THE COUNTY
I
The “retired” sea-captain, if he had been too free-handed to grow
rich, or had missed his chance of success through practising small
shrewdnesses rather than large, often earned his living ashore as
postmaster, or “deepo-master,” or he ran the tavern, or the village
store that supplied the inhabitants with any obtainable commodity.
In any case, as gentleman farmer or one of lower social rank, he
fitted easily into the life at home which, in comparison with that of
an inland town, was cosmopolitan by reason of constant interchange
with countries beyond the sea. Men had a wider outlook: though they
might never “go to Boston,” which was the minimum adventure of the
community, they were familiar with far scenes discussed of an evening
among the frequenters of post-office or store. And if all sailors did
not become captains, though the contrary may seem to us to have been
the fact, it was the exception when an able-bodied male had not gone
at least one “voyage to sea.” The normal Cape Cod boy looked upon
the ocean as his natural theatre of action. If he could wheedle his
mother into consent, he was off at the tender age of ten, or as soon
thereafter as might be, to serve as cabin boy with their neighbor
the cap’n. It is even said of one child that by the time he had
reached his tenth birthday “he was old enough not to be seasick,
not to cry during a storm, and to be of some use about a ship.”
From the galley he might be promoted to the fo’c’s’le; from there,
if luck and temper served, to the quarter-deck. A captain’s letter
to his little daughter tells us something of the relation between
captain and crew. Discipline was strict, but “the old man” did not
forget that they were all neighbors at home. “We have plenty of
music in the forecastle,” he writes, “but I wish I had you all with
me and the seraphine and then we could have a good sing. There is a
violin-player and one of the best players on the accordion I ever
heard, and they go it some evenings, I tell you, and have a regular
good dance. They have their balls about twice a week, and I can hear
them calling off their cotillion and having a merry time of it. I
wish you could see them going it for awhile. Daniel plays the bones
and a young man from Barnstable is the musician. I like my crew very
much so far and hope they will continue the voyage and improve.”
As cabin boy, forem’st hand, able seaman, mate, or captain, on
merchant vessel or fisherman, every man Jack in the village was
pretty sure to have had his taste of the sea, and thereby was
equipped to contribute his story to the common fund of anecdote. With
truth he could say “I am a part of all that I have met.” And whether
they had followed the sea for one year or forty, or vicariously
through the experience of others, each of them had a tang of “the
old salt”; and their home was set in the ocean as surely as if Cape
Cod were another Saint Helena breaking the long Atlantic rollers
that come sweeping down the world. Many a time, indeed, it must have
seemed to swing to their stories like the deck of a ship, and the
dry land under foot to be stable only because one was braced to its
motion. For most of the men, all the sea ways about the world were
as familiar as the village road around the ponds. Daniel Webster
once wrote some friends in Dennis of a trial in their district when
question arose as to the entrance of the harbor of Owhyhee: “The
counsel for the opposite party proposed to call witnesses to give
information to the jury. I at once saw a smile which I thought I
understood, and suggested to the judge that very probably some of my
jury had seen the entrance themselves. Upon which seven out of the
twelve arose and said they were quite familiarly acquainted with it,
having seen it often.”
Every boy had some grounding in the common branches of study at the
schools which his Pilgrim ancestors had been at pains to establish;
but given the three R’s, his education was expanded in the larger
school of personal adventure. Rich gives a quick biography typical
of the Truro fisherman: “Till ten in summer—a barefoot boy, tough,
wide-awake—hoes, clams, fishes, swims, goes to the red schoolhouse
taught by the village schoolmarm. After ten, on board a fishing
vessel cooking for nine or ten men; at thirteen a _hand_; goes to the
same schoolhouse three months or less every winter till seventeen
or eighteen; graduates. At twenty-one marries; goes skipper;
twenty-five buys a vessel and builds a house, or has been looking
around the world to make a change. Whatever may be the experiences
of after life, the early history of Cape Cod boys could be summed
substantially as stated.”
This matter of an elementary education, in the early days, was
frequently undertaken by men whose work was cut out for them to keep
their own knowledge a little in advance of their scholars. There
was Mr. Hawes, schoolmaster of Yarmouth in the later years of the
eighteenth century, who gloried in the fact that
“The little learning I have gained,
Was most from simple nature drained.”
