there 
 till Mount Morello shall herald the coming dawn. 
 
 The sudden clash and clang of a hundred 
 bells breaks the evening quiet, up-pealing so 
 insouciantly — there is no other word for the 
 manner of their ringing — to the darkening 
 heights. Those garrulous brazen tongues never 
 let us forget where we are : in Italy. . . . 
 
 Their echoes had scarcely ceased as I entered 
 the town again and heard the old Portuguese 
 bell in the tower of the South Church on Orange 
 Street striking seven and calling me — home. 
 
 Yes ; Italy is one of the great passions of 
 
i 4 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 life. It is full of effulgent heights, mist-filled 
 depths, ecstasy of unrest, subduing charm, all- 
 abandoning devotion. Its spell is binding even 
 in absence. 
 
 And what a contrast is this little gray town 
 afar on the island outpost of our United States ! 
 Its windows overlook the billowing moors and 
 the infinite-reaching wastes of the Atlantic. 
 How it draws, draws quietly, insistently, irre- 
 sistibly to the low hearthstones and open 
 fires in its homes both humble and stately. 
 How it attracts with the enduring power of a 
 lifelong wedded love that finds at the fireside 
 of home its necessary sustenance; seeks there 
 its refuge ; finds there — sanctuary. 
 
 Now, at nine, even while I am writing, the 
 old Portuguese bell is ringing curfew. I'll 
 match its tone against the best in Europe. . . . 
 
 I have just been out on the porch to listen and 
 watch in the blackness of this dark night. I 
 heard the continuous tolling of the bell on the 
 buoy beyond the jetties. I watched the con- 
 tinuous wax and wane of the great beacon light 
 miles away across the moors on Sankaty Head. 
 
BY WIRELESS 15 
 
 2. 
 
 I've been thinking about those "earth-revisit- 
 ing souls" and their "happy greetings" I men- 
 tioned. I certainly did not write that as a 
 figure of speech. They really seemed such to 
 me at that time. 
 
 I recall, however, one special visit to the 
 Medici Chapel, where my thought was quite 
 otherwise in the presence of the Master's works : 
 the titanic Twilight, Dawn, Night, and the 
 unfinished Day. And I wonder, recalling that 
 visit — I wonder, and I wonder ; and, with all 
 my wondering, being no nearer to any satis- 
 faction, I have imagined Michael Angelo revis- 
 iting that same Medici Chapel three hundred 
 years after his death to see his unfinished work. 
 
 And now I find myself wondering again if by 
 any possibility I may have imagined rightly ? — 
 
 In the Medici Chapel at Twilight 
 
 Michael Angelo loquitur. 
 
 What ! Sleeping still, 
 Mute, pallid offspring of my art? The Chapel's dim, 
 I scarce know them apart ; but, by the turn of limb, 
 
16 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 I'm sure the Night is here and over there the Dawn. 
 (My marble poppies — potent charm !) Three centuries 
 
 gone 
 And Italy, they say, reborn ! 
 
 Still waking, Day, 
 As ever and for always to new greed for gain ? 
 To strife for rights ? — Chimera of a dullard's brain ! 
 We both — mark well — have wrestled with the thing 
 
 called Fame 
 As Jacob with the angel till it — shall I tell ? — 
 Had like to prove a blessed curse that smacked of hell. 
 
 Imprisoned Day, thou'rt still in thine unfinished strength ; 
 As yet no master's hand hath given these limbs repose. 
 Can it be true that after me — be humble, Heart ! — 
 Not one has dared to shape this rugged, rough-hewn 
 
 length ? 
 And does this prove that only he may reap who sows, 
 Though centuries intervene ? I speak as one who knows. 
 Earth-memories stir within me but to bring earth-pain. 
 Yea, Heaven is Heaven ; alas, I know that all full well ; 
 But earth, my earth, and life and love, and art, my art — 
 O God, that I might live again ! 
 
 No solution — this. 
 
 3- 
 
 I am reading the "Memorials of Edward 
 Burne-Jones". I like group reading. Some 
 books induce it. I know I shall reach out 
 
BY WIRELESS 17 
 
 through this to so many of his time — Morris, 
 Rossetti, Carlyle and Ruskin, dear old Ben- 
 venuto Cellini, Malory and Fiona Macleod. 
 
 This book, for instance, is like the central 
 sun of some great nebula ; the central thought 
 surrounds itself at once with groups of associated 
 beauty as it is conceived in all the arts, in life, 
 and letters. 
 
 I have laid the book aside for a few minutes, 
 taken my writing-pad, and am jotting down, 
 just as a matter of curiosity, the readings 
 from the waves of my wireless, induced by a 
 half hour spent with this book. 
 
 Thomas Carlyle is mentioned with loving 
 reference, — Carlyle, for many years my priest 
 and prophet. I look at his ivies in their clay 
 pots on the narrow shelf above the fireplace. 
 They are as green and thrifty as if they had never 
 been transplanted from their native soil in that 
 small backyard — it is nothing more pretentious 
 than that — of a certain old house in Cheyne 
 Row in Chelsea Town. Carlyle's ivies, their 
 roots mulched and watered, perhaps, by the 
 Sage when he and Tennyson, those two Niagaras 
 
1 8 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 of prose and poetry, sat speechless, pipe in mouth, 
 in that same backyard one summer night, and 
 at parting congratulated themselves on the 
 pleasant evening they had passed together ! 
 
 Yes, they are thriving here on this island in 
 the Atlantic. They have suffered no sea change ; 
 every leaf recalls the unpretentious house and 
 my pilgrimage to it. I went as to a Mecca. 
 
 There is mention, also, of the portrait of 
 Gladstone's baby grandchild; and again my 
 wireless is at work. 
 
 I am in Hawarden Church, looking at the 
 Burne-Jones memorial window. Some laborers 
 are digging in the churchyard ; a mason is at 
 work resetting some stones in the chancel. 
 The sky is overcast. I see the sign of the old 
 hostelry, the Glynn Arms, swinging in the high 
 wind. I see the curving, gray, village street, 
 typical of Wales, and, as I take my stand at its 
 farther end, by the ancient pump beneath an 
 ivy-draped garden wall, I see a girl swing past 
 on her bicycle. She is bareheaded ; the long, 
 bright curls are tossed on the wind. Her face 
 is like those of which the Pre-Raphaelite Brother- 
 
BY WIRELESS 19 
 
 hood dreamed in order to visualize and im- 
 mortalize. 
 
 Afterwards I find it reproduced in one of the 
 tiny shop windows hard by the inn, and I know 
 it to be that of the Master of Hawarden's 
 granddaughter — a face which, had Burne- 
 Jones known it in its blossoming womanhood, 
 would have enriched the world of art through 
 the medium of another of his incomparable 
 angels. 
 
 I am in the Glynn Arms, ordering tea and 
 toast and the inn's best jam. I shall never 
 taste its like again ; I have tried in vain to 
 imitate it here at home. It was, rather, a 
 plum conserve and delectable with crisp, hot 
 toast. I am sitting in the low, dark-ceiled 
 front room, listening to the scurrying wind till 
 the light begins to fade through the low case- 
 ment. . . . 
 
 I am thinking now of that late afternoon, 
 the ancient, gray Welsh village, the fading 
 light, the clouded sky ; and I see but one ray 
 of brightness in all of it — the wholly radiant 
 face of that girl. 
 
20 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 4- 
 
 October. 
 
 I like to explore this old town when it is en- 
 wrapped in light mists. There is no fog. The 
 water is visible, but softly veiled. Every out- 
 line of hull and rigging, of wharf and ware- 
 house, of shore and lighthouse is softened. Of 
 angles there are none. Every lane has its dim 
 perspective ; every road its charmingly indefi- 
 nite limitations of turning. Either nothing 
 leaves off where everything begins, or all objects 
 are mere suggestions where they should be defi- 
 nite somethings. Everywhere there is pleas- 
 ing vagueness, but never vacuity. 
 
 5- 
 I was walking in an unexplored south quarter 
 of the town when I came upon a road that, 
 apparently, ended on an upland of the moors, 
 and crowning the grass slope was the old wind- 
 mill in the mist, gray in gray. There was no 
 movement about or above me, on the ground or 
 in the air ; neither bird nor beast was abroad 
 at that moment, in that place. There was 
 
BY WIRELESS 21 
 
 only the mist, and the mill, and the climbing 
 moorland road and I alone in it. 
 
 I held my breath for an instant that the silent 
 charm might not be broken ; that another 
 vision, which the sensitive brain films had kept 
 intact for this hour, this minute, this infini- 
 tesimal part of a second, might materialize in 
 thought. Oh, the marvellous law of associa- 
 tion and its results ! On my retina was the 
 image of the old Nantucket windmill in the 
 mist — that and the climbing road. And simul- 
 taneously with the striking of the waves of 
 reflected light on the sensitive nerves, the 
 message went forth through the million intricate 
 brain cells, and lo ! — I am aware of another 
 windmill in the mist, but afar on the coast of 
 France, on the shores of Boulogne. I see it 
 between two dim uplands, and it crowns the 
 whitish gray road that climbs between them. 
 So I saw it seven years ago. 
 
 6. 
 
 Heigh-ho for the salt island-marshes ! 
 Heigh-ho for the salt winds that are sweeping 
 
22 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 over them ! And hey for the salt-hay-laden 
 wains and the horses straining to their task ! 
 
 I have been on the point all this afternoon, 
 on a level with the sea and the wondrous- 
 tinted marshes that it feeds. I have been 
 watching the hay-making on the salt meadows ; 
 watching the incoming tide slowly fill the little 
 creeks till they gleamed all rounded, sinuous, 
 jewelled as with chrysoprase, jasper, topaz, 
 in their deep setting of reeds. Wireless again. 
 For at sight of .the eel grass and the slowly 
 filling creeks, I am a child once more and dis- 
 covering the wonderland of Cape Cod. 
 
 7- 
 On a lift of the moors just beyond the old 
 windmill are some ancient thorn trees. This 
 evening, after the sun set clear, cloudless, and 
 before the earth shadow fell, the horizon where 
 the moors seam it with purple was defined by a 
 broad zone of red gold, flawless as the ancient 
 priceless lacquer of Japan. Against it my 
 three thorn trees, gnarled, wind-bent, every 
 branch and twig weirdly reticulated, stood out- 
 
BY WIRELESS 23 
 
 lined in black. — Why do I need to see Japan 
 after this ? 
 
 8. 
 
 There is no use in my attempting to finish 
 settling the house in such weather. Yesterday 
 an old trustworthy horse and I rambled over 
 eastwards ; rambled is the word, for we wandered 
 hither and thither, through and around, and, 
 finally, over Saul's Hills — the section of the 
 island lying between the harbor and Sankaty 
 Head. 
 
 Hills, moors, ocean lay open to the October 
 sun. A pond gleamed like an opal in the deep 
 hollow of the moors, the motionless waters 
 reflecting the brilliant red of huckleberry bushes, 
 the brown-green of the bayberry, the deep blue 
 of the sky, and one tiny cloud-plume. 
 
 As I came out on Sankaty Head I faced — 
 Eternity. 
 
 The sunshine was that bottled vintage of 
 mid-summer which nature lays aside for three 
 months, only to pour out in libation as a mellow 
 golden cordial on just such an October day. 
 The sun had wheeled a degree from the meridian. 
 
24 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 In the south the ocean lay pale, blue, clear, to 
 the horizon's rim ; but eastwards and before 
 me — what was before me ? I cannot tell. It 
 seemed to me as if I were having one long, 
 long look into that Mystery of Mysteries in 
 which all life lives, moves, and has its being; 
 into which we humans gaze with straining eyes, 
 mutely questioning; through which we, the 
 Unknowing, pass with faltering sight into the 
 Unknown. 
 
 I stood on the very edge of the high head and 
 gazed long into the fathomless, translucent 
 mist of tenderest blue that lay upon an ocean of 
 constantly changing, but veiled cerulean. This 
 marvellous mist veiled yet revealed, was pene- 
 trable but baffling; it secreted, yet divulged. 
 There was no dividing line of color to mark 
 sea, atmosphere, or sky. Mist, water, and firma- 
 ment blended with such ethereal gradations 
 of tints and to such wonderful depths above, 
 beneath, and before me, that the mere physical 
 reception of the reflected light-waves, in their 
 soft intensity, produced a sensuous joy as well 
 as a spiritual exaltation. 
 
BY WIRELESS 25 
 
 And here again the wireless of the brain was 
 at work. As I marvelled at that color, I saw 
 in it the wondrous blue of the Alpine gentian 
 I picked years ago from beside the snows on 
 the pass of the Simplon. I heard the surging 
 elemental waves of harmony in the overture to 
 Wagner's "Rhinegold". I caught one chord, 
 distinctly, from MacDowell's "Mid-Ocean" — 
 and I saw the reed-measured sapphire of the 
 foundation of the new City of God. 
 
 And that which lay before me symbolized to 
 me the creative power that has made these 
 five things possible. 
 
 Oh, what are words ! Mere blasphemies for 
 such an experience, for such a day. . . . 
 
Ill 
 
 BEACH PLUM JELLY AND SOME PRACTICAL 
 DEDUCTIONS 
 
 I. 
 
 I made some beach plum jelly this morning; 
 it is the thing to do at this season in Nantucket. 
 It was a failure. Although it was firm and clear 
 the taste was not right. I must try again. 
 
 I wonder how women get on who have not 
 these common things of life to interest them ? 
 
 Making jellies and jams, preserving and pic- 
 kling, is a process always stimulating to me — I 
 ought to add when it does not prove dishearten- 
 ing as in the present case. There is always 
 the delightful factor of chance in it; the "turn- 
 ing out well" is a real cause for rejoicing; 
 the failure is, of course, a proportionate dis- 
 appointment, and failure with things that are 
 of the "earth earthy" is so deadening to the 
 spirit ! 
 
 26 
 
BEACH PLUM JELLY AND DEDUCTIONS 27 
 
 It is really remarkable the total depravity, 
 at times, of concurrent circumstance when I 
 am preserving — peaches, for instance. Now 
 putting up peaches looks on the surface to be an 
 ordinary and one-sided operation, voted pro- 
 saic by a host of women ; but viewed from the 
 various points of the weather status, of growth, 
 quality, distance from orchards, venalities of 
 marketmen and shippers (oh, that deceptive 
 red netting !), express companies, and one's 
 own mood at the time of preserving, it becomes 
 a curiously complex affair. 
 
 Sometimes when a guest sits at my table in 
 mid-winter, enjoying those same peaches with 
 a "topping" — our New England word — of 
 whipped cream and expressing satisfaction with 
 the dish, I think to myself : 
 
 "Little you are realizing what goes to the mak- 
 ing of these delectables ! — sun, rain, the dropped 
 kernel, the earth-mother with her * will to yield ', 
 the tending by human hands, the watching by 
 human eyes for cloud or clearing and the fore- 
 cast of weather bureau ; the kindling of bon- 
 fires if the frost fall ; the careful picking, selec- 
 
28 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 tion, packing, shipping ; the sea voyage to this 
 distant island ; the sorting and paring ; the 
 making of syrup from the largess of the fields of 
 Louisiana, Hawaii, or the distant Philippines ; 
 the testing, doing, tasting; the sterilizing of 
 jars, and, at last, the sealing!" All these 
 processes are the factors in the making of my 
 two dozen jars of peach preserve plus the day's 
 mood of the woman who is "doing them up" 
 and the state of the weather. 
 
 With all this interweaving of elements and 
 mechanics, there is always the possibility of an 
 infinitesimal mould-growth — enfant du diable 
 for us housekeepers — to ruin all my first at- 
 tempt, and the woful prospect of my having to 
 "do them over", a very penance for my house- 
 wife's soul. Well, if my guest, man or woman, 
 say five months afterwards, "How delicious !" 
 I have my reward. 
 
 2. 
 
 Ah, these common things of life ! What 
 balance, what poise they give us when we are 
 forced to breast alone the overwhelming flood 
 of adverse circumstance ! Who shall say what 
 
BEACH PLUM JELLY AND DEDUCTIONS 29 
 
 thoughts, what high resolves, what memories, 
 what dogged persistence in undertaking, what 
 courage of the pour-on-I-will-endure kind, what 
 undaunted valor of soul that endures the gnawing 
 and tearing of physical pain at the very vitals, 
 are component parts of these myriad common 
 things of life that go to the making of the normal 
 whole ? 
 
 How many indignant protests against tyranny 
 in the home and injustice from the world in 
 general have women kneaded into bread ? How 
 many sorrows, how many joys, are set with every 
 stitch of a mother's sewing ? How many curses, 
 solid if harmless, are nailed fast upon some 
 unsuspecting offender with every tack a house- 
 keeper puts into an old "turned" carpet? 
 How many cobwebs of the brain are cleared 
 away with the sweeping of a room ? Only 
 women can tell, and preeminently those women 
 who know from experience the everlasting sal- 
 vation latent in just the common things of life. 
 
 And of the women who do not know them, or, 
 knowing, ignore their existence, ignore the fact 
 that they have been, are, and always will be living 
 
30 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 daily benefactions, physical, moral, spiritual ? 
 There is little to be said, for the result is ever 
 before our eyes. Nature's law of compensation 
 works through these common things of life ; 
 to ignore them, to cease to make ourselves one 
 with them, is to invite disaster. 
 
 "Occupation treatment" whereby men and 
 women are set to work that the lost balance may 
 be, if possible, restored — this obtains every- 
 where in our present times. That which in 
 the following of a great natural law keeps life 
 at the normal is now artificially reproduced, in 
 order to induce the same result in the abnormal 
 cases that are multiplying because of the igno- 
 rance of just these common things of life. 
 
 Yes, set to work ; and we find men and women 
 weaving on hand-looms as of old; we find men 
 and women chopping wood, like the pioneers 
 of old; we see men and women working in clay, 
 making pottery like all primitive peoples. 
 
 If this be not a signpost for future generations 
 then he who runs and does not read is blind. 
 
 They are a part of our commonwealth, this 
 wealth which you and I and all those who have 
 
BEACH PLUM JELLY AND DEDUCTIONS 31 
 
 two eyes with which to see, two ears with which 
 to hear, who have smell, touch, taste, hold in 
 common. Through each sense we own a world, 
 a wonder-world. Yet men and women, un- 
 heeding the richness of such possessions, dare 
 call themselves "poor" because, forsooth, they 
 have no strong box filled with gilt-edged securi- 
 ties ! 
 
 There is need for a readjustment of the terms 
 of life, not philosophy, in this our generation. 
 There is need for a readjustment of values ; 
 for a spiritual as well as a physical revaluation 
 of our possessions in this America of ours. 
 We are met at every turn, in every phase of 
 our national life, with the material fact of " riches 
 versus wealth" and the consequent confusion 
 of standards. We need standards that shall 
 be recognized by every eye and, what is more, 
 we need standard-bearers. 'This is the great 
 spiritual need of our times. 
 
 3. 
 My beach plum jelly having proved a dismal 
 failure, I betook myself this afternoon westward 
 
32 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 to Maddequet where, I am told, they grow 
 abundantly. 
 
 Westward to Maddequet with the sun still 
 high in the heavens ! And how far toward 
 Maddequet did I get in this shining October 
 weather ? I wandered hither and thither and 
 yon and, at last, mounted a swell of the moors to 
 look about me — 
 
 Were you ever on the coast of Sicily beyond 
 Messina ? 
 
 On my right was the pond, Wannacomet, a 
 sparkling pale blue, like the Montana sapphire. 
 Before me lay Capaum among the low dunes 
 splotched with masses of bayberry and gray 
 moss ; by some trick of reflected light its color 
 at that moment was amethyst. The long 
 irregular line of coast, white with bleached 
 hummock grass, gleamed sharply against the 
 dark blue waters of the Sound. — No picking of 
 beach plums to-day ! 
 
 Through my two eyes of what unexpected 
 wealth have I recently come into possession : 
 this billowing moorland sea lying soundless 
 beneath the brilliant sunshine of late October ! 
 
BEACH PLUM JELLY AND DEDUCTIONS 33 
 
 They fascinate me — these moors. They are 
 unlike any I have seen : the Liineburg Heath, 
 the dunes of Holland, or Cape Cod, the country 
 west of Cleve, the Scotch moors ; these have 
 undeniable charm, but not that of the Nan- 
 tucket moorlands. 
 
IV 
 
 ROOTS, SUBSOIL, AND LANDED ESTATES 
 I. 
 
 A charming woman of seventy-six, a gentle- 
 woman of the old school (the "new school" 
 will produce what at seventy-six ? I can but 
 wonder), was one of the first to call on me and 
 bid me welcome to her island. I write "her" 
 advisedly, for she was born here as were her 
 father and father's fathers to the sixth genera- 
 tion. She was as much a part of the island as 
 are its moors. 
 
 I met her afterwards in her own house, one 
 of the island's stately homes, a fit setting for 
 its mistress. She spoke of her father and 
 mother and showed me their portraits ; then 
 she brought to my notice a large photograph 
 of an old English house in one of the Channel 
 coast counties. "I was born at Z , " she 
 
 34 
 
ROOTS, SUBSOIL, AND LANDED ESTATES 35 
 
 said, mentioning one of the old island families, 
 "and I trace my descent in a straight line for 
 a thousand years from the original owners of 
 this manor." 
 
 The statement was an astounding one to me. 
 A thousand years ! I made no answer. I was 
 not capable of a fitting one at that moment. 
 I was prepared for a Revolutionary ancestry, 
 for one dating from the Mayflower, the old 
 Colony days, or from Huguenot, Dutch, or 
 Spaniard, what you will among our heteroge- 
 neous pioneers — but a thousand years ! 
 
 Why, Norman William had not then set foot 
 on that other island across the ocean, Leif 
 Ericsson made no voyage to Vinland. The 
 sequoias of the Sierras were still in their first 
 prime and standing sentinel over an undis- 
 covered continent. The great Saxon Alfred 
 was a contemporary of her many times removed 
 grandfathers ! And here before me in the 
 flesh, on a bit of terminal moraine of the last 
 great ice-sheet, — the island of Nantucket, — 
 left like a footprint of the aeons on half-sub- 
 merged shoals, stood loyal and sincere, this 
 
36 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked, seventy-six-year-old 
 descendant of the Anglo-Saxons, confronting 
 me — of To-day — with her thousand years of 
 ancestry ! 
 
 For the space of a minute, Columbus seemed 
 of recent birth ; then I was aware that she was 
 speaking again : 
 
 "Do you wonder that I am proud of such a 
 lineage ?" 
 
 "Indeed I do not," I answered heartily. 
 She deserved indulgence, as do all of us when 
 we are given insight that, in a way, we are 
 what we are by reason of what untold genera- 
 tions once were. 
 
 2. 
 
 I laughed a little under my breath at this 
 harmless ancestor worship as I walked slowly 
 homewards in the November twilight, a twilight 
 entirely at variance with our accepted New 
 England standard of the drear, dull closing 
 of late November days. A golden afterglow 
 was lingering beyond the moors, and against 
 it my "Corot" trees — so I call the four noble 
 elms on the upland slope of lawn at the head 
 
ROOTS, SUBSOIL, AND LANDED ESTATES 37 
 
 of Liberty Street — were etched in intricate, 
 interlacing curves. All about me were lawns 
 as fresh as in June, hedges as sturdily green, 
 rich banks of dark glossy ivy and high brick 
 garden walls behung thickly with it. Here 
 and there a rose blossomed over a trellised 
 porch. The wind was from the south ; it 
 brought to me the sound of the surf breaking 
 on the South Shore. 
 
 3- 
 
 If I laughed to myself while walking home 
 in the luminous twilight, I was laughing at 
 myself and my own need of indulgence along 
 certain ancestral lines. 
 
 It is not generally known, even among my 
 intimates, that I am an extensive landed pro- 
 prietor. My estates are many, of great in- 
 trinsic value. ,Their revenues, although fluctu- 
 ating at certain periods, are enormous. In these 
 days of the new income tax inquisition, when 
 that which is secret shall be laid bare under 
 oath, it may be well to antedate official inquiry 
 and make here and now semi-official statement 
 
38 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 of their value. I am wondering how my Gov- 
 ernment will deal with the revenues from my 
 landed properties ? 
 
 One of my estates is duly entered in the town 
 registry; a fourth of an acre, rather "less" 
 than "more", — in reality it is nothing more 
 than a "back yard", — on this windswept 
 island. But this record is misleading for I am 
 a large landed proprietor in the true meaning 
 of that term. 
 
 I never knew I had so many grandfathers, 
 so many grandmothers, so many uncles and 
 aunts as collaterals, until I was invited to in- 
 vestigate myself in detail through my forbears 
 in order that I might be eligible to the " Colonial 
 Dames", for which society, by the way, I have 
 never qualified. Of course, I knew in a general 
 way that to the fourth and fifth generation I 
 had had grandfathers ; in fact, knew their 
 names. An inheritance of nearly three centuries 
 in the soil of Massachusetts — to be exact, 
 three hundred years in 1923 — is productive 
 naturally of a large crop of ancestors. Behind 
 that there are six centuries of English ancestry 
 
ROOTS, SUBSOIL, AND LANDED ESTATES 39 
 
 as, of course, there are for every one of our many 
 millions of English descent. 
 
 I confess the mere thought of these thousands 
 of grandfathers is overwhelming, and were it 
 not for the tangibility of some of their estates 
 it would be unbearable and not conducive to 
 lucidity. Think of them as they stand in 
 written record : tanners, fishermen, mill-owners, 
 men of landed estates, — "gentlemen" so called, 
 — lawyers, farmers, doctors, warriors of high 
 degree, servants, sheriffs, governors, soldiers, 
 "goodmen", "misters", yeomen, and sailors. 
 This is a prototype of the ancestry of millions 
 who now inherit our America : men good, bad, 
 indifferent, in the usual proportion ; poor, rich, 
 or in that blessed class that has neither too 
 much nor too little. Each man filled his little 
 space of time in this world with whatsoever he 
 had of sufficient backbone to produce, whether 
 of good or ill to his fellow-men. And all, to- 
 day, are an integral part of the earth-mother 
 which undeniable fact establishes once for all 
 our common heritage. 
 
 With this fact hourly in evidence, it seems a 
 
4 o FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 pity to lose two thirds of the satisfaction of 
 actual living by attempting to confine our in- 
 dividual humanness within prescribed ancestral 
 lines. Life is not long enough to stand on 
 ceremony with ourselves and other humans on 
 account of ancestors. There are so many of 
 them for each of us ! 
 
 I hold my estates from these ancestors in fee 
 simple. They are mine by reason of the work- 
 ings of that wonderful law : the primogeniture 
 of the imagination which blessed inheritance 
 the thousands of dead ancestors have contrived, 
 by a combining, selecting, refining, eliminating 
 process, to hand down here to me very much 
 alive in this twentieth century. 
 
 These small, gray, shingled houses, on this 
 island, for instance; the wells, pumps, latch- 
 strings, circular cellars ; the salt marshes, wil- 
 lows, eels, eel-grass, clams, quahaugs, even the 
 windmill — they are as familiar to me as if I had 
 lived with them all my life ; for they recall that 
 other ancestral life on the queer, physical con- 
 figuration of the south coast of my native state, 
 that wonderful "sand-spit": short upper arm, 
 
ROOTS, SUBSOIL, AND LANDED ESTATES 41 
 
 sharp elbow, long forearm, and fist doubled with 
 downward pointing thumb like the Roman 
 thumb at the combat in the arena eighteen hun- 
 dred years ago — the wonderland of Cape Cod. 
 
 The device above the great seal of Massa- 
 chusetts is Cape Cod in outline, only reversed 
 and with sword in fist. 
 
 This side of the funny bone of the Cape's 
 elbow, at present Chatham, there is an inden- 
 tation of the coast : Lewis Bay. Just here on 
 this bay, which did not escape the keen eye of 
 Samuel de Champlain on one of his many voy- 
 ages, lies Hyannis; "over eastward" Barn- 
 stable and Yarmouth ; and, trending north 
 along the coast, Sandwich, Plymouth, Duxbury, 
 Scituate, Cambridge, Watertown, Lynn, and 
 Nahant. Here, along the curve of Massa- 
 chusetts Bay, from the sands of Barnstable to 
 the rocks of Nahant, which unproductive penin- 
 sula a far-removed grandfather bought of an 
 Indian sachem for a suit of clothes, and proceeded 
 thriftily to make tar from its pine trees, are to 
 be found many of the roots of my special life 
 in the New World. 
 
42 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 Not for a modern fortune would I exchange 
 what the estates of these various ancestors 
 have yielded me in impressions alone — those 
 impressions that are "more lasting than bronze". 
 
 4- 
 
 To a child city born, the journey down the 
 Cape in one of the slow-going, infrequent trains 
 of the Old Colony line was a long, long road to 
 Paradise. With the first breath from the salt 
 marshes I was blissful, for I was entering a new 
 world. 
 
 The train shackled along over the rough 
 roadbed. Now and then a branch of the scrub 
 oak coppice brushed the side of the car. The 
 sands stretched away north and south to the 
 rippling blue. After a long wait at the "Nar- 
 rows", the train started again in the twilight 
 on its last leisurely lap for Yarmouth and 
 Hyannis. Wonderful fragrances drew in through 
 the car windows that were as a rule open : — 
 the spice of marsh pinks, the strong, salty 
 breathings of an incoming tide, the resinous 
 pungency escaping from pines in the cool of 
 
ROOTS, SUBSOIL, AND LANDED ESTATES 43 
 
 the evening after their hot sun bath. At 
 times I get it here, but never of quite the same 
 commingled perfumes. Last summer I was 
 sitting at one of the windows that look harbor- 
 wards, and as the tide turned the sea seemed to 
 breathe once, deeply ; then it sent its life-giving 
 ozone over the masses of roses and honeysuckle 
 in full bloom below our bank. The fragrance 
 of it opened wide the sense portal of smell for 
 memories of those home-goings to my grand- 
 mother on the Cape. 
 
 5- 
 One of the seventeenth century Cape grand- 
 fathers on the maternal side was born rich, 
 inherited riches, married riches, accumulated 
 riches, and died rich ; yet of true wealth he 
 possessed nothing and, more is the pity, knew 
 nothing of its meaning. He was just "a stingy 
 old screw". Yet I am his debtor, for among 
 his many investments in land he made one of a 
 thousand acres in what is now Hartford County 
 in Connecticut, on the Connecticut River, the 
 same being, according to description, "the fifth 
 lot at the crotch of the river". 
 
44 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 It is by virtue of those thousand acres at 
 "the crotch of the river" and of another thou- 
 sand near and on the Connecticut's largest 
 branch, the White River in Vermont, — six 
 hundred of which were deeded to a great-great- 
 grandfather on the paternal side, and designated 
 on the parchment as "his pitch", and four 
 hundred more belonging to his son, — that I 
 inherit all the beauty of the Connecticut Valley, 
 that wonderful valley which lies at our doors 
 yet is sought for its beauty by comparatively 
 few. ; 
 
 How many realize that this great New Eng- 
 land artery has a course of nearly four hundred 
 and fifty miles ? How many have ever jour- 
 neyed, just for the sake of its exquisite scenery, 
 — as thousands seek the Wyoming Valley of 
 Pennsylvania, — from Lyme to Lyndon, we 
 will say, on its Passumpsic branch in northern 
 Vermont, or to Littleton in the White Hills ? 
 
 The scenery is not spectacular, but from mouth 
 to source there is constant variety and the charm 
 of contrast : the gradual transition from low 
 sandstone banks, populous with cities and towns, 
 
ROOTS, SUBSOIL, AND LANDED ESTATES 45 
 
 to the gateway of the hills and the turn of in- 
 numerable mill-wheels ; from the slow, sea- 
 going flood, bearing on its sluggish current sloop 
 and schooner and tug from Long Island Sound, 
 to rapids and falls and sharp twisting curves 
 where the White and the Lower Ammonoosuc 
 wind among the mountains on the slopes and 
 heights of which are still to be found lonely 
 trails, primeval forests, miles of green solitude, 
 and a silence unbroken save for hoot of owl 
 and laugh of loon. 
 
 What more charming than the approach to 
 Hartford and its canal that mirrors tower 
 and bridges ? Where will you find two such 
 independent young mountain scouts as Tom 
 and Holyoke ? Where more gracious watery 
 pleasances than the Connecticut's broad sweep 
 between still broader meadows, from North- 
 field to Claremont and Windsor ? Who has 
 had the pleasure of seeing the sentinel outposts 
 of the White and Green mountains, Monadnock 
 and Ascutney, loom vast and shadowy blue 
 through the September haze ? And who, fol- 
 lowing the Lower Ammonoosuc and the White 
 
46 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 through the overlapping foothills into the heart 
 of both ranges, has not felt his breath quicken 
 at the sudden eclipse of all sunshine and scenery 
 as the train rushes into and through an old, 
 covered, wooden bridge, few of which remain, 
 and out again along precipitous banks below 
 which the swiftly flowing water runs, for a brief 
 moment, burnished silver ? 
 
 All this beauty is mine by virtue of that in- 
 heritance of two thousand acres. I know this 
 valley in all seasons, nor can I say in which it 
 most entrances. At which " crotch of the river", 
 or on which "heaven-kissing hill" those acres 
 are spread, whose they are — that is all one to 
 me ; my inheritance remains ; it cannot be 
 
 taken from me. 
 
 6. 
 
 I should like to dwell on some of the special 
 preserves on this, my largest landed property, 
 the Valley of the Connecticut, but it would be 
 to the exclusion of an inventory of my many 
 lesser, far humbler estates. However, in my 
 pride of possession, I may be permitted to sug- 
 gest to him who has never journeyed four 
 
ROOTS, SUBSOIL, AND LANDED ESTATES 47 
 
 hundred miles up this valley in mid-winter, to 
 make good that omission without waiting many 
 years. He will be my debtor. 
 
 Of course, one should choose the time. I 
 recall that I made the journey in January, 1898. 
 
 After leaving the Sound and following for 
 miles the steely gray river under an ominous, 
 clouded sky, we entered, at Springfield, the 
 region of snow. At Brattleboro the river flowed 
 darkly beneath ice floes. As we followed it 
 northward it became ice-bound. Still farther 
 on, the newly fallen snow lay thick upon it 
 and what was river and what was field it was 
 hard to distinguish. 
 
 There had been a heavy snow storm a few 
 days before ; it added a foot to the usual winter 
 depth. Twenty-four hours of thawing had 
 followed closely upon that, and, directly, more 
 snow, wet and clinging. In the night before 
 I made this journey, the mercury in the more 
 northern latitudes had dropped sufficiently to 
 fix solidly, as part ice, every flake that had fallen 
 on roof, fence, bush, and coppice, on every 
 branch of hemlock, spruce, and pine. 
 
48 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 The gray skies were with us during the whole 
 day ; they deepened in the east to a bluish 
 slate and against them the New Hampshire 
 mountains, snow covered from base to summit, 
 showed indefinite and ghostly. The hemlocks, 
 black against the gray of sky and white of hill- 
 side, were weighted with snow, their lower 
 branches broken. The spruce looked thin, for 
 every tiny twig and branchlet bent beneath 
 its icy load. The pines tpwering into the gray 
 held their own, but looked like squads of con- 
 victs, for each trunk on the northeast side, 
 whence came the last storm, was coated with 
 snow and ice ; here and there a heavy over- 
 laden lower branch swept the ground. 
 
 But there was no monotony in the ever- 
 changing mountain-sides, overlapping hills, in- 
 tervales where the watercourses could be traced 
 only by the fringe of willows, in the roadside 
 coppice of wondrously interlaced and spraying 
 bushes. Everywhere was bewildering grace of 
 outline : intricate anatomy of forest trees and 
 underbrush, curving riverbanks, soft swells of 
 meadow lands, flowing, upward reaches of foot- 
 
ROOTS, SUBSOIL, AND LANDED ESTATES 49 
 
 hill slopes leading the eye to mountain profile, 
 rounded summit, or sharpened peak. 
 
 Only once, as the train approached Ascutney, 
 the sun, being about an hour and a half to its 
 setting, broke through the clouded west and, 
 for a moment, transformed that noble plain of 
 approach, with its adjacent semicircle of hills, 
 into a resplendent amphitheatre of prismatic 
 colors. 
 