He had worked on the farm and managed his own schooling when the
only textbooks were the Bible and Catechism. “When the Spelling
Book was first introduced,” he remarks dryly, “the good old ladies
appeared to fear that religion would be banished from the world.”
Hawes, however, undertook the pursuit of the higher learning, and
once had a sum set him in the “Single Rule of Three” that cost him
three days’ work in the solving of it. “I went often to the woods
and gathered pine knots for candles,” he remembers. “At this time I
lived with my aged grandfather, who had a liberal education, but was
in low circumstances, and I could learn more in his chimney-corner
with my pine candle, in one evening, than I could at school in a
week.” Discipline was administered by means of an apple-tree branch,
and “as soon as the master retired from school, every instrument of
correction or torture would by the scholars be destroyed.” In the
Bible class, “while each scholar would mention the number and read
one verse,” the master would be making pens, and the other children
most likely “playing pins, or matching coppers.” Hawes, at the age
of seventeen, had “advanced in Arithmetic about as far as Square
and Cube Root,” and by his own industry “gained some knowledge of
Navigation,” when the Revolution interrupted his studies, and,
promptly enlisting, he served in the land force for three years, and
then took to the sea. He sailed in no less than five vessels that
were captured, but remarks that he was never prisoner more than two
months running; and at the close of the Revolution he felt qualified
to set up as schoolmaster ashore. His account probably gives an
accurate picture of the public education of the day. “I commenced
teaching school in Yarmouth,” he writes, “at seven dollars per
month, and boarded myself, which was then about equal to seaman’s
wages in Boston; and I occasionally taught town and private schools
in Barnstable and Yarmouth, when not at sea. The highest wages I
ever had was thirty-five dollars per month; and the last school I
taught was in Barnstable, and was then in my sixtieth year. Now
I will state my own method of school teaching with from sixty to
ninety pupils, viz: The first and last hours were generally spent
in reading, the middle hours in writing. Those in arithmetic would
read with the others when they pleased. Having one class in school,
every scholar, at my word ‘Next,’ would arise and read in his seat,
till I pronounced the word ‘Next,’ and I often stopped him in the
middle of a verse. After reading around, I would order another book,
more proper for the scholars present, as before, and then in four
or five different books till the hour expired. Then I gave out the
copies and made as many mend their pens as could. If they had no
ink-stands, which was the case with many, I would send one after
shells, and put cotton therein. The ink I found and charged it to the
school. I likewise set at auction who would make the fire cheapest,
say for one month, which would go at about one cent a day. While they
were writing in the second form, I would hear the little ones read
alone, who could not read in classes. Seventeen was the greatest
number I think I ever had of them. When school was about half done
one scholar was sent for a bucket of water,” and then, no doubt from
one dipper, did they all, girls first, then boys, unhygienically
drink. “Those in Arithmetic having books of different authors, got
their own sums, wrote off their own rules, &c. If they wanted to make
inquiries concerning questions,” Mr. Hawes goes on to say, “and the
scholar next him could show him, I would request him to; if not, if
I had time, I would explain the principles by which the sum was to
be done. If he then met with difficulty, I directed him to take it
home, and study late at night to have his answer in the morning. When
I dismissed the school I would examine each one’s writing book....
I was too much in favor of the Friends’ principles to require any
bowing, and left that discretionary with each scholar.”
In schools as rudimentary as this were trained the men whose energy
was to accomplish the greatest prosperity of the Cape. A majority of
the boys were too busily employed in helping to extract the family
livelihood from the soil and the sea to be allowed studies beyond
those useful for such a purpose; yet almost immediately the free
schools were supplemented, at Yarmouth and Sandwich and Barnstable,
by seminaries and academies, where Greek, Latin, French, and the
higher mathematics were taught. In 1840 the Truro Academy was founded
under the directorship of a wise teacher who raised the standard
of education in all the towns about. And there was the Pine Grove
Seminary, conducted by Mr. Sidney Brooks at Harwich, and beloved of
its scholars: for Mr. Brooks not only encouraged learning, but was a
promoter of innocent pleasure. His pupils were to remember Saturday
excursions to Long Pond, sailing there in summer and ice-boating in
winter; and Mr. Brooks permitted tableaux and dancing in the hall,
even were there a brisk revival in progress at the meeting-house
across the way. The pupils of Mr. Smith, of Brewster, who died in
1842, remember that he was “successful in making the dullest learn,”
and also recall that “Ferula disciplinæ sceptrum erat.”
The elegancies of the Early Victorian era—French, deportment, fine
needlework, sewing and embroidery, bead and shell work, the making
of wax flowers, sketching in pencil and watercolors—were taught the
young ladies by private instruction. Their culture was continued
in the Lyceum and Female Reading Society. Anne C. Lynch and Martin
Tupper were the fashion; and they read largely literature commended
in the “Lady’s Book,” to which every household with any pretension to
gentility subscribed. Mr. Godey averred that his magazine should be
“a shrine for the offerings of those who wish to promote the mental,
moral, and religious improvement of woman. For female genius it is
the appropriate sphere. It will contain a new and elegant engraving
in _every number_—also, music and patterns for ladies’ muslin work
and other embellishments.” The Cape Cod female mind took on with
some readiness this shining veneer, but its native vigor remained
unimpaired; and women conducted their domestic affairs, or their
social amenities at home and in foreign ports, as became the wives of
their sailor husbands. At Barnstable and thereabouts domestic service
was supplied sometimes by the village girls, sometimes by the Mashpee
Indians. An old lady remembers her nurse Dinah, a tall, handsome
creature belonging to the clan of “Judge” Greenough, who governed his
people with wisdom and good sense; and she recalls a story of the
days when the mail arrived by post-rider and an old squaw held up the
embarrassed carrier to beg a ride. He permitted her to mount, but,
putting his horse to the canter, hoped to shake her off before he
reached the town. To no end: she clung like a leech, and called out
cheerily, “That’s right, massa. Go it! When I ride I love to ride!”
It is easy to be diverted by such anecdotes. With all their seeming
primness, the people had a rollicking humor, of which countenances
hidden in coal-scuttle bonnets and chins rigid in portentous stocks
were no index.
Manners were at their finest and best, and the expression of them
often bears a charming simplicity of thought if not of word. Such
is Mr. Freeman’s memory of an old lady who had been kind to him.
In a footnote of his history he corrects a deplorable error in the
text: “We were led, by intelligence communicated in good faith by
one whose relations to the person gave to his announcement the
assurance of authority, to state that a venerable and most estimable
lady was deceased. We are grateful that it is an error. Long may
that excellent woman survive, the admiration of her friends. We have
remembered her with respect ever since the day she loaned to us,
then a little boy, a beautifully illustrated Natural History, kindly
proffered with commendations and other encouraging words; and had we
the skill of a limner, we could now portray those features marked
with intellectuality and benevolence when, with attaching manners,
she made her little friend so happy.” Freeman says elsewhere: “If
the manners of the age were simple, they were not rough; nor was the
rusticity of the less influential devoid of that polish which the few
who gave tone to society, unassuming and unenvied, diffused among the
masses.”
All through the clipper-ship era, the importance of the Cape steadily
grew. She built ships at her own wharves and docked them there,
and in the eighteen-forties she even had her own custom-house at
Barnstable, although it cleared but one ship, and the building was
turned into a town hall. Wharves, harbor improvements, lighthouses
were built where they were most needed. In 1830 the Union Wharf
was built at Pamet Harbor by the toil of the shareholders in the
enterprise, each of whom held but one share and each of whom must
wheel his proportion of sand to fill the bulkheads. A committee was
appointed to supervise the work and see that there was no shirking;
and Rich tells us that some of the younger members of the company
were “willing to work harder than wheeling sand” to invite the charge
of shirking and fasten that charge upon some man “who felt that
neglecting his duty was nearly a crime.” At any price they must have
their fun, and lampooned certain bumptious members of the company in
doggerel that followed them to their grave. In 1825 a flint-glass
factory that became famous for its beautiful output was founded at
Sandwich—“glass-works to improve its sand,” is Thoreau’s gibe. The
salt-works flourished, there were several cotton and woollen mills,
banks and insurance companies and newspapers were established.