 It was but for a moment; then the gray- 
 white of snow and ice on river and plain, the 
 white and black of hemlock woods, the soft 
 purple gray of our long steam pennon relieved 
 the dazzled sight. 
 
 7- 
 
 I can but contrast the autumnal effects of 
 color here on the island with those among the 
 hills and peaks of the Green and White moun- 
 tains. 
 
 Here, over the low moorland, the coloring 
 is laid on slowly. I have watched its perfecting 
 for two weeks. There are acres of low-running, 
 wide-spreading scarlet in monotone; acres of 
 browns and yellows; acres of dull, dark red 
 
So FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 like the lees of wine, all accented by the blackish 
 green of dwarfed pine plantations. There is no 
 necromancer frost at work here ; it is late 
 November before that blight falls. It is sun- 
 shine and sea winds, salt-impregnated soil, 
 root-seeking sap and natural decay that are 
 at work on these moors, painting them with 
 large impressionist stroke in broad masses of 
 color. 
 
 It is then I look from my eastern windows 
 across the harbor, — the blue of which at times 
 is the blue of Maggiore beneath the terraced, 
 garden walls of Isola Bella, or that glimpse of 
 the open Adriatic beyond the Giudecca at 
 Venice, — over miles of moorland so rich in 
 such subdued perfection of coloring that the 
 eye feasts on it, as does the imagination on 
 the iteration and reiteration of those old taber- 
 nacle colors : "blue, and purple, and scarlet 
 and (white) fine twined linen". Somehow that 
 special color scheme never seems complete 
 unless I add the coverings, "of rams' skins 
 dyed red". 
 
 This is autumn on our island. 
 
ROOTS, SUBSOIL, AND LANDED ESTATES 51 
 
 I do not know how many, many times be- 
 tween the ages of six and twelve I read that 
 formula of color for the tabernacle furnishings 
 (my father gave me fifty cents a year for reading 
 the Bible through annually. I accomplished 
 this task for love of him, stimulated by the 
 reward. To what extent am I not his debtor !) ; 
 but I do know that the constant reiteration, 
 the insistence on that special combination of 
 colors, set for me then, and thereafter for my 
 life, the standard of color combination that most 
 fully satisfies me. 
 
 Never an incomparable moorland sunset, of 
 which I am witness, that I do not see the cloud- 
 tabernacle curtains of purple and scarlet. Never 
 a glimpse of the harbor waters faintly white 
 at sunset under the rising of the pale full moon, 
 and of the purple-red of the moors beyond, 
 never the sight of the fall of foam on the bar 
 and the blue of the Sound behind it, that I do 
 not experience that elation from gratified color- 
 sense, fostered by the ancient artificers' formula : 
 
52 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 "blue, and purple, and scarlet and fine twined 
 linen". 
 
 9- 
 
 But in October, among my mountains and 
 hills, the slopes of which feed the Connecticut, 
 the crimson flame of maples leaps higher and 
 higher up hill and mountain-side. It darts 
 unexpectedly from out some dark hemlock 
 bush ; it flaunts a branch, a saucy Mephisto- 
 phelian feather, above a russet oak. The wood- 
 land roads, thickly canopied with birch, beech, 
 elm, and now and then a giant butternut, are 
 long arcades of varied golds — dull gold, antique 
 gold, red and Roman golds, light, California 
 virgin gold, with now and then a mass of road- 
 side, frost-touched sumach like jacinth in 
 ancient Etruscan setting. 
 
 In these northern hills and mountains, three 
 hundred miles from this island, the hot mid- 
 day sun of October, warm rain, and a sharp, 
 hard frost closely following it, are the miracle 
 workers. Twenty-four hours may transform 
 the mountain world. 
 
 Curious ! Here all the natural and artificial 
 
ROOTS, SUBSOIL, AND LANDED ESTATES 53 
 
 lines are low, earth-seeking, as if adjusting them- 
 selves to sea level ; whereas among the moun- 
 tains of New Hampshire and Vermont the lines 
 tend to the perpendicular, slope-angles of every 
 degree leading the eye upward or downward. 
 
 I find as I live longer here that all these 
 natural lines lead the vision outward ; they run 
 to every point of the compass. I gain a broader 
 outlook upon what I may call the levelling pro- 
 cesses of life. Among the mountains of our 
 North Country I catch the inspiration of life 
 from both its heights and depths — an insight 
 into it rather than an outlook upon it. 
 
 10. 
 
 A complete inventory of my estates would 
 fill this page. I need only indicate a few; 
 they are not confined by any means to this 
 side of the ocean. I have several in Kent. 
 One of the Old Colony grandfathers was a 
 clothier from East Greenwich in that county 
 and, migrating hither, lived for a time on Kent 
 Street, — so called because of the "men of 
 Kent" who settled there, — in Scituate. 
 
54 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 Whenever I have been in London I have 
 intended to make that water journey down the 
 Thames from Battersea to Greenwich, not 
 only to verify the mist and smoke effects of 
 Whistler's etching of the Tower Bridge, but to 
 see something of London on the Kentish side 
 which is far from reminding one of the much 
 besung hopfields and cherry orchards of that 
 noted English county. Unfortunately this has 
 always remained an intention. Had I carried 
 it out, East Greenwich, where my clothier- 
 grandfather lived, would have claimed my 
 interest ; and, after that, a leisurely, looking- 
 up-estates excursion into southern Kent, as 
 well as Sussex, would have rewarded me satis- 
 factorily. 
 
 What concern is it of mine if decades or cen- 
 turies ago others purchased, others inherited 
 those fine estates of Groombridge, Spedhurst, 
 Hockerton, Laundale ? Half their charm lies 
 in their names. The present owners cannot 
 deprive me of my special brand of inheritance. 
 And having feed lodge-keepers, and importuned 
 gardeners over Kentish hedges, it is just possible 
 
ROOTS, SUBSOIL, AND LANDED ESTATES 55 
 
 I might have been permitted to set foot on one 
 of my many over-seas landed properties. 
 
 Shades of my ancestors ! How well you 
 fought, and delved, and loved, and hated ; 
 grasped with one hand and gave with the other ! 
 And now how thickly lie your bones as dust in 
 those old churches and graveyards ; how well 
 your mortal bodies have enriched the soil of 
 Kent! 
 
 All these good intentions are not confined 
 to my English right of domain, for sometime 
 — ah, that "sometime"! — I mean to take a 
 day for Duxbury and there seek out the land 
 where stood the old homestead of the Aldens. 
 That poor-rich old grandfather's sister, Abigail, 
 married the captain-son of John and Priscilla 
 Alden. I am ever grateful to her for favoring 
 him ; it gives me a live collateral interest, as 
 niece, in her father-in-law's love story. 
 
 11. 
 
 But I must enlarge no longer the category 
 of my landed properties. Their real value to 
 me consists in the fact that, during my life, I 
 
$6 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 have always felt at home in farmhouse, fisher- 
 man's cottage, in workshop, or mill, in mansion, 
 hall, or manor. I can account for this feeling 
 of "at homeness" in these varied environments : 
 it is an inheritance from those thousands of 
 ancestors who were sheltered under such varied 
 roof-trees ; who worked — fighting Indians, fish- 
 ing, tanning hides, making tar from the pine 
 trees of Nahant, weaving cloth, building mills, 
 weirs, causeways for the benefit of the com- 
 munity and governing it, in that first half- 
 century of the Old Colony's life; or, in Eng- 
 land, fighting Saxon, French, and brother Eng- 
 lishman, cultivating the Kentish land as hind 
 or yeoman, adding to great landed estates by 
 diplomatic marriage with heiresses, — no little 
 work of a certain kind, this, — hobnobbing 
 with Chaucer and actually breathing the same 
 air with William Shakespeare. I have an 
 ancestral grudge of long standing against some 
 of those worthies for not handing down to me 
 some record of those two Englishmen ! Why 
 did not David de Waller, Master of the Rolls 
 for thirty years to Edward III., tell us of Chaucer? 
 
ROOTS, SUBSOIL, AND LANDED ESTATES 57 
 
 12. ' 
 
 As I have already stated, my one piece of duly 
 registered estate, what I actually own under the 
 law of the land, is a mere back yard here on this 
 island. But I assure you it is no ordinary back 
 yard. Although its superficial contents are 
 registered as something over six thousand square 
 feet, its outlook is so far-reaching that it enlarges 
 daily to thousands of acres in my mind's eye, 
 and I think I dare assert, and with truth, to 
 my natural eye as well. Its only back gate is 
 the gate of every new day beyond harbor and 
 moors ; and not for Golconda's riches would I 
 exchange the privilege of seeing the sun rise 
 from over those moors in winter, and in summer 
 from the ocean haunts beyond the "haulover". 
 
 At such times the back gate becomes the lodge 
 gates to a royal demesne. 
 
 At night, in that far east, the lodge gates of 
 day being closed, there shine forth two lights 
 to mark those portals. One can be seen only 
 when the tide is at the flood, and the night is 
 both clear and dark. Then one can glimpse 
 
58 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 the irregular rise and fall of the mast-lanterns 
 on the lightship moored twelve miles seawards 
 on Great Round Shoal. The other, except in 
 times of fog, may always be seen at the eastern 
 point of the compass. It is the brilliant flash 
 and gleam of Sankaty beacon seven miles away 
 across the moors. 
 
 Night after night, season after season, with a 
 regularity that allays all fret of present exist- 
 ence, that brings calm into the fevered life of 
 To-day, those great gates, defined by those two 
 lights, open invisibly for the pass and re-pass of 
 the full moon, a planet, a constellation. Watch- 
 ing their serene entrance, I feel that I own some- 
 thing both of earth and heaven. 
 
 No wonder that the little back yard here on 
 this island outpost in the Atlantic dwarfs all 
 those ancestral estates. 
 
V 
 
 THE "PASS" 
 
 I. 
 
 This is the island word for what may be 
 seen from one's windows, front or back, as it 
 may chance, of the local life of the town. 
 
 My front windows are directly on Orange 
 v Street which is a thoroughfare. They are 
 flush with the sidewalk as are many in this old 
 town. Looking from them I am never con- 
 scious of the fact that Nantucket is an island. 
 I might be in some town in Scotland except 
 that the houses are shingled instead of being 
 laid in stone ; or in some large village of 
 the English Channel coast counties ; yet there 
 is not the slightest hint of imitation. It is 
 unique. 
 
 Those unacquainted with the winter popula- 
 tion might conceive of the town as an American 
 
 59 
 
60 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 edition of Cranford ; but it is nothing of the 
 kind. It is literally running over with chil- 
 dren whom, in my experience of three years, I 
 have rarely heard cry, so rarely, that at the first 
 wail I usually rush to the window to see if any- 
 thing untoward has happened. Like the chil- 
 dren of foreign lands they play in troops on the 
 roadbed of the streets, whether it be of sand, 
 asphalt, or cobbles. Their parents also walk 
 thereon ; in fact, the whole population, whether 
 summer or winter, preempt the roadway rather 
 than use the narrow sidewalks where many of 
 the protruding flights of front steps, planted 
 solidly on the inner half, threaten to knock the 
 breath out of an unwary and conventional 
 foot-passenger. They remind me of those so- 
 called "kneeling windows" on the Florentine 
 palaces. I recall that a member of my family 
 while taking a walk in that city was, in a mo- 
 ment of abstraction, brought up short and 
 breathless against the unyielding stone. 
 
 Yes, there are literally troops of children to 
 be seen at any hour not occupied in school. 
 The majority of them are children of Irish, 
 
THE "PASS" 61 
 
 Portuguese, Brava, English-American parent- 
 age. It is on account of these varied nation- 
 alities that I applied the word " marvel " to the 
 winter population. The disintegration of the 
 old underlying English-American stratum is 
 rapidly taking place. There is already amal- 
 gamation of various nationalities, and I doubt 
 not in another generation or two there will 
 result renewed vitality through cross-breeding. 
 It is not necessary to be a student of sociol- 
 ogy and to seek, for the purpose of observing 
 this process of amalgamation or assimilation, 
 the cities that are congested by the influx of 
 other nationalities. The process can be ob- 
 served and studied by any one of clear Vision in 
 a mountain hamlet, in a village of the coast, or 
 on this island. When beneath my living-room 
 windows there can be heard from the "pass" 
 Portuguese, Brava — a dialect of the same — 
 Greek, French, or English, I realize that I am 
 in no backwater, no side eddy of the great 
 stream of the migrations of the nations, but 
 in the full current, in midstream, as it were. 
 A recognition of this, and what it means nation- 
 
62 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 ally, precludes any considerable feeling of insu- 
 lar isolation. 
 
 This "day pass" is, in consequence, more 
 intensely interesting to me than a well-staged 
 and acted play ; for the stage is a real one, 
 and those that figure on it, passing and re-pass- 
 ing daily, are not simulating the various roles 
 that belong to comedy, to joyous vaudeville, 
 to melodrama, misery or tragedy — it is all 
 real, but the language is polyglot. 
 
 2. 
 There goes Tommy ! a ward of the town and 
 one of God's "hidden ones". I do not know in 
 all my acquaintance a more dead-in-earnest, 
 contented, peaceable — when not tormented — ■ 
 worker than he. He loves his pushcart and his 
 profession of collecting rubbish. He is a young 
 fellow now, and will always remain young of 
 heart. He can never "grow up" although he 
 is strong, tall, able to do and does according to 
 his ability. Delighted with any small gift, he 
 cherishes it. Many a time during the last three 
 years I have heard him pass the house playing 
 
THE "PASS" 63 
 
 "Home, Sweet Home" perfectly on his har- 
 monica, a Christmas gift. On that first Christ- 
 mas when he came into possession of this 
 treasure, as he passed beneath the window in 
 the early twilight on his way to his only home, 
 the poorhouse, I heard him playing that tune 
 softly and sweetly. Hearing it, I could but ac- 
 knowledge that all earthly joys are relative. 
 
 I should miss Tommy from the "pass". 
 
 Now and then a quahaug fisherman tramps 
 by with a huge burlap sack of that succulent 
 bivalve on his back. 
 
 Joyous parties of young people on horseback 
 canter gayly through the street on their way 
 to the state road or the moors. Smart private 
 traps, old shays, queer, primitive-looking 
 Quaker carts, loads of seaweed coming in from 
 the South Shore to be used for fertilizing, carts 
 laden with clam shells, fruit, or vegetables all 
 join Orange Street's lively procession. 
 
 The bells on the baker's cart may be heard 
 at any time of day. They jingle as loudly and 
 merrily as if there were two feet of snow, and the 
 gay cart on runners ; at least, they hint of 
 
64 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 winter as I understand the expression of that 
 season, but it seems to be wanting very gener- 
 ally here. 
 
 The powerful blast of the fisherman's horn 
 announces that there is a prospect of mackerel, 
 cod, white-bait, scup, flounders, or swordfish 
 from the shoals or deep sea. 
 
 There is a very special knife-grinder a glimpse 
 of whom is worth much to the eye that de- 
 lights in the pure Italian type. His matched 
 stationary bells on his little machine are so 
 perfect in tone that I, for one, would gladly 
 follow him down the street for the sake of pro- 
 longing the pleasure they give me. I have had 
 less at many a Boston Symphony. 
 
 Sometimes there is other music, crude in its 
 way but contributing to round out musically 
 the daily "pass". Down the long vista of this 
 foreign-looking street I can see the procession 
 of the "Carrying of the Crown". There are 
 scores of children whose parents only a few 
 years ago were celebrating this feast in the 
 same way in Lisbon, mayhap, or on one of the 
 islands of the Azores. For a moment a queer 
 
THE "PASS" 65 
 
 little feeling of homesickness — for what I can- 
 not say — possesses me wholly. I feel that 
 I am in a foreign land. 
 
 Again, on Corpus Christi Day, as I watch 
 from an upper balcony the approach of the long 
 bright procession, it seems as if I had lost my 
 grip on my own nationality. The street is 
 filled from side to side with scores of children, 
 girls, and youths, all in gala dress. The air is 
 filled with the fragrance of flowers, although the 
 little wreaths are artificial. They are march- 
 ing to the strong blare of trumpet and beat of 
 drum beneath the gleam of silken churchly 
 banners and — ah ! there they are, glorified 
 in the sunshine (I feel again at home), three of 
 those old tabernacle colors — "blue and scarlet 
 and the white of fine twined linen" — Our 
 Colors ! They, too, are a symbol of sanctuary 
 to these peoples. 
 
 3- 
 
 As for the "night pass", and there is one, I 
 not only cannot see it, I should not care to see 
 it if I could. I know perfectly well what is 
 
66 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 passing along the famous South Channel be- 
 yond Great Point and the "haulover". 
 
 I see in imagination the passing of sloop, 
 barge, steamer, and schooner — three-masted, 
 five-masted — their sails and smoke pennons 
 faintly white against the clear dark, or reful- 
 gently opaline in the light of the moon. I 
 see with the inner eye as plainly as if the outer 
 vision could compass it, what is nightly passing 
 out there beyond the moors, beyond the forty 
 miles of shoals, on the Atlantic main. 
 
 On the nights of terrific wind I see the surf- 
 men — the coast patrols — on that long sand 
 dune of Coskata, out by Great Point ; I see them 
 at Maddequet, on lone Muskeget, or on the 
 wild South Shore. They are leaning forward, 
 head down and on to the fearful force that beats 
 them backwards, beats the breath from their 
 bodies till they are forced to lie flat to regain it. 
 Stung by sleet, lashed by rain, blinded by driv- 
 ing snow, they stagger forward on their awful 
 beat towards their goal where, facing about, 
 they race before the fury of the wind to their 
 shelter in the station. 
 
THE "PASS" 67 
 
 I see in the north and east the pass of barge 
 and schooner bewildered in snow squall, lost in 
 fog, helpless among the maze of slues, bars, 
 shoals, and rips. I see them caught in the 
 sudden gale, dragging anchors, blown from under 
 the lee of Great Point, or parting hawsers and 
 stranded on one of the numberless shoals — a 
 toy for breaking seas. 
 
 I see the crew taking to the rigging, mast and 
 spar and marline sleet-coated, or putting off, a 
 forlorn hope, in open boats. I see the crew of 
 some sinking barge trying in vain to signal to 
 the tow ; and, in the fury of the storm, the black- 
 ness of the night, I see the surfmen waiting, 
 watching, ready at the first break of dawn with 
 surfboat and breeches buoy. 
 
 I know that those men lashed in the rigging 
 are freezing, the men in the open, drifting boat 
 already frozen ; that in the first light of dawn 
 the noble surfmen, who risk their lives for their 
 fellow-men, will bring them in, frozen, some of 
 them, in the open boat, freezing, many of them, 
 from the ice-coated rigging. 
 
 I know that on the South Shoals, forty miles 
 
68 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 from this island, the flashing beacons of the 
 lightship rise and fall as the vessel heaves and 
 tosses, plunges and rolls in the shallow, tumul- 
 tuous waters lashed white by the gale. Inaction 
 is the duty of the crew when all about is in 
 chaotic movement. They can afford no active 
 help; they must simply "stand by" — the 
 hardest task for a man. They must keep the 
 lights trimmed and burning while their unwieldy 
 anchored craft pitches from the crests and rolls 
 in the troughs. 
 
 I know that there are other tragedies of the 
 sea worse than death ; for, sometimes on those 
 ever-anchored but ever-moving ships, the brain 
 gives way and when opportunity offers the man 
 is taken off — insane from the monotony of 
 movement, from the monotony of prolonged 
 inaction, constant monotony of sea and sky, 
 sky and sea, rising and falling, falling only to 
 rise again with inexorable sequence. 
 
 And farther, still farther beyond the South 
 Shoals, I see forging ahead, unheeding the 
 storm, despite wind, snow, fog, or ice, the huge 
 ocean liners. I see their myriad lights, the 
 
THE "PASS" 69 
 
 brilliant saloon, the warmth of open fires, the 
 comfort of library and smoking-room, the lux- 
 urious staterooms on the upper decks, the cozy 
 cells of the lower ones, the comfortable second 
 cabin saloon without the gayety and luxury of 
 the first. I see the immigrants' crowded quar- 
 ters, the rows of low bunks, the little steerage 
 hospital, confined at best. And still beneath 
 I see the engines, the coal-bunkers, the bulk- 
 heads. And in and through all I see that 
 humanity — two thousand five hundred souls 
 — afloat on the unstable element of the sea. 
 
 Above in the saloons, the billiard room, the 
 grills, there is feasting, laughter, dancing, sing- 
 ing, gambling, drinking, debauch. Below, 
 anguish of maternity and a new-born babe in 
 the steerage hospital, or an old life suddenly 
 snuffed out like a candle in one of the immi- 
 grants' bunks. And still below there is the 
 perfect working of ponderous machinery, the 
 withering flame of furnace fires, and men, half 
 naked, shovelling with might and main, — the 
 steamer is off South Shoals Lightship and the 
 record must be broken, — shovelling as for dear 
 
70 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 life, all through the night shift in their sweat 
 and their grime. 
 
 I thank God I may not actually see the "night 
 pass" from this Island Outpost in the Atlantic. 
 It suffices me to know that through the varying 
 seasons, night after night, passing and re-pass- 
 ing, it is always there. 
 
VI 
 
 OUTLOOK 
 I. 
 
 Insularity does not necessarily tend to 
 restrict outlook on men and affairs. On the 
 contrary the field of vision may be enlarged 
 although the angle of the point of view may 
 shift. At least this has been my personal 
 experience here. 
 
 At first I was surprised when in answer to 
 my question if the oak wood I was purchasing 
 for my fireplaces was well seasoned, the dealer 
 replied : "Yes, I've just filled an order from 
 some place up the Nile for three cords of the 
 same lot, and Mr. ", mentioning the pur- 
 chaser's name, "is always particular on that 
 point. " 
 
 It certainly extends the boundary of mundane 
 affairs, at least of the town, when the honor- 
 able selectmen are petitioned on ambassadorial 
 
 71 
 
72 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 paper, from far away Japan, to lay an asphalt 
 covering on a noisy, cobble-paved street of this 
 little, antipodal sister-island. 
 
 That my Nantucket neighbors may winter 
 in California, Bermuda, Algiers, Canton, or on 
 the Riviera, is no longer a matter of comment 
 on my part ; it was until I understood that 
 this bit of terminal moraine, three miles wide 
 and fifteen long, is considered — and is, in 
 reality — a kind of social, international clearing- 
 house. 
 
 As I have said, the natural lines of the island 
 and its environment tend to lead vision out- 
 ward and beyond ; and not only is that vision 
 unrestricted, except for the limitation of sight, 
 but through it there is a stimulation for the 
 inner imaginative eye that looks beyond the 
 miles of moorland, beyond the ocean horizon 
 line, far, far along the waterway of the nations 
 to southern seas, to tropics and palms ; and 
 ever beyond to antarctic ice and towering moun- 
 tain range buried beneath snow and scourged 
 by Polar winds — the cradle of continental 
 glaciers. 
 
OUTLOOK 73 
 
 I venture to assert that I think thrice to every 
 other American woman's once of Shackleton, 
 Scott, and Amundsen, just because my eyes 
 can look abroad southward on that ocean the 
 Polar seas of which, in the ultimate South, 
 wash the shores of the continent they have 
 made known to us. 
 
 This breadth of outlook is the island's inheri- 
 tance. Its seafaring men, captains, mates, 
 sailors before the mast, knew the Seven Seas 
 a century before Kipling sang of them. Last 
 summer an aged woman gave as her contribution 
 to a local charity a basket of shells brought by 
 her father from the shores of the Pacific ; they 
 were both rare and beautiful. Not long ago 
 one of the local carpenters lent me an old ship's 
 ledger in which was written his great-uncle's 
 account of his nine cast-away years among the 
 South Sea islands. It is a straightforward, 
 manly narrative of his strange life and how, as 
 sole survivor of the crew, he adapted himself 
 under necessity to the new environment. It is 
 nearly a century old. 
 
 Men of marked business capability and fine 
 
74 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 intelligence were the owners of merchant-ships 
 that carried our flag into the ports of England, 
 France, Russia, Sweden, China, and India. And 
 now in these interesting homes I may find the 
 flotsam of a century, as rare chinas — old Chel- 
 sea, Lowestoft, French of the First Empire, or a 
 piece of carved teakwood furniture, a shawl 
 from the handlooms of Cashmere. One dear 
 lady showed me her sixty-seven pitchers — direct 
 heirlooms, collateral heirlooms, gifts, many of 
 them a collector might envy — and in addi- 
 tion twelve dozen infinitesimal silver spoons in 
 a carved and polished cherry stone. I judged 
 them to be something less than an eighth of an 
 inch in length ; a magnifying glass was needed 
 to see them properly. They were a wedding 
 gift bought in London for her grandmother at 
 the time of her marriage there in 1812. 
 
 The island remains true to its cosmopolitan 
 inheritance. 
 
 The Rocky Mountain States, the states of the 
 Mississippi Valley, the South, the North, moun- 
 tain and plain, even the Atlantic coast, all 
 contribute their quota to the summer popu- 
 
OUTLOOK 75 
 
 lation. As for the winter population — that 
 is a marvel. 
 
 The second great stream of continental immi- 
 gration, setting so powerfully the last twenty- 
 years to our shores, has not left this little island 
 untouched. Just as the Gulf Stream tempers 
 these waters, warming them on the shoals that 
 extend forty miles to the south, and makes for 
 a climate more equable than any on the Atlantic 
 coast north of Charleston, so this island feels 
 the influence of foreign influx. 
 
 As a result, I observe on this Atlantic outpost 
 of our United States, in this era of rapid tran- 
 sition, something of the remaking of all America 
 for all Americans. It is well to meet the Inevi- 
 table halfway. 
 
 2. 
 
 Removed as I have been for the past few 
 years from what I may call the tension of ex- 
 istence — the attempt, with millions of other 
 bread-winners, to make headway against the 
 overpowering and adverse current of metro- 
 politan life, I find that this abstraction from 
 the rush, the unease, and what, perhaps, I may 
 
76 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 best designate as the discontinuity of life in 
 the rapids of those great centers where for years 
 I have made my home — New York and Chi- 
 cago, and the minor cities of Boston and Wash- 
 ington — has relaxed certain strained attitudes 
 towards all life. The outlook has become nor- 
 mal. The inner vision has cleared. There is 
 no surcharge of excitement to overstrain heart 
 or brain. 
 
 As a result, affairs on the continent, — the 
 Islanders always speak of the mainland, and 
 with right, as "the continent", — national con- 
 ditions, sectional changes, flux of new ideas, 
 influx of new inventions, reflux of satiety en- 
 gendered by too much of both, recover balance 
 in my thought of them ; assume normal pro- 
 portions. The interplay of forces in the devel- 
 opment of our new national life does not threaten, 
 does not alarm. These forces show themselves 
 as following the natural law of change, the 
 corollary of which is, and ever will be, unrest 
 — visible or invisible. 
 
 Disintegration is taking place in sections of 
 our nation, and men find themselves at loss, 
 
OUTLOOK 77 
 
 unable to account for the results of it that are 
 daily in bewildering conditions before their 
 eyes. 
 
 3- 
 
 Take, for instance, our own New England. 
 As it is my home, I suppose I may say without 
 undue egotism that I love it as well as any other 
 New Englander; that I am as anxious for its 
 well-being, for its prosperity along industrial 
 lines; and yet, and yet — ! The phrase "the 
 passing of New England" is no idle one, nor 
 uncertain of sound. 
 
 Several years ago while I was living among the 
 Green Mountains, the Grand Trunk Railroad 
 purchased the Central Vermont. We, who saw 
 daily before our eyes evidences of that change 
 in ownership, said : "This is one great wedge 
 that will, in time, split the solidarity of New 
 England." 
 
 My grandfather had as helper at odd times an 
 old French Canadian ; his family and two others 
 settled in that Green Mountain village; were 
 industrious ; prospered in their way ; reared 
 their children whose children were educated in 
 
78 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 the common school, and drew others of their 
 nationality to them — a local tannery proving 
 the industrial attraction. 
 
 I have wondered often who would have 
 worked that tannery if not they ? 
 
 In time, there came to be a large contingent 
 of French Canadians among whom I have 
 acquaintance. These children's children are 
 now Americans to the marrow. I was making 
 purchases last spring at a large shop in Boston, 
 one of our old reliables, and a pleasant sales- 
 woman, in taking my address, said : "Oh, I 
 know of you so well; my aunt is ", men- 
 tioning one of that third generation of French 
 Canadians in the mountain hamlet ; it was but 
 little more than that when the first French 
 immigrant entered it. 
 
 Within a few years, I have seen the tops of the 
 high hills surrounding this same village laid 
 bare to sun and storm ; their granite masses 
 quarried, hewn, drilled, sculptured, by French, 
 Hungarians, Poles, Italians, Lithuanians, Scotch, 
 and Germans. I have heard the polyglot of 
 languages on the village streets. Seeing all 
 
OUTLOOK 79 
 
 this, living with it for a time, I have realized 
 something of the great forces at work in the dis- 
 integration of the foundation racial strata of 
 our New England life, as well as of the effect of 
 wedge and cleavage. 
 
 I hold it a privilege to have been permitted 
 to see at close range the actual working of this 
 process of the remaking of America.^ 
 
 4- 
 
 After these quarries had been worked a few 
 years, being then in Washington for the winter 
 of 1907-1908, I went down one Sunday morn- 
 ing to the wholly informal opening of the new 
 Washington Station, from the entrance of which 
 you may look straight uphill to the Capitol. 
 
 As I stood there among the thousands gath- 
 ered to admire the nobly proportioned building 
 and the beauty of the stone, purest white gran- 
 ite, I said to myself, "I believe I am the only 
 one among these thousands who has seen this 
 granite in situ, six hundred miles to the north 
 among the mountains of Vermont." 
 
 I recalled that day when I drove from my 
 
80 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 home over the intervening hills to visit those 
 recently opened quarries. There, as yet undis- 
 turbed, bared of its thin layer of sod, I saw the 
 granite that was to materialize in the Wash- 
 ington Station through the great portal of 
 which the rulers of our country, millions of its 
 citizens and school children, its men of science, 
 the representatives of foreign lands, were to 
 pass and re-pass for — who can say how many 
 centuries ? 
 
 It gave me food for thought. 
 
 And the forgotten quarrymen, the Poles, 
 Hungarians, Lithuanians, Italians, Scotch, Ger- 
 mans, and French who made this possible ? I 
 realized as I, too, passed out through that high- 
 arched entrance, that without them to dig, to 
 hoist, to drill, to hew and smooth and sculp- 
 ture, it would not have been possible. And I 
 knew, moreover, that within a generation many 
 of the children of these various nationalities 
 would pass and re-pass through that same por- 
 tal as American born citizens, their patriotism 
 stimulated by the thought : "Our fathers helped 
 to make this. " 
 
OUTLOOK 8 1 
 
 They will recognize their ownership and be 
 justly proud. 
 
 5- 
 
 Surely those third and fourth generations will 
 feel toward their fathers, — the makers of Amer- 
 ica in what I may call "under the surface" work, 
 — as I feel toward the New England pioneers. 
 
 One hundred and fifty years ago, a pioneer 
 grandfather on my father's side migrated from 
 New Milford into the northern wilderness, work- 
 ing his way up the Connecticut Valley, and 
 settled on those six hundred acres, "his pitch", 
 near its White branch. There he made roads, 
 felled trees, built first the log house and after- 
 wards the substantial farmhouse of big pine 
 from "his pitch"; cleared, broke, and tilled 
 his land ; begot sons and daughters ; upheld 
 his feeble church as "deacon", in fact, obeyed 
 the supreme command : "Acquit yourself like 
 a man", and was in due time "gathered to his 
 fathers". His simple history is the history of 
 thousands of New England born, and his work 
 the great work of the New England pioneers. 
 All honor to their unrecorded lives. 
 
82 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 6. 
 
 But the New England is now old. In seven 
 years it will have been settled for three cen- 
 turies. The work of its pioneers has long been 
 finished. Even its industrialism is aging. Its 
 industrial initiative is diminishing. Its lines 
 of traffic are not the lines of great national 
 food supply and never will be because of its 
 isolation. It is a small, cold, northeast corner 
 of the United States. It would take but little 
 to render it insular so far as its physical con- 
 figuration is concerned. Maine is three fourths 
 wilderness. New Hampshire is at a standstill 
 in population. After one hundred and twenty- 
 three years of statehood, Vermont's utmost is 
 approximately three hundred and fifty thou- 
 sand. Massachusetts still has thousands of 
 acres of waste land ; its commerce is not holding 
 its own ; its traffic along railroad lines is grad- 
 ually being "side-tracked"; its fisheries are 
 being rivalled. 
 
 The New England that our forefathers opened 
 up, the New England that our fathers devel- 
 
OUTLOOK 83 
 
 oped has, in a sense, had its day. It is subject, 
 as is every enterprise of settlement, manufac- 
 tures, mining, agriculture, to the law of dimin- 
 ishing results ; and no building of enormous 
 docks, no extension of railroads, no forcing of 
 mill industries, will aggrandize, enrich her, or 
 tempt to settlement. Certain sections of our 
 own country, because of the rapid development 
 of the whole during the last seventy-five years, 
 must fall by their own weight. The balance of 
 sectional development, owing to the pace at 
 which this continent has been tracked with 
 railroads, nerved with telegraph and telephone, 
 quarried and mined, has been unsettled. 
 
 7- 
 
 The history of this island will be, I believe, 
 an epitome of the history of New England. 
 
 Thomas Macy, one of its original purchasers 
 and one of the first three settlers, left Salisbury, 
 not that he was persecuted, but because in his 
 own words, "he could not in justice to his con- 
 science longer submit to the tyranny of the 
 clergy and those in authority." This is an echo 
 
84 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 of the Pilgrim Fathers and, heard as early as 
 1659, indicates the tyranny of the Puritan 
 theocracy. 
 
 There followed slow development, slow in- 
 coming of others who sought this refuge for 
 other reasons, perhaps as potent. In the course 
 of a century the whale fisheries made known the 
 island to the world, and its merchant-ships and 
 whalers were found in every port. The popu- 
 lation increased rapidly because of prosperity. 
 Prosperity, dependent on the demand for a 
 world supply of its commodity, waxed because 
 of that demand for the island's particular prod- 
 uct. In the middle of the last century sperm 
 oil gave place to crude petroleum ; the opening 
 of the first oil well wrote "the end" for Nan- 
 tucket's extensive maritime interests. Business 
 stagnation followed. Its people migrated. 
 Grass grew in the cobble-paved streets. 
 
 As a child, I came once to it from the Cape, 
 and for one night. There has remained with 
 me the impression of foggy drowsiness, of the 
 absence of life in the streets and little lanes, of 
 the salt marshes at low tide, and of a quaint 
 
OUTLOOK 85 
 
 home in an alley where my mother, aunt, and 
 I were made welcome. I recall the mustiness 
 of the tiny rooms, the oily smell from a kerosene 
 lamp, the all-pervasive air of another-world- 
 ness than that to which I was accustomed. 
 
 Now, after these many years I am here again 
 — at home. The streets are lively with a life 
 foreign to me. The bay is dotted with the 
 boats of scallop and quahaug fishermen. One 
 winter day three years ago I counted twenty- 
 one sail coming down from the upper harbor. 
 Now, after so short a time, I rarely see a fisher- 
 man's sail ; only power boats are at work with 
 drag and rake and dredge. The quaint houses, 
 the quiet, picturesque lanes are still here, but 
 every house available seems to have been bought 
 by the "off-islanders". 
 
 The spring, summer, autumn, see another 
 life, and the population exceeds by thousands 
 that of the island in its most prosperous days. 
 
 This is the redintegration of this Island Out- 
 post. In the century to come I foresee some- 
 thing of the same process for our old New 
 England. 
 
86 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 8. 
 One must have lived away from this section 
 of the country for some years to realize this. 
 One must have lived in the great centre of the 
 Mississippi Valley, that enormous granary of a 
 continent, to understand the significance of 
 Cobden's words: "Here will one day be the 
 headquarters of agriculture and manufacturing 
 industry ; here will one day centre the civiliza- 
 tion, the wealth, the power of the entire world." 
 