But the Civil War put an end to this expansion: vessels that were
destroyed then or had rotted at the wharves through disuse were never
replaced; and in any event the war had but given the _coup de grâce_
to trade by sailing ships that the development of steam and rails was
sure to weaken. Cape Cod soldiers who had followed the sea returned
from the war to find their business gone, and many energetic men
had to look elsewhere for careers. They found them; and there is
hardly a great city in the country that does not owe something of its
prosperity to these men and their children. It is interesting that
to-day the old determination to succeed in the circumstances offered
is reviving, and men are beginning to see that they need not travel
far afield to make a living. There is one of the best intensive farms
in the State at Truro; a model farm of twelve thousand acres is
being developed at the other extremity of the Cape; there is a great
duck-raising farm, and asparagus farms at Eastham. And why should not
sheep-raising be revived on the moors of Truro, and Eastham become a
granary once more?
Those men who remained at home after the Civil War became again, for
the most part, farmers and fishermen, and the humble native cranberry
was to do as much for their prosperity as had the salt-works for
their fathers. Back in 1677 the Massachusetts colonists who had
taken it upon themselves to coin the “pine-tree shillings,” sought
to appease the displeasure of King Charles by sending him, with
two hogsheads of samp and three thousand codfish, ten barrels of
cranberries. But it was not until 1816 that their cultivation was
seriously undertaken. Then Henry Hall, of Dennis, first succeeded
with his artificial “swamp”; four men of Harwich closely followed,
and the business grew until thousands of acres were developed, and,
crowded on the Cape, it worked out to larger scope in Plymouth
County. The picture of these swamps, flat as a floor, intersected by
drainage ditches, surrounded usually by wild hedges that teem with
color, is one of the most familiar to the Cape. In winter, when they
are often flooded, they add countless little lakes to the number
summer gives us; or their vines offer the smooth red of eastern
looms to brighten the pale northern scene until spring turns them
green once more. A new swamp shows gleaming sand through the regular
planting of the vines; on one that “bears,” crimson berries, in early
autumn, hang thick on the glossy dark-green runnels. And then the
swamps are charming centres of activity: women in bright sunbonnets,
men in soft shirts and caps, move swiftly on their knees up the
roped-off aisles as they scoop the berries into shining tin measures,
and a good picker earns a considerable number of dollars in the day.
There is the sound of talk and laughter, and the patter of berries
as they are “screened” of refuse and swept into barrels. The sun
brings out the last tint of color, the atmosphere is like a crystal
goblet of heady wine: it is the homely festa of the Cape at its most
beautiful season of the year.
II
From the beginning of the nineteenth century the towns were drawn
into increasingly close connection with the larger world. The mails
came to them first a-horseback, then by stage, then by the railway
which gradually nosed its way to the tip of the Cape. Telegraph
followed railway, and then, until the late war, the great Marconi
station and the cable talked with countries oversea. Freeman
reflects upon the blessings of rapid transportation in his day
when “we are now, in 1859, in more intimate and close contact with
Berkshire and even Maine, in fact with New York and Pennsylvania,
than the Cape was with Plymouth during all the time that it remained
the seat of justice. It is easier from the extremest town on the
Cape now to visit Boston and return, than it was once to perform
the necessary act of domestic preparation by carrying a grist from
Sandwich to Plymouth to be ground. Nor have we forgotten that
important character, the post-rider, who took the entire mail in his
saddle-bags (and lean they were too) and occupied the week in going
down the Cape and returning. The clock could not better indicate the
hour of 5 P.M., than did the regular appearance of Mr. Terry on his
slow, but sure and well-fed horse (the horses of the Friends are
always well kept and sleek, and possibly their capacity for swiftness
of locomotion was never put to the test) with his diminutive
saddle-bags that seemed to challenge the observation of every one
touching the question of their entire emptiness, every Friday
afternoon. The facilities now afforded by railroads, stage-coaches,
cheap postage, &c., contrast strangely with former times.”
[Illustration: THE MEADOWS]
Mr. Swift, in his “Old Yarmouth,” tells us something of those
facilities: “The all-day’s journey from Boston to the Cape is
remembered with recollections of pleasure, in spite of its
inconvenience and wearisome length. Starting at early dawn, and the
parties made up of persons of all stations and degrees of social
life, the stage coach was a levelling and democratic institution. The
numerous stopping places, along the route, gave ample opportunity
for the exchange of news, opinions, and to partake of the good cheer
of the various taverns.” The liquid portion of that “good cheer,” by
the way, was only too liberally distributed, and in 1817 no less than
seventeen retailers were privileged to quench the thirst of northern
Yarmouth. Such abuse led to reform; and a temperance society was
founded whose pledge was not too exacting: no member, “except in case
of sickness, shall drink any distilled spirit or wine, in any house
in town except ... the one in which he resides.” And the town voted
“not to approbate a retailer, but to approbate one taverner for the
accommodation of travellers.”
Thoreau, on his famous journey to the Cape, when inclement weather
forced him to coach between Sandwich and Orleans, was pleased not at
all in respect of the utilities of the towns, but bears testimony, as
a philosopher, to the extenuating attributes of their inhabitants.
The opinion has been quoted often, and is worth quoting again: “I
was struck by the pleasant equality which reigned among the stage
company, and their broad and invulnerable good humor. They were what
is called free and easy, and met one another to advantage, as men
who had, at length, learned how to live. They appeared to know each
other when they were strangers, they were so simple and downright.
They were well met, in an unusual sense, that is, they met as well
as they could meet, and did not seem to be troubled with any
impediment. They were not afraid nor ashamed of one another, but were
contented to make just such a company as the ingredients allowed.
It was evident that the same foolish respect was not here claimed,
for mere wealth and station, that is in many parts of New England;
yet some of them were the ‘first people,’ as they were called, of
the various towns through which we passed. Retired sea-captains,
in easy circumstances, who talked of farming as sea-captains are
wont; an erect, respectable and trustworthy-looking man, in his
wrapper, some of the salt of the earth, who had formerly been the
salt of the sea; or a more courtly gentleman, who, perchance, had
been a representative to the General Court in his day; or a broad,
red-faced, Cape Cod man, who had seen too many storms to be easily
irritated.” In short, Thoreau’s Cape-Codders were cosmopolitan
creatures, men of the world that he was so ready to despise.
Until the railway was continued “down the Cape,” travellers there
were far more likely to make their journeys to and from Boston by the
packets than by stage. “For fifty years,” writes Swift, “the arrival
and departure of the packets was the important topic of North side
intelligence, which was communicated promptly to the dwellers on the
South side, that they might govern themselves thereby in arranging
their business or their travels.” There are pretty stories of voyages
on the packets: of the little girl, wide-eyed with expectation, in
big bonnet and mitts, and a flowered bandbox for luggage, who is
entrusted to the captain for safe delivery into the hands of her
kinsmen in Boston. One old lady, whose histrionic sense developed
early, remembered that once when she was visiting Boston as a child
there was a smallpox epidemic. “I couldn’t help laughing,” said she,
“to think if I had got it and died, how grand it would have been to
be brought home by the packet, me on board sailing up the harbor with
colors half-mast.” There were young ladies setting out for their
finishing-school in the metropolis. And on any trip there was sure
to be a deep-water captain starting out to “join his ship” at Boston
or New York for the longer voyage overseas; beside him, perhaps, his
wife companioning him as far as she might, and when he had sailed
returning to the children and the three years on the farm without
him. Then, when his ship had been spoken by a faster sailer, and
was due to “arrive,” she would go up to the city and wait sometimes
through anxious weeks until it was sighted down the harbor. Nor were
they likely to be idle weeks. “I am so busy I do not know how to
stop to write except it is absolutely necessary,” she might write to
the little flock at home. “It is a great misfortune to have such a
busy mother, but you must make the best of it. I am improving every
moment in sewing, looking forward to September when father’s home for
my leisure.” And, joy to read, she has decided to let them come to
town. “You must come by packet, and you better not make any visits
except to grandmother as you will need all your time to prepare.