 9- 
 
 We need, also, to saturate our minds with 
 national facts, economic, climatic, racial, and 
 historical, as well as acquaint ourselves with 
 the ideals of those three great states on the 
 Pacific Coast and of that empire on the divide 
 and slopes of the Rockies — Montana. Its 
 eastern foothills, alone, will yield in the future 
 sustenance for millions. 
 
 We need to look farther in order to see more 
 clearly and deeper into our national life and its 
 mainsprings ; to remind ourselves oftener that 
 
OUTLOOK 87 
 
 although New Englanders, we are something 
 more — and all the time something more, not 
 merely at elections or in national crises ; that 
 we are citizens of a great republic which seeks 
 its sources of vitality among all sorts and con- 
 ditions of men who find themselves in a won- 
 derful country of possibilities, known as yet to 
 comparatively few among the working mil- 
 lions. 
 
 Homogeneity, the old racial status of New 
 England, works intensely in one direction and 
 in the interest of the special race. Hetero- 
 geneity, the present racial status of our entire 
 country, works diversely, more slowly, but none 
 the less powerfully towards the common interest 
 of the Race. 
 
 We shall come to recognize — and without 
 such great periodical discouragement, without 
 such spasmodic despair when we fail in reaching 
 the special local goal we have in view — that 
 in the course of historical development which, 
 in the end, is economic development, for a grow- 
 ing nation's history follows the lines of its food 
 supplies, that we are getting out of the current, 
 
88 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 not crowded out, — a condition which would 
 permit us with desperate struggle to get in again, 
 — but that, sectionally, we are economically 
 and, I dare assert, educationally devolving. 
 
 10. 
 
 I wish I had a little influence with the Board 
 of Overseers of Harvard ! If I had, I would 
 urge them to appropriate the interest of some 
 of their available millions to the founding of 
 travelling scholarships exclusively in our own 
 country. 
 
 The students obtaining them should visit 
 the universities of the states, the mines, mills, 
 plantations, agricultural schools, reservoirs, 
 dams, docks. They should acquaint them- 
 selves with the country's watersheds, with the 
 methods of irrigation. They should know the 
 forest slopes of the Sierras and Cascades, as 
 well as the muskeg and black spruce of Minne- 
 sota. They should know the Great Lakes, and 
 their traffic undreamed of by Easterners. They 
 should know the great civic centres and the 
 loggers' camps of north and south, east and 
 
OUTLOOK 89 
 
 west. They should note the direction of the 
 great streams of immigration, their diversion 
 and distribution along certain lines that can but 
 be affected now that the great Canal is about 
 to divert some of the over-seas humanity to 
 the Pacific Coast. 
 
 Nor should they be content with noting the 
 direction of the greater affluents of this immi- 
 gration stream. They should note carefully 
 the little rills of immigrant labor with their 
 tiny irrigation gates in mountain village, 
 prairie settlement, or sea-coast hamlet; they 
 should take note even of the "seep". 
 
 Then this old New England, into the heritage 
 of which some of them may have been born, 
 will assume in their eyes its rightful proportions 
 in the scheme of "things as they are" in our 
 United States. With no less loyalty to her 
 three hundred years of history, her traditions, 
 her accomplishments in the past, but with in- 
 creased power to understand the accurate di- 
 mensions of the part she is to play in the future 
 of the nation's life, — its councils, its economics, 
 its perils, and prosperity, — they will enter into 
 
9o FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 her service equipped in a measure to avoid for 
 themselves and their children disheartening illu- 
 sions ; to interpret to another generation her 
 waning powers and to determine the lines of 
 her redintegration. 
 
 That man who has studied at first hand his 
 country's racial necessities, and her natural 
 endowments for the supply of those necessities, 
 will render better service as a citizen, will be 
 better prepared to direct New England's energy, 
 into what channels soever it shall be diverted, 
 through understanding and accepting the fact 
 that the New England of the past three cen- 
 turies, the standard-bearer for the colonies, 
 many times voice and guide for a young nation, 
 breeder of sons that colonized in the west, 
 pioneer in industrialism, is now, in all truth, 
 an old New England that is but a small part of 
 a great National Whole the ideals for which 
 are to be sought and found among its youth in 
 the Great West. 
 
 And this is as it should be. 
 
VII 
 
 CERTAIN MOODS OF THE MOORS 
 I. 
 
 They are so wide-reaching that even the sea, 
 bounding them on the east, west, and south, 
 seems not to confine but to enlarge them. One 
 is apt to think them stable of aspect until one 
 has lived with them intimately ; then one real- 
 izes that they have many moods and tenses. 
 
 During the four years of my residence here 
 they have acquired, in my thought at least, the 
 charm of a strong personality that, as yet, has 
 not wholly revealed itself to me nor, it may be, 
 ever will. This is one of the sources of their 
 charm. They allure, yet baffle ; they take you 
 into their confidence but always with reserve 
 and a hint of "more if they would". It has its 
 secrets, this moorland which is the creation 
 primarily of a continental ice-sheet, and it with- 
 holds them from all who have not the fine hear- 
 ing ear, the seeing eye, the understanding heart 
 
 91 
 
92 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 for this special expression of nature. It will 
 reveal itself, and then but in part, only to its 
 lovers, and even to them in unexpected moods. 
 
 You wander out a mile or two over their 
 seemingly monotonous stretches, and suddenly 
 you are aware that there is buoyancy in your 
 walk ; the closely matted surface of the meal- 
 plum vines, that cover them, fairly springs 
 beneath your feet. You mount one of the many 
 soft, rounded breasts — those innumerable 
 swells of the moorland — to look about you on 
 an afternoon in July. 
 
 There may be no wind which is an exceptional 
 condition here of the air at all seasons. Then 
 there is a quiet abroad that is the distilled 
 spirit of calm ; not even the hum of a bee is 
 heard, not the stirring of an insect's wing. 
 The sunshine filters through a light haze that 
 amplifies the distance, and the great moor- 
 mother basks in it, offering her warm breasts 
 to those of the earth-children who seek her. A 
 natural peace broods both body and soul. 
 
 It is well to let nature work her will with us 
 on such a day, in such a place. 
 
CERTAIN MOODS OF THE MOORS 93 
 
 2. 
 
 Over westwards there is a tiny house hunched 
 against one of these moorland swells. It is 
 protected on the north by this rise of land. The 
 west and south lie wholly open to it. I should 
 like to own it that I might see from its windows 
 the approach of those wondrous storm-clouds 
 from the southwest that in huge, riven masses, 
 their dark edges frayed, bear rapidly continent- 
 wards. They cloak the firmament with their 
 voluminous swinging folds. Their trailing skirts 
 efface the dun-colored, low-lying moors, levelling 
 and blotting out. They sweep unendingly, so it 
 appears to one watching, at the rate of thirty 
 miles an hour, out of the watery wastes and 
 over this island toward the mainland. 
 
 At such times I am permitted to see the storm 
 clouds at work between the vast of the deep and 
 the vast of the sky. I see the strain and the 
 travail for they are heavy with rain, the tortuous 
 upward twist of the gigantic, wind-driven masses 
 in their onward rush landwards. 
 
 This great natural arena for this elemental 
 
94 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 wrestling match is best seen, I believe, from the 
 Nantucket moors. 
 
 3- 
 They hold constant surprises for those who 
 frequent them. One may come unexpectedly 
 on a tiny cup-like hollow among the soft, 
 moorland breasts. It is filled with clear water 
 that floats dark green, leathery lily pads, and 
 white lilies open wide to the August sun. Sur- 
 rounding it is a low irregular coppice of wild 
 roses in bloom. Incense of water lilies, the 
 spicy fragrance of the wild rose, and, for an 
 added sensuous delight, the breeze coming in 
 from the near-by ocean and stirring a petal here 
 and there. 
 
 4- 
 
 But oh, the marshes on their borders, where 
 the shy wild life lives for a while and feeds ! 
 Wild land about pond and pool — peat-bog, 
 and hummock, marsh and reedy inlet filled 
 from the largess of the adjoining sea ; wild 
 November skies and the hoarse kruk of coot, 
 the scream of gulls flying high over the island ! 
 
CERTAIN MOODS OF THE MOORS 95 
 
 5. 
 
 On ordinary starlight nights the moors are 
 never dark. There is a curious atmospheric 
 luminosity about them that gives the impres- 
 sion of great enclosed space — the unbroken 
 arch of the sky is responsible for that — illu- 
 mined dimly from beneath. Something of the 
 same effect can be seen across the dunes of Hol- 
 land. I suppose it is a matter of refracted light 
 from the circumambient waters of the ocean. 
 
 Those are nights to be remembered when 
 in the early evening the new moon and Venus, 
 apparently within its curve, are setting together 
 in the clear dark beyond the line of the moors 
 where the ocean bounds them. 
 
 I keep certain joys for myself in anticipation ; 
 it is one of my life's best assets. Sometime in 
 the April of 19 14, I mean to see Orion wheel 
 slowly down the dark expanse of moorland and 
 sink at last, star by star — flash of Rigel, gleam 
 of Betelgeux — into the Atlantic. 
 
 As for nights of full moon, there is enough 
 light focussed on this island to supply an 
 
96 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 archipelago. Then even the moors partake of 
 the glamour of the silvered sea. 
 
 6. 
 
 "What must it be like in such a soft dark night 
 out there on the moors where, westwards, 
 never a beacon shines from home or lighthouse 
 tower ?" 
 
 This I ask myself when I stand at the open 
 door and listen to the unbroken, heavy undertone 
 of seas pounding on the south shore. On such 
 a dark night, for instance, as I last stood in the 
 open doorway listening to that marvellously 
 deep basal note, with which was mingled from 
 time to time strange overtones, and wondering 
 that the impetus of those heavy seas, the after- 
 math of some terrific storm far, far away on 
 the Atlantic, did not carry them across the isl- 
 and to mingle with the quiet harbor waters. 
 
 This low, far-away booming of surf is seldom 
 heard in the town ; the conditions for it are 
 rarely combined. To produce it there must 
 have been a severe storm somewhere to the 
 south of us on the Atlantic ; the night must be 
 
CERTAIN MOODS OF THE MOORS 97 
 
 practically windless, or with a gentle steady 
 breeze from the same point of compass. 
 
 At such times, in the soft dark, under clouded 
 skies, the moors must reveal another world 
 to him who seeks them. The eye must first 
 of all accustom itself to the impenetrable dark- 
 ness. The ear must wont itself to the constant 
 terrific roar and boom of surf breaking along 
 fifteen miles of sand beach ; the mind adjust 
 itself subjectively, of necessity. Thoughts crowd 
 the consciousness in such an hour, in such a 
 place. There is a blind groping, a vain 'search- 
 ing of the spirit, a realization of its impotence 
 in that universal dark. 
 
 What a beacon to our very soul if on the 
 benighted sight the glowing twinkle of one 
 firefly should break suddenly against the sur- 
 rounding blackness ! 
 
 7- 
 
 There is but one perfect epic for such a dark- 
 ness, for such a night ; one perfect expression of 
 the thoughts such an environment must en- 
 gender : Hellen Keller's "Chant of Dark- 
 ness" : 
 
98 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 "Out of the uncharted and unthinkable dark we come, 
 And in a little while we shall return again 
 Into the vast, unanswering dark." 
 
 This would be the moorland's hymn on such 
 a night, and its accompaniment the deep diapa- 
 son of breaking seas. 
 
 8. 
 
 I confess I find a certain satisfaction in 
 materializing anticipated joys, or good inten- 
 tions, by writing them out; it is a process of 
 anticipatory realization. I find I am saved 
 many disenchantments thereby. 
 
 Now I know perfectly well that were I to go 
 out alone into the darkness on the moors, — 
 provided I could gain courage to get beyond 
 the town, — I should find it infinitely "poky" 
 in that dark ; and I have a woman's horror 
 of finding myself alone in a "dark poky place ". 
 Nor do I doubt that if, by a supreme effort 
 of will and groping along that rutted sand-road, 
 I could place myself well for observing the 
 effect of such surroundings on my consciousness, 
 — for, of course, there would be nothing to see 
 objectively, — I should promptly relight the 
 
CERTAIN MOODS OF THE MOORS 99 
 
 lantern I had but just extinguished and, with- 
 out making many particular thoughts on eter- 
 nity, infinity, or various conceptions of the 
 universe, turn my steps homeward with an 
 alacrity wholly inconsistent with certain 
 cherished ideals. 
 
 This confession must be made if section 7 
 is allowed to stand ; and stand it shall because 
 of that wonderful chant by a woman who, 
 born into physical darkness, has attained never- 
 theless to such dazzling illumination of soul 
 that to us, marvelling, her whole existence 
 seems at times "dark through excess of light ". 
 
 9- 
 
 February, 1910. 
 
 I have been out on the moors for two of the 
 morning hours. During the night there was a 
 fine fall of snow over the island. It fell quietly, 
 without heavy wind to drift it. At sunrise I 
 was introduced to another world. 
 
 It is a fact that because the winds are so 
 strong and constant here at all times, much of 
 the snow is blown over and off the island. 
 
ioo FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 This statement was made to me when I came, 
 and left me sceptical. I have since verified it. 
 The storms that leave even a little depth of 
 snow, and for only a day or two, can be counted 
 on the fingers of one hand. 
 
 On this particular morning, at nine o'clock, 
 the sun, although not high, was both brilliant 
 and warm, the sky a more intense blue than I 
 have ever seen it except in January in Italy. 
 From a swell of the moors, beyond the forking 
 of the western end of the long main street, I 
 could see to south and west for miles across 
 the undulating white expanse. In the south 
 a line of deep indigo defined the ocean bound of 
 the besnowed island. To the west stretched a 
 magic land all sparkle and gleam and glitter, 
 its white swells catching every beam of high 
 light. The hollows between them were filled 
 with a myriad soft shadowy hints of every 
 nuance of violet and purple. 
 
 Below me, in the lee of the little hill, a small 
 herd of cows was nipping at the tips of the dried 
 grass pricking through the light covering of 
 snow. Evaporation had begun already, for 
 
CERTAIN MOODS OF THE MOORS 101 
 
 here and there the air ran quivering to and fro 
 over certain sun-beshone lowlands. The gray 
 walls of the great water-tower in the foreground 
 accented the dazzling whiteness. 
 
 Oh, the charm of all this in its lowly way ! 
 
VIII 
 
 MY MAIL 
 I. 
 
 We have a really delightful little steamer, 
 a propeller, that in the winter months braves 
 almost any weather to keep us in touch with the 
 mainland. It is one of the island's best assets 
 but, unfortunately, not always available owing 
 to heavy storms and stress of high winds com- 
 bined with tides. 
 
 At first I used to please myself with the 
 thought that the daily arrival of the boat would 
 keep me posted concerning affairs on our con- 
 tinent and the interests of my special friends. I 
 was fond of quoting — to myself naturally — as 
 I watched the boat make its way into the 
 
 harbor : 
 
 "Every day brings a ship, 
 Every ship brings a word ; 
 Well for those who have no fear, 
 Looking seaward well assured, 
 That the word the vessel brings 
 Is the word they wish to hear." 
 102 
 
MY MAIL 103 
 
 This was satisfying as a bit of pure sentiment, 
 but I soon found that it was a sentimental 
 fallacy. The word about town, "No boat for 
 Nantucket to-day", quenches both hope and 
 sentiment in regard to a dependable daily mail. 
 I have seen the time when if we were so fortunate 
 as to receive it once in seven days, I was de- 
 voutly thankful. In justice I must add that 
 this state of things has obtained but once during 
 my four years of residence. 
 
 But what added zest it gives to read the 
 letters that have been delayed in transmission, 
 if only for one day ! What a goodly pile I am 
 apt to find in the mail basket, followed next 
 morning by the second delivery — books, news- 
 papers, magazines, and delightful remembrances 
 from various quarters of the globe. Why, only 
 the other day, all Norway came over in the 
 Sankaty, the boat at present in service. 
 
 Ever since I knew that country to be a geo- 
 graphical fact, I have dreamed of it ; hoped to 
 visit it; delighted myself with imaginative 
 pictures of it — the winters in particular : its 
 snow-covered mountains, crystal fjords, pine 
 
104 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 forests ice and snow laden, the strange light of 
 its partially sunless days, the long twilights, 
 the ethereal dawns. By way of contrast, I 
 like to imagine the midnight sun shining on 
 the peaks of the northern islands, the high light 
 on mountain pastures, the deep shadows in 
 the valleys, and behold ! — here they are in 
 the mail, having crossed the North Sea, the 
 Atlantic Ocean, and Nantucket Sound to reach 
 me from Christiania. There are fifty-four im- 
 pressions from large photographs : among them 
 the midnight sun on the Lyngen fjord, the 
 Lofoten islands, the august Saldul Gate, Gausta, 
 the Isterdel Peaks, Romsdalshorn — yes, and 
 Gjende, the mountain tarn in Jotunheim, and 
 the ridge of the same name along which Peer 
 Gynt sped on the reindeer's back ! 
 
 In addition I possess a letter of sixteen pages 
 from the sender of the gift, a Norwegian lady — 
 an English letter, perfect as to script, grammar, 
 phrasing, and expression. She writes : "I am 
 fifty years old, and since I was fourteen, I have 
 taken the greatest interest in English literature 
 and of late in the American also. I know both 
 
MY MAIL 105 
 
 Emerson and Thoreau, and some of the new 
 novelists. Of poets, I know chiefly Longfellow, 
 Whittier, and Whitman." 
 
 Reading this I feel as if I knew not one iden- 
 tical thing about anything ! Why haven't I 
 learned Norwegian in all these years ? Why have 
 I contented myself with translations either in 
 English or German of Frithjof 's Saga, of Bjornson 
 and Ibsen ? Why haven't / five Norwegian 
 authors read in the vernacular to my credit ? 
 
 Possibly, only possibly, if I had really liked 
 Ibsen as I like Goethe, I might have been 
 tempted to acquire a reading knowledge of the 
 Norse for the sake of the richness of rhyme 
 and the lightness of rhythm in his poetic master- 
 pieces. But I did not like him, do not like him, 
 and never shall like him. I think I have good 
 reason for these various tenses of negative 
 dislike, but I dare not tell this to the lady in 
 Christiania — not yet ! 
 
 2. 
 It is a reproach against us in general that, 
 because we are women, it is difficult for us to be 
 
io6 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 "fair", as the children say. By which is meant, 
 presumably, that our emotional natures, our 
 quicker if less firmly grounded sympathies, our 
 strong advocacy of a cause without intensive 
 working over the reasons for our advocacy, 
 our transient, indiscriminate adoption of new 
 ideas and, to the masculine mind, our inconse- 
 quent action in grave affairs without so much 
 as a "buffer" of reason between us and calamity, 
 pervert the judgment and dethrone justice. 
 
 I suppose it is all true — indeed, I do not quite 
 see how we should be women at all without these 
 inconsistencies. To make my personal con- 
 fession, I do find it difficult to be "fair", but 
 that does not prevent my wanting to be — 
 oh, so fair ! And I really struggle, desperately 
 at times, to appear so whether I am or not. 
 
 Having confessed this much, it would seem 
 that a further confidence might be in place. I 
 have a "corrective" for all my "unfairnesses": 
 I wait, simply wait. After expressing myself 
 in what I call my "sputter", — a harmless 
 enough diatribe in regard to persons and things, 
 — I feel I can wait, wait patiently a month, a 
 
MY MAIL 107 
 
 year, a decade, a quarter of a century if neces- 
 sary, to be shown where I am at fault, where I 
 have not been "fair". Life's experience is my 
 "corrective" for all unfairness. I know that, 
 despite any will of mine, it must modify if there 
 be anything in my pronunciamento to be modi- 
 fied ; that it will clear my mental atmosphere of 
 the mists of prejudice the result of environment, 
 heredity, or training ; that it will force me to see 
 that what is heterodox to me is orthodox to 
 another. 
 
 I wait — and Life turns a corner, suddenly 
 perhaps, and I see as suddenly from another 
 point of view. It gains a height, and I get an 
 inspiration that gives me insight into the depths. 
 It adjusts a different lens to my eyes by which I 
 may discern the right, detect the wrong; by 
 which I mean I am enabled to see deep enough 
 into the verities and insincerities that underlie 
 all the attempts of us humans to express our- 
 selves in this world whether by daily living, in 
 what way soever attainable, or along certain 
 lines as in the arts : painting, sculpture, by the 
 written thoughts as literature. 
 
108 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 In the end, I am made to do justice to effort, 
 not the result of that effort ; to motives, not to 
 movements along certain unexpected lines of 
 action ; to accept not so much the manifestations 
 of genius as the intent behind their expression. 
 
 "Just wait awhile," I say to myself, "and 
 despite all your 'sputterings' you will be 
 'fair' in your final judgment. You can't help 
 being fair in the end, for Life's experience tills 
 your soul whether you will or no ; ploughs and 
 harrows, and sows many seeds that in due season 
 ripen, many of them, to a harvest of tolerance." 
 
 After writing that decided statement, "I 
 never liked Ibsen, do not like him, and never 
 shall like him," I held my pen suspended for a 
 moment, questioning : "Am I fair in saying 
 that ? Am I not allowing the prejudice of 
 fifteen years' standing to bias that statement ? 
 Is not the disdain with which I re-read his works 
 four years ago distorting my point of view, 
 discoloring what is seen from it ?" 
 
 3- 
 I took out a note-book, — like all my intended 
 
 note-books four fifths of the pages are blank and 
 
MY MAIL 109 
 
 the notes on the remaining fifth disjointed in the 
 extreme, — and am copying some of my "sput- 
 terings" about Ibsen's works which in the 
 winter of 1909-1910 I re-read to get an idea of 
 his powers. Here they are. They show pretty 
 conclusively how I felt towards them after a 
 "wait" of eleven years. Evidently that length 
 of time had not cleared the atmosphere for me. 
 And I do so want to be fair ! 
 
 "Ibsen — the spectacle ! The freedom ( ?) of 
 Nietzsche become here an obsession. 
 
 "Compare sanity of Meredith, of Stevenson. 
 
 "What healthy work there is in Genesis 
 compared with this ! 
 
 "The ideal holds the truth in suspension. 
 With Ibsen it seems to be ideals versus truth. 
 The trouble seems to be that he has laid his 
 foundation stones in wrong relation to the super- 
 structure — en delit, as is said of the quarried 
 stratified rocks when placed in the walls con- 
 trary to their manner of lying in the stratum. 
 
 "Realism, or anything else, to the zero power 
 equals one — the ' I ', one-self, of Ibsen and 
 Co., — the sick ego. 
 
no FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 "Look at this ! Ghosts (morphia — insanity, 
 heredity), — The Wild Duck (pistol), — The 
 Doll's House (threatened suicide), — Rosmers- 
 holm (foot-bridge), — Hedda Gabler (pistol), 
 — Emperor and Galilean (insanity). 
 
 "We thrive in the sunshine, not in the rainbow- 
 hued scum of putrescence. True, the sunshine 
 may be broken by a medium into its elemental 
 colors (oh, the unsavory misuse of that word 
 'elemental' and its meaning !), but the rainbow 
 colors are not those in which we grow and thrive 
 and develop, oh no ! One-thoughted men, 
 obsessed men, are apt to see through the medium 
 of green, red, blue, or yellow, and the readers 
 of their works see life-facts as they present 
 them colored by this broken prismatic mentality. 
 Hence the morbid tendencies (morbidus, morbus, 
 diseased, unwholesome, threatening decay) of 
 Ibsen ; hence the seeing red like Nietzsche ; 
 hence yellow like — 
 
 "Oh, the sunlit clarity of a Goethe, the whole- 
 some sunshine of Shakespeare ! Oh, the crystal 
 sunniness of the order of life lived by the God- 
 Man of Galilee ! No wonder that so many of 
 
MY MAIL in 
 
 these modern writers' creations cry out 'The 
 sun — the sun ' — ' Helios — Helios ! ' They 
 are crying for what humanity cannot do with- 
 out. That cry, at least, shows common sense. 
 
 "In the prose dramas, Ibsen's people seem to 
 be presented as if suddenly seized with cramps — 
 whether mental, moral, or physical it is for the 
 audience to determine. 
 
 "There is a perverted dreaming that gives us 
 Peer Gynt. There is another dreaming that 
 gives us the imagination of a Newton and the 
 law of gravitation." 
 
 4- 
 
 Re-reading these notes after four years, I 
 say to myself: "Now, you are not wholly fair. 
 Read something of his again ; find out what 
 Life has taught you in these forty-eight months. " 
 
 I took Peer Gynt and read it straight through 
 at one sitting. With the lovely Norwegian 
 scenes before my eyes, I interpreted that wonder- 
 ful first act very differently. Among the photo- 
 graphs was one of Lake Gjende in Jotunheim. 
 There was the very ridge, the arete, of those 
 mountains along which sped the reindeer buck on 
 
ii2 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 his mad course, carrying Peer Gynt on his back, 
 held there by the powerful backward thrust 
 of the horns. And there the lake, the mountain 
 tarn, into which both rider and buck plunged 
 to meet their double in the clear dark of its 
 waters ! 
 
 I began to live with Peer and his mother Ase ; 
 and when we begin to live in the experience of 
 another's narrative, whether real or imagined, 
 we become necessarily one of it and with it. 
 We no longer see it with our eyes, but through 
 those of the actors in it. Not until then can we 
 in the least degree judge of the intention of the 
 creator. When we live, even in sympathetic 
 imagination, through the experience of another, 
 whether that life-experience be fiction or truth, 
 then for the first time we are freed from prejudice, 
 are ready to do justice to effort irrespective of 
 result. 
 
 "Have you ever 
 
 Chanced to see the Gendin-Edge ? 
 
 Nigh on four miles long it stretches 
 
 Sharp before you like a scythe. 
 
 Down o'er glaciers, landslips, screes, 
 
 Down the toppling gray moraines, 
 
MY MAIL 113 
 
 You can see, both right and left, 
 Straight into the tarns that slumber, 
 Black and sluggish, more than seven 
 Hundred fathoms deep below you. 
 Right along the edge we two 
 Clove our passage through the air.'* 
 
 And reading on and on I live the experience 
 of this strange Peer Gynt. I understand his 
 poorly equipped temperament, the rich but 
 flighty imagination — a will-o'-the-wisp for the 
 shifting desires — the weakness of his will, the 
 purposelessness of a life begotten on the one 
 hand in drunkenness and on the other fos- 
 tered by the pathetic, imaginative nature of his 
 poor, peasant mother. 
 
 Ah, that mother's death ! Never have I 
 read a more heart-rending scene. I see the 
 miserable, despoiled hut on the mountain, the 
 boards for couch, the fur robe, and the son, 
 but just returned from his wanderings, drawing 
 upon his most vivid and powerful fancies to 
 help tide her over that last mortal hour ! 
 
 I have seen Faust given on the Dresden 
 stage by the best talent in Germany, but the 
 prison scene cannot compare with this, nor can 
 
ii 4 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 those last words, "She is saved", ring more 
 true than the simple words of the peasant wife, 
 Solveig, who, waiting years for Peer's return, 
 answers to his cry : 
 Hast thou doom for a sinner, then speak it forth ! 
 
 Solveig 
 
 He is here ! He is here ! Oh, to God be the praise ! 
 
 {Stretches out her arms as though groping for him.) 
 
 Peer 
 
 Cry out all my sins and trespasses. 
 
 Solveig 
 
 In nought hast thou sinned, oh, my only boy. 
 
 {Gropes for him, and finds him.) 
 
 Peer 
 Canst thou tell where Peer Gynt has been since we parted ? 
 
 Solveig 
 Been ? 
 
 Peer 
 
 With his destiny's seal on his brow ; 
 Been, as in God's thought he first sprang forth ! 
 Canst thou tell me ? If not, I must get me home, — 
 Go down to the mist-shrouded regions. 
 
MY MAIL US 
 
 SOLVEIG 
 
 {Smiling) 
 
 Oh, that riddle is easy. 
 
 Peer 
 
 Then tell what thou knowest ! 
 
 Where was I, as myself, as the whole man, the true man ? 
 
 Where was I, with God's sigil on my brow ? 
 
 Solveig 
 In my faith, in my hope, in my love. 
 
 ******* 
 
 Peer 
 
 My mother, my wife ; oh, thou innocent woman ! — 
 In thy love — oh, there hide me, hide me ! 
 
 (Clings to her and hides his face in her lap.) 
 
 Solveig 
 
 (Singing softly) 
 
 Sleep thou, dearest boy of mine ! 
 
 I will cradle thee, I will watch thee — 
 
 Yes, Life has taught me in these last four 
 years. I understand Peer Gynt ; and in nothing 
 he has written has Ibsen seen more deeply 
 and more "musically" into life than in this 
 reading of a woman's love. When deepest 
 
n6 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 and truest, there is in it always something of 
 the maternal. 
 
 Yet Mr. Shaw affirms: "No man will ever 
 write a better . . . comedy than . . . Peer 
 Gynt." The italics are mine. 
 
 5- 
 
 In the prose dramas I still see the "cramps" — 
 certain men and women galvanized into a 
 semblance of life. Doubtless this is artistry; 
 but I see the wires that are manipulated to 
 produce the convulsive movements and, in 
 consequence, I find no true art. 
 
 I believe that Ibsen's enduring fame will rest 
 on "The Pretenders" and "Peer Gynt". 
 
 6. 
 
 But to my mail. Here is a package from far 
 away India ; there are only a few words with it, 
 but a whole "travelogue" in the fifty postal 
 cards. For this evening I am there — the breadth 
 of two continents distant from Norway. 
 
 I have to laugh at myself and our strictly 
 up-to-date Bostonians over the manner in which 
 
MY MAIL 117 
 
 we "tackled" India in the time of Mozoomdar ! 
 In my youth, after the true Bostonese manner, 
 I proceeded to ransack Bates Hall for works on 
 India. I wonder now how in that young youth, 
 with a vivacity of temperament and keen 
 joy in life that forbade any introspection, I 
 absorbed, or seemed to, those works. At the 
 finish — I think this special cult lasted with me 
 about five months — it is no matter for wonder- 
 ment that I did not know (I must use a slang 
 phrase just here, for no other expresses the con- 
 dition of mind) "where I was at" ! 
 
 Goodness, what a list — for youth ! Had 
 I not found last year another of those note- 
 books in the attic of our mountain home, I 
 should never have remembered that I had so 
 much as touched India "esoterically". I find 
 I accomplished "Esoteric Buddhism", — a clear 
 waste of precious youth, — and through Max 
 Miiller, something of the Vedas, the Zendavesta 
 and the Mahabharata, and "India, What Can 
 It Teach Us ?", "The Oriental Christ", and 
 "Faith and Progress of the Brahmo Somaj", 
 and what more I have not listed. 
 
n8 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 Although I have forgotten all this, I feel that 
 I know India through two books, one poem, 
 one Tale, a statue, and a woman. 
 
 A "Life of Buddha", in German, a marvel- 
 lous record of a marvellous life, interpretive in a 
 way of that most wonderful Life of the New 
 Testament. 
 
 One poem by Goethe, "Der Gott und die 
 Bayadere". All India's martyrdom of woman- 
 hood is in it ; all the glory of its sacrificial love, 
 and its divine reward even to the outcast. 
 
 My third is, of course, "Kim"; and the one 
 Tale, "The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney". 
 I read in some paper the other day — the New 
 York Post, I think — a conversation with 
 Kipling in which he said that Mulvaney was 
 dead. He must have been mistaken. Mul- 
 vaney is one of the Immortals ; there is no 
 death for such as he. 
 
 This is the India I know. I am very grateful 
 to the German author, to Goethe and Kipling 
 for having made me acquainted with it. 
 
 Before me on my writing table is a Buddha ; 
 it is about eight inches high and sculptured from 
 
MY MAIL 119 
 
 a hard red stone — it looks to be a kind of 
 porphyry. This is overlaid with solid beaten 
 silver. 
 
 When I was a small child of eight, a mis- 
 sionary, who had been many years in Burmah, 
 was for a few days a guest in our home. She 
 was a charming woman, with an abundance of 
 little, brown side-curls that bobbed about, 
 merry eyes, and a sweet comfortable voice. 
 She told me legends of India and stories of 
 Indian children, of the natives rich and poor, of 
 elephants and their wonderful memory ; of her 
 being awakened one morning by what seemed 
 to be the effect of a prolonged earthquake. The 
 ground continuing to shake, she looked out of 
 the window and saw forty elephants coming 
 toward the house. Each elephant carried a 
 log for building purposes in his trunk. The 
 natives were about to present her with the 
 Christmas gift of a new house of worship, the 
 first having been destroyed by fire. 
 
 She brought with her this Buddha before me. 
 It was a gift to my father. It is an old house- 
 hold god of a rich family who abjured their 
 
120 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 ancient faith for the new, and gave the symbol 
 of the old to the missionary of the new. 
 
 It has a curious effect — the study of it. 
 The eyelids are half closed. But if you examine 
 the statue closely, looking up under those full 
 lids, you may see something startling : the god 
 is watching ; he is mindful of all that transpires, 
 externally, internally. Gaze at those eyes 
 steadily for a minute and you become convinced 
 that he knows your inmost thought. There is 
 an inscrutable smile on the silver lips, — not 
 an unpleasant one, — and a quiet and repose of 
 feature and of hands, those telltale members of 
 god or human, that seem far, oh, so far away 
 from — trolleys, for instance, from automobiles, 
 aeroplanes, and submarines. 
 
 I have lived in his presence all these years, 
 and I frankly admit it is a beneficial one. The 
 old gods are to be revered whether Norse or 
 Indian. They are forever a symbol of the long- 
 ing of the human soul to express a spiritual ideal. 
 
 Perhaps I need not say after this that I felt 
 at home with all those postal-card scenes from 
 India. 
 
MY MAIL 121 
 
 7- 
 
 It would seem as if this island acted as a 
 centripetal force on the mail from other islands, 
 for it comes to me from Australia, New Zealand, 
 from England, Japan, or Newport, from Ber- 
 muda or Cuba, and spurs me to make myself 
 less ignorant, at least of these antipodal islands. 
 And yet — and yet — I have to confess that 
 never, never by any forced process of memorizing, 
 or by long gazing at the map of Australia can 
 I remember to name properly the divisions and 
 their capitals ! 
 
 But that emigrant ship from England carrying 
 to that land of promise dear old Peggotty, Mr. 
 and Mrs. Micawber, all the blessed contrari- 
 ness of Mrs. Gummidge, all of little Emily's 
 broken heart and broken life, takes me forth- 
 with to that island continent. When I was a 
 child I learned by heart those paragraphs 
 which include the description of the sailing of 
 that emigrant ship. It is one of the best 
 things ever written by Charles Dickens's always 
 busy pen. 
 
122 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 And then Australia is very real to me through 
 one of her voices. Australia means Melba 
 and all the hours she has made golden for me 
 with her golden voice. Somehow, I always 
 hear the whole Australian land singing with 
 that voice, singing its way up from a life begun 
 in wretchedness into the light of a golden day. 
 
 On the contrary, I never think of Mrs. 
 Humphry Ward as born in that land. Rather 
 she seems a product of some Westminster- 
 Catechism-bounded, Church-of-England-over- 
 shadowed, Puseyism, Newmanism, Matthew 
 Arnoldism irrigated desert country where there 
 are no heights or depths, but just the long 
 parallel irrigation ditches of a two-ideaed doc- 
 trinaire : a man's soul versus the strait jacket 
 of the Church, a man's soul versus the political 
 labyrinth of the State. Not that I find no 
 enjoyment in Mrs. Ward's work. I do — in 
 spots ; but I wonder how she can harp so long 
 on those two strings without wearing them 
 thin. 
 
 When I go through those works in thought, 
 I can but marvel that so many pages should be 
 
MY MAIL 123 
 
 read, yes and re-read, by the reading public 
 when from the first page to the tenth or twelfth 
 thousandth there is not a line of redeeming 
 humor. I never could see much beauty in an 
 irrigation ditch, but I know that it is most useful 
 and productive of much good to humanity in 
 general. And even on this point I feel that I 
 should not find fault. She is as she is, and to 
 ask her to be otherwise is asking the impossible. 
 I really want to be fair in this matter. 
 
 Curiously enough I feel that I know the dis- 
 tinctive feature of the Australian land of wonder 
 and mystery, the Australian "bush"; for I 
 read quite recently a story of "Billy" — the 
 biography of a little kangaroo that was partially 
 tamed. Through Billy's bright little eyes I 
 have seen the "bush". For this I am deeply 
 indebted to Billy's biographer. 
 