Susan must have all her petticoats fresh starched; Joseph must get
his whitewashing done and his garden in perfect order. We shall want
lots of potatoes if father is at home next winter. How does my flower
garden flourish? Fix up the pigstye as I want it ready when I get
home. Fasten the gates strong so the cattle cannot get in, and see to
the water fence. Susan need not fetch a bonnet-box unless it rains
when she goes to the packet. Hang your bonnet up on board and wear
your sunbonnet. Put the things which you will need to put on when
you get here in the leather bag. Remember if it is evening, stay on
board all night unless there is some one on board you know to go with
you. You may think you know the way, but there have been a great many
changes since you were here, and the city looks very different in the
evening to what it does in the daytime.” There are portraits of Susan
and Joseph taken on this momentous visit: elusive daguerrotypes set
in elaborately worked gilt frames. Joseph, in roundabout and Eton
collar, and with the determined mien befitting a future master of
ships, is seated by a table ornately covered. The other half of the
old stamped-leather case, that may be securely clasped by a brass
hook, is occupied by Susan: Susan shy, yet determined, too, clutching
at the same table, her wool dress cut for the display of childish
collarbones, her thin little arms twitched slightly akimbo by their
short tight sleeves; but her necklace is picked out with gold, her
cheeks with pink, and Susan’s wide-set eyes under the primly parted
hair look at you straight, undaunted by the great world.
The captains of these packets that ran out of every town on the
north shore of the Cape had their fun racing one another from port
to port; it is probable some money was lost or won on the results.
Barnstable, even, produced a ballad to immortalize some of the
contestants:
“The Commodore Hull she sails so dull
She makes her crew look sour;
The Eagle Flight she is out of sight
In less than half an hour,
But the bold old Emerald takes delight
To beat the Commodore and the Flight.”
Other packets had the romantic names of Winged Hunter and Leading
Wind; the Sarah of Brewster was as familiar to her people as “old
Mis’ Paine” or “Squire Freeman.” Truro had the Young Tell, the Post
Boy and the Modena. The Post Boy may be said to have been queen of
the bay, luxuriously fitted out in mahogany and silk draperies, and
with a captain who had the reputation of knowing the way to Boston in
the darkest night, and being able to keep his passengers good-natured
in a head wind. Passengers by the Post Boy knew the quality of their
company, and that the run to Boston could never be so long as to
exhaust the fund of stories. “Each told his experience, or listened
with interest or pleasure to the rest, and all sought with unaffected
goodnature to please and profit.”
III
No picture of the Cape could be complete without some accent upon
its men of the learned professions. Teacher, doctor, parson, and
lawyer might or might not have shared the universal experience of the
sea: it depended, usually, upon whether they were importations or
native products. But certainly the memory of them adds another note
to the richness of the general hue. We have met good Deacon Hawes,
the Yarmouth schoolmaster, and the more elegant Sidney Brooks, of
Harwich: they exemplify, perhaps, the two types of early teachers.
Young collegians, working their way through the university, were
for a later generation; and very well, for the most part, did they
train the boys and girls of the district schools. They were absurdly
young, some of them lads not yet in their twenties; but they imparted
knowledge with the same clear-minded determination with which they
were pursuing their own education. Schools of the best quality
that offered, the people of any time were bound to have: Truro, as
early as 1716, placed schoolmaster before politician. They engaged
Mr. Samuel Spear “for the entire year” for the consideration that
he should receive forty pounds salary and “board himself”; then,
“determined to save in some way what they were compelled to spend for
schools,” they voted to send no representative to the General Court,
“because we are not obliged by law to send one, and because the Court
has rated us so high that we are not able to pay one for going.”
Later Mr. Spear served Provincetown as minister.
Of the early physicians Doctor Abner Hersey, of Barnstable, was,
perhaps, the most famous. He came there from Hingham in 1769 to study
medicine with a brother, who, however, died within the year of his
arrival. Very likely the general knowledge he had picked up in that
short association, supplemented by his native judgment and common
sense, his keen observation and power of correct deduction, served
his patients as well as would a more exact training in the science
of the day. He became the leading physician of the Cape, and on his
regular circuit through the towns, the sick were brought for his
healing to every crossroads and centre. He was brusque and uncertain
in temper, and was, withal, eccentric. Freeman judges him “subject
to hypochondriac affections.” “He rejected alike animal food and
alcoholic stimulants; his meals were fruit, milk, and vegetables.
Contemning the follies of fashion, his garments were peculiar to
himself—his overcoat to protect him in travel was made of seven
calfskins, lined with flannel.” As a further precaution against the
searching winter winds his chaise was entirely enclosed with leather
curtains, pierced by two loopholes for his eyes and the reins. There
is evidence that his bed was heaped high with “milled” blankets which
he manipulated, up or down, in accord with the temperature. He was
just, benevolent, shrewd, and his name lived after him. By his will
he left five hundred pounds to Harvard University to endow a chair
of anatomy and surgery; and after his wife’s death the residue of
his estate was to be held for the thirteen Congregational parishes
of the county, the income distributed in due proportion to the size
of his practice therein. And there opened the door of temptation to
the devout: for this sum, amounting to some four thousand pounds,
was to be managed by the deacons and the income expended for such
sound doctrinal books as Dodridge on the “Rise and Progress of the
Christian Religion,” and Evans on “The Christian Temper.” But the
deacons made such good cheer at their annual meetings, which held
over sometimes for two or three days at the comfortable tavern of
Mrs. Lydia Sturgis in Barnstable, that little of the income was left
for the purchase of godly literature. The matter became something of
a scandal, and after the lapse of thirty years the court settled the
estate and distributed the principal among the several parishes.
Doctor James Thacher, who studied with Hersey and served as a surgeon
in the Revolution, died, in 1844, at the age of ninety. Doctor
Leonard, of Sandwich, born in 1763 and practising for sixty years,
had the enviable reputation of being patient with chronic invalids,
prompt in epidemics or “occasional” diseases—in short, a good
Christian and a good doctor. He was succeeded by his son, who links
up the profession, in the memory of the living with Doctor Gould, of
Brewster. Vast, kindly, skilful, sympathetic with his patients to his
own hurt, rather silent, who can forget him on his errands of mercy
as he drove from house to house or town to town in the “sulky” that
was so exact a fit for his bulk the wonder was he must not always
carry it upon his back as the snail his shell. It was an ordeal then
for a child to be stood on a chair and have that Jovine ear applied
to back and chest in lieu of a stethoscope. “Have you a phial?”
inquired Jove of the parent after one such test. Later a terrified
infant was abstracted from the depths of a broom-cupboard. “O mother,
mother, what is a phial?” cried the victim of his fears.
The early parsons were often, as we have seen, of a fine type—English
university men usually, who had travelled far in their quest of
freedom. They were perforce, in the new country, farmers as well
as clergymen, and one of them, the Reverend John Avery, of Truro,
practised, in addition, the arts of doctor, lawyer, and smith. It is
written of him that he “manifested great tenderness for the sick,
and his people very seriously felt their loss in his death.” He came
to them in 1711, and lived active, beneficent years among them until
his death in 1754. These Cape pastorates frequently covered a great
span of years. In its first century the West Parish of Barnstable
had but two ministers. In 1828 died the Reverend Timothy Alden, of
Yarmouth, after a tenure of fifty-nine years. Alden was more truly
of the soil than many of his brethren, as he was in direct line
from John of the Mayflower. He was a man of wit in the choice of
his texts: “Where no wood is, there the fire goeth out,” brought
forth on the Monday his stipulated firewood that had been lacking;
and to a critic he gave answer on the following Sabbath: “The word
preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that
heard it.” Mr. Freeman remembers that Alden was the last to wear the
Revolutionary costume. As late as 1824 he saw him at an ordination:
“his antique wig conspicuous, in small clothes, with knee and shoe
buckles, and three-cornered hat lying nearby—objects of interest to
the young.” “He sat there as sometimes stands a solitary, aged oak,
surrounded by the younger growth of a later period. It was to us
the last exhibition of the great wigs and cocked hats; it left also
impressions of a bygone age long to be remembered.”
The pastorates of Mr. Avery, Mr. Upham, and Mr. Damon, of Truro,
covered one hundred and eighteen years. It was Mr. Upham who rebated
fifty pounds of his salary during the hard times of the Revolution,
and gave further evidence of public spirit by travelling to Boston
to aid in adjusting “the prices of the necessities of life.” His
people were ready to raise one hundred dollars