 8. 
 It is interesting — this mail from these dis- 
 tant lands ; but the home letters are those that 
 refresh and strengthen me ; to them I look 
 forward with an eagerness not to be known 
 
124 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 except by those who really live the year round 
 on an island. There is always a bit of romance 
 attending the arrival of the boat. I look out 
 over the harbor and watch for her to round the 
 Point. There she is ! My temperature rises 
 a little with each arrival. What will she 
 bring to me ? Love and friendly greetings, news 
 and a good wholesome bit of gossip from an 
 intimate woman friend, or some royally hearten- 
 ing words from a masculine one. 
 
 The other day there came in quite unex- 
 pectedly an Indian five-act drama from a fine 
 boy in a northern state. He wants to know 
 if it gives sufficient promise for him to choose 
 literature for his career. 
 
 Ah, poor laddie ! You are only seventeen, 
 and I must write and tell you the truth : "Litera- 
 ture is a good staff, but a poor crutch", and I 
 would far rather, in these times, that you 
 should take plus your college training in " litera- 
 ture" a full course in practical agriculture; that 
 you should know how to till, and plant, and sow 
 and reap a harvest ; that you should take your 
 scholarships, gained by steady effort, and invest 
 
MY MAIL 125 
 
 in two acres of land that you can call your 
 very own and, after college is over, proceed to 
 cultivate them to the best of your ability — rather 
 this than to devote your young idealism wholly 
 to a literary career. 
 
 I shall say to him : "If this desire be in you, 
 if you are both equipped and endowed to work 
 along this line, then work you will — and no 
 demon of chance and no hoeing of potatoes, 
 no digging of the same, no sorting them over, 
 no barrelling and marketing them can hinder 
 you of your 'providence' in the profession of 
 literature. No ; if that special gift be yours, 
 you will compose better, indeed, while you are 
 sorting over potatoes than if you were placed in 
 surroundings supposed to be ideally perfect for 
 such production. I could substantiate this truth 
 by a cloud of witnesses, for it is well known." 
 
 For all these letters and the many, many more 
 that come to me here — thanks to their senders, 
 one and all. It is always a delightful feeling, 
 this of being remembered by those whose faces 
 we may not see. And if these many, many 
 letters — most of them — remain unanswered 
 
126 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 for a year, two years, three, even ten, perhaps 
 during an indefinite lifetime, lay not the sin 
 of forgetfulness at my door. Remembrance is 
 my penance. 
 
 I do not like to write letters, only to receive 
 them ; and here again I realize I am not 
 "playing fair". 
 
IX 
 
 A LITERARY MOLOKAI 
 I. 
 
 In the southwest corner of the square on the 
 map that is bounded by latitude 41 north and 
 71 west of Greenwich, there is a tiny, insignifi- 
 cant island known as No Man's Land. At 
 times it is uninhabited ; at present there is but 
 one family on it. It looks across intervening 
 waters and one of the Elizabeth Islands to 
 Penikese, the island colony for lepers. 
 
 I should like to ship to this island of No 
 Man's Land every copy of a book that may be 
 classed as leprous literature, as well as all those 
 that show the slightest symptom of that disease 
 — send them thither and destroy the plates. 
 I say "literature", and do not include dime 
 novels and matter forbidden transportation 
 through the mails. 
 
 It is not necessary to go into particulars of 
 
 127 
 
128 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 this special disease according to the manner of 
 some litterateurs now writing. I will refer any 
 one who may desire to study analogous symp- 
 toms to read of the condition existing in the 
 Hawaiian Islands only a few years ago, or to 
 Leviticus XIV. I think he will find all the 
 details necessary. 
 
 This special, forced migration is intended 
 only for the literary offspring of those men 
 who, to-day, for want of better expositors of 
 what is true literature, are classed as authors 
 of some of the best modern work. 
 
 As up to the present time no cure has been 
 discovered for this special disease in letters, it 
 would seem wise to remove these books from the 
 body politic — pro bono publico — by segrega- 
 tion. This class of literature infects the mind, 
 a process of corruption that in these days of 
 learned psychiatry is affirmed to be more danger- 
 ous than mere bodily infection. 
 
 Were it in my power I would ship every book 
 — every novel, every play, every club report, 
 every printed lecture and discussion (all these 
 written for and discussed by the laity, be it 
 
A LITERARY MOLOKAI 129 
 
 understood) that, whether in English, German, 
 Swedish, Norse, French, Italian, or Russian, 
 exploits in any fashion the so-called "sex- 
 problem" of to-day. I write the word "ex- 
 ploits " intentionally. 
 
 Against the authors personally I have nothing. 
 I do not know them personally and what I 
 know of them is generally to their credit as 
 men. What I say here is in regard to their 
 works ; they are held responsible for the in- 
 fluence of what they produce. 
 
 2. 
 There is a humorous side to these moderns' 
 "output". Reading their plays and novels 
 one would receive the impression that their 
 creators are hardly yet fully awake to the fact 
 that this earth has been peopled for many 
 thousands of years. Scientists differ as to the 
 time, but this is a matter of no moment; the 
 main fact being that this world has been very 
 generally peopled, to what extent we, with 
 our small amount of actual knowledge, as yet 
 cannot affirm. Recorded history is so very 
 
i 3 o FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 recent, and recording strata also young com- 
 pared with the age of the world. And before 
 that — who knows what "before that" ? 
 
 These writers seem not to be aware of the 
 fact that the cave man, the cave woman must 
 have been as acutely conscious of sex as the men 
 and women of to-day. True, they did not write 
 about it, throw a glamour over it, halo it about 
 with rays of attempted enlightenment for the 
 cave public; nor did they conceive that they 
 were on a level with their contemporary beasts 
 and trust to the "unerring instinct of the 
 brute". They accepted the fact that they 
 were created men and women as natural, not 
 unnatural, and made no literary attempt, so 
 far as we have discovered, to denaturalize that 
 fact. To read some works by certain authors 
 of the present one might be led easily to believe 
 that To-day is the first day of the first man, 
 the first woman, the first bird, the first beast 
 of the field. One is forced to ask : "Where 
 is their insight into Life?" Not London life, 
 not Parisian life, not the similitude of life on the 
 stage of the Adelphi, but Life as a whole. 
 
A LITERARY MOLOKAI 131 
 
 What they offer to you, to me, to the reading 
 public in general, appears to be a simulacrum 
 of Life galvanized by artificial instinct. It 
 reminds me of the muscles of a frog's leg severed 
 from the body, twitching in a semblance of 
 life from the application of the electric current. 
 The frog is real ; the leg is real ; the twitching 
 is very real — but there is nothing animate in 
 the experiment. 
 
 I concede Life is not easily "seen into". 
 But one fact has established itself without ex- 
 traneous help of author or playwright : this 
 earth of ours has been abundantly peopled for, 
 as yet, uncalculated time, and in the long course 
 of the ages has proved an abiding-place, such 
 as it is, for countless millions and billions of 
 human beings, at least from their birth till 
 their death. 
 
 3- 
 
 I believe if one could question those countless 
 millions individually concerning their life- 
 experience, that those would be in the minority 
 who would dare to deny that Life meant to 
 them, at some time, some kind of hope — 
 
132 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 whether of food, improved circumstances, of 
 joy of mating, of loyalty to some ideal, if 
 that ideal were only the artistic ideal of the 
 cave man who drew with sharpened flint on the 
 wall of his cave; that, having had that hope, 
 that ideal, they experienced something that 
 made life not only endurable but desirable, at 
 least for a time. 
 
 I believe they would admit — and my be- 
 lief rests on the evidences in my contemporaries 
 about me, on the evidences, also, in the revela- 
 tion on stone, papyrus, parchment, or paper, in 
 pigment, marble, or bronze, of generations of 
 men and women for more than three thousand 
 years — that, crushed by adverse circumstances, 
 buried by earthquake, overwhelmed by tidal 
 wave, subject to cataclysms induced by the play 
 of great natural forces ; often hungry, cold, 
 miserable, worn in the devious ways of life, 
 broken by toil ; many times starved by famine 
 in the land, or swept out of existence by war 
 and pestilence, their bodies tortured, imprisoned, 
 or left on the field like broken, discarded gourds, 
 they, too, mulct of living by Life nevertheless 
 
A LITERARY MOLOKAI 133 
 
 could say, " I lived — if only for a day, an 
 hour. I played the man and not the coward. 
 I had moments of bliss. I can honestly say 
 that I would rather have lived than not to have 
 known existence with all its handicaps, its dis- 
 appointments, its misery, its long-continued, 
 bitter toil for scant rations, its fighting struggle 
 for mere existence. For, so long as I had a spirit 
 within me that made me the man, and not 
 wholly the animal, I had some hope, some 
 ideal : once a woman loved me ; a child called 
 me father ; once I was fed — full ; once a man 
 or woman spoke a friendly word to me. I made 
 one song and the singing filled my soul with 
 joy, although afterward the remembrance was 
 as ashes in my mouth. I wrought one statue 
 and rejoiced, discontentedly content in my work. 
 Once I asked for bread and was given a stone 
 and, starving, I wrought from that stone a 
 masterpiece." 
 
 4- 
 Looked at from the right angle, through a 
 normal medium, there is no such problem as 
 the "sex-problem". The facts in evidence do 
 
134 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 not constitute a "problem" to be solved. There 
 is no solution. What is termed "sex" is a 
 force, and like gravitation it solves itself. New- 
 ton formulated a law; but gravitation existed 
 before the law; worked securely without the 
 law ; and no formulating of that law has changed 
 by a hair line the ellipse of the ecliptic — nor 
 ever will. It is true we can calculate disaster 
 but not avert it. We may not put to rout 
 aeons of the work of evolution, much misused 
 word, with any discussion of this so-called 
 "sex-problem", or by any formulating of laws 
 for the same, or by its exploitation in novels 
 and plays. 
 
 What windy nothings seem words, appeals, 
 attempts, suggestions, attempted solutions, over 
 against this miraculous force ! — it is the attempt 
 of the ant to fill the living crater of Kilauea. 
 
 5- 
 
 What astonishes me most in connection with 
 this subject is the colossal narrowness of these 
 writers' outlook on life, not to speak of their 
 want of insight. Love, faith, joy, hope, sacri- 
 
A LITERARY MOLOKAI 135 
 
 fice, duty, " respectability", which spells for 
 certain of them Puritanism, Philistinism, and 
 Hypocrisy, are anathema ; romance, ditto ; 
 poetry tinged with romance, ditto ; sentiment, 
 ditto. They believe all these to be manifesta- 
 tions of untruth. Well, that is their point of 
 view. Their world is a "charnel house"; their 
 humanity is "worm-eaten"; life to be life as 
 they conceive it should follow the "unreasoning 
 instinct of the brute"; womanhood — but I 
 won't write that for the sake of my own woman- 
 hood. Shakespeare is "crude" in his interpre- 
 tation of life — he indulges in "sentiment"; 
 Thackeray makes of its end a "sentimental lie". 
 O gentlemen, gentlemen ! Were what you 
 affirm in so many, many words that one is 
 almost hypnotized by them into belief, this 
 humanity of ours could not exist, for the main- 
 spring of life would suddenly stop — short. 
 
 6. 
 
 A complete statement in a few words of the 
 process by which this leprous literature has been 
 and is being evolved is contained in one sen- 
 
136 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 tence that was written with no reference to 
 this subject. Indeed, to apply it, I have re- 
 versed the quotation. An author of this class 
 of literature "simply puts an emphasis on the 
 facts that constitute his body rather than on 
 the facts that make him a man." (The quota- 
 tion, taken from one of the Ingersoll Lectures, 
 "On the Hope of Immortality", by Mr. Charles 
 Fletcher Dole, to whom I am indebted for the 
 sentiment that, reversed, applies to this ap- 
 parently antipodal subject, is as follows: "He 
 simply puts his emphasis upon the facts that 
 make him a man, rather than upon the facts 
 that constitute his body.") 
 
 Take a few of these English-writing authors 
 of To-day, — it is not possible in a few pages 
 to open up the subject through German, French, 
 or other foreign language ; that would be a task 
 for months. 
 
 One writes with "distinction" of this so- 
 called problem, but with a caul over his soul. 
 
 A second, with an excursiveness that reminds 
 me of Mr. Barrett Wendell's phrase, "the 
 elusive swirl of thin verbiage", plays about the 
 
A LITERARY MOLOKAI 137 
 
 subject with a cloying cleverness that no longer 
 deceives and in a little while will hardly amuse. 
 
 A third writes with real craftsmanship, but — 
 
 There may be seen in the Dresden Green 
 Vaults a work that also shows "real craftsman- 
 ship" — a production in wax of the "Visita- 
 tion of the Plague", from life. With the help 
 of this most careful workmanship the matter 
 presented is true in every detail ; nothing is 
 omitted. There may be seen the beginning, 
 progress, waste, discolorations, contortions, 
 death agonies, not in one specimen but in 
 several. . No one denies the craftsmanship, 
 but — ! 
 
 7- 
 
 We might like to ask at this point, "What 
 does make the man ?" Surely the time has 
 come to ask this in all earnest. 
 
 We know pretty thoroughly what constitutes 
 the body. This body has been analyzed, sub- 
 jected to chemical test; we know its elements, 
 what makes its ash. And by the bye the thing 
 that animates this body eludes all analysis, 
 escapes from the retort, is wanting in the ash, 
 
138 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 is not found in any combination of chemicals, 
 cannot be captured or coaxed to revivify the 
 combined elements that go to the making even 
 of one grain of corn. 
 
 There is but one conclusion : the mere aggre- 
 gation of elements chemically combined into 
 the body of a man does not constitute him a 
 man. It constitutes him an animal of which 
 Darwin says : "The structure of man is the 
 final form in physiology." 
 
 What is it makes the man as we know him, 
 as we see him daily before our eyes, if not 
 honest labor of whatever kind, honesty of pur- 
 pose, word, and deed ? The endeavor to fulfil 
 as best he may in the circumstances the law of 
 existence, to marry, found the family, clothe 
 and feed his children until they are able to clothe 
 and feed themselves ? What is it but to set 
 before those children an example of work, 
 work, and always work, and to teach them that 
 a life lived without it is no life ? To acknowledge 
 that man sins because he is human; that he 
 fights because he is wronged; that he creates 
 for himself his own heaven and hell and that 
 
A LITERARY MOLOKAI 139 
 
 he must be a tenant of one or the other on this 
 earth, or, paradoxically — on account of the 
 spirit warring with the flesh — a tenant of 
 both ? To set before his children a standard 
 of decency in living because he is a man and 
 not wholly a brute; to cultivate loyalty to his 
 friends, loyalty to his special country, reverence 
 for his creation — I may not define here con- 
 cretely because I do not know how ; that he 
 be willing, not forced to be willing, to recognize 
 men as his brothers, and, recognizing them in 
 common brotherhood because they are human, 
 be logical enough and brave enough and generous 
 enough to admit with every breath he draws 
 that he has a Father to whom he is responsible 
 for the spirit of man that is in him ? 
 
 8. 
 This may seem easy to write; it is not. 
 When certain men sitting in their snug study, 
 or comfortable library, dip their pens into their 
 inkstands and draw a line through the words 
 Creator, spiritually created, sin, forgiveness, 
 logical result of sin, hope, faith, repentance, 
 
140 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 salvation of one's self by work in this world, 
 and then proceed to enlighten us on the subject, 
 for instance, of the "Puritans", it becomes a 
 spectacle to make a man who is a man weep 
 
 — or laugh ! All that is easily written by them 
 
 — with one line they erase the hope, the life of 
 mankind. 
 
 9- 
 
 I could wish, even, that not only the "touched" 
 books of these present day writers — not all 
 their works I am thankful to say ; some of them 
 are delightful and really give promise of more 
 wholesome diet — might be shipped to the 
 little island of No Man's Land, but that a few 
 of the authors themselves might be induced to 
 make a sojourn there for a year or two, depen- 
 dent wholly on their manual labor for their 
 livelihood. 
 
 Surely the world would be no poorer and No 
 Man's Land might be enriched by the fruit of 
 their labors. They should be obliged to plough, 
 harrow, till, plant, and harvest. They should 
 learn in furtherance of their livelihood to fish 
 with line and trawl; to dig clams, rake in 
 
A LITERARY MOLOKAI 141 
 
 scallops, dredge for quahaugs, spear eels, and in 
 so doing have the benefit of lungfuls of uncon- 
 taminated air. The Atlantic winds might free 
 them from all intellectual miasma ; give the true 
 man's spirit, half asphyxiated by their present 
 intellectual environment, freedom to expand ; 
 the salt spume sting their eyes until they watered 
 themselves clear of the humors engendered of 
 their abnormal and astigmatic outlook on life. 
 They might experience on that little island, in 
 this air, what it means to earn their living 
 literally by the sweat of their brows, — a whole- 
 some process, — not by the perspiration that 
 is apt to gather thereon when, leaning over a 
 desk beneath a lamp, they wrestle with the so- 
 called "sex-problem". If these men could live 
 for one season on that island, dependent on 
 their own efforts for their livelihood, and see 
 daily before their eyes the life of the one family 
 that finds its maintenance there, I believe they 
 would write another kind of book — a whole- 
 somer. In the end they might learn a lesson, 
 also, from the clams they would dig. 
 
 I respect the clam ; it has certain reserves. 
 
X 
 
 BY WAY OF CONTRAST 
 
 I. 
 
 "I will lift up my eyes unto the hills from 
 whence cometh my help." 
 
 I knew a woman whose story I have been 
 tempted again and again to write. It is com- 
 monplace. 
 
 She lived in an old, weather-beaten house on 
 a remote hill in Vermont. She was married 
 early, perhaps as a matter of making one less 
 in a none too well provided for household. She 
 had her one child, a girl, just before her hus- 
 band died. She went back to the old home on 
 the hill to work for herself and child, caring, 
 meanwhile, for her father and mother. 
 
 She told me that because, after the death of 
 her parents, she could not take her child with 
 her into the mill, and as she had no one with 
 whom to leave her, she was allowed to take 
 
 142 
 
BY WAY OF CONTRAST 143 
 
 certain work home ; and so spun and wrought 
 till the brothers were old enough to care for 
 themselves. There were three of them. 
 
 One enlisted and lost his life in the Civil War. 
 She mortgaged the old house, the home of her 
 parents, and with the money went on to Balti- 
 more and brought his body home. The second 
 brother was drafted, and there was no money 
 to be had to pay the bounty in order that he 
 might remain at home to help her. He went ; 
 and was sent back invalided for life. The 
 third was drafted also. She was enabled to 
 borrow money to pay the bounty. He was 
 necessary in the home; he helped a little by 
 " teaming " for the mill, but he was the kind 
 that never "got on". 
 
 Finding she could not work in the mill, care 
 for the home and support herself, child, and 
 invalid brother, she mortgaged her little home 
 once more for a hundred dollars — I think that 
 was the sum — and opened a shop in the small, 
 front room. She set to work to feed four, 
 clothe three, and educate her child. 
 
 In due time one brother married, the other 
 
i 4 4 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 died ; but not before she had buried her only 
 child, a girl who had grown to young woman- 
 hood ; had worked in the mill, fighting against 
 inherited weakness of constitution, and finally 
 succeeding in earning something for herself and 
 mother by the use of her voice, a rarely beautiful 
 one. That happiness was of short duration — 
 a year ; then she, too, was carried from the little 
 house on the lonely hill and slept beside her 
 father. 
 
 As a child of twelve I idealized work where- 
 ever and whenever I saw it ; I imagined how 
 delightful it must be to earn for oneself — like 
 Kate, this one daughter of the rare voice. One 
 day, — I was on a visit to my grandparents, — 
 I begged her to take me with her that I might 
 work beside her in the mill. She indulged me. 
 For three hours I sat on a stool by her side 
 trying to do awkwardly what she did so skil- 
 fully. It was a hot day. The sun shone into 
 the room through the many bare windows be- 
 neath which the water roared over the dam 
 shaking the mill to its foundations, as well as a 
 small girl perched on a high stool before a bench 
 
BY WAY OF CONTRAST 145 
 
 at which some twenty girls and women were 
 at work, their ringers flying at a rate that made 
 me dizzy. And what with the dizzying fingers, 
 the dizzying of the rushing waters, the hot sun 
 shining on them and sending the glaring reflec- 
 tion quivering along the ceiling, and the con- 
 tinual shaking and trembling of stool and floor 
 beneath her, it was a sea-sick small girl who 
 was taken down to the door of the mill and 
 sent up the hill to the little house for comfort 
 and refreshment. 
 
 I never idealized any kind of work after that. 
 
 This daughterless woman was left at last 
 with the care of an old, old woman who lived 
 to be a hundred and one years lacking a few 
 months. She was a relation, and her humble 
 home was across the road on that hilltop. The 
 two lived apart as was best ; but day after day, 
 season after season, year after year as the old 
 dame grew more feeble, this undaunted woman 
 carried in summer heat and arctic cold a tray 
 well-filled from her hard-earned store across to 
 her poorer neighbor and relation. She tended 
 her, at ninety, through what was supposed to 
 
146 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 be her last illness. She lived eleven years after 
 that. 
 
 In time the old woman died. She, also, was 
 brave, strong of spirit, poor — but she, also, 
 was glad to have lived. "Don't have me on 
 your mind nights, Susan," she used to say; 
 "remember it is for me just now as if I were 
 crossing that threshold. Don't mind there 
 being no light in my bedroom — it makes no 
 difference." 
 
 When she was gone her poor home on the hill 
 became the woman's who had cared for her. It 
 let, off and on, with its small garden for thirty 
 dollars a year. But it was only "off and on". 
 "If I could have that thirty dollars income 
 regular from that house of Aunt L.'s," she used 
 to say, " I should feel rich — yes, rick, " she 
 added with emphasis. 
 
 Poor she always was, but rich in spirit — so 
 rich that people sought her out in that home on 
 the hill for inspiration, for jollification, for the 
 pure pleasure of hearing something of her marked 
 originality, of her good thoughts on many sub- 
 jects, of sharpening their wits on hers. 
 
BY WAY OF CONTRAST 147 
 
 She kept her independence, working almost 
 to the last. Twice a year she went to Boston 
 to buy goods for her little shop. These were 
 gala times for her. Nothing from Bunker Hill 
 Monument to the latest play at the theatre es- 
 caped her keen eyes. All the city life for that 
 one week yielded her a wealth of enjoyment, 
 and the relation of that enjoyment gave genuine 
 pleasure to many others in that remote North 
 Country village. 
 
 She was merry. She was no Puritan, no 
 Philistine; yet she was eminently "respec- 
 table"; honored for her dignified and sacrificial 
 womanhood ; loved for her hospitality, her 
 cheeriness, her friendliness, by the hundreds 
 who sought her acquaintance. She never spoke 
 of her troubles, living or dead, unless to those 
 who knew her well enough to speak first of them 
 to her, and then never with a note of despair. 
 
 "How can you be so cheerful now that you 
 have lost all ?" I asked her one day when I was 
 paying her a visit. 
 
 We were sitting at the immaculate table on 
 which stood at meal-time, in winter and summer, 
 
148 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 in the places where her brother and daughter 
 were accustomed to sit, two old-fashioned cus- 
 tard glasses filled with such flowers as the season 
 offered : in winter geranium and its leaves ; in 
 summer any little flower from the hillside or from 
 her small old-fashioned garden. With a deli- 
 cacy I must record, she never when entertain- 
 ing a passing guest, and they were many, allowed 
 the custard glasses to be on the table. They 
 were for her alone — a pleasant companionship 
 for her on that hill, but never intended to remind 
 others of any sadness of loss. I used to ask 
 that they might remain when I was with her, for 
 as a child I knew her daughter and brother. 
 
 She looked at me across the table and smiled. 
 "My dear," she said, "as sorrow after sorrow 
 came and my heart broke after Kate's death, 
 I learned a lesson : never to carry my grief into 
 another's home or intrude my tears on pleasant 
 companionship. I soon saw that I should not 
 be welcome to my friends if I went among them 
 with a sorrowful face or with tears — and my 
 friends are all I have left. I cannot do with- 
 out them." 
 
BY WAY OF CONTRAST 149 
 
 She looked out of the window with eyes that 
 saw nothing of the roadway, the bank, or the 
 setting sun, and added: "I have cried buckets- 
 ful as I have sat here alone — but that is no 
 concern of anybody's." 
 
 I, too, learned my lesson then and there. My 
 only hope is that I may have profited by it, and 
 may continue to. 
 
 2. 
 
 Many a time I have sat on the steep, dark, 
 narrow stair that led to her garret and browsed 
 in her library, the light falling on the page from 
 the open garret door just above me. Her 
 library ! — this she called the three book-filled 
 shelves that were set, recessed, into what was 
 an old window. Instead of boarding it up, she 
 had made it into a book closet in the wall of the 
 steep stair. Across it was drawn an immacu- 
 late white curtain of coarse, starched linen. 
 
 As girl and woman I always had a thrill when 
 I drew aside that curtain and sitting down on 
 the narrow stair took out a book. They were 
 curious, some of them ! Books that had been 
 given to her daughter; books that had been 
 
150 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 presented to the hostess herself; books the 
 summer friends, visiting or boarding in the 
 mountain hamlet, had left there on the settle 
 in the old-fashioned kitchen ; books the minister 
 had discarded when he changed his parish ; 
 magazines dating from the time of the Civil 
 War, given to her by some city friend ; novels in 
 paper covers — an olla podrida of literature. 
 
 The library in the wall of the garret stair in 
 the little weather-beaten house on that hill gave 
 to me "Dora Thorne"(!) and — "Spinoza" 
 in translation ! ! These two suffice to show the 
 range of its literary gamut. 
 
 3- 
 
 She died eight years ago. She had a serious 
 heart trouble — when I knew it I recalled her 
 words, "My heart broke after Kate's death." 
 As she lived alone, some one had given her a 
 telephone which hung by her bedside. Every 
 night at bedtime she rang up her nearest neigh- 
 bor and said, "Good night, I'm all right", that 
 they might not have her "on their mind". 
 
 One night in mid-winter, when the mercury 
 
BY WAY OF CONTRAST 151 
 
 registered twenty-eight below zero, that tele- 
 phone rang at midnight. The neighbors, 
 roused from sleep, answered at once; but 
 there came no sound. Summoning the doc- 
 tor, they hurried down to her. They found 
 her on the old settle in the kitchen which was 
 the living-room of the house. She had made 
 up a fire and tried to do for herself. After an 
 hour's struggle during which, with a brave smile, 
 she assured them she thought she would " come 
 through" — she "went out". 
 
 She was as brave a woman as I have ever 
 known. 
 
 She was the prototype — in some things 
 only — of "Aunt 'Lize" in "The Wood-carver 
 of 'Lympus", and the incident of the praying 
 colporteur is an episode in her own life on that 
 hilltop. Commenting on my version of it, she 
 said : "You didn't make it half strong enough ;" 
 then, laughing merrily, for she had a keen sense 
 of humor — I believe that was her mainstay in 
 life — she added with much impressiveness : 
 "Yes, I let him pray right along and I kept on 
 kneading. I knew it wouldn't do me any harm, 
 
152 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 and it was doing him a lot of good to pray for 
 me — poor soul !" 
 
 But the "poor soul" was not for her. 
 
 Would you ask that woman if she was thank- 
 ful to have lived ? 
 
 4- 
 
 This is not an hypothesis, a theory of life; 
 it is a fact of life, although a meagre enough 
 sketch of what was so rich in spirit that to think 
 of it is an inspiration. There are many mil- 
 lions of such facts among those who toil. Pon- 
 der a moment this fact : — that the spirit of 
 man may be rich, is so divinely constituted that 
 it calls itself rich, when the body that is its 
 mechanical expression is overwhelmed with care, 
 burdened with over-work, starved in part, cold, 
 miserable, suffering. 
 
 5- 
 
 As I have gathered strength through this 
 woman's life lived among the hills, I can also 
 affirm I have been enlightened by the words : 
 "If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art 
 there. " 
 
 That hell is about us, around us, with us; 
 
BY WAY OF CONTRAST 153 
 
 we have not far to seek it in prison, in slum, in 
 the luxury bought with a woman's honor, in 
 the thought of man, in his deeds. We may find 
 it without much seeking; sometimes we have 
 only to "look at home". 
 
 I was reading only the other day in Scribner's 
 Magazine the second paper, by Miss Taylor, of 
 the series, "The Man Behind the Bars". 
 
 "Alfred" was a waif. Until he was thirteen 
 he knew no helping hand, sleeping anywhere, 
 eating when he could find a morsel, struggling 
 at that growing age just to get the strength to 
 struggle to exist. Then a professional burglar 
 held out a helping hand. He literally "took 
 him in hand" — and his education landed him 
 at an early age in prison. 
 
 Miss Taylor writes: "His fate seemed such 
 a cruel waste of a piece of humanity of fine fibre, 
 with a brain that would have made a brilliant 
 record at any university. But the moral and 
 physical deprivations from which his boyhood 
 had suffered had wrought havoc with his health 
 and undermined his constitution." Thereupon 
 followed the prison term. Hard labor and con- 
 
154 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 finement sowed the seed of disease in the weak- 
 ened constitution. 
 
 He wrote to Miss Taylor : " Even in this 
 horrid old shop I have some very happy times 
 thinking of your friendship and building castles 
 in the air." 
 
 After his release he had another long row to 
 hoe in his struggle to reestablish himself on a 
 footing of existence. Why did he not end it 
 all ? What was there in his life to induce him 
 to live ? A friend, perhaps, and an encouraging 
 word — and surely the spirit of a man. 
 
 He writes again : " Strong as is my love for 
 woman, much as I long for some one to share 
 my life, I don't see how I can ever ask any 
 woman to take into her life half that blackened 
 and crime-stained page of my past. I must 
 try to find happiness in helping others." 
 
 But the one woman crossed his path ; and when 
 he told her all that past she said : "And so 
 you were afraid I would think less of you ? Not 
 a bit. It only hurts me to think of all that 
 you have been through." 
 
 He lived to hear a little boy try to call him 
 
BY WAY OF CONTRAST 155 
 
 "Father", and a short while after that to lay 
 him away. Then Life proved too hard for 
 him — for the mechanism of him, not for his 
 undaunted spirit. He wrote that he hoped 
 "to be able to work again". 
 
 Miss Taylor calls him "a good soldier . . . 
 a valiant spirit." 
 
 What would "Alfred's" answer be to the 
 question, "Would you rather have existed on 
 this earth or not ?" 
 
 Having read some of his letters, I believe we 
 
 know the answer. 
 
 6. 
 
 Over against that woman's life lived among 
 the hills, over against this man's life — one of 
 thousands lived for a time in hell — this "Al- 
 fred", this created thing, part mechanics, part 
 spirit, the spiritual part of whom remained 
 undaunted when his mechanism failed him, 
 place the exposition of what life is by some of 
 the present-day writers of fiction — a matter 
 of lust, greed, hypocrisy, dulness of the senses 
 to all objective beauty, the indifference of the 
 beast in man. 
 
156 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 It is this deadliness of infection, the precursor 
 of pestilence in the mentality of our human race, 
 that calls for a literary Molokai like No Man's 
 Land. 
 
 I may be mistaken, I trust I am. I may lay 
 too much weight on the influence of these pres- 
 ent-day productions. It may be food for a 
 certain coterie appetite only. Let us hope so, 
 if only for the sake of the children of To-day 
 and those yet unborn. 
 
XI 
 
 AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD 
 I. 
 
 This is the South Shore. Two miles' walk 
 or drive from town and one comes to this ultima 
 thule of New England's coasts. 
 
 It was my good fortune to find myself there 
 one warm October morning. The ocean lay 
 open to the sun shining through a light haze. 
 The surface water rose and fell in long, long 
 swells each one of which, with a marked con- 
 tinuity of gentle motion, broke in exquisite 
 involute curves along the seemingly unending 
 stretch of sand eastward to Tom Never's Head 
 and westward to Maddequet. A narrow edge 
 of foam outlined on the sands this involute 
 movement of the waters. 
 
 The crisping rustle of the slow wave was the 
 only sound audible. Not a gull, not a cloud 
 flecked the arching sky. There was no sea- 
 
 IS7 
 
158 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 weed, not a shell on the yellow sands, not a 
 white sail on the horizon. The low bank be- 
 hind me shut off all view of the silent moors. 
 Before me lay the Ocean to the horizon line, 
 and ever beyond it southward was that Ocean 
 — and still southward, ever beyond. 
 
 Sitting there, I believe the soul of me for a 
 space of unrecorded time, — it might have 
 been a minute, it might have been but ten 
 seconds, — sloughed off its earthly trappings. 
 I lost for that indefinite portion of time the 
 personality that so often encumbers ; so often 
 hinders us in accomplishment ; so often hampers 
 us in our relations with others ; so seldom shows 
 itself as a perfect medium of expression for 
 "one's self". I saw that personality for what 
 it is in its relation to the natural world : some- 
 thing less than a grain of the sands at my feet. 
 
 Life's worries, its anxieties, burdens, tasks, 
 were no part of me for that infinitesimal portion 
 of the round of eternity. Its joys, hopes, an- 
 ticipations, disappointments were as though 
 they had never been. The soul of me stood 
 aside and looked on. I realized that what 
 
AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD 159 
 
 that personality might say or do, how it might 
 act, how it might not act at a given time, in 
 given circumstances, could not affect the soul 
 that has its dwelling apart. This realization 
 was but for that space of unrecorded time. 
 
 I do not hold much with dreams, and I dream 
 but seldom ; but one remains with me : — I 
 was standing on the shore of a great sea, in the 
 shadow of one of the pyramids. The sun was 
 low in the west, and that shadow was prodi- 
 giously projected far, far out across the waters 
 to the horizon line. The sense of physical 
 isolation was appalling; it was a feeling of 
 loneliness I have never in waking hours supposed 
 possible. 
 
 I experienced something of this isolation of 
 spirit for that moment — if moment it were — 
 at the Edge of the World. 
 
 2. 
 I took up a handful of the sands and let them 
 run through my fingers. Just so small, so ap- 
 parently valueless, so insignificant seemed all 
 my petty criticisms, my tempest-in-a-teapot 
 
160 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 indignations, my senseless diatribes against 
 this thing, that thing, or the other. I doubt 
 at that moment if I could have found a single 
 act of my life under the most powerful micro- 
 scope, so infinitesimal did all connected with 
 this "self" seem out on the South Shore, under 
 the arch of that serene sky, in the light of those 
 sun-filled waters on the shoals. 
 
 Indeed, the things themselves seemed more 
 than trivial. A man's view of the universe, 
 a telescope's revelation of another portion of it 
 — these seemed but infinitesimal attempts to 
 enlarge Infinity. From Infinity to Infinity — 
 that is all the best and most eloquent expositor 
 of the universe, physical and spiritual, can 
 show us, the only road. Why not accept this 
 without question ? Why waste a portion of 
 our strength, physical and spiritual, in wrestling 
 with the Infinite ? It is well to hark back to 
 Goethe's words : "Man is not born to solve the 
 problem of the universe, but to find out what 
 he has to do ; and to restrain himself within 
 the limits of his comprehension." 
 
 These words bring comfort. 
 
AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD 161 
 
 3- 
 
 Feeling so very small, so utterly insignificant, 
 so wholly useless out there on the sands cast up 
 from the shoals, I began to regret what I had 
 felt about the work of men who write not ac- 
 cording to my way of thinking, narrow as this 
 must seem and sound. For a few minutes such 
 was my feeling of unworthiness to think a 
 thought, much less utter a word, about any 
 living human being's accomplishment in this 
 world, that I was minded to retract what I 
 had thought and said of it. I was even 
 for allowing poor Ibsen, Nietzsche, Strindberg 
 and Company to thrive like green bay trees 
 in their attempts to present certain problems 
 of this universe for solution — but I caught 
 myself up in time. 
 
 No ! Nirvana is not for me any more than 
 it was and is for them. They, and I, and all of us 
 humans must stand the test, "What is excellent 
 by God's will is permanent". So I dare mis- 
 quote. What they give of excellence will live, 
 what they yield of unworthiness will perish. 
 Wait — only wait. 
 
i62 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 4- 
 
 As for me, I am here to-day, of To-day ; that 
 is enough. I recalled my father's word to me 
 when my small six-year-old world suffered 
 transient eclipse through some fancied woe : 
 "Come out into the sunshine." 
 
 "Yes," I exhorted myself, "come away from 
 all that leads you into the realm of the anni- 
 hilated individuality. ' Stick to your sure trot. ' 
 Keep your house as best you can ; cook, dust, 
 sew, and between whiles manage to earn your 
 livelihood in a legitimate way. Care for those 
 you love ; try hard to care a little for those you 
 do not love who may need you even if you think 
 you have no need of them. Keep your friends 
 — an art in itself. Be a friend. Live out each 
 day in the recognition that another day on this 
 earth having been yours, you are the richer in 
 many opportunities to aid, to comfort, to enjoy, 
 and help enjoy. Remember that you have five 
 perfect senses with which to enjoy; that you 
 need not seek diversion so long as you are blest 
 with these. Remember that woman's life on 
 
AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD 163 
 
 the remote hilltop, and act according to that 
 remembrance. " — Ah, if I could ! 
 
 And thereupon I rose, freed myself from sand, 
 shook myself together — soul and body ; they 
 needed a thorough mixing, as they would not 
 amalgamate, after that moment of separation 
 at the Edge of the World. Then I drove over 
 to Tom Never's Head and so straight over the 
 moors homewards. 
 
 5- 
 
 When the little town came into view, so glad 
 was I to see it that I was seized with an absurd, 
 unreasoning desire to approach a gray shingled 
 cottage on the road with the intention of at- 
 tempting to hug it; I did in spirit. Had I 
 been for two years in exile on the steppes of 
 Tartary, home could not have been more wel- 
 come to me. Every clam-shell path, every 
 sandy lane on that homeward drive looked to 
 be an avenue of approach to my earthly para- 
 dise. I wanted to greet every scallop fisher- 
 man who passed me with "Good-day, brother". 
 I wanted to wave my hand to all the school 
 children solely to express my joy in their heed- 
 
164 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 less youth ; to promise every old woman who 
 passed me in the roadway a birthday cake; 
 to kiss every fat, fair baby that peered at me 
 from beneath the hood of its carriage. 
 
 No ! Nirvana, and all that tends to it, is 
 not for me. My spirit is gregarious, how aloof 
 soever it might have held itself for that lonely 
 moment on the South Shore. It is no abiding- 
 place for the spirit of us humans — that Edge 
 of the World ! 
 
XII 
 
 A PRIVATE VIEW 
 
 I. 
 
 There is one small room I keep for my private 
 picture gallery. It is a quiet room with a good 
 light. The dozen or more water-colors and a 
 few choice etchings show to advantage on its 
 walls. My friends are always at liberty to 
 view it privately. 
 
 Here is Number One : A close in an old 
 wynd in the ancient quarter of Edinburgh, the 
 Cowgate. A bit of clear, cold sky shows high 
 between the stone houses blackened by time, 
 weather, and smoke. At the right of the narrow 
 irregular entrance is an early eighteenth cen- 
 tury doorway with wide, recessed triple arch 
 and heavy jambs. Sculptured on the stone in 
 beautiful Old English lettering you may read: 
 Pax intrantibus — Salus exeuntibus. 
 
 165 
 
166 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 The painting is true in detail and exquisite 
 in color. It might be taken anywhere for a 
 Drummond. But most significantly beautiful 
 to me is the inscription, pathetic, also, for 
 this royal welcome is found in what is now a 
 slum of Scotland's capital. Peace to those enter- 
 ing — Health to those departing. 
 
 I wish I had just such a fine, old stone doorway 
 here in Nantucket ! Then I would have carved 
 above it : Pax intrantibus — Salus exeuntibus, 
 as a "hail" and "health-to-you-in-leaving" for 
 my special friends. Indeed, I ought not to 
 limit this sentiment of the old Latin inscription 
 to the privilegies. I could wish that all who 
 should cross our threshold might partake of its 
 good will. 
 
 This Number One is a favorite of mine ; I 
 saw the original in Edinburgh many years ago. 
 
 2. 
 
 I often turn from a minute study of this 
 
 picture to a painting of Mount Mansfield in 
 
 the Green Mountains. I can conceive of no 
 
 greater contrast in color scheme, subject, treat- 
 
A PRIVATE VIEW 167 
 
 ment, and sentiment, than is this to the confined, 
 narrow, centuries-darkened close in the old Cow- 
 gate wynd. 
 
 The season is October. Across miles of 
 yellowish brown grass and stubble lands, the 
 mountain looms against an eastern sky of in- 
 definite blue-gray. It is seen in the low light 
 of a sunfilled afternoon. In the nearly level 
 rays of that strong sun, a third of its height, 
 where the maple-forest belts it, glows transfused 
 crimson, subdued here and there by the intrusive 
 irregular masses of evergreens. From this mag- 
 nificent foundation of transcendent color, the 
 mountain's remaining height mantled in newly 
 fallen snow gleams with a wondrous purity of 
 tint against that indefinite east. 
 
 This work belongs of necessity to the Impres- 
 sionist School because of the subject and masses 
 of color. 
 
 3- 
 
 Perhaps I ought to say, that there may be no 
 unnecessary deception by which any one might 
 be led to believe that I am the possessor of 
 Corots, Drummonds, Meryons, or Millets, that 
 
168 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 my little quiet room is only one of my chambers 
 of memory and these pictures on its walls are 
 a few, very few, among the many of my lasting 
 impressions. I have only to enter this little 
 room — by day or night, it makes no mate- 
 rial difference, the light is always good — and 
 there they hang unspoiled in any way by time, 
 as fresh in coloring as when the impression 
 was first made on the delicate brain-films. It 
 was in October, 1905, that I saw Mansfield in 
 such glory. 
 
 4- 
 
 We lived for one summer in Switzerland on 
 the Lake of Thun. I brought away with me 
 several paintings — water-colors, of course. I 
 call them the "Lake of Thun Series". 
 
 From our room-balcony, overlooking the lake, 
 the three monarchs faced us : the Eiger, Moench, 
 and Jungfrau — a summer's vision of rose- 
 gleam at eventide, purple and white at dawn, 
 of undulating violet and blue in the mists that, 
 at times, half hid, half revealed them, of cold 
 gray-white under cloudy skies, and the ethereal 
 gradations of rose, violet, purple, and gray at 
 
A PRIVATE VIEW 169 
 
 the departure of the afterglow, in the rising of 
 the pale, full moon. 
 
 Across the lake, only two miles distant, the 
 Niessen rose seven thousand feet, seemingly 
 from the water's edge; in reality there is a 
 plain of approach. Day after day an artist 
 in the house attempted to catch and render 
 permanent in color something of the transient 
 beauty of that mountain. It became a matter 
 for despair ; a second, and a new combination of 
 colors was necessary; a minute, and the trans- 
 formation was complete — proportion, shape 
 even, must be altered. There were sketch 
 suicides by the dozen during that summer; 
 but the Niessen was not to be captured. 
 
 Oh, that marvellous, unbelievable play of 
 color in the diaphanous mists that trailed across 
 it, wreathed its summit, lay on its flanks ; that 
 half veiled it; that rose and fell like a tide 
 from the lake about its base; that banded its 
 green with purple; subdued its purple with 
 gray; tinted its gray with violet, touched its 
 smoke-topaz with bronze ! Oh, the clouds that 
 swept across, over, around, and above it ! They 
 
170 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 were "shepherded" on its green slopes, or cap- 
 ping its summit were tinged now and then by 
 the palest rose, a reflection from the evening- 
 glow on snow-crowns of the monarchs at the 
 head of the lake. At times, the seven thousand 
 feet of mountain nobility — those who know 
 the Niessen will recognize the truth of that 
 word "nobility" — were blotted out in dense 
 rain-clouds. 
 
 There is another I have named my "tout- 
 ensemble-multum-in-parvo" sketch. It recalls 
 what we saw daily from our balcony, weather 
 permitting : in the foreground are the heavy- 
 timbered, brown roofs of the village houses ; 
 beyond, the little chateau beneath the cypress, 
 and its walled gardens extending into the lake 
 across which the Niessen shadows the waters 
 beneath it till they gleam translucent, a pave- 
 ment of pure beryl. And beyond lake and 
 intervening mountains, whose alps show emer- 
 ald in the sunlight, loom the three white giants 
 filling all the eastern sky. 
 
 I have only to look at this, and I hear the 
 moving tinkle of herd-bells. 
 
A PRIVATE VIEW 171 
 
 5- 
 
 My home in the Green Mountains stands at the 
 meeting place of three roads or, better perhaps, 
 the triple forking of the highway from the village. 
 
 The main one slopes northwards and down- 
 wards to the bridge and the river. Another 
 looks eastwards up a steep slope between high 
 grass-hills — upland pastures for sheep and 
 cattle ; the vista is closed by the skyline resting 
 on the road at the top ! The third curves 
 southwards up a long, hard rise. One side of 
 the road is set, by nature, with butternut, maple, 
 elm, and roadside "brush". The other is 
 fenced ; and below the fence broad hill-pastures 
 slope to the river beyond which the hills, broken, 
 overlapping, follow the course of the " White" 
 branch of the Connecticut into the heart of the 
 mountains. 
 
 This third road was constantly changing in 
 aspect with the seasons. It was at all times a 
 delight. A sketch of it, as I saw it in November 
 a few years ago, hangs on the walls of my private 
 gallery : — The snow is falling thickly. The 
 
172 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 ground is covered. The anatomy of the trees 
 shows dimly dark in the storm. The day is 
 windless. Down the curving white hill-road, 
 beneath the indefinite, overhanging branches, a 
 large flock of sheep is being driven to the village. 
 Their fleece shows a dun, yellowish gray in the 
 universal white. The man who is driving 
 them is suggested merely, for the snow is falling 
 so thickly. 
 
 6. 
 
 A really choice etching shows the Chicago 
 River near its entrance into the lake : — The 
 blackened warehouses, the dark sluggish water, 
 the cobweb of mast and rigging; and out in 
 the lake a glimpse of a leviathan whaleback, 
 all seen — as I have seen it so many times — 
 through smoke of tugs, under lowering, smoke- 
 filled skies. 
 
 7- 
 
 Another is of Birmingham, England ; just a 
 glimpse such as one might obtain from a car 
 window as the train draws to a standstill : — 
 An overlook on black chimney-pots, soot-black- 
 ened houses, dark back yards filled with un- 
 
A PRIVATE VIEW 173 
 
 namable refuse in an all-pervading atmosphere 
 of smoke and grime. In the yard directly 
 beneath the track, — from that vantage ground 
 I received the impression, — two men are locked 
 savagely in a brute struggle ; women lean from 
 the narrow black casements above them. 
 
 8. 
 
 Far away in Scotland there is another lake I 
 love — Loch Earn and its clachan of St. Fillans. 
 This impression also will remain with me to the 
 end. 
 
 The Earn rushes from the lake at the "lug 
 o' the loch". The surrounding heights are 
 purple and rose, for the heather is in full bloom. 
 The lintels of the low, stone houses, mere huts, 
 are covered with the great yellow disks of 
 Gloire de Dijon roses. The mountains outline 
 the shore so closely that they leave but one 
 narrow space for a roadway between the lake 
 and the gray houses hunched against the heights. 
 Beneath some lindens on the level river bank 
 three lassies are beating their linen white on 
 large, flat stones. 
 
174 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 9- 
 
 There are so many lovely works on the walls 
 of memory ! But in this little special room 
 there is space for only a few more. Their titles 
 will give a hint of their beauties. 
 
 Bass Rock off the Scotch coast in a September 
 gale and thousands of gulls seeking refuge on it. 
 
 A funeral procession in Venice. I saw it 
 from a gondola as we were passing beneath 
 the Bridge of Sighs : white gondola, white cata- 
 falque covered with white roses, priests in white 
 robes — suddenly rounding a dark turning of 
 the narrow canal. A shaft of yellow sunshine 
 falls athwart the procession and lights the dark 
 green waters. 
 
 Two etchings. One of the Ghetto in Frank- 
 furt, when Ghetto signified, in truth, as to city 
 districts, "separation". The other is the Mer- 
 cato Vecchio in Florence before modern im- 
 provements had in part despoiled it. 
 
 I may not describe them all. But the Kana- 
 wha Valley has one to its credit ; and Altoona 
 among the mountains of Pennsylvania, as I 
 
A PRIVATE VIEW 175 
 
 saw it at midnight, in deep snow, and the fierce 
 glare of the coke furnaces staining the whiteness 
 blood red. 
 
 Nantucket, of course, has already several. 
 One shall suffice ; it is so homely, and insular, 
 and cozy, and Nantuckety ! A tiny lane, cob- 
 ble-paved. The gable of a small barn takes up 
 a part of one side ; it is overrun with the vines 
 of the wild grape. A load of hay fills the lane 
 from side to side, and beyond it, down the short, 
 steep slope are the blue waters of the harbor 
 and the white sail of a catboat closing the vista. 
 
XIII 
 
 THE WINDS 
 
 I. 
 
 Eheu — eheu — eheu ! 
 
 No, I have never known before that the wind 
 had a gamut of its own — basal note, overtones, 
 undertones, octaves, sharps and flats ; that it 
 can drone like a bagpipe, shrill like a police- 
 man's burglar alarm, howl in three keys, roar 
 with the noise of a thousand blast furnaces, 
 screech like a Brobdignagian Banshee, squeak 
 like a troll, thunder as well as croon in the 
 chimneys, find a crack in a seemingly tight 
 window frame and issue through it into one's 
 bedroom in the crescendo-diminuendo tremulo 
 of a screech-owl. 
 
 I never knew before that it could "confuse 
 one's head", deafen one to all noises but its 
 own, even drown thought in its mad chaos of 
 sound. 
 
 176 
 
THE WINDS 177 
 
 Yes, it can do all this and do it thoroughly, 
 with a whole-heartedness that would be admi- 
 rable if exerted in another cause. 
 
 2. 
 
 The great winds in Dante's Inferno have 
 always been to me very impressive, very poet- 
 ical, but they are in print; they are not the 
 winds that sweep over this island. ^Eolus, 
 also, has some notable winds that he let loose 
 in the ^Eneid ; they, too, are poetical, but arti- 
 ficial. We rarely have that kind here. 
 
 Now and then in summer we have a gentle 
 ten-mile-an-hour breeze that cajoles us for a 
 time into thinking it is going to continue, and 
 that for the rest of the season we are safe from 
 any rude force. But generally it races over the 
 moors at the rate of twenty miles hourly, increas- 
 ing to thirty-five out of sheer caprice and set- 
 tling down to a forty-mile pace to which we have 
 become accustomed ; we find no fault with it. 
 
 At times, with due warning, it increases its 
 steady-going pace to fifty, fifty-five, and sixty 
 miles an hour. There is apparently no wrath 
 
178 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 manifest in this ; it merely shows what it can 
 do when something out of the ordinary is ex- 
 pected of it. On such occasions, the "out-of- 
 the-ordinary" is "no boat leaving Nantucket". 
 
 3- 
 
 Unexpectedly, at intervals, it arises in sudden 
 wrath — wherefore I have not the faintest idea. 
 Weather-bureau "areas of high-pressure and 
 low-pressure" have nothing to do with these 
 particular ebullitions of ours ; no storm signals 
 are displayed by any order from Washington. 
 The wind simply arises in its wrath and per- 
 forms one of its offices on this earth : that of 
 blowing at the rate of seventy miles for every 
 sixty minutes. I wonder sometimes if it has 
 itself got wind — via some wireless of its own — 
 of a young hurricane's birth in the West Indies, 
 and is determined not to be outdone by such a 
 pygmy ; or has it heard from some bird of pas- 
 sage that a cyclone is contemplating the devas- 
 tation of a large tract in Kansas and, believing 
 in competition, starts in to compete ? How- 
 ever that may be, blow it does — I might say 
 
THE WINDS 179 
 
 for all it is worth, but that would not be accord- 
 ing to evidence, for it has yet greater "stunts" 
 to show us. 
 
 My young girl friends laugh at me good- 
 naturedly on account of my misuse of a phrase of 
 modern slang. They assert it is orthodox to say 
 a "corking stunt". I, on the other hand, insist 
 on reversing that phrase and hold that nothing 
 less than a "stunting corker" can express 
 certain meanings. I feel convinced that if they 
 lived here at those rare times when the wind 
 from the southwest is blowing at the rate of 
 seventy-two miles an hour, with an extra puff 
 of ninety, they would understand that my slang 
 is much more to the point than theirs. That 
 wind of the twenty-second of February, 191 2, 
 was most emphatically a "stunting corker". 
 
 But at this rate of seventy miles, I look to 
 see if the window frames show any sign of blow- 
 ing in, or if a passing carriage when it issues 
 from the lee of the house will turn turtle in the 
 street. 
 
 Nothing of the kind happens. All sorts of 
 vehicles pursue their way undisturbed. I have 
 
180 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 noticed that even the horses' tails do not blow 
 sideways under the nearly eighty pounds pres- 
 sure to the square inch, and the drivers' caps 
 never make a motion to leave the heads beneath 
 them. The window frames and panes are 
 intact. The wind subsides as quickly as it 
 arose and resumes its steady jog. 
 
 I 
 4- 
 
 I understand now why these old town houses 
 stand four-square, without additions of any 
 kind save a small lean-to, to the winds that blow. 
 Even the steady nerves of the pioneers might 
 have been a little shaken if the wind, in its 
 wild sweep over this island, had caught under 
 wide, overhanging eaves or beneath any ex- 
 traneous roof over an open space. 
 
 These houses, one and all, shake under the 
 impact of the heavy wind, shake and give a 
 little. Doubtless they were built loose-jointed, 
 like the wooden hull of bark or schooner or brig- 
 antine, in order to yield a little to the strain. 
 (It would be well for us humans to consider 
 ourselves built a little that way; we should 
 
THE WINDS 181 
 
 yield more gracefully under strain and pressure 
 of circumstance; there would be less danger 
 of collapse after resistance.) I feel sure if these 
 houses were not pliable to some slight degree 
 in their joints and joists, rafters and uprights, 
 they would capsize in some of these gales, or, at 
 least, be blown from their foundations. 
 
 But no; there they stand, staunch, and 
 square, and squat — most of them — and solid. 
 I look anxiously to see the shingles ruffed on 
 the roofs like the hooks of a teazle. Not at all. 
 Not even a loose one has blown into the street 
 in all its length and breadth ! 
 
 I marvel that an old hunched chimney here 
 and there does not succumb, at least lose a 
 brick from the top layer; that the numberless 
 scuttles in the garrets are not lifted from their 
 hinges; that numerous "Captain's Walks" — 
 the balustraded open promenade on the roof, 
 a kind of ridge-pole balcony peculiar to this 
 town — are not sailing off into the street or 
 harbor. 
 
 Nothing happens. The town after a heavy 
 gale is in statu quo ante. In the harbor, to be 
 
1 82 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 sure, a catboat or rowboat, left to breast the 
 storm as best it can, may sink. The low dikes 
 on the Point may be overridden by the waves, 
 a thousand feet of lumber be floated off the 
 wharf ; the beach at 'Sconset or the South Shore 
 be eaten away for twenty feet by the force of 
 the seas. But, apart from this, there seems to 
 be only the terror of the element itself that has 
 any effect; nerves suffer most. It is impos- 
 sible to sleep on these rare nights of terrific 
 storm — I mean when the gale rages at seventy 
 miles an hour for eight hours, with gusts of 
 ninety to its discredit. 
 
 There is one thing in favor of these winds 
 here : they may blow sometimes with hurricane 
 force, but it is a steady hurricane movement. 
 There is nothing cyclonic about it. If there 
 were — 
 
 5- 
 
 It is curious to study the effect of the strong 
 persistent winds on the growths of the moors. 
 The pine plantations have had a fearful struggle 
 to maintain their foothold. Each individual 
 tree makes a good fight, but the result, in time, 
 
THE WINDS 183 
 
 as with us humans when circumstances of envi- 
 ronment are too adverse, is dwarfed growth, 
 slow development, ofttimes distortion in some 
 form. We see these gnarled trunks indicative 
 apparently of great age, in height but six or ten 
 feet; yet by good pine rights they should be 
 in their sturdy prime. 
 
 The wind beats them down as seedlings, keeps 
 them down ; yet they, persistently vigorous, 
 willing to live in their natural piney way, live 
 despite their windy environment, but in the 
 struggle for existence become stunted, twisted. 
 There is no evidence of youth in them, although 
 these plantations date from a few decades 
 only. 
 
 Compare with these my two white pines on 
 the slope of the hill below my mountain home ! 
 They have had the benefit of right environment 
 — sunshine, space, a north exposure to toughen ; 
 and there they stand, seventy feet of beauty, fifty 
 feet of soft, blue-green pine boughs, and a 
 straight shaft of a trunk that sends the thought 
 to every pillar of strength in Egyptian temple 
 or cathedral nave. 
 
i8 4 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 6. 
 
 The bayberry, also, has its struggle for exist- 
 ence. 
 
 I know a spot on the coast of Penobscot Bay, 
 near Camden, where I have walked along 
 paths that the bayberry overarched. The 
 leaves were long, glossy, rich in aromatic 
 scent — a fragrance that creates in me a wild 
 longing for the sea whenever I catch something 
 akin to its pungency from slowly ascending 
 incense in an inland church or cathedral. 
 
 Here the bayberry is a lowly, humble thing. 
 Beaten down by wind, sustained only on sandy 
 soil, it nevertheless makes its own way in time 
 and reaches the height of two or, at most, three 
 feet. Like the pines it is misshapen ; it has 
 turned and twisted in vain endeavor to aspire 
 to a greater height. And look at its berries, as 
 if they were contemporary with the cave men ! 
 They are wrinkled as if with the passing of the 
 ages, and hoar as if with the frosts of aeons. 
 They are positively uncanny at times. But 
 when a bayberry branch, loaded with its irregu- 
 
THE WINDS 185 
 
 lar swarms of little, wrinkled, gray berries, the 
 size of allspice, is laid on the hearth and lighted 
 — ah, then they are no longer uncanny in our 
 eyes ! They crisp and exude and sizzle as they 
 burn with flame of wax and flash of leaf ! Their 
 fragrance rises into the nostrils, and all the con- 
 centrated essence of the lowly moorland plant- 
 life seems to ascend as in incense from the home- 
 hearth. 
 
 7- 
 Last Christmas evening I made a bayberry 
 fire, feeding the first large branch on the hearth 
 with another and yet another — and far away 
 in the West there were three lovers of these 
 moors who, with a precious tiny branch, did the 
 same for two households. In the west of the 
 Empire State there was still another hearth 
 from which a little branch of that same bay- 
 berry sent its incense-smoke up chimney. And 
 one there was, a lover of the moorland in 
 all its moods and tenses, but without a home- 
 hearth on which to burn so much as one wee, 
 wizened, waxen, gray berry — who, nevertheless, 
 enjoyed the flaming hearthfire in spirit. And 
 
1 86 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 who shall say that that enjoyment yields less 
 than does the material ? 
 
 8. 
 
 The wind was rising as I laid the last branch 
 on the hearth, rising in its might as we were well 
 aware by midnight. Then it was that we of 
 the island looked to our fires, covered carefully 
 the embers on the hearth with ashes ; ran the 
 furnace as low as consistent with a decent 
 amount of comfort. Then it was that windows 
 were wedged before we "turned in" ; doors well 
 fastened ; all things made tight and close-hauled 
 to outride the increasing gale. 
 
 All that night it howled across the moors 
 from the eastern main. Hour after hour its 
 force increased. Again and again I rose and 
 looked out into the blackness of the night, just 
 for the sake of seeing the gleam and flash of 
 my trusty Sankaty beacon. I listened to a 
 veritable chaos of sound. It was wind'alone 
 — just wind ; no snow, no rattling of wires, no 
 jiggling of blinds, no loose board, no rumbling 
 under the shallow eaves. No, it was just one 
 
THE WINDS 187 
 
 steady, roaring howl in which it was hard to 
 think collectedly so filled were the ears with 
 the steady pressure of sound-waves. 
 
 But Sankaty was there shining fairly brightly 
 throughout the night although the spindrift 
 obscured its brilliancy and the seas were gnaw- 
 ing at the beach below the bluff. In the street, 
 the watch — the men who in shifts patrol the 
 town on nights of terrific storm as a precaution 
 in case of fire — held hardily on their way, 
 although a footstep could no more be heard in 
 that stupendous onrush of air than could the 
 sound of a tiny pebble dropped into the depths 
 of the Canyon of the Colorado. 
 
 I have always been amused at the nautical 
 expression "the roaring forties". I do not find 
 it a subject for much mirth now that I am here 
 on this island outpost, for I am experiencing 
 what it is to live in them. 
 
XIV 
 
 LITTLE GARDENS BY THE SEA 
 I. 
 
 Any flower that grows for me, grows, I am 
 convinced, solely by the grace of God. 
 
 Through no tending, no care, no watchful- 
 ness of mine will they flourish and bloom. If 
 now and then a blossom shows itself in an apolo- 
 getic manner, if a sudden blooming of dahlias 
 surprises me after I have given up hope even 
 for a few, if a belated rose puts forth from a 
 leafless stock, I am joyfully and profoundly 
 grateful to the processes of nature that have 
 produced them ; but there remains an humble 
 recognition on my part of my limitations in 
 floriculture. 
 
 I can raise puppies, kittens, if absolutely 
 necessary, and chickens whether necessary or 
 otherwise — I really think unendingly. I never 
 "keep poultry", but I have raised dozens, 
 
 1 88 
 
LITTLE GARDENS BY THE SEA 189 
 
 yes, hundreds of chickens by the natural method 
 simply for the pure enjoyment of browbeating 
 obsessed hens into "staying put", of conquer- 
 ing and, I must confess, being conquered. 
 Somehow it is never humiliating for me to be 
 outwitted by a hen. She is of my own sex and 
 her wiles are known to me ; we are well mated 
 when we strive for the mastery. 
 
 There was always method in my — to the 
 household — seeming madness. About the first 
 of March I visited certain neighbors and asked 
 if they had a good, sitting-inclined hen to sell. 
 I generally found six ancient dames of whose 
 torment their owners were glad to be rid. 
 
 One, I remember, was a spasmodic producer 
 and always laid on the top of a box, in a cold 
 shed. In winter if the egg by chance remained 
 on the top of the box, it was frozen ; otherwise 
 it rolled to the shed floor and was useless. After 
 the laying period was over, this worthy con- 
 tinued to sit on the bare box-top trying to hatch, 
 so far as any one could see, merely splinters. 
 It was a simple charity to provide her with a 
 clean tomato box, sweet hay, a warm nest and 
 
190 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 thirteen eggs of Black Orpingtons that cost me 
 two dollars for the dozen and one. 
 
 I merely gave to her the desired work and tried 
 to enable her to fulfil her mission of hatching 
 out chickens. But my intentions were not 
 accepted in that light by this special hen. She 
 wished to sit on a bare box-top and indulge in 
 imaginative hatching. It seemed to me, as I 
 watched her manceuvrings to get rid of all that 
 sweet hay, — shoving it to one side of the 
 tomato box, working the eggs carefully from 
 under her into the same corner with the hay, 
 — and deliberately make a business of sitting 
 on the bare bottom of that box, that I had seen 
 something of these traits of character in human 
 beings. I had not so very far to seek. It 
 used always to be for me far easier to imagine 
 a thing done than to make an attempt to do it 
 in the regulation manner. If I did it at all, I 
 wanted to do it my own way. 
 
 Recognizing my own shortcomings, I made it 
 a matter of fellowship, as well as patience, in 
 dealing with this special hen. I patiently filled 
 hot-water bottles and kept the ignored eggs 
 
LITTLE GARDENS BY THE SEA 191 
 
 warm until such time as the old dame could 
 be put back on them and tied down to her task. 
 At this point, she unaccountably developed 
 an extra set of muscles by which she could raise 
 herself one inch from those costly eggs and, 
 remaining in that position, allow a cooling draft 
 to play continually over them. 
 
 I tried starving her into sitting on them. I 
 tried overfeeding her to make her heavy. I 
 tried allowing her to range as far as fifteen feet 
 of clothes-line tied around her right leg, pro- 
 tected by a bit of flannel, would permit — I 
 meanwhile seeing to it that the eggs did not 
 get too cool. She chose to remain off the nest 
 sometimes one hour, sometimes six. When she 
 returned to the small box, — I had to substitute 
 a starch-box as it allowed no freedom of move- 
 ment, — she invariably stepped on those eggs 
 as if she weighed fifteen pounds. 
 
 Of course I had to give it up. I was dealing 
 with a natural force, and my pygmy efforts to 
 counterbalance it could end only in disaster. 
 
 But she was only one of so many ! There 
 were some who insisted upon remaining on the 
 
192 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 nest from morning till night and from night till 
 dewy dawn for nearly the entire period of incu- 
 bation. The poor eggs never had a chance to 
 cool off as they should in a natural way. There 
 was nothing to be done with these but let them 
 sit, grow thin, their combs white, their eyes 
 ditto, and count the days for their deliverance 
 from such obsession. I tried forcible feeding, 
 but it seemed to me that the obsession had 
 culminated in lockjaw. 
 
 But I enjoyed all this true sport keenly and 
 raised chickens by the fifties. I remember that 
 I lost but one chicken after hatching. I played 
 various roles — and I do not flatter myself when 
 I assert that I played them well — during the 
 process. I acted as midwife to several unfortu- 
 nates who, closely confined in a Plymouth Rock 
 shell, as hard, apparently, as the proverbial 
 New World threshold of the Pilgrim Fathers, 
 peeped continuously within those walls to be 
 set at liberty. 
 
 I have improvised incubation in the hour 
 after midnight, — I confess to the disgruntle- 
 ment and distraction of the household, — with 
 
LITTLE GARDENS BY THE SEA 193 
 
 a clothes-line across the attic, a kettle, flannels, 
 and a judiciously placed kerosene lamp. 
 
 I have taken advantage of the power of the 
 sun's rays, remembering certain proceedings in 
 far away Africa, and when the thermometer 
 indicated 101 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade 
 of a July day, at four in the afternoon, I have 
 finished in a truly scientific manner a deserting 
 hen's job. 
 
 I have turned strike-breaker, and used the 
 oven of the kitchen stove to bring success to a 
 worthy cause. 
 
 Somehow I succeeded ; the chickens were 
 hatched ; they throve. I lost but one among 
 those many. I never paid the slightest atten- 
 tion to any rules for up-to-date poultry "feed". 
 I read about it as I found it in poultry books and 
 Grange Weeklies. I invested in this literature 
 until experience taught me that all poultry is 
 not alike in its tastes. I fed the fluffy, downy 
 balls, so soon as they had dried off, with a 
 strictly grown-up diet : cracked corn and water. 
 They throve on it, although I confess I had to 
 introduce them forcibly to this special diet 
 
i 9 4 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 because they were only a few hours old and 
 needed to be helped to pick and swallow. But 
 the digestion proved to be perfect, and, after 
 all, that is the chief end in animal life. 
 
 When they were about ten days old and 
 scratching with a tenacity of purpose and 
 energy worthy of aeons of scratching inheritance, 
 I gave them to my neighbors, — all of them : 
 Black Orpingtons, Plymouth Rocks, Rhode 
 Island Reds, and White Wyandottes. 
 
 I used to present myself with twenty or more 
 in my apron at a neighbor's back door. I 
 always noticed that the man of the house showed 
 real appreciation of my gift ; but the spindle 
 side looked at me and the chicks askance. 
 
 I once made bold to ask the reason, when I 
 presented an autumn "hatching". I found 
 that the spindle side had to prepare the "warm 
 mash" — a disagreeable task. I do not blame 
 her for feeling aggrieved at my gift. There is 
 a limit even to chicken raising. I should 
 draw the line at making "warm mash" of a 
 winter's morning when the mercury was near 
 the bulb of the thermometer and the mash half 
 
LITTLE GARDENS BY THE SEA 195 
 
 frozen before it reached the hen house. I said 
 nothing about the "cracked corn" diet. Each 
 of us makes his own experiment with life. 
 
 2. 
 
 As I have said — I fear in a manner too prolix 
 — I can raise anything belonging to the animal 
 kingdom, but with flowers, for which I really 
 care, I fail ignominiously. 
 
 I have no garden as yet. My back yard with 
 its situation, capabilities, and possibilities would 
 require a Frederick Law Olmsted to do it 
 justice. 
 
 It really has wonderful capabilities for some- 
 thing little less inferior to the sloping gardens 
 of the Rhine — those you may see just before 
 you reach Bonn — or those of the Borromean 
 Islands. I see it as it might be, could I afford 
 to "dike" it, terrace it, grade it, build a pergola 
 for it through the vine-covered vistas of which 
 would be seen the gray roofs, the great gray 
 chimneys, the little, gray, fishermen's huts of 
 that part of the town which lies below Orange 
 Street Bank ; and, beyond them, those harbor 
 
196 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 waters changing, forever changing above shoals 
 and channels — indigo, ultramarine, sapphire 
 blue, gentian blue, blue of peacock's rings, blue 
 of lapis-lazuli, each and severally crossed with 
 the pale whitish green of jade, green of Nile, 
 green of Niagara above the cave of the winds, 
 green of beryl and porphyry. I see it all as it 
 can and should be ! Whether it will ever attain 
 to such metamorphosis remains doubtful. 
 
 Meanwhile I manage to enjoy it as it is. 
 
 At present a portion of my back yard con- 
 sists of stubble from an experimental "vege- 
 table patch". Peas, beans, cucumbers, lettuce, 
 thrive for me. I plant them — and Nature is 
 kind ; she does the rest without much effort 
 on my part. I can hoe a row of beans as well 
 as any one and enjoy the exercise. But let 
 me take between my thumb and forefinger a 
 tiny, nickel-plated, up-to-date flower-weeder and 
 within ten minutes I am in a state of exhaustion ; 
 so are the flowers. Only the weeds seem to 
 hold their own under the manipulation of my 
 patent weeder. 
 
 It is discouraging to plant — yes, and to 
 
LITTLE GARDENS BY THE SEA 197 
 
 water, to hope and anticipate, "Another year 
 and they will yield !" and, in the end, see no 
 fruition. I turn to my peas and beans for con- 
 solation. They yield abundantly and, looked 
 at carefully, a bean or pea blossom, though shy 
 in blooming, is really charmingly decorative; 
 but I cannot pick them to that end and so 
 sacrifice future beans and peas ! 
 
 Last year there was a seven weeks' drought, 
 and my courage waned in the third week. I 
 gave over the garden to Fate. The dahlias' 
 little green nubs dried up and fell off. The 
 nasturtiums were as if they had not been. 
 The trumpet vine bore one superb blossom — 
 blew its own trumpet, in fact, to proclaim that 
 it lived, and then lost every leaf. The wistaria 
 attempted a wholly out of season blossoming, 
 — I have become accustomed to this freak blos- 
 soming in my garden, — but the attempt proved 
 abortive. The rose bushes, "warranted field- 
 grown for two years", I found by the first of 
 August as mere bare stocks among an enormous 
 crop of Bouncing Bets, a legacy from a long- 
 neglected, former ownership. They covered 
 
198 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 the place I call a lawn, rioted in the vegetable 
 garden, overflowed down the bank, and gave 
 cheer to desolation till they, too, dried and 
 showed nothing but a crop of little brown 
 pompons. 
 
 The tomato blossoms along a fifty-foot hedge 
 of them — I set out thirty-seven bushes for a 
 small family — fell off before a tomato could set. 
 Some cosmos was lost in dry grass. 
 
 It is hard to cultivate faith, hope, and charity, 
 when contemplating such a garden ; to use a 
 Western phrase it is a "proposition". Still 
 I am always aware of the possibilities of this 
 garden of mine — under another owner. 
 
 At least, there was one satisfaction for me 
 at this crisis. Having accepted the drought, 
 I gave up all care and thought of the garden 
 and in consequence found I was accomplishing 
 much that in other household directions was 
 necessary. The truth is it was no longer on 
 my mind. My neighbors have superlatively 
 lovely gardens, and they, pitying me, were 
 kind. My bowls and vases were filled from 
 their largess. 
 
LITTLE GARDENS BY THE SEA 199 
 
 But the miracle happened ! right here in this 
 desolate, little, back-yard garden. We had a 
 few days of rain ; another week of it — I had 
 not thought to look at my kiln-dried flora — 
 and one morning when I went out to pick a 
 ripened cucumber I found my dahlias a-bloom, 
 my green tomatoes as big as thimbles, my Sweet 
 Alyssum bed a mass of white fragrance. Some 
 nasturtiums were as large as the entirely decep- 
 tive plates on garden-book covers. The cosmos 
 was flourishing; a heliotrope in blossom, and 
 one solitary tea rose trying to put forth on its 
 leafless stock — in fact, a resurrected garden ! 
 
 I was happily enabled to fill my own bowls 
 and vases with my own blooms until the first 
 of November. 
 
 3- 
 
 My neighbors' gardens are a joy to me; as 
 is every other garden — except my own — large 
 and small, on this island. They are unique. 
 There are no imitations. You find no dupli- 
 cates among them. The owner of a successful 
 garden said quite recently to me : "You can 
 make anything grow in Nantucket if you try." 
 
200 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 I accepted this statement with one mental 
 reservation pertaining to me and my efforts. 
 
 Beneath the bank there is a garden, a corner 
 of which I can overlook from my upper balcony. 
 On a pleasant day in midsummer, the scene is like 
 a Watteau fete or a Fragonard. Under a group of 
 fine trees, little tables with snow-white cloths are 
 set forth on the lawn. It is a gathering place 
 for the afternoon-tea clans. The light, smart 
 dresses, the gayly colored parasols, the coming 
 and going, the abundance of bright flowers, 
 are worth a journey across the Sound to see. 
 
 The garden adjacent is a riot of color, but 
 there is no attempt at formality or orderly 
 arrangement. For this very reason I find it 
 full of charming surprises. 
 
 4- 
 
 On one of the longer streets, at the corner of 
 a lane, stands an old, unpretentious little house, 
 weather-beaten nearly black. In passing one 
 would not give it a second glance. Turn the 
 southeast lane-corner, however, and you invol- 
 untarily halt with your hand shading your eyes 
 
LITTLE GARDENS BY THE SEA 201 
 
 if the sun be shining. Poppies are there, 
 thousands of them — old-fashioned red poppies 
 that have sown themselves year after year and 
 fill the side yard, a space eighteen feet by thirty 
 possibly, with a mass of glowing color. The 
 delicate silk-like texture of the petals is trans- 
 lucent in the strong sunshine. 
 
 5- 
 I have another garden in mind ; it belongs to 
 a friend. Great trees shade the fine lawn, and 
 in the background the ample, double-doored 
 breadth of an old, gray-shingled barn is graced 
 with vines and large clusters of shell-pink roses. 
 In their season pink zinnias, pink asters just 
 touch with color the surroundings of the stately, 
 gray house. One lingers long at the tea table 
 on the lawn to enjoy the color scheme. 
 
 6. 
 Here and there are stately, old-fashioned, 
 formal gardens behind ten-feet high brick walls 
 nearly smothered in ivy of two generations' 
 growth. 
 
202 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 I know a sunken orchard-garden in the very- 
 heart of the town. It is surrounded by old 
 stone walls lichened with age. The trees are 
 gnarled and wind-bent. The shade beneath them 
 on a warm summer day is both deep and restful. 
 Many a time have I leaned over the fence on the 
 level of the street and feasted my eyes on the 
 thrift, the beauty of these trees and their set- 
 ting, and the promise of an apple harvest on a 
 side street ! 
 
 Above the wall there is another fine garden : 
 one large grass plat surrounded by a wide, con- 
 tinuous flower-bed that shows the blossoming 
 procession of the seasons from the first crocus, 
 daffodil, and tulip, through peony, rose, and 
 lily, to aster and chrysanthemum. 
 
 7- 
 Some of the larger gardens are surrounded by 
 hedges of privet, of wild rose, or honeysuckle — 
 hundreds of feet of each. Tiny gardens, mere 
 side yards, show fences covered with the last 
 named. Every little home has its flower, or 
 flowers. One, perhaps, may be graced with a 
 
LITTLE GARDENS BY THE SEA 203 
 
 wonderful climbing rose that covers the trellis 
 over the door, the gable and eaves. Another 
 ranks hollyhocks along its old, worn, side walls. 
 Here is a small front garden space, ten by eight, 
 filled with lilies ; another with nasturtiums ; 
 a fourth with bachelor's buttons. Another 
 tiny six-by-eight-feet plot at a side door, grows 
 a marvellous blue hydrangea four feet high. 
 
 A neighbor's garden down the street shows 
 all the old-fashioned flowers in masses. When 
 the sun is shining on this garden, I walk slowly 
 by just for the sake of the cheeriness and color 
 it adds to my day. 
 
 In June the atmosphere is charged with the 
 fragrance of this flower incense. The soft sea- 
 breeze coming in over the marshes, over these 
 gardens large and small, adds an indescribable 
 tang to olfactory delight. 
 
 No wonder ! for there are gardens everywhere 
 in the town : gardens of yellow broom on the 
 cliff-slope above the sea ; gardens of purple 
 lilacs all adown the high banks ; gardens of 
 quince and grape that seem almost indigenous 
 to this island, they thrive so well and with so 
 
204 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 little care. And in May, on the moors, there is 
 one great garden of pink and white arbutus, 
 extraordinarily large and rich in fragrance, 
 acres of purple and blue violets, acres of bluets ! 
 and later a carpet of the tiny blossom of the 
 
 meal-plum vine. 
 
 8. 
 
 But there is one garden to which I give my 
 love. I have named it the Iris Garden. 
 
 You may pass into it through a high white 
 gate. Close that behind you and you shut out a 
 thoroughfare. In part it is a sunken garden ; 
 at your left is a large bed of Japanese iris, pale 
 blue, white, and yellow, and purple. They 
 stand there in a royal grace all their own. 
 When, in the moonlight, you leave them to 
 follow the stepping-stones laid in the soft thick 
 turf, you mount three broad, old, stone steps 
 and linger a moment by the ivy-wreathed marble 
 sundial gleaming white in the refulgent night. 
 Then you pass under a vine-covered arch ; and 
 here your feet would gladly stay for an hour, 
 for across the lawn, beyond arch and hedge 
 and climbing grape, there lies the silvered surface 
 
LITTLE GARDENS BY THE SEA 205 
 
 of the harbor waters seen over the flattened, 
 full-leaved tops of a group of great trees grow- 
 ing at the foot of the steep, high bank. 
 
 I have a small engraving of one of Turner's 
 most beautiful works. It shows a lake among 
 high hills ; into it juts a small rocky peninsula 
 which is covered by a wonderful chapel. The 
 moon's glory touches the lake along a wide path- 
 way, and its light shining through the chapel's 
 high, oriel windows transfuses the interior. 
 Beneath this is written : Datur hora Quieti. 
 
 In the moon-lighted Iris Garden overlooking 
 the sea, one of those "quiet hours" may be 
 experienced. 
 
XV 
 
 LOW TIDES 
 
 I. 
 
 In the economy of nature I know they are 
 necessary, but I do not like them. So often on 
 Penobscot Bay I have watched the tide-pools 
 at the half ebb and marvelled at the lowly life 
 that is dependent for existence on that ebb. 
 
 Personally, I, too, have low tides, but to what 
 economical purpose I fail to understand. It 
 may be possible that I get some sort of nutrition 
 from them. — I wonder ? 
 
 Why or how I invariably associate a low tide 
 on the seashore with a slum I cannot say, unless 
 it be that as a small child the sight of Dorchester 
 flats at low tide on a warm day, and the unsightli- 
 ness and unwholesomeness of a portion of the 
 Back Bay in my native city — a lagoon that 
 was subject to a sluggish ebb and flow which 
 
 206 
 
LOW TIDES 207 
 
 rendered the adjacent streets and the railroad 
 tracks parallel with the Mill-dam an abomina- 
 tion — made an impression on me that has 
 never been effaced. 
 
 These flats were always to be seen from the car 
 window when I was going to Cape Cod or to 
 New York, to which latter city I was taken 
 by my parents sometimes thrice a year between 
 the ages of four and eight. 
 
 It is interesting to trace the workings of 
 associated ideas and impressions from which 
 the law of association is formulated. 
 
 I can say with perfect truth that I felt it a 
 disgrace to be obliged to walk through Beach 
 or Albany Street, the approach at that time to 
 the station. They were not only thorough- 
 fares of approach, they were affluents of South 
 Cove, one of the notorious slum districts of 
 Boston. Somehow, I cannot say how, I knew 
 all this. 
 
 I recall the row of deep, dingy basements 
 entered by steep flights of steps, the besmudged 
 window panes thick with dirt, cobwebs, flies ; 
 the black bottles placed on the sill for lure ; 
 
208 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 the spotted, black greasiness of the steps ; 
 the blotched, swollen, discolored faces I used 
 to see appear suddenly above the top step, so 
 near to me, — I was at that age not over three 
 feet above the curb, — and the indescribable 
 and sickening odor of liquors, smoke, and foul 
 air that came out against me in a tepid puff as 
 I passed them. 
 
 Through this purlieu people drove or walked 
 to the station. If it chanced that the train, 
 after running out a half a mile through mouldy, 
 clothes-behung brick walls and the sickening 
 sights of South Cove's crowded tenement life, 
 came upon Dorchester flats lying slimy-green, 
 fetid in the hot sun, baring to the unaccus- 
 tomed eye tin cans and city refuse, showing 
 boats on their beam ends, and I heard the 
 words "low tide", or if the car window was shut 
 quite against my desire as the train skirted 
 the deadly lagoon, I naturally associated low 
 tides with slums, unsightly flats, and the Back 
 Bay abominations. 
 
 I recall, also, that once when a child I was 
 taken with one of my cousins by an uncle-in-law 
 
LOW TIDES 209 
 
 for the first time to the region of the wharves. 
 Some friend of his was a passenger on a merchant 
 ship. The ship was to sail the next day for 
 South America ; she lay a little way out in the 
 stream. We were rowed out to her. The night 
 was dark. I remember the long, quivering 
 gleams of yellow light on the water ; they were 
 the cabin, mast, and stern lights of the great 
 ship. 
 
 On our return we came up through North 
 Street, at that time another notorious slum 
 district of the city. I remember the uncle 
 hurried us on at a pace not suited to our shorter 
 legs. There was music of a kind all about us, a 
 glare of red lamps, here and there a blazing gas 
 jet, the sight of men and women dancing in 
 basement or upper hall, and the sound of singing, 
 laughing, shrieking from above and below and 
 from the saloons around us. Above the con- 
 fusion I could hear the "fiddle", the sharp 
 click of "clappers", and the chink of what I 
 know now to have been "castanets". 
 
 "The pains of hell never gat hold upon me" 
 after my childish eyes had once looked on that 
 
210 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 limbo ; for, somehow, I knew then as well as I 
 know now that what my too young eyes 
 had looked on that night was "hell", and that 
 the home which sheltered my little life, fostered 
 in love, was "heaven", and that both were 
 made on this earth. 
 
 I doubt if any theology that intimated there 
 might be a "better place" or a "worse place" 
 than these two of which I had become cognizant, 
 could have made the slightest impression on me 
 in after years. I only know that all my life 
 I have been free from such theological concep- 
 tion. At that time there were several years of 
 Bible-reading impressions behind me. Nothing 
 said in that book about "hell" had any terrors 
 for me; but those lovely words containing the 
 great truth : " The kingdom of heaven is 
 within you", I managed to interpret in my own 
 way. They meant to me that my home was 
 the kingdom of heaven, and I was within it. 
 I was too young to interpret those words dif- 
 ferently. 
 
 And looking back over these many years, I 
 find no reason to change that point of view 
 
LOW TIDES 211 
 
 although it has enlarged with the experience 
 of things material and spiritual. If the home 
 where love reigns be not the nearest thing to 
 heaven, be not heaven itself in one of its many 
 manifestations, then I do not know it ; and not 
 knowing I cannot define it. What satisfaction 
 that little story by Tolstoy gives me, "Where 
 Love is there God is also." 
 
 2. 
 
 I experience a low tide of feeling when I am 
 aware of any marked tendency, whatever its 
 expression, that makes for the undoing of the 
 home ; that makes for the loosening of the ties 
 between father, mother, and children. 
 
 I am not ignorant of the pain, the confusion 
 of standards, the miserable inefficiency of law and 
 custom that tend to the dissolution of such ties. 
 I know something of all three — the man's, 
 the woman's, and the child's, for all three have 
 told me. In the end, it is to the child my 
 heart goes out, the child that came into this 
 world through no will of its own, for whom and 
 to whom father and mother are responsible. 
 
212 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 It is this effect on the child that, in the long 
 run, tells sociologically ; for the child's im- 
 pressions are "more lasting than bronze" 
 
 3- 
 
 Childhood's opportunity is the guaranty of 
 good citizenship. Citizenship in its highest 
 interpretation is the consciousness of power to 
 promote and the will to promote the welfare of 
 all. And the welfare of all, considered not as 
 an abstract phrase but as a living possibility, 
 rests first, last, and always on the welfare of 
 the child as the unit of the race. 
 
 Just in proportion to my tidal lowness of 
 mind when I am aware of the tendency to dis- 
 solution of family ties and consequent dep- 
 rivation of the child of its natural right, am 
 I rejoiced, refreshed in spirit and strengthened 
 in faith when I see a powerful tendency apparent 
 to champion first and foremost the cause of 
 the child. All child-labor laws, — although those 
 at present are inadequate and many times a 
 misfit, — all attempts to win the child from the 
 lure of the streets at night, all settlement ex- 
 
LOW TIDES 213 
 
 periments that include children, all the wonderful 
 work of the Barnardo Homes, all legislation of 
 whatever kind that has for the end in view 
 the giving to childhood its opportunity, are 
 manifestations of this tendency. It gives one 
 courage ; for behind any marked world-wide 
 tendency there is a living truth as motive power. 
 Whenever a home is provided for a child, 
 there we find this tendency working along lines 
 that need be subject to no deviation, no ex- 
 perimentation, no fluctuation of basis. The 
 child, in such case, has come into his own. 
 
 4- 
 
 I must have been about eight years old when 
 I went with my father and mother — they not 
 caring to leave me at home that evening with 
 a new maid — to a large hall where were gathered 
 many hundreds of the best citizens, men and 
 women of the city, to hear something of child- 
 life in the slums of New York and its contribu- 
 tion to humanity. 
 
 I remember nothing of what was said by the 
 various speakers on the platform. I was ab- 
 
214 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 sorbed, alive, and wide awake, although it 
 was long past bedtime, in watching the one, 
 to me, existing fact in that hall : the little 
 children, boys and girls, ranged on a low bench 
 behind the speakers. 
 
 Just what these children were, who they were, 
 whence they came, whither they were bound, 
 occupied all my thoughts. My father whispered 
 to me, when I questioned him, that they were 
 orphans. As a matter of fact they were waifs 
 of the slums, children without parents, without 
 homes and knowing nothing of either, rescued 
 from their surroundings and awaiting — what ? 
 
 At the close of the addresses, during which I 
 was kept wide awake watching the children 
 two or three of whom were sleepy, my young 
 eyes saw a marvellous sight ; I know now that it 
 was the kingdom of heaven a-making on this 
 earth. The gentleman who had the children 
 in charge came forward to the front of the 
 platform and holding up a little girl in his arms, 
 in a silence I shall always, paradoxically, hear, 
 asked if there were any in that audience who 
 would take that child for their own. 
 
LOW TIDES 2is 
 
 In that silence which impressed me, which I 
 can hear now, I looked up into my father's 
 face and saw the tears rolling down his cheek. 
 I heard a sob from some one behind us ; then 
 a man and woman rose and came down the 
 main aisle, the man with arms outstretched. 
 He took that child to be his and hers hence- 
 forth. 
 
 - Again and again in that profound silence 
 this little scene in the great Life-Drama was 
 enacted before my eyes, until all those children 
 were provided with what alone could nourish 
 their starved affections — a home. 
 
 Remembering this, it happens now that when 
 I know of a man and woman who, childless, 
 take unto themselves as their own one such waif, 
 realizing the effort, the labor, the watchful care 
 necessitated for body and soul, the many sacri- 
 fices of time and inclination, sometimes of per- 
 sonal comfort entailed, a high tide of faith and 
 hope floods heart and soul because I realize 
 I am witnessing now, as years ago, something 
 of the kingdom of heaven a-making on this 
 earth. 
 
216 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 5. 
 
 But when I see the flotsam of humanity left 
 stranded, broken, fainting, despairing on the 
 bared flats of life, I feel in my heart the ebb of 
 hope, joy, enthusiasm — sometimes even of 
 faith. 
 
 I was once in the presence of seven hundred 
 criminals in the State Prison at Charlestown — 
 bolted in with them and their custodians in the 
 assembly hall for an hour of "Thanksgiving" 
 services. Perhaps I need not add that to me 
 that hour seemed a travesty on "thanksgiving" 
 of any kind. 
 
 The purlieus of Edinburgh and Leith are not 
 unknown to me — worse than what White- 
 chapel used to be, so a Londoner who knew both 
 assured me. I went out in search of the histori- 
 cal-picturesque, and found — the Unbelievable. 
 
 On our second visit to Edinburgh we took 
 lodgings. Our landlady was a widow. A few 
 weeks before our arrival she had lost through 
 burglary a fine old watch which was her hus- 
 band's. It had been traced to a pawnbroker's 
 
LOW TIDES 217 
 
 shop in Leith. She asked me if I would like to 
 go with her to see that seaport. She was a 
 most interesting woman and worked among the 
 wretched and outcast in the closes and wynds 
 of the Cowgate and High Street. I knew I 
 should have a pleasant and instructive hour or 
 two in her company, and was glad to accept 
 the invitation. I was young, about twenty- 
 three, and the tide of joy and hope and enthu- 
 siasm was at its height. 
 
 I remember we found ourselves in Leith Walk 
 — a seaport slum. She led the way into a 
 narrow close; from there into a dark, small 
 wynd into which it seemed the sun could 
 never penetrate except in mid-summer. We 
 climbed a dark, narrow, winding, stone stair 
 to a small pawnshop; the dimensions must 
 have been something like six feet by eight ex- 
 clusive of the counter. I have seen the Ghetto 
 in Frankfurt and its accumulations of ap- 
 parent generations of dirt, refuse, and cast- 
 off clothing; but that was cleanly, fresh-aired 
 in comparison with this stifling den. 
 
 As I stood by the counter waiting for my land- 
 
218 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 lady to redeem the watch, a woman came in 
 from the stairway and stood beside me. I 
 suppose it was a woman. She had on a soiled 
 chemise and a ragged skirt and about her naked 
 shoulders an old shawl. Dissipation of all kinds 
 had rendered her features almost unrecognizable 
 as a woman's — coarsened, inflamed, discolored 
 them. She might have been thirty-five. Then 
 and there, as she stood close beside me, she 
 pawned to an attendant, who made his appear- 
 ance from behind an old faded curtain strung 
 behind the counter, the chemise from off her 
 back — and for a mere pittance. 
 
 The horror of that transaction, opening my 
 eyes to bottomless depths of degradation of 
 the human, produced for a time an ebb tide of 
 all hope and faith. 
 
 But now I know that that which stood beside 
 me that August morning in the stifling pawnshop 
 in the Leith wynd was but the broken machine, 
 a wreck of the human that should be the ex- 
 pression of the divine. I have come into the 
 knowledge that the soul of that woman was some- 
 thing apart from that wretched body — that 
 
LOW TIDES 219 
 
 in touching her, as I stood beside her at that 
 counter, I no more touched her soul than the 
 utter abandonment of that body to debauch 
 had touched it. This faith sustains me now. 
 I have had many such unexpected object 
 lessons, and I have learned them all the more 
 thoroughly because I have been unprepared 
 for what I was to learn. There was never a 
 preparatory " slumming" in my life as an ave- 
 nue of approach to any work of philanthropy. 
 I have come upon facts that showed themselves 
 to me stark naked — with not so much as a 
 wisp of philanthropy, of sociology, of civic 
 work, to hide their nakedness in my conception 
 of them. 
 
 6. 
 
 In Chicago during the winter of 1 893-1 894, 
 I saw hundreds of men lined up in deep snow and 
 biting wind each waiting his turn for the work 
 that should keep him and his alive. 
 
 From personal knowledge I know what a 
 great work was accomplished that winter in 
 just keeping human beings from freezing, from 
 starvation. Through a Captain of the Salva- 
 
220 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 tion Army I kept in touch with a corner of 
 "Hell's Acre". Those who knew Chicago at 
 that time will recognize the place as a portion 
 of Polk Street. In a small room in that vicinity- 
 men, irrespective of criminal record, were fed — 
 seventeen of them at a time — but, alas, not 
 often enough ! 
 
 In that same winter, an acquaintance and I 
 were coming homewards down the Lake Shore 
 Drive from a reception at a mansion facing the 
 lake. It was about six. The heavy wind was off 
 shore and the ice-floes in the lake advanced grind- 
 ing against the sea-wall only to recede after each 
 advance a little farther from it. The snow was 
 drifted two feet deep against the coping. 
 
 Apparently we were the only ones on the 
 Drive. We were hurrying on, our faces pressed 
 into our muffs on account of the biting wind, 
 when suddenly there came from over that 
 waste of ice-floe and water a faint, strange cry. 
 We stopped ; listened. That same cry was 
 repeated, but louder, nearer: "Help — help!" 
 That in its hoarseness it was scarcely humanly 
 articulate need not be emphasized. 
 
LOW TIDES 221 
 
 We ran across to the coping; leaned to look 
 out on the heaving waters held down by the 
 ice-floes. We could see the head of a man in 
 the lake perhaps thirty feet from the coping. 
 His hands were clinging to a small floe. 
 
 '"I'll run back to the house for help," said 
 my companion. I remained to try to "keep up 
 his courage". 
 
 Easily said, but with what ? I tried my 
 puny strength on one of the park seats ; it 
 was riveted. There was nothing in sight of 
 any avail. I bethought me of the long trailing 
 skirt of my reception gown. It was off and 
 over the coping before the thought had wholly 
 formulated itself. In that eighteen feet depth 
 of coping and wall every stone was laid so 
 perfectly that on all that surface not a crack 
 was left wherein a man might insert his finger 
 nails. That thought sickened me. In that 
 intensified moment of living I saw every 
 detail connected with the surroundings. There 
 was nothing ponderable by which I might en- 
 courage. 
 
 In the powerful rays of the nearby arc-light, 
 
222 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 I knew the long trailing skirt could be seen by 
 that man. "Hold on," I cried, "hold on, 
 help is coming." Whether it would get there in 
 time to save I could not know, but still I cried, 
 "Hold on!" 
 
 How many times I encouraged against all 
 hope I do not know, for in a moment, some 
 men — thirteen of them — came running with 
 rope and stepladder from the laundry ; they were 
 bareheaded, in their dress suits — straight from 
 the reception, to which my companion had 
 gone for help, to the rescue. 
 
 It was quick, hard work — a rope, the step- 
 ladder at the end, and both lowered over the 
 coping with a man on the lower step and another 
 on the upper, a crunch of ice — a hand over 
 hand — a pulling all together and the man, be- 
 numbed, exhausted, half frozen," was saved. 
 
 He was a carpenter; a Swede. Want of 
 work ; a three months' fruitless search ; three 
 mouths to feed and nothing with which to feed 
 them; then despair — and the lake. 
 
 That he was deserting he knew when he flung 
 himself over the coping, and he cried out in 
 
LOW TIDES 223 
 
 hope to be saved and make good, somehow, 
 to the children he had left. He was given work. 
 
 Since then, when men and women, sitting in 
 their comfortable homes, evolve sporadic econom- 
 ical theories and attempt to promulgate them, 
 when the periodical philanthropic frenzies are 
 in evidence — they seem to me so empty, so 
 ineffective over against the living fact : — 
 
 The man wanted work ; was willing to work ; 
 anxious for work — and he could obtain 
 none. 
 
 Our present system of economics finds itself 
 in an impasse when confronted with this fact. 
 When I think of this I experience a dead low 
 politico-economic tide. 
 
 I have wished many times that the contrast 
 that night had not been quite so great, so sharp, 
 that it had not been bitten into my memory as 
 with an acid. For since then, it has happened 
 that at a reception, in the midst of the glitter, 
 the gayety, the frothy nothings, the frou-frou 
 of rich robes, the empty laughter, the passing 
 complaisance of men and women, I have heard 
 an echo of that night and, hearing it, I have 
 
224 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 gone out quietly and very early — and no one 
 has been the wiser for my going. 
 
 7- 
 
 I read recently Alfred Noyes' "The Wine- 
 press" — an epic of War, the monster, a cross 
 of the eight-armed octopus of Greed and hydra- 
 headed Lust, enlived and engorged by human 
 blood. 
 
 The world shrank and shrivelled as I read. 
 It seemed but a day's journey to that battle- 
 field, for a monster arm of that war-octopus 
 had extended, relentlessly indrawing, across 
 a continent, across an ocean, and grasped a 
 human life on this peaceful island four thousand 
 miles distant. 
 
 There is a small fruit shop on the main street 
 kept by Greeks. I have traded there and al- 
 ways with the one I called the "little Greek". 
 It fed a certain vein of historical romance in 
 me to buy my figs, dates, and various fruits 
 from one who had trodden that soil which has 
 yielded such rich satisfaction of enjoyment to 
 mankind for the past twenty-five hundred years, 
 
LOW TIDES 225 
 
 from Homer and Sophocles, Phidias and Praxit- 
 eles to the small Corinthian grapes with which, 
 as currants, to this day I may enrich my pound 
 cake. 
 
 The "little Greek" was requisitioned; he 
 went home to fight as commanded. After the 
 first war there was news of him and the expecta- 
 tion of an early return to his island home. 
 With the second war of the former allies there 
 was silence. . . . 
 
 There is still silence. 
 
 Now there is ebb tide in my heart at the 
 thought, and Alfred Noyes' "Winepress" is 
 very real to me ; for I hear some of its drippings 
 when I enter the fruit shop and no longer find 
 the "little Greek" of whom I may purchase 
 the baskets of grapes exposed for sale. 
 
 8. 
 Fortunately my low tides are not regulated 
 wholly by any system of political economy. I 
 have various lesser tides that are disheartening 
 at times. The high cost of living, for instance. 
 I went out a year ago last autumn with one 
 
226 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 dollar in my purse. I bought with those 
 hundred cents one pound of butter, one dozen 
 eggs, and two apples. This year for the same 
 sum I should be minus the apples ! 
 
 Then there is a real neap tide when I look at 
 women in their present dress. It is fortunate 
 for us all, I suppose, that we never can see 
 ourselves with our own eyes. Why do women 
 wish to make themselves look positively ugly ? 
 In the pictures of another generation when 
 hoops prevailed, there is to be seen an orderly 
 doing up of the hair at least ; a decent appre- 
 ciation of the fact that a woman has a waist in 
 a good location, and a pretty foot well shod at a 
 proper distance beneath those voluminous petti- 
 coats. But now ! 
 
 9- 
 
 I was thinking the other day how truly con- 
 sistent we are as a nation in this matter of 
 dress. I had taken out a coin — rare with me — 
 a twenty-dollar gold piece, and was examining 
 the die after a design of Saint-Gaudens. 
 
 "And is this my country's symbol ?" I said 
 to myself : " is this menad with all the appear- 
 
LOW TIDES 227 
 
 ance of split, diaphanous skirt, high waist, 
 floppy blouse effect and wild streaming hair 
 the symbol of ' liberty* and seal of approval 
 to our present female apparel ? " For, in truth, 
 we seem to copy this costume and woman of 
 Saint-Gaudens designing very closely — alack ! 
 
 Compare this with the "Wingless Victory " of 
 the Greeks. Compare it with an exquisite 
 head of Demeter, a plaster cast of which I 
 possess ; it was made from one of the few mar- 
 vellous cuttings of gems — in intaglio — in the 
 Berlin Museum. Why can we not have as fine 
 for our own mintage ? 
 
 Taking out another coin, I made a close 
 examination of that; it induced one of my 
 periodical low art-tides. 
 
 It is a ten-dollar gold piece recently minted. 
 I find on it the Indian's head with war bonnet. 
 Across the band of the bonnet over the forehead 
 is the word "Liberty" in relief. 
 
 Liberty ? How much liberty have the Indians 
 as a race received from us as a nation ? How 
 much liberty have they had to pursue their 
 own ways of life since the coming of the white 
 
228 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 man ? Is it liberty to be moved, at the will of 
 a Power, from South to North, from North to 
 South, from East to West ? 
 
 I have come late to the reading of a most 
 remarkable work : "The Indians' Book", by 
 Miss Curtis. It is both an historical docu- 
 ment and a racial monument. It is in truth 
 the Indians' book — their Bible. In it we 
 may read in their own words the story of their 
 wanderings, — we need not look to Egypt for 
 an exodus, — their endurance, their attitude 
 over against their conquerors, their hopes, their 
 songs, — the expression of their ideals, — their 
 conception of the fructifying forces of life and 
 their intense religious life. It is truly the 
 Indians' "scriptures". I even find in their 
 self-colored drawings the ancient "blue and 
 purple and scarlet" of the dwellers in another 
 wilderness. 
 
 Read this wonderful book, and when next 
 you look at a gold "eagle", that comes into your 
 hands fresh from the mint, draw your own con- 
 clusions in regard to our want of a national 
 sense of proportion in art ! Liberty ? The 
 
LOW TIDES 229 
 
 Indian has not known it for nearly three 
 centuries. 
 
 No, liberty is not symbolized by our placing 
 the word on an Indian's war bonnet. Neither 
 is liberty the license of the menad. It is the 
 restraint of controlled intelligence; and when 
 we get controlled intelligence working in clay, 
 marble, bronze, in painting and literature, we 
 get true art. Art to be art must have a basis of 
 truth ; it cannot be founded on a mockery of 
 truth. If it be attempted, the result may be 
 artistry, but never art. 
 
 It would seem a thing of slight importance 
 — this of the symbols on our national coinage ; 
 but looked at closely it subjects us to criticism. 
 The Bastile on a coin of the French Republic 
 would be as appropriate for a symbol of liberty, 
 as the designs on our present gold mintage. 
 
 10. 
 
 I look at Rodin's "The Thinker", and ask 
 myself: "Is this the plastic expression of my 
 generation ? " At Whistler's charming color- 
 schemes and ask again : "Is this an expression 
 
230 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 in painting of certain tendencies of my genera- 
 tion ? Where in both are evidences of the deep 
 sea soundings ? " 
 
 This remembrance of Rodin calls to mind 
 Mr. Shaw whose bust he has made ; and Mr. 
 Shaw reminds me of Galsworthy, and Gals- 
 worthy of Wells, and Wells of Bennett — and 
 all combined bring to remembrance the Henry 
 James of the later period, Nietzsche, d'Annun- 
 zio, Strindberg, Post-Impressionist, Symbolist, 
 Futurist, Cubist — 
 
 Dear me ! I find I am getting very low in my 
 mind. It is really dead low tide ; the ebb has laid 
 bare the rips and flats. But just this, contrary 
 to what one might expect, gives me a feeling of 
 buoyancy — for I know it will soon turn ! 
 
XVI 
 
 HIGH TIDES 
 
 I. 
 
 It is high tide as I look from the window by 
 which I am writing. The flats are covered ; 
 storm clouds are drifting over the harbor; the 
 air is soft ; the wind is from the southwest. 
 Cows are grazing in a marshy meadow below 
 the bank. Some ducks are quacking with a 
 truly Hans Andersen liveliness. Now and then 
 I hear the scream of a gull — inland, I think, 
 for these scavengers prefer a half tide. 
 
 I feel something of a scavenger myself after 
 rescuing the flotsam of all those low tides of 
 memories. 
 
 2. 
 
 With a thankful heart I dare assert that, 
 temperamentally, I am built on what may be 
 called high tide lines. This is no boast of an 
 egoist, nor can it be a matter of personal vain- 
 glory. It is a matter of inheritance ; I was born 
 
 231 
 
232 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 so, and in the making of myself I was mot a 
 factor. 
 
 I like all that is fresh, wholesome, clean, 
 whether of mind or matter. I adore courage 
 whether moral or physical. I love honesty of 
 purpose, purse, and word. I hate meanness ; 
 despise cowardness ; loathe underhandedness 
 — which statement is by no means to be inter- 
 preted that I have not been guilty of petty 
 meannesses, that I am not cowardly, at times, 
 in the cause of truth. 
 
 3- 
 
 People say : "It is a dull day." 
 
 Now it never occurs to me that a day in which 
 I can breathe, eat, work, enjoy, — and there is 
 always something to enjoy if only the gray, 
 drifting slant of rain past the windows (the 
 Japanese make so much of that in their art) — 
 is "dull". This is a matter of temperament on 
 which has been engrafted a habit of finding 
 pleasure in little things. 
 
 I find exactly as much to enjoy in the great 
 market in Washington, for instance, as in the 
 
HIGH TIDES 233 
 
 best theatre in New York. David Warfield's 
 "Music Master" gives me pure delight of a 
 certain kind. Some street-sweepers I was 
 watching one day in Hanover, Germany, sud- 
 denly dropping their brooms and dancing to 
 the merry tune of a passing itinerant musician 
 gave me just as much of another kind. 
 
 A luncheon in the Senate lunch-room at the 
 Capitol was a delightful experience because I 
 broke bread with both "stand-patters" and 
 progressives and there was good masculine talk, 
 well worth attention, on interesting, national 
 subjects. None the less interesting and enter- 
 taining was a luncheon miraculously provided 
 for an acquaintance and myself in a far away 
 forsaken village in our North Country, on the 
 border line between New Hampshire and Ver- 
 mont. 
 
 4- 
 
 I shall never forget that day ! We found our- 
 selves stranded, so far as train connections 
 were concerned, for six hours in as forsaken and 
 depressing a place as ever has come within my 
 travelling experience. 
 
234 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 For once, I confess, things looked indeed 
 "dull". It was an intensely hot, humid Sep- 
 tember day. The clouds were low, threatening 
 rain and blanketing an already over-heated 
 earth. It was a task to draw a full breath. 
 
 To be sure there was the station, but it was 
 no refuge — dark, hot, uncleanly, it was filled 
 with flies that "sensing" rain foregathered by 
 thousands in the waiting-room. There was 
 nothing up the street but tracks, dust, and a 
 building called a "town hall" on which was the 
 advertisement of a "show". These are the two 
 hall marks of a North Country village. 
 
 Down the street there was a vulgarly new, 
 staring, red brick block, and farther along on 
 the other side among grass and weeds was a 
 lunch-wagon. Once it must have been white; 
 now it was the acme of dingy, muddy, grimy, 
 streaked forlornity. It was labelled in huge 
 letters : White House Cafe ! 
 
 And seeing that we smiled for the first time 
 since our arrival and walked on an eighth of a 
 mile to a toll bridge. I felt positively mediaeval 
 when I paid one cent to cross it and another to 
 
HIGH TIDES 235 
 
 return from a vista of long, forsaken road, 
 and a few trees and bushes powdered ash color 
 with dust. It is needless to say that we did not 
 patronize the "White House Cafe". We were 
 hungry, tired, and a bit depressed when we 
 returned to the station and asked the ticket 
 agent if there were a place where we could 
 get something to eat ; both of us were too 
 cowardly to say "luncheon" in that special 
 environment. 
 
 "To be sure," he said right cheerily; "just 
 across the road in that block is a cellar. They 
 opened a restaurant there a few days ago." 
 
 "Is it good ?" I asked. 
 
 "Can't be beat in the state of New Hamp- 
 shire," he affirmed with such conviction that we 
 smiled for the second time; "but", he added, 
 "'t'ain't open till noon." 
 
 We thanked him and went out on the railed 
 platform for air. As we leaned on the railing, 
 wondering just at that moment what life was 
 really for, we heard the sudden blare of trumpet 
 and beat of drum, and down the street from 
 the town hall came a fine-looking band of men 
 
236 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 gorgeous in corded sombrero, sheepskin "chaps", 
 red and yellow neckerchiefs — the Texas Rang- 
 ers. 
 
 £* They made a brave show ! Our spirits rose. 
 Halting in front of the station platform they 
 played one popular tune after the other, fortis- 
 simo, agitando, accelerando furioso, — French 
 horns, trombone, clarinet, and drum, — until 
 we thought some vein must burst. Their 
 cheeks were blown poppy red, their hands red, 
 their eyes fixed and protruding. Never, never 
 was musical notation written for such a pace ! 
 Never had such inspiriting music filled my ears 
 and my soul with such peculiar joy ! Strauss 
 and his "Till Eulenspiegel " are mere by-prod- 
 ucts, in comparison, for noise and hearty 
 resonance. 
 
 How we enjoyed it ! How we applauded ! 
 How we regretted that we could not stay over 
 for the "show" ! How the few children shouted 
 with delight and the one old horse attached to a 
 lone farmer's wagon on the outside of the ring 
 cavorted and snorted to the tune of the "Wash- 
 ington March " ! 
 
HIGH TIDES 237 
 
 Marine Band ? Senate lunch-room and five 
 senatorial courses ? They never yielded quite 
 the enjoyment of those Texas Rangers, and here 
 is my public acknowledgment for the pleasure 
 they gave me. 
 
 At twelve, promptly, we went down the eight 
 steep steps into the "cellar" — and what did we 
 find ? A full-fledged Rathskeller among the 
 hills of our North Country ! It was clean, 
 freshly painted in white and pale olive green. 
 A white shelf around the entire room was filled 
 with cheap steins of every species, stuffed 
 squirrels, mugs of bright flowers. On the painted 
 walls were some fairly good pictures — one of 
 Venice and the Piazzetta ! In addition there 
 were clean tables, clean lunch-counter, clean 
 dishes, a clean, smiling waitress — pretty too. 
 I found on the "dinner-card" egg-sandwiches. 
 
 "The last touch of a perfected civilization," 
 I said to myself as I ordered two, the other pro- 
 vision of hot pork and "fixings" not being to 
 my taste in that temperature. 
 
 When they came I found to my amazement 
 that the hill-country Rathskeller idea of an egg- 
 
238 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 sandwich was an egg fried hard in pork fat 
 and placed hot between two huge slices of but- 
 tered bread ! 
 
 The last aesthetic touch to our pleasant sur- 
 roundings was given by the entrance of the 
 Texas Rangers who, divested of all their para- 
 phernalia, in becoming street dress, brown from 
 exposure to sun and wind, healthy with fresh 
 air, dark eyed, dark haired, and well mannered, 
 filled the three remaining vacant tables in this 
 foreign graft of a Rathskeller. 
 
 This experience is one of my high tides on the 
 border of a state that has no coast line. 
 
 5- 
 
 And then there are such spring tides of ap- 
 preciative recognition ! All of us must at some 
 time experience them : recognition of what is 
 best in painting, sculpture, literature, and, in 
 consequence, rejoicing that some of the most 
 wonderful thought of this great, perplexing 
 humanity of ours may find its ablest interpreta- 
 tion through genius. 
 
 Going over in my mind the other day the 
 
HIGH TIDES 239 
 
 examples of plastic art that have most influenced 
 me, I was surprised to find how few they are. 
 Our own country has two masterpieces through 
 one of its sons, born an alien, and both belong to 
 the world that genius enriches. 
 
 6. 
 
 Time and again when I was living in Chicago, 
 I walked to the entrance of Lincoln Park and 
 stood before that marvellous statue of Abraham 
 Lincoln — so strong, tender, hopeful, brave. 
 There is a prayer on those firm lips. He is 
 looking toward the South and in his eyes there 
 is the keen appreciation of the seer who reads 
 the years and bids mankind further dare and do ! 
 
 Surely Saint-Gaudens fixed here in bronze 
 for the enlightenment of future generations the 
 meaning of "The hour — the man", as no one 
 else has ever done. 
 
 Perhaps his Adams statue in Rock Creek 
 Cemetery, in Washington, may be said to be 
 one of the very few masterpieces in sculpture 
 that the world has produced for the last three 
 hundred years. It belongs to the world, for it 
 
240 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 embodies the deepest emotion, and the greatest 
 unanswered thought of the human race : the 
 grief of loss over against the want of the absolute 
 assurance of immortality. 
 
 On a wonderful April day a few years ago, 
 I entered the natural, arbor-like enclosure 
 formed by magnolias and one ancient, over- 
 shadowing, southern pine, and sitting down 
 opposite this statue lived with it for half an hour. 
 
 The natural setting is perfect. A quiet 
 prevailed that reminded me of Saint John's 
 expression: "There was silence in heaven for 
 about the space of half an hour." The sun- 
 light falling through the interstices of the foliage 
 brought out the exquisite ivory disks of the 
 magnolia blooms and played about the head 
 of the statue. The breeze stirring the branches 
 of the pine shifted the shadows in its mantle. 
 
 The Form sits alone with Grief. It is mantled 
 from head to foot with despair; the shoul- 
 ders are slack, sorrow-weighted. Beneath the 
 swollen, drooping lids the tears have furrowed 
 deep their dry-run courses. The lips are com- 
 pressed, for theirs is silent speech. 
 
HIGH TIDES 241 
 
 There has been nothing like this since Michael 
 Angelo. 
 
 7- 
 
 In the Duomo of Florence there is an absence 
 of ornamentation which is refreshing to eyes 
 that throughout Italy and France have been 
 accustomed to overelaboration of detail. I 
 used to go in there frequently of a morning when 
 on my way to the Mercato Vecchio which I 
 fairly haunted during the winter we lived in the 
 city of Saint Mary of the Flowers. 
 
 As one enters from the brilliant sunshine, 
 the eye has to accustom itself to the darkness ; 
 then follows the relief of the wide-spaced, unen- 
 cumbered nave. Walking farther on towards 
 the apse one comes suddenly — or did then, I 
 do not know if it be there now — on a marvel- 
 lous group, an unfinished Pieta by Michael 
 Angelo — and, seeing that, one sees little else 
 in the cathedral even if one visit it frequently. 
 
 The mother leans over her son who lies 
 partly across her knees. In that face we see 
 the soul of a mother in anguish. The anguish 
 is human, the Son is human, the mother is 
 
242 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 human — and the work makes its appeal to 
 humans. 
 
 To this group I owe much enlightenment 
 as to the "soul of mothers". 
 
 8. 
 
 There are two other mothers in art with whom 
 I associate this unfinished work of Michael 
 Angelo's ; we bridge three centuries to find them. 
 
 One may be seen in that group by Constantin 
 Meunier, "Le Grisou" (Firedamp), in Brussels. 
 Here, also, the mother is leaning above her son, 
 the dead miner. It is a plastic expression of the 
 almost daily tragedy that goes on "under the 
 crust" in this age of a monster Industrialism. 
 
 Looking into that mother's face I feel her 
 grief to be a factor of the elemental human. 
 So have other mothers looked since maternity 
 knew itself for motherhood — felt, sorrowed 
 over the man child born to a short toiling struggle 
 and early death. She is the plastic embodiment 
 of motherhood bereft of hope of immortality 
 through offspring. "She expresses all the com- 
 passion of one who has borne and suffered, and 
 
HIGH TIDES 243 
 
 who watches, with no word left, the wrecking 
 of a life and the nothingness of hope and youth." 
 
 Here also I find a certain speech of silence to 
 be interpreted by a future generation. 
 
 The other is a myth-mother. In the Athe- 
 naeum in Helsingfors hangs a painting by Axel 
 Gallen — " Lemminkainen's Mother " — from 
 the Finnish epic of the Kalevala. 
 
 I have seen only the photographic reproduc- 
 tion ; even in that its emotional appeal is almost 
 overpowering. She, too, sits beside the dead 
 body of her son, resting a hand on the lifeless 
 form. Her face is raised in anguished protest 
 against such intensity of suffering, yet it is 
 patient with the knowledge that she must bear 
 the Inevitable. That face is old, lined, worn, 
 the corners of the mouth are drooping and 
 slightly drawn. The appeal in those old, dry 
 eyes is more heart-rending than the reddened, 
 tear-swollen lids of youth, for her heart knows 
 the flinty ways of life and her sad eyes may not 
 blink the glaring fact that death pays no heed to 
 the order of primogeniture. 
 
 These two sculptured forms and faces, and 
 
244 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 the one painting by Axel Gallen, permit us to see 
 deeply into the mother-soul when the light of 
 that soul is eclipsed by the death of what is 
 very bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh and, 
 ofttimes, spirit of her spirit. I have felt the in- 
 fluence of all three. 
 
 9- 
 
 There must be a drop of pagan blood in my 
 veins for, apart from these four great sculp- 
 tures that have influenced and continue to 
 influence me, I am most indebted for an under- 
 standing of how plastic art may interpret life 
 to the wonderful sculptures from the altar of 
 Pergamos. They are in Berlin. 
 
 Through them I understand something of 
 the beginning of things on this earth : the 
 titanic warring of ideals and elemental earth 
 forces. These great forms, — sometimes the 
 relief is ten inches in depth, — embody in my 
 thought of them the present struggle of men, 
 the half-gods, for the mastery of natural 
 forces ; for the conquering of the air, the sea, the 
 earth, the deadly bacillus — their attempt to 
 overcome even death. 
 
HIGH TIDES 245 
 
 One of Rodin's nudes beside any one of these 
 living, struggling, wrestling, sculptured forms 
 would show the inadequacy of his attempt to 
 voice our generation. His "Thinker", for in- 
 stance, placed beside a warring Titan would 
 show merely as a poseur; whereas Meunier's 
 "Puddler" belongs in their midst, is one of 
 them ; is something of each faction — god and 
 earth-born — as are the men who "overcome" 
 in mine or quarry, in the earth, on the sea, in 
 the air. 
 
 What Rodin desires to express in the 
 "Thinker" is, doubtless, the awakening of 
 thought in Mankind concerning the why and 
 wherefore of existence on this earth that must 
 be tilled and worked by man to produce him and 
 sustain him. But the "Puddler" of Meunier 
 thinks as he pants heavily with open mouth, 
 resting from the horrible strain of his toil. 
 Rodin's man seems to say, "I am, therefore I 
 think"; Meunier's, "I work, therein I show 
 myself a thinking man." In the latter's 
 masterpieces we may test the worth of the Age 
 of Industrialism. 
 
246 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 IO. 
 And what high tides of rejoicing in heart and 
 mind and soul when I enumerate all the good 
 that has been bestowed on the millions of our 
 race, including my own small millionth, through 
 John Bunyan, Israels, Hauptmann, Lessing, 
 Goethe, Shakespeare, Carlyle, and Ruskin, 
 Burne- Jones, Meunier, Balzac, Dickens, — yes, 
 and Rudyard Kipling and Finley Peter Dunne 
 (our inimitable philosopher, Mr. Dooley) and 
 Phillips Brooks and Jane Addams and Dr. 
 Barnardo and the men of science — but I need 
 another book to enumerate all of those who have 
 blessed, are blessing, and will continue to bless 
 us and future generations. The good works 
 " through all, in all, onward through all ". 
 
 ii. 
 
 But there are two flood tides which, thank 
 God, never ebb : the tide of love and the tide of 
 friendship. I mean true love and true friend- 
 ship. They cannot ebb by their very nature, 
 for they are of the essence of divinity and the 
 primal source is always filling to the divine level. 
 
HIGH TIDES 247 
 
 If we may count our true friends on the two 
 fingers of our right hand — yes, on one — we 
 may dare to say we have known God. If once 
 during a lifetime, whether long or short, we 
 may assert that we have known the meaning 
 of true love, we may consider ourselves of the 
 Immortals. 
 
 12. 
 
 January 26, 1914. 
 
 It is sunset as I write. The tide is on the 
 flood. Across the deep-blue harbor waters, 
 roughened in the wind, the shores and moors 
 of Monomoy, Shimmo, Pocamo curve to 
 Wauwinet and the "haulover" — a crescent of 
 amethyst. I have seen this light at sunset on 
 the hills of Fiesole near Florence, but in no 
 other place until I found it here. The sky 
 above is pale rose ; a line of clear, blue-green 
 separates it from the amethystine moors. In 
 the foreground the little creeks in the marshy 
 brown meadow gleam faintly blue. A reach of 
 quiet water in the lee of the old wharf is touched 
 with deep rose. 
 
 The shadows are falling on the black roofs, 
 
248 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 the great, gray chimneys, the weather-worn 
 fishermen's huts on the shore. The rose above 
 is deepening, the blue beneath darkening. The 
 waters are alive and the wind is freshening. 
 
 I like this high tide ; but I am thankful just 
 for to-night that the dusk is falling and I may 
 not see its ebb. 
 
XVII 
 
 SEARCHLIGHTS 
 
 I. 
 
 My grandmother used to say : " I was born a 
 hundred years too soon." 
 
 That was her one great regret, so eager was 
 her desire to know more of her country's mar- 
 vellous development, and the progress in inven- 
 tion that had its inception in her day. I wonder 
 if the regret would be so keen if she were living 
 in this century ? I doubt it ; yet, at times, I 
 find myself wishing I might be permitted to 
 turn a powerful twentieth century searchlight 
 on the conditions of our race a hundred years 
 from now. I should like to be able to "pick 
 up" at least the buoys. 
 
 2. 
 Here in our own waters the searchlight is 
 used for excessively dark nights and in fog. 
 
 249 
 
250 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 At times the fog is so thick ! Impenetrable 
 to sight, baffling as to course, confusing as to 
 sound, disheartening to all — and the search- 
 light is practically useless. 
 
 3- 
 
 The Age has not been quite fair with my 
 generation ; we have been experimented with 
 and upon like no other since recorded history. 
 That we have stood the pressure as we have 
 makes for faith in our vitality as a race and 
 warrants the assumption that spiritually we 
 are "something more than we seem". The 
 experiments are of such a varied nature and 
 along so many lines ! They have come so thick 
 and fast, like a sudden fog settling upon sea 
 and land and blotting out direction, beacons, 
 signposts, refuge, at one and the same time. 
 One becomes confused, dazed in such an environ- 
 ment where sight and hearing are indeterminate. 
 
 I permit myself to use the first person, for 
 personal experience is apt to be more convincing 
 and interesting than the statistical experi- 
 mentation of a generation. 
 
SEARCHLIGHTS 251 
 
 I have been classed with rabbits, guinea pigs, 
 and monkeys. They have been experimented 
 on for my sake that every deadly bacillus might 
 be examined, every germ defined, every serum 
 produced that can be marshalled to fight death 
 on the one hand by producing germicide on the 
 other. I am labelled scientifically like a tube 
 of culture germs. I am classed with peas and 
 beans and am subject to the Mendelian laws 
 of heredity because they are subject to that law. 
 I am said to be a descendant of simian ancestry 
 because Darwin has lived to use that wonderful 
 brain for the benefit and enlightenment of the 
 race. 
 
 No longer may I have any Bible, as I have 
 always understood that word, because that 
 book has been criticized, re-written, put under 
 the exhaust air-pump glass of science, and 
 declared to be a delusion and a snare. I may 
 have no God because certain men, measuring 
 the universe with their tape-measure of wisdom 
 and investigation, decide that I have worshipped 
 merely an ideal. Mr. William James tried to 
 substitute "pragmatism" and failed. He led 
 
252 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 men and women to the crossroads and said, 
 "This way", — but could not say "to what". 
 Love is a matter of electricity; life enlived 
 matter. The bounds of the universe are known. 
 Haeckel conjugates matter throughout the entire 
 universe and nothing but matter : I am matter, 
 thou art matter, he, she, or it is matter. To 
 conjugate otherwise is another delusion and 
 snare. 
 
 Submarines make acquaintance with the fast- 
 diminishing whale and like that mammal come 
 up to the surface to breathe. Aeroplanes defy 
 all known laws of aerostatics and prove that 
 there is no other element to conquer. Machines 
 are made so delicately adjusted that they can 
 pick up a needle or remove a block of granite. 
 The North and South Poles are labelled — 
 United States and Norway ; soon we shall be 
 able to whisper by wireless telephony from one 
 to the other ; there is nothing left to discover. 
 
 The result of all this sudden precipitation of 
 ideas, inventions, discovery, is that my genera- 
 tion and I have found ourselves, at times, in 
 what an old lighthouse keeper I knew on an 
 
SEARCHLIGHTS 253 
 
 island off the Maine coast used to say was "a 
 teetotal dungeon fog ". 
 
 4- 
 
 There are three things you can do in a fog. 
 If you are on a river and the laws of the land 
 are practical, you will have to drop anchor till 
 it lifts. This action saves both yourself and 
 others. 
 
 If you are on the high seas and there are no 
 laws to command and guide you, either you can 
 take the risk of going ahead at full steam to 
 make a record run, or you can slow down, take 
 soundings, and wait for it to lift. 
 
 In the third place you can wander around, if 
 you happen to be in London, see men, lamp- 
 posts, cabs, and drays "as trees walking", or 
 not at all ; and if you are so fortunate as to find 
 the Nelson Column in Trafalgar Square, you 
 can sit down by the lions and wait, chilled and 
 disheartened, until the fog disperses. 
 
 All these methods of comporting oneself in a 
 fog are mere attempts for the time at com- 
 promise with life. Meanwhile, it is not a matter 
 
254 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 for wonderment that so many are bewildered, 
 lost. 
 
 5- 
 There is one fact about fog, the densest, 
 blackest, most bewildering, most baffling that 
 can form : it always lifts ; certain natural laws 
 preclude the possibility of its continuance. 
 
 6. 
 
 I see signs that the fog which has bewildered 
 and baffled my generation and the present one, 
 which has obscured the spiritual vision and 
 confused the listening spirit of man, is lifting. 
 I look forward confidently to the time when it 
 shall be lifted wholly in order that men and 
 women shall see clearly their surroundings ; 
 that they shall think clearly with unbefogged 
 brains ; that they shall work in hope, shall live 
 in faith. 
 
 Meanwhile — ah, meanwhile ! — so many are 
 lost. 
 
 7- 
 
 There are various fogs that tend to obscure, 
 to bewilder. We on this island, for instance, 
 
SEARCHLIGHTS 255 
 
 may see from our windows the sudden precipi- 
 tation of the snow fog that adds cold to the ele- 
 ment of great danger. 
 
 We have the thin, vaporous, layer-fog which, 
 allowing the sight to penetrate a little way in 
 various directions, shuts off all view of the sky. 
 We know the sun is there above, shining ; 
 but we may not see it, strain our eyes as we will ; 
 nor at night can we see one star by which the 
 mariner may steer. 
 
 The so-called "black fog" is rarely seen on 
 these waters ; but when it forms, earth and 
 sea and sky are blotted out and the window 
 panes are a blank. 
 
 But they always lift. Meanwhile — alas ! 
 — a schooner or bark is fast on rock or rip ; a 
 steamer has grounded on the bar; a derelict 
 has threatened a five-master with disaster, and 
 bell buoys, sirens, fog horns, searchlights, and 
 the lighthouse keeper's dinner bell are at work 
 in vain. 
 
 8. 
 
 Perhaps no fog has been thicker and more 
 bewildering to the men and women of my genera- 
 
256 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 tion than that which, in Whitman's words, may 
 be said to be "the darkening and dazing with 
 books". 
 
 When a great amount of stock is suddenly 
 and without warning unloaded upon the market, 
 a panic is precipitated. When within a genera- 
 tion a million ideas, accompanied by as many 
 inventions and discoveries, are unloaded upon 
 men and women who think, and see, and hear, 
 taste, smell, and feel, — human sensitive-plates, 
 all of them, — there is apt to be a world-wide 
 panic of unreason, for reason itself is befogged. 
 These ideas are precipitated so suddenly and 
 in such masses along every known line of life, 
 from every direction, that man as an entity 
 stands for a time in their midst practically 
 lost, bewildered, without guide or compass, or 
 if he have a compass, it is of no use. Reason 
 cannot effect a "way out" even if it will; 
 objectively it has nothing upon which to work, 
 for all objects are obscured or, at least, rendered 
 disproportionate, distorted by refraction through 
 the fog medium. 
 
 No wonder so many suffer shipwreck, are 
 
SEARCHLIGHTS 257 
 
 lost in swamp, perish in the abyss, give over 
 life because their poor human eyes fail to find 
 a "way out" 
 
 9- 
 
 This man promulgates his theory of the uni- 
 verse ; another proves it to be useless. A 
 third advances a new hypothesis and a fourth 
 cuts the ground from under it by one small fact 
 discovered through a powerful telescope. Some 
 other man makes a more powerful lens and the 
 fact is shown to be a fact only in so far as it 
 may be related to and coordinated with future 
 discoveries. These discoveries may shake as- 
 tronomy to its foundation. And so on ad 
 infinitum. All these ideas are printed, read — 
 and the world is dazed. 
 
 Man not content with the power of his own 
 eye increases its magnifying and searching 
 power by the use of the microscope. What 
 used to be an atom is no longer such. Division 
 can take place infinitely. Every lens more 
 powerful than another reveals new facts. Every 
 new fact, in relation to previous discovery, 
 may modify every other known fact. Men 
 
258 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 search and search — and in the end make plain 
 only that infinitude leads to infinitude. All 
 these ideas are printed, read in a truncated 
 fashion, discussed — and the world is be- 
 wildered ; it cannot adjust itself in another 
 medium. 
 
 Science has shown to man himself — the 
 mechanical part of him. We accept this fact 
 stolidly for it does not alter the seasons, affect 
 the harvests, or induce man to live on one meal 
 a day. We are as we are ages before science as 
 science was. 
 
 In astronomy the result may be that we can 
 calculate the possible dimensions of a sun spot, 
 but we cannot avert disaster to the crops for all 
 the calculations. In human life the individual 
 soul brings to naught all collective results of 
 calculation. 
 
 Now we are being informed rather thoroughly 
 as to our mental makeup. Psychology and 
 psychiatry are busily at work to show us why 
 we think as we do ; what we should think given 
 certain environment, certain living conditions. 
 Also, why, if we do not think as we should think 
 
SEARCHLIGHTS 259 
 
 in given conditions, we should be induced to 
 think as others think we ought to think ! All 
 this is well in its place — as an experiment; but 
 meanwhile we grope befogged by the multi- 
 plicity of ideas and the hypnotic use of words, 
 words, and ever words, until in the end we some- 
 times think we do not think at all. 
 
 That sane word of Goethe's is needed to clear 
 up this fog : " I have never thought about 
 thinking." 
 
 10. 
 
 And here is another word to the wise : " Scien- 
 tists need not so much close investigation for 
 the purpose of supplying facts and coordinating 
 them, but the concentrated and prolonged 
 thought on the principles underlying natural 
 phenomena." 
 
 11. 
 
 I was standing at the window one evening 
 last October, watching for the coming of the 
 boat. It was eight o'clock. The night was 
 black, for heavy thunder clouds obscured the 
 sky. I was looking for the steamer's lights 
 when, without warning, the searchlight focussed 
 
260 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 me. It was startling. I felt for that second 
 as if every secret thought of mine was laid bare 
 to the night, as well as every organ of my body. 
 This is the kind of searchlight I should like to 
 turn on the coming hundred years. 
 
 But as I cannot do that, I trust I may be 
 permitted to turn the searchlight of a question 
 in three different directions in the hope, at 
 least, of picking up the "buoys". 
 
 Twenty years ago I visited Hull House. 
 Fancy, then, the pleasure and profit I have had 
 recently in reading Miss Addams's "Twenty 
 Years at Hull House". This book, like the 
 Memorials of Dr. Barnardo of London, is a 
 sociological beacon as trusty as my Sankaty 
 light "over eastward" across the moors. 
 
 In the presence of such noble achievement 
 we feel the lifting of the fog; we see the clear- 
 ing of the social atmosphere. And because 
 this work is so noble, so far reaching, so full of 
 past accomplishment and future promise, I 
 should like in all humility, but very earnestly, 
 to put one question to its founder after her 
 twenty years of such faithful work : 
 
SEARCHLIGHTS 261 
 
 "Would you, had you opportunity to begin 
 again those twenty years of your life work, which 
 has proved the salvation of so many, and en- 
 riched and enlightened as you are by this expe- 
 rience with human kind during all those years, 
 lay as the first foundation stone of this work 
 — 'the head of the corner' — the actual teach- 
 ing, not only by example, to men and women 
 and children of these various nationalities the 
 power of God, the Father, to sustain the spirit 
 of man, and the power of salvation on this 
 earth through the great truths of life as taught 
 by Christ?" 
 
 12. 
 
 Truly, as Mr. Gilbert Murray says, there is 
 such a thing as the "spiritual life-blood of a 
 people". This "spiritual life-blood" must be 
 nourished ; and music, literature, painting, sculp, 
 ture, good comradeship, contact with finer 
 minds, congenial work, help to nourish — but 
 not satisfactorily. The spirit of man cries out 
 for other food; for that which will give him 
 spiritual strength to endure the hardest con- 
 ditions ; for that which shall enrich his spirit 
 
262 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 to such an extent that to be "poor" is not, in 
 the man's outlook on this life, the "great evil"; 
 that will show him toil, labor, work as a blessing, 
 not a curse. The spirit of man needs to be so 
 sustained, so nourished that cold shall not be 
 the cold of degree but of kind ("Blow, blow, 
 thou winter wind, thou art not so unkind as 
 man's ingratitude.") ; that suffering of the body- 
 shall be endurable in comparison with the 
 suffering that comes from the consciousness 
 of sin; that the hunger of the body cannot 
 kill the hunger of the soul for God ; that death 
 shall be not only the "way out", but the "way 
 in". Into what? — We may not know; and 
 life accepted on these terms is faith. 
 
 13- 
 
 These things are of the mysteries. Yet even 
 as I write that word "mysteries", I recall what 
 a man who deals daily with life and death said 
 to me a year ago : "It is all so simple," — this 
 power of God to sustain the spirit, and the 
 meaning of Christ's life on earth. It is simple 
 — to be comprehended by every human being 
 
SEARCHLIGHTS 263 
 
 if only the channel can be opened by which 
 man's spirit " may flow direct to God ". 
 
 Swedenborg wrote thirty-eight — I think I 
 am correct in this number — octavo volumes, 
 many of them to interpret Christianity. Christ 
 interpreted it in eight words : " I am come to show 
 you the Father." 
 
 H. 
 
 This world is not so very old. At heart it 
 is still aglow; and constantly, although we 
 may be unconscious of it, it sends forth from 
 its glowing heart an energy and life-force by 
 which our bodies are helped to live. One and 
 all in this world are dependent on it. 
 
 Neither is this humanity of ours so very old 
 — not yet. Its heart is aglow. But the crust 
 is thickening. Feeding the spirit of man fans 
 that heart-flame and sets free a life-force, the 
 value of which can be hourly demonstrated. 
 The spirit of man must have sustenance, must 
 be fed, and not only fed but nourished, else the 
 material facts of life in their complexity will 
 overwhelm, overcome him. "Man shall not 
 live by bread alone." 
 
264 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 IS- 
 
 And once more letting the searchlight-beam 
 travel slowly across the length and breadth of 
 our country, I wish it might find and illumine 
 the mind, heart, and soul of an Indian of the 
 past generation, a Winnebago, for instance. 
 I should like to know what he thinks of our 
 vaunted "civilization" ? How he feels in re- 
 gard to the many philanthropic experiments 
 that have been tried upon him ? How his soul 
 regards the Great Mystery in the face of his 
 race's devolution ? 
 
 I should like to know if he have kept his faith. 
 
 Thereafter the beam, travelling slowly, should 
 seek out this island and pick up my own soul 
 as it picked up the buoys on that dark night in 
 October. And looking into that mystery I should 
 ask of myself : "How dare you question another 
 soul when you may not know your own ?" 
 
 16. 
 
 I, like other humans, do not wish to be mis- 
 understood. If I rebel against the fact that, 
 
SEARCHLIGHTS 265 
 
 on account of the elements of which I am com- 
 posed and the laws that are supposed to govern 
 my creation, I am classed with peas, beans, 
 rabbits, guinea pigs, and monkeys for the sake 
 of experimentation, it is not for a moment to 
 be interpreted that I do not see and acknowl- 
 edge with reverence and thankfulness the great 
 work of science; that I do not bow before the 
 patience, the sacrifice, the toil that has given 
 and gives such marvellous results so beneficial 
 to mankind. But I rebel against the word of 
 science being the final word for mankind. Nor 
 am I alone in considering this attitude of finality 
 "antiquated". 
 
 Personally, I feel very near at times to the 
 fish in the sea, the bird in the air, to the lowly 
 grass and the flowers in which the dust of my 
 material frame may appear again on this earth. 
 When I see the petals of a flower prepare for 
 the flower-sleep, when at sunset I see a raccoon 
 curled about the branch of a tall tree like a 
 chestnut burr on a twig, I, too, feel a certain 
 natural kinship. I realize I am something of 
 each. Nay, more, I have a feeling of pleasant 
 
266 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 relationship with an intelligent monkey, and 
 never omit an opportunity to put a five-cent 
 piece into the tiny — oh, so human ! — hand 
 that is thrust at me from the top of the hurdy- 
 gurdy. Indeed, I would pay far more just to 
 see at close range the inquiring lift of those 
 callouses that stand for eyebrows, and the roll 
 of those beady eyes. I am not so sure that I 
 feel wholly unrelated to an electric light as I 
 stand by the post. I realize that I am one 
 with the universal elements, not so far removed 
 from their curious combinations and expressions 
 that I dare say to anyone of them, "I am made 
 of different material from you." 
 
 But — when it comes to the fact of my own 
 soul, my spirit draws the line. Into that 
 spiritual fastness of mine no one has a right 
 to penetrate forcibly, to deny its existence, 
 or try to prove there is no such thing, or attempt 
 to show that what I call "my soul" has been 
 gradually evolved during aeons, as matter, from 
 occult processes in the evolution of the amoeba. 
 
 I may not know my own soul except dimly, 
 in part, — how can I, it being of the essence 
 
SEARCHLIGHTS 267 
 
 of the Creator whose "thoughts are as high 
 above my poor thought as the heavens are 
 above the earth" ? But I know I possess one; 
 / have that knowledge, — although no one else 
 may have it, — and I know that it is the reason 
 for my being on this earth ; that for me to deny 
 it is to deny me as a fact. 
 
 I know that I may not know but in part this 
 soul of mine, but that what I know of it assures 
 me that I may not enter into another's soul. 
 It is that part of me as an individual that 
 another may not touch. Even love may not 
 fuse one soul with another soul ; and the non- 
 knowledge of this has been and is productive of 
 such misery among men and women ! 
 
 I touch it, at times, tangentially only ; but at 
 others I may enter a little way into that spirit- 
 ual fastness and know something of its essence 
 through intuitions that may not be denned or 
 even catalogued. This soul of mine abides, in 
 a way, apart. But it is mine, and to it I owe 
 all that interprets this life, all that makes this 
 life the great miracle, all that enables me to 
 endure the thought of the saddened life of the 
 
268 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 world, all that convinces me we "know only in 
 part"; all that makes me conscious of some 
 kind — I care not what kind it may be — of 
 immortality. 
 
 A materialist knows nothing of this ; nothing 
 either of the universal soul — or of mine. 
 
 17- 
 I love to recall that word of George Sand's ; 
 I am glad to record it just here : "II n'y a de 
 sur dans ce monde que ce qui se passe entre 
 Dieu et nous." 
 
XVIII 
 
 THE GULLS AND AVIATION 
 I. 
 
 On a Sunday morning, two years ago, I was 
 on one of the large yachts anchored in the 
 harbor. After luncheon I had the deck to my- 
 self, barring the captain and two or three of the 
 crew forward. 
 
 A strong, southwest wind was blowing and 
 threatened to increase. There were hundreds 
 of gulls flying about over the harbor and in- 
 dulging in some aeronautic gymnastics solely 
 it seemed for their own pleasure. But that was 
 not so, for I was an interested and delighted 
 audience of one. 
 
 Through a powerful glass I watched their 
 movements for two hours. 
 
 No aeroplane has yet ventured to cross the 
 sound and a portion of the open sea from the 
 mainland to this island. But that day will 
 
 269 
 
270 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 come; this is written in the Domesday Book 
 of Progress. If, for instance, a flight were 
 made from the life-saving station at Monomoy 
 on the Cape, with the powerful stationary 
 glass on my back porch I could follow the entire 
 course. 
 
 Watching these gulls so closely gave rise to 
 doubts, to questions as to the final stability 
 and utility of the aeroplane or any invention 
 by which men may seek in future to conquer the 
 air. These living aeroplanes knew exactly 
 what they were about. With heavy, powerful, 
 labored downward stroke they would beat 
 slowly up at an angle of thirty degrees against 
 the strong wind — one mile, two miles, until 
 they were high over the island. Then — well, 
 I cannot say just what happened. They cer- 
 tainly turned "on edge" when they tacked 
 sharply and centripetally to come round before 
 the wind ; but in so doing they apparently 
 turned turtle, for the wind was very strong. 
 
 I cannot prove this, not after those two hours 
 of patient watching; but I failed to see how 
 they could make so sharp a turn in the face 
 
THE GULLS AND AVIATION 271 
 
 of that strong wind without a half-second of 
 capsizing. Now that we know that aviators 
 have flown head downwards, it may be possible 
 that the gulls adjusted themselves in some such 
 manner on that afternoon. The long, swift 
 glide on full-spread wings to the level of the 
 water was a thing to remember. 
 
 Again and again they returned to their sport, 
 beating up against the increasing wind, laboring 
 heavily as I could plainly see, covering the up- 
 ward course only to perform that "on edge" 
 turn at the height of their flight over the island 
 and glide down triumphantly on the aerial 
 toboggan slide. 
 
 It reminded me of that at once — toboggan- 
 ing, and the long hard pull up the hill for 
 the sake of the glorious minute of rapid de- 
 scent. 
 
 2. 
 
 After watching the gulls for so long a time, 
 it seemed to me that in the present make of 
 aeroplanes, the rigidity of the planes, the angle 
 of their jointure and the location of the centre 
 of gravity must militate against all permanent 
 
272 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 stability in flight. But perhaps the Burgess- 
 Dunne machine may solve this problem. 
 
 Still, as I think it over, I cannot see how the 
 air in movement is to be conquered ; for even 
 the gulls feel the great winds and are driven 
 helplessly before them against any object, like 
 the lighthouse lantern, that is in their aerial 
 path. Moreover, the most of them lie low some- 
 where during a great gale. 
 
 3- 
 Captain Paul W. Beck writes : "In actual 
 flight I have experienced side slips, lateral fore 
 and aft disturbances in balance, right or left 
 drifts and other actual movements that I have 
 been utterly unable to explain by any theory 
 that exists. This experience is not unique, 
 however; upon reciting some of these expe- 
 riences to 'pure' scientists, I have been met 
 with looks that plainly indicated that I was 
 either stating untruths or was an egregious idiot. 
 They would prove mathematically and scien- 
 tifically that which I already knew, viz., that 
 my experience was impossible. Yet the ex- 
 periences stand." 
 
THE GULLS AND AVIATION 273 
 
 4- 
 
 We experience something of this when, over 
 against the "pure" scientist and materialist, 
 we assert some intimations of immortality — 
 what may be termed unaccountable, spiritual 
 "side slips", "right and left drifts". They 
 say they are "impossible experiences". 
 
 Yet such experiences stand. 
 
XIX 
 
 DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS 
 
 I. 
 
 I have taken so many in my life. Sometimes, 
 and the majority of times, they have yielded 
 me nothing. Sometimes what has been brought 
 up from the depths has not been worth examina- 
 tion. Much has been strange, unaccountable, 
 impossible to classify because unrecognizable 
 for any known thing. Some findings have 
 been familiar and as a result the depths have 
 not seemed bottomless. At such times I feel 
 that the lead has actually touched bottom. 
 
 Helen Hunt Jackson said : "I do not think 
 we have a right to withhold from the world a 
 word or a thought, any more than a deed, which 
 might help a single soul." Perhaps I, too, 
 have no right to withhold from others what I 
 have brought to the surface from deep sea 
 soundings. The fact that these results have 
 enlightened me may be proof that they may 
 
 274 
 
DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS 275 
 
 help to enlighten another; for does not Balzac 
 say : "Nous allons de nous aux hommes, jamais 
 des hommes a nous" ? 
 
 2. 
 
 It seems to me that I always come very late 
 — two, three, four, sometimes ten years after 
 publication — to every book worth reading 
 "for keeps". A book is written, printed, criti- 
 cized, lauded or condemned, and to me remains 
 unknown, except for a review of it ; then, long 
 afterwards, I turn the corner of a library alcove, 
 for instance in this Island Athenaeum, and there 
 it is holding out a hand to me and inviting me 
 to enjoy it. 
 
 This Athenaeum is a delightful place in which 
 to browse, to read, to explore unknown coasts 
 by way of books. I like its outside ; the great 
 portico pillars remind me of the Acropolis at 
 Athens. I like the inside and its seductive in- 
 consequence. It is such a relief, after the cut- 
 and-dried processes by which a book is obtained 
 from any of the great libraries, to prefer a simple 
 request : "I should like this book, please;" 
 
276 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 and it is yours, with a reassuring smile that it 
 may continue yours by judicious renewal. 
 
 There is one corner I call the "ancestral 
 retreat" ; it is filled with charming old books on 
 genealogy. They hobnob — reaching out a 
 hand across a century, and more — with the 
 latest "Life", "Letters", or "Discoveries". 
 
 On a table near at hand are some wonderful 
 maps by the United States Geological Survey of 
 North Dakota between the Red River and the 
 beginning of the Missouri plateau; the region 
 is thickly strewn with bits of terminal moraines 
 — which fact, in my thought of it, makes this 
 other bit of island terminal moraine in the 
 Atlantic akin to those far northern plains. 
 A few steps aside and you find a revolving 
 bookrack filled with readable delights. I dis- 
 covered there one day "Coke of Norfolk and 
 His Friends"; and after reading it decided 
 that I knew more of the American War for 
 Independence and of the England of the eigh- 
 teenth century through that one book, than I 
 had learned all my previous life from historical 
 gleanings. 
 
DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS 277 
 
 On the walls may be seen the painting of a 
 clipper ship under full sail, and not far away 
 the benevolent portrait face of Lucretia Mott ; 
 farther on a loan collection of Rembrandt 
 prints. 
 
 One nook is for foreign literature. A sign 
 of the times is a small collection of books in 
 Portuguese for the benefit of the foreign con- 
 tingent in the population. 
 
 There is no distinctive booky atmosphere 
 about the Athenaeum ; it is a homey, cozy 
 gathering-place for the intellectual life of the 
 people of the island. I rarely visit it without 
 anticipating some delightful find, and I am as 
 rarely disappointed. A few months ago I 
 came upon Maeterlinck's book, "The Treasure 
 of the Humble ". It invited me to make ac- 
 quaintance with it — intimate acquaintance ; 
 and dipping into it then and there, suddenly I 
 found that I was "sounding in the deep sea". 
 I kept on paying out my line, and the lead 
 finally touching bottom I brought to the surface 
 what will be found to be the truth concerning 
 true love. 
 
278 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 Here is Maeterlinck's word which, read with 
 reverence, should enlighten a world. 
 
 "When Fate sends forth the woman it has 
 chosen for us — sends her forth from the fast- 
 nesses of the great spiritual cities in which we, 
 all unconsciously, dwell, and she awaits us at 
 the crossing of the road we have to traverse 
 when the hour has come — we are warned at 
 the first glance. Some there are who attempt 
 to force the hand of Fate. Wildly pressing 
 down their eyelids, so as not to see that which 
 had to be seen — struggling with all their puny 
 strength against the electric force — they will 
 contrive to cross the road and go towards 
 another, sent thither but not for them. But 
 strive as they may, they will not succeed in 
 1 stirring up the dead waters that lie in the 
 great tarn of the future'. Nothing will happen. 
 The pure force will not descend from the heights 
 and those wasted hours and kisses will never 
 become part of the real hours and kisses of their 
 lives." 
 
 This is one of the results of deep sea soundings 
 of Love which is Life. Examine it closely, 
 
DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS 279 
 
 put it under the microscope of experience, and 
 we recognize it to be a great truth. And be- 
 cause this truth is not recognized by all, in- 
 terpreted by all, we find the confusion of stand- 
 ards, the unhappiness, the misery of "Love's 
 Wayfaring" — we see the very thongs which 
 bind in the "Wayfaring of Love" that Burne- 
 Jones has painted. 
 
 Maeterlinck prefaces this with, "Of the true, 
 predestined love alone, do I speak here." 
 
 But to those who interpret correctly, to them 
 is given to know the heights and the depths, 
 the patience, the long-suffering of Love — its 
 God-given strength to endure. 
 
 How the millions of the Human Race toil 
 for the sustenance of this Love that means 
 Life ! The very thought warms the heart. 
 
 3- 
 My creed as a worker is very simple. It 
 has few articles. There can be no real work of 
 any kind without toil — which interpreted is 
 perseverance, patience, endurance applied to 
 daily and hourly tasks. 
 
280 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 Long ago I ceased to consider the mere 
 amassing of riches by men for the sake of amass- 
 ing them either true work or toil. It is what 
 may be termed slavery, and consequent loss of 
 true life in ignoble servitude. 
 
 Work — toil — is man's greatest blessing, a 
 blessing that makes mentally, bodily, spirit- 
 ually for health, provided it be not continuous 
 overwork. We have constantly before our eyes 
 evidence of the fact that overwork kills, ex- 
 cessive toil exhausts. But — it is better to die 
 than to be idle ; better to succumb than to 
 live supine. Better to have an ideal, a hope, a 
 legitimate ambition and die in the attempt 
 to realize that ideal, fulfil that hope, accom- 
 plish what is aimed at, than to live in indolence, 
 to live without effort, workless. 
 
 Soldiers fall in the ranks ; men drop at their 
 toil ; women sink beneath the load imposed on 
 them or assumed of their own free will. This 
 is the way of Life. 
 
 And the way of Death ? — What is a better 
 guidepost therein than these words of Auerbach : 
 "Fertig sein ist der beginnende Tod," The 
 
DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS 281 
 
 meaning in free translation may read : We have 
 entered already on the path of Death when 
 there is no longer something for which we may 
 work. Satiety is slow death. 
 
 4- 
 
 Once at a musical extravaganza, I was 
 watching intently and with an uneasy feeling 
 the girls in a chorus-ballet. There was no en- 
 joyment for me in this, for I knew the encores 
 had been too many and the dancers — using 
 their breath in singing — would soon be ex- 
 hausted with the repetition of their strenuous 
 bodily exercise. Suddenly a girl, a thin, frail 
 creature, fell forward out of the fictitiously 
 joyous ranks — rigid. She was removed ; the 
 dancing chorus closing up in front of her. It 
 was death — there on the stage. The extrav- 
 aganza went on, without life or spirit, it is true ; 
 but men and women played their parts to the end. 
 
 I have thought so often since of that frail 
 young thing. She was supporting herself, and 
 doubtless another. She was doing her duty. 
 Like a good soldier she fell fighting in the 
 
282 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 ranks. Life had given her something — and 
 Death gave her far, far more : it took her 
 suddenly from all deadening power of lingering 
 disease, from all prolonged misery of want, from 
 all the hard, hard struggle for her daily bread, 
 saved her, possibly, from a living death. 
 
 I have thought, at times, one might indeed 
 envy her. One woman, at least, honors her 
 memory. 
 
 5- 
 
 I believe in Work of some kind for all. I 
 believe that work should be so regulated that 
 in an occupation which menaces health the 
 hours should be very few, the shifts many, the 
 wages large. 
 
 A friend of mine worked as machinist in a 
 machine shop until the iron filings hurt the 
 delicate lung tissue and hemorrhage resulted. 
 Rescued from that work, he found other and 
 enjoys that to this day. 
 
 6. 
 
 I believe that no man should be asked to 
 work more than eight hours a day — and that 
 
DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS 283 
 
 no man should be deprived of the privilege of work- 
 ing twelve hours if so minded. I believe that 
 children, despite the child-labor laws, — the aim 
 of which is wholly laudable, but the regulation 
 by them of child life not adapted to our present 
 economical and educational conditions, — should 
 be allowed a certain amount of work; should 
 be permitted to begin to earn something at an 
 early age. They are happier with the right 
 amount of work ; they are unhappy without it. 
 
 7- 
 
 I fail to see that the toil which exhausts the 
 body, mutilates it, or kills it, is so great a curse 
 as the alcoholism that kills the body after ex- 
 hausting it, wrecking the intellect, weakening 
 the will, and inducing to crimes untold. 
 
 8. 
 I believe that no kind of toil should preclude 
 the possibility of an education of the right kind. 
 In making this statement, I acknowledge that 
 education — as education is understood To- 
 day — never yet produced character. Neither 
 
284 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 will work produce it ; but it will develop it. 
 I do not hold education, as we are accustomed 
 to define it, in such high esteem as many others. 
 
 The heart actually teaches for this life better 
 than books. Character makes for a better 
 moral environment than mere "culture", so 
 called. 
 
 When we approach the problem of education 
 — as it is understood at present — versus the 
 toilers, we are, as a nation, "all at sea". Deep 
 sea soundings are in order here. As for this 
 generation, it has been experimented with along 
 so many educational lines that the marvel is 
 that it can produce another generation upon 
 which to continue the experiment. 
 
 9- 
 
 In Miss Addams' book, which I have already 
 mentioned, I was greatly interested in the ac- 
 count of her visit to Tolstoy made in the hope 
 that it might assure her that "Tolstoy's under- 
 taking to do his daily share of the physical 
 labor of the world, that labor which is 'so dis- 
 proportionate to the unnourished strength' 
 
DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS 285 
 
 of those by whom it is ordinarily performed, 
 had brought him peace !" 
 
 Tolstoy was so great in his simplicity, so 
 earnest in his interpretation of the ideal that 
 regulated the latter part of his life, that to me 
 he has been and will remain one of the most 
 pathetic figures in sociological history. He 
 failed to sound deep enough — but it was no 
 fault of his. 
 
 He struggled to be one with the toilers. He 
 worked as a toiler. He strove to square his 
 life by Christ's. He believed that only so — 
 by his daily toil in the fields, by his simple fare 
 — could soul and body be rightly nourished ; 
 in simple fare, simple life, simple love of man- 
 kind, strenuous physical labor showing itself 
 in daily toil at the side of the peasant worker, 
 could be found a panacea for the misery of 
 life, a reconciliation of life with its glaring 
 inconsistencies of social conditions. 
 
 He failed to grasp this truth : Between the 
 man who has and is not obliged to work for his 
 daily bread, and the man who has not and must 
 toil from day to day not knowing whence the 
 
286 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 next dollar is to come for the support of himself 
 and those dependent on him unless he continue 
 to work, work, and ever work, there is fixed an 
 impassable gulf. It cannot be bridged by 
 sympathy, by intuition, by aid given gener- 
 ously in the true spirit of Christ. It is there ; 
 and it cannot be bridged. 
 
 Tolstoy could not rid himself of his past. 
 He was born into a state of society in which it. 
 was impossible for him to feel the pressure of 
 poverty. No earnest and faithful attempt on 
 his part could extract him from his inherited 
 environment; no effort, however prolonged, 
 eradicate from his mentality the knowledge 
 that there was "always something on which to 
 depend". Nor could he render himself wholly 
 dependent on his daily toil for his daily bread. 
 
 This man's awful spiritual struggle to counter- 
 act his past and his inherited environment by a 
 life of self-imposed toil is one of the present 
 day's great tragedies. Struggle as he might, 
 he could not bridge that abyss. It is no wonder 
 Miss Addams failed to find what she so earnestly 
 sought. 
 
DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS 287 
 
 Personally, I have always felt that if Tolstoy 
 with that earnestness of spirit that flamed with 
 the intensity of an apostle's zeal could have 
 accepted his past and present and used the 
 great gift of his intellect, the flame of his spirit, 
 the infinite pity and love of his heart, the great 
 power of his life experience, in giving to the 
 world more of the masterpieces like those for 
 which we are so deeply indebted to him, the 
 world would have been enriched, taught, helped 
 to a degree that his attempt to make himself 
 one with the toilers fell far short of. 
 
 Like his Levin, in "Anna Karenina", his 
 
 lead failed to sound the depths of existence, 
 
 but not through any lack of earnest, yes, tragic 
 
 effort on his part. It was his fate to have been 
 
 born as he was. That fate produced a thinker 
 
 who saw in physical toil alone the salvation of 
 
 man. 
 
 10. 
 
 Evolution in all its phases that come before 
 our eyes is most interesting, entertaining. 
 
 I remember that at the Columbian Exposition 
 in Chicago I spent an hour most profitably, 
 
288 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 most entertainingly, with numerous examples of 
 the process of evolution of the locomotive. 
 Later I found in the ethnological section what 
 might be labelled "The process of evolution as 
 shown in the skull of man". There were the 
 skulls of the various races at various periods, 
 and the skull of prehistoric man. Accompany- 
 ing these was, of course, the skull of a man- 
 ape, perhaps of Borneo ! 
 
 In Boston a few months ago, I was watching 
 the entrance of one of the great driving machines 
 of the present day — a locomotive of the New 
 York Limited — into the South Station. I 
 stood on the platform for a moment looking 
 at the behemoth. In appearance it was as far 
 removed from the latest in that line at the 
 Columbian Exposition as that was removed from 
 the little wood engine and the train of coaches 
 of 183 1. 
 
 I looked up at the monster breathing heavily 
 above me and said to myself: "Well, it's just 
 steam after all — the pulse of this machine — no 
 matter what the change of form, as the instru- 
 ment of this steam power, induced by change 
 
DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS 289 
 
 of environment and railroad conditions. This 
 machine is the final form of the adaptation of 
 steam to locomotives. But it is the same 
 steam, the same power that propels it through 
 all its changes in form. Steam it is and steam 
 it has always been, despite the evolution of the 
 instrument into this ' No — ' towering above me." 
 This is precisely how I felt about those skulls : 
 
 — flat foreheads, pointed foreheads, full fore- 
 heads, low foreheads, acute facial angles, obtuse 
 facial angles, or no angles at all practically, 
 flattened occiput, protruding occiput, receding 
 jaw, protruding jaw — h'm ! 
 
 I said to myself: "These were men animated 
 by the spirit of man. The machine adapted 
 itself to this, that, or the other environment 
 
 — had to — but the spirit of man, which makes 
 him a man, remains throughout all changes of 
 form the same spirit of man." 
 
 This thought was a positive comfort to me, 
 and no process of evolution has ever appalled 
 me since that day, only interested, instructed, 
 entertained. Evolution has been at work — 
 always, — that is all we can say to designate un- 
 
290 FROM AN ISUAND OUTPOST 
 
 recorded time, — at work before any law for- 
 mulated it ; and the formulating of the law can- 
 not change its working or the lines along which 
 it works. This is another comfort. 
 
 As for the man-ape of Borneo — I have my 
 own theory in regard to his skull and himself. 
 It is abstruse, I confess ; and I dare not submit 
 it to scientists. Not for fear of being laughed 
 at ! Oh, no ; but because I truly believe that 
 they never have taken such intuitive deep sea 
 soundings in this special latitude and longitude 
 on the ocean of evolution as have I. (And, 
 of course, no scientist ever does take an "intuitive 
 sounding" !) This must read and sound rightly 
 audacious. I realize it — none better ; but, 
 after all, any one is at liberty to have a little 
 private theory of one's own about anything 
 on the earth or in the heavens. I have very 
 few theories about things in general, but I have 
 a decided one for this special subject. 
 
 ii. 
 
 And because evolution is held accountable 
 for almost all that takes place nowadays, it 
 
DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS 291 
 
 delights me to know that, as a process, in one 
 instance, at least, it is completely balked ; it 
 "fails to work" in this case of the spirit of man. 
 
 Along certain lines there is no such process. 
 
 For instance : I say to some boys who are 
 having recess in the house, on account of a stormy 
 day, and are ranged one behind the other play- 
 ing tug-of-war to the detriment of knickerbockers 
 and jacket belts — the smallest boy, of course, 
 at the head of the "tug": — "Boys, if you 
 don't keep your line away from that glass door 
 in the corridor some of you will go through it." 
 
 Now those boys really have a good deal of 
 faith in me. They know I wish them well ; 
 that what I say is probably the truth, — if 
 they think at all about it which is doubtful, — 
 for in their boys' way they have tested me and 
 found that I am truthful with them. But, 
 acknowledging all this, subconsciously perhaps, 
 they shout as one: "Oh, no, we won't — we'll 
 be careful !" ("Careful" and a boy !) 
 
 In a few minutes there is a tremendous crash. 
 Some frightened boys appear bringing with them 
 another boy — of course the smallest at the 
 
2Q2 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 head of the "tug" — with the feeble explanation 
 that "a fellow let go too soon". As a result 
 the small boy's head was propelled by sheer 
 momentum through that glass door. 
 
 Fortunately the jugular vein is not severed, 
 but I have the doubtful task of picking out fine 
 splinters of glass from the scalp of a closely 
 cropped small head. 
 
 When he feels better — not so "wobbly" — 
 he tries to explain to me that he went through 
 "head on". Perhaps he thinks I need enlight- 
 enment ! 
 
 Would there be any use in my saying after 
 this, "I told you so" ? 
 
 A physician says to a man : "If you begin 
 with that drug you will acquire the habit and 
 such and such will be the result." But the man 
 trusts to his own power of resistance ; he says : 
 "Oh, no; it sha'n't get the better of me. I'll 
 be careful." 
 
 But the habit is formed before he realizes it 
 and his power of resistance is not sufficient to 
 overcome it. No one has yet defined the safety 
 line for the making of a bad habit. In course 
 
DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS 293 
 
 of time the result justifies the physician's 
 warning. 
 
 A father says to a son : " If you do so and so, 
 if you abuse your health, if you make such and 
 such experiments with life, so and so will happen 
 — not to your benefit. / have found this out 
 by bitter experience. Profit by my experience; 
 be warned in time." 
 
 But the son says to himself : " I am I ; father 
 is father. I can do what he couldn't. Each is 
 a law unto himself;" and goes his way irrespec- 
 tive of parental warning. 
 
 These cases can be multiplied with the multi- 
 plier of the human race. So far as we have 
 record of men's lives we find no tendency for 
 one man to learn of another and more expe- 
 rienced, so far as his individual experiment with 
 life is concerned. Generation after generation 
 begins on the footing of the first generation of 
 men. Evolution is not in evidence. 
 
 In the face of experience of a hundred 
 generations, the man of To-day decides that he 
 is able to make his own experiment with life 
 although he is warned of certain shipwreck. 
 
294 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 He will not believe in that shipwreck until he 
 experiences it ; then he desires to warn another, 
 a younger. But that other also exercises his 
 prerogative of individual experience, and in 
 time they both cling to the same life-raft. 
 
 It seems that it is just here that the spirit 
 of man, the soul of man, of each individual, 
 stands apart from every other of the race. It 
 will do its best to work with the machine with 
 which it is supplied and with which it must 
 perform its work, if at all. The machine may 
 change, may be obliged to adapt itself to new 
 environment ; but the spirit of man remains the 
 same. It begins and ends in itself. 
 
XX 
 
 BEACONS 
 
 I. 
 
 On the wall of my bedroom I may see at any 
 hour, at any minute of a dark, clear, moonless 
 night, the reflection of the wax and wane of the 
 great beacon light seven miles across the moors 
 on Sankaty Head. 
 
 The first time I was aware of this, I came to 
 the conclusion that it was some optical illusion ; 
 perhaps an extra blood pressure on the optic 
 nerve, or that curious effect we may sometimes 
 note, when the eyes are closed, of strange, 
 running, colored gleams of purple and yellow 
 lights apparently crossing the retina and retir- 
 ing from sight somewhere above the left ear. 
 But, investigating shortly, I found it was 
 merely the reflection of the great light on San- 
 katy Head. 
 
 295 
 
296 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 In the moonlight this beacon shines as Capella 
 shines in a clear, dark winter's night when it 
 mirrors itself in the harbor waters. Its light is 
 visible to the mariner forty miles at sea. At 
 times, in exceptional gales, the flying spume dims 
 it. In fog it is obscured. But even when I 
 cannot see it, / know it is always there. 
 
 2. 
 
 It would be a matter of amazement if some 
 were to ask, — and in all probability the ques- 
 tion might be put to me, "How do you know it 
 is always there ? What proof have you if you 
 cannot see it in fog or heavy storm ?" 
 
 I make answer : "Simply because I know it 
 is there." 
 
 "But that is no reason," says one. 
 
 I reply that I know it is there because night 
 after night I have seen it there ; because I have 
 faith to believe it there, having seen it so many 
 times." 
 
 "But that is no reason," a second makes 
 objection; "your faith does not prove it." 
 
 Now, what answer shall be made to this ? 
 
BEACONS 297 
 
 If I say : "If you will take sloop, or schooner, 
 or tug, and in snow and sleet, in the teeth of a 
 sixty-mile-an-hour gale contrive to double Great 
 Point, work along past Great Round Shoal 
 and get under the lee of Sankaty, or if you will 
 cross the moors in the face of the blizzard till 
 you actually reach the light, you will find it 
 there. Make your own experiment;" they will 
 protest : — 
 
 "But that is impossible. You know per- 
 fectly well we could not make that journey by 
 land or sea without guide and compass, or 
 even with them in such a storm. We should 
 be exhausted ; we should perish." 
 
 "Well," I conclude, "then if you were to 
 attempt it you would perish ; but the light would 
 be there for all your perishing. And what you 
 assert is no argument against my faith in the 
 keeper's trustworthiness." 
 
 3- 
 
 This ocean that I see from my windows was 
 uncharted when Columbus set sail on it. 
 But he had the stars, a compass that varied — 
 
298 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 and faith. With these he went forth on unknown 
 seas — and finally gave to us our country. 
 
 An astronomer of the present day might be 
 able to prove to Columbus that the star by 
 which he guided his little caravel was not there ; 
 that it had been dispersed in star dust aeons before 
 the Santa Maria's keel ploughed the unknown 
 ocean ; that what he saw was but the simulacrum 
 of the star — the light of it merely whfch was 
 travelling for millions of years after the disper- 
 sion of the star to reach the discoverer's eye. 
 
 I can fancy Columbus' look of amazement 
 after having given to his sovereigns a new world 
 to hear that he was guided thereto by a simu- 
 lacrum of a star. In imagination I hear his 
 answer in no uncertain tone : 
 
 "The light was there, star or no star. I 
 saw it ; by it I steered my caravels. Behold 
 the result !" 
 
 This is the test : "Behold the result." 
 
 4- 
 
 It is a curious fact, I am told, that to man 
 alone among animals belongs the inspiratory 
 
BEACONS 299 
 
 cry. There was breathed "into his nostrils 
 the breath of life ; and man became a living 
 soul." 
 
 And here is its corollary : "Then shall the 
 dust return to the earth as it was ; and the spirit 
 shall return unto God who gave it." 
 
 Here we have the Human case : Birth — 
 Death ; the spirit given from a source and the 
 spirit returning to that source — inspiratory 
 cry, expiratory sigh. Between the two, man 
 pilgrimages from Infinity to Infinity. Faith is 
 the sustenance of the spirit on this journey as 
 food is the sustenance for the body. 
 
 5- 
 "But where begin with faith ? What beacon 
 can guide us ?" 
 
 The answer is very simple : Begin with the 
 child. 
 
 "But how begin ? We are at sea." 
 Again the answer is simple : Begin by teach- 
 ing the child faith in God as his Creator. 
 
 "But if we do not have the faith to teach ?" 
 Then do not teach the child. Take to gar- 
 
300 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 dening where you have faith that a seed, which 
 you, nor I, nor any human can animate, once 
 put into good ground and tended by you will 
 sprout and thrive. Take to cooking where you 
 make bread irrespective of your ignorance of 
 how to animate the kernel of wheat that it 
 may grow and produce the flour of which you 
 seem perfectly willing to make your bread — 
 and eat of it as well. Take to "clerking", to 
 stenography, to weaving, spinning, hoeing, even 
 — but leave the teaching of a child to some one 
 who has faith and is not afraid to confess it. 
 
 6. 
 
 Mr. Peter Roberts in his exhaustive studies 
 of the "Anthracite Coal Industry" and the 
 "Anthracite Coal Communities" writes in con- 
 clusion : 
 
 "If society is to be saved, the regenerating 
 power can only come from the moral-spiritual 
 nature of man, and every force, either in society 
 or industry, which grinds the altars of a nation 
 will ultimately grind to powder the foundations 
 upon which society rests." 
 
BEACONS 301 
 
 One altar of our nation was broken, at least, 
 when in this generation the simple petition, 
 "Our Father", was made not obligatory in the 
 common schools. 
 
 The impressions received in childhood, the 
 habits formed, in the majority of cases persist 
 through life ; it is the way of the plant, the way 
 of the sapling. No nation can afford to ignore 
 this fact : That its children are the hope of its 
 strength. This fact is both spiritual and eco- 
 nomical. 
 
 In our common schools the children are 
 taught to salute the flag ; it is made for them a 
 symbol of their country. The government that 
 should lay an embargo on this teaching would 
 prove unfaithful to its great trust. 
 
 I hold that it is just as unfaithful to a greater 
 trust — greater because universally human, not 
 merely national — when it attempts to educate 
 the child and at the same time omits to teach 
 him reverence for his Creator. 
 
 "But the majority of children have some 
 religious instruction. Does not this fill the 
 need?" 
 
302 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 By no means. For I am not considering 
 " religious instruction" of any kind as we under- 
 stand it. Religious instruction, so called, given 
 once or twice a week does not meet the need of 
 this special case or apply to it. 
 
 Between the hours of 9 and 12 a.m. the mind 
 of the child is freshest, most impressionable. 
 That mind expands like a plant to imbibe in- 
 fluences. The delicate brain-films, after sleep, 
 are most sensitive to impressions. The child 
 does his best work between these hours ; atten- 
 tion fixes itself with less strain ; interest is roused 
 with less effort ; mischief is not so rampant 
 as during the afternoon session. In these three 
 precious hours not only should the child's mind 
 be fed but its soul. The soul-feelers are at work 
 seeking spiritual food. When they are given 
 nothing, they turn inward on themselves, fam- 
 ished in part. 
 
 The child comes out of the fresh air, perhaps 
 sunshine, rain or snow — all true delights to a 
 healthy child — to enter into confinement for 
 three hours, with thirty or forty other children, 
 between four walls darkened by blackboards, 
 
BEACONS 303 
 
 and into an environment foreign to his thoughts. 
 During these three hours certain habits are in 
 the process of formation ; the intellect is sup- 
 posed to be quickened, and is in most cases ; 
 the soul — that is not provided for. Now the 
 soul of a child is as constantly with him and a 
 part of him as his brain — and needs as much 
 sustenance, if not more. There are various 
 ways of providing it which it is not my province 
 to touch upon except in this one case. 
 
 Upon each daily entrance into this foreign 
 environment for a child's thoughts, let there 
 be made the simple petition, "Our Father". 
 Let that be the first English learned by the 
 millions of our foreign child population. This 
 is no special instruction in any "religion" — 
 this simple acknowledgment of a Creator; 
 but it teaches as nothing else can teach. Those 
 few minutes of reverent silence when listening 
 to the spoken words, or the reverential habit 
 that is formed by daily repetition of those few 
 words, makes for a certain attitude of mind 
 impossible without it. It is as simple as lift- 
 ing the cap in the presence of the flag, or rising 
 
304 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 when the Star-Spangled Banner is played. 
 But its symbolism sounds far deeper depths 
 
 — the soul of the child. 
 
 Lessing, that great believing unbeliever says : 
 "We can be unfaithful to a national god, but 
 never to the true God when once we shall have 
 known him." But He must be made known. 
 
 This is no matter of creed, doctrine, or reli- 
 gion as we understand that word — that atti- 
 tude would now be called "antiquated"; it 
 is a matter of forming in the child a habit of 
 faith. It is a matter of giving regularly — as 
 the breaking of fast of a morning is observed 
 
 — to the child what the child spiritually, but 
 unconsciously, needs to start his day. 
 
 7- 
 
 This is no theory upon which I draw to illus- 
 trate; I draw upon experience. 
 
 For a few years I taught in a school, for both 
 boys and girls, where it really seemed a matter 
 of lese-majeste to name the Name. The curric- 
 ulum of the school was made on the basis of 
 science-teaching. As the chiefs failed to recon- 
 
BEACONS 305 
 
 cile science with what that Name implies, all 
 mention of the Name was considered taboo. 
 Yet in all my experience I have never witnessed 
 more earnest, more conscientious work for 
 the children's sake. It was beyond criticism. 
 
 It was a curious position in which to find one's 
 self. Dealing daily with childish hearts, child- 
 ish brains, children's souls, I discovered the 
 fact that I was failing all along the lines of 
 instruction when I could not freely refer to the 
 Creator of all created things. 
 
 At that time psychology was to the fore; 
 and I at once began that study in the hope that 
 it might aiford me help with my teaching; 
 perhaps prove a substitute for what I was ex- 
 pected to omit in my work. Beginning with 
 Mr. James' "Psychology", I have finally fin- 
 ished all study in that direction with an attempt 
 at Professor Miinsterberg's "Psychotherapy". 
 This endeavor covers a period of nearly twenty 
 years. I honestly and earnestly tried to solve 
 the problem presented to me daily by these 
 twenty-seven children — my special class — by 
 placing myself in the position of a willing and 
 
306 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 humble disciple of men who knew far, far more 
 than I could ever attain to; whose knowledge 
 of psychology and its handmaid physiology was 
 profound. 
 
 But in Mr. James' words : "It did not work. " 
 I discovered that in a certain direction I 
 knew more of a child's soul by daily contact 
 with the child along certain lines of instruction 
 than anything Mr. James might intimate. 
 This is not arrogance of knowledge ; it is said 
 humbly, because I looked from my own soul into 
 the child's and what I found there contradicted 
 many of his theories. 
 
 I found I was dealing with some spiritual 
 facts that had escaped his keen analysis and 
 theoretical excursiveness. Indeed, I came to 
 the conclusion that, if I may be permitted the 
 word, he was "floundering" spiritually. I speak 
 only for myself ; I could find no anchorage with 
 his deductions. 
 
 8. 
 
 What was I to do when one day a girl of 
 twelve, with all my sex's inconsequence, and 
 apropos of nothing — or so it seemed to me — 
 
BEACONS 307 
 
 I think we were at work on some clay relief 
 maps of South America — said suddenly : 
 
 "I want to believe the Bible is true, but I 
 can t. 
 
 Poor mite ! I knew she must have heard 
 some discussion at home ; or possibly the mak- 
 ing of the relief in clay, and association of ideas 
 had brought her a thought of Genesis — I do 
 not know. But this was her sudden statement. 
 
 I could not ignore it — and we were not sup- 
 posed to mention that Name. I was on the 
 horns of a dilemma none the softest. But over 
 against the soul of that child there was but 
 one duty — to feed it, if in truth I could. 
 
 As the class was listening for an answer, I 
 spoke to all : "Children, how many of you 
 had bread for breakfast this morning?" 
 
 The hands went up as one. 
 
 " Who made the bread ? " I permitted general 
 answers when we were "off guard" as I used 
 to call those precious minutes for a child when 
 he can speak in class without raising a hand. 
 
 I received various answers in which the names 
 of certain cooks were distinguishable. 
 
308 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 "Of what is the bread made ?" All knew. 
 
 "Of what is the wheat made ?" No answer; 
 that called for enlightenment. 
 
 I told them of the kernel of corn and the 
 wheat. Then I sprang a question on them : 
 "How is a grain of wheat made, now that I have 
 told you of what it is made?" 
 
 They could not tell — neither could I. I 
 explained to them as simply as I could what 
 chemical combination is, but I also explained 
 that no man, try as he might, could combine 
 those elements to make one grain of wheat or 
 a kernel of corn ; nor could he, were it possible 
 for him to combine these elements, make the 
 combination grow. "Now," I said, "if a man 
 does not make it grow, who does make it ?" 
 There was a faint, timid answer here and there : 
 "God." 
 
 "Yes," I said with emphasis, "God the 
 Creator." And with these words a great bur- 
 den for those children's sake rolled from my 
 soul. I spoke from absolute conviction — and 
 they knew it. "And, Helen," I continued, 
 speaking to the small girl who had made the 
 
BEACONS 309 
 
 dispiriting statement, "would you not find it 
 very unreasonable and foolish to refuse to eat 
 bread because you cannot know just how it is 
 made to grow, and because no one living or dead 
 has been able to make it grow ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "And can you not trust God, who made us, 
 for many of these things you cannot under- 
 stand ? Do you refuse to breathe because you 
 cannot see the air you breathe ?" 
 
 Never, never shall I forget the flush of joy 
 that illumined that sweet face as she said with 
 a sigh : "Oh, I do see it now ; and I feel so much 
 better." 
 
 Dear child ! She could not know how or why 
 she " felt better " ; but I knew: she had been 
 fed, had been given a little food for her hungry 
 little soul. And this instance is but one of 
 many of which I have knowledge. 
 
 After all my work in psychology I found that 
 the soul of each child is different from the soul of 
 every other child. On this rock of fact all my 
 psychology went to pieces. Then I went down 
 on my knees and asked for help over against the 
 
310 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 soul of the child. . . . Perhaps it is needless 
 to say that I handed in my resignation at the end 
 of the year. 
 
 9- 
 
 God is not mocked. An old truth that is 
 ever new. No man, or woman, who has not 
 unwavering faith in his Creator should teach a 
 child. No man, or woman, should teach science 
 to a child who has not reconciled his faith with 
 that science; who has not truly given both 
 consent of the heart and assent of the intellect. 
 No man, or woman, can be asked the question 
 by a child : "Who made a star ? Who made this 
 egg ? Who made this butterfly ? Who made 
 me, and how?" — and stand for a moment 
 in the searchlight of that child's soul if he hesi- 
 tate a second in his answer. We need science; 
 but we need faith in a Creator to go hand and 
 hand with it. 
 
 And I would have children taught science from 
 their earliest years — objectively, of course. 
 Nothing so satisfies the inquiring mind, nothing 
 so stimulates inquiry to effort along so many 
 life-lines as such teaching — 
 
BEACONS 311 
 
 But if I begin on this most interesting matter 
 I shall overrun my manuscript ; indeed, I fear 
 that I have already. 
 
 The need of clear vision in this matter of the 
 child's education was never so pressing as in 
 this industrial age. We are in a transition 
 state ; all sorts of forms along this special line 
 are being evolved in our endeavors to adjust 
 ourselves to a changed environment. This 
 multiplicity of forms confuses, discourages, 
 because of unsatisfactory results. It obscures 
 the main object, the great beacon for this our 
 Twentieth Century and all future centuries : 
 The work that works in faith and hope. What 
 a beacon light this is ! 
 
 We must work in hope and teach others to 
 work in hope ; we must live in faith, while we 
 work in hope, and inspire faith in others ; but 
 to do this we must make conditions such that 
 educationally, industrially, economically, spirit- 
 ually, men and women, yes, and little children, 
 shall be enabled to work in hope — shall live in 
 faith. 
 
 I see no other salvation for our Human Race. 
 
3 i2 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 10. 
 February 9, 1914. 
 
 The sunset was very fine to-night. I like to 
 see it in the east by reflected light; the effect 
 is wonderfully beautiful. The waters of the 
 harbor were heaving in the strong wind ; they 
 were dark green. The shores of Monomoy and 
 Shimmo were pale yellow and black in the 
 level light ; one long, dark band behind 
 them marked the plantation of dwarfed pines. 
 The great sand dune of Pocomo Head gleamed 
 deep orange in the strong rays of the setting 
 sun. The shadows on the gray chimneys were 
 sharply defined. Above, in a sky partly filled 
 with heavy drifting clouds, the full moon was 
 shining faintly. 
 
 At the moment of sunset the great Sankaty 
 Beacon twinkled across the moors. As dusk 
 fell, the moon, shining from behind the dark, 
 drifting clouds, silvered a portion of the harbor 
 waters. A little light shone out here and 
 there in the houses below the "Bank" and 
 in the fishermen's huts on the shore — small 
 
BEACONS 313 
 
 coastwise beacons. Brant Point gleamed on 
 the left ; and far away on Great Point the third 
 light on this Island Outpost in the Atlantic 
 signalled across the Sound to Monomoy on the 
 Cape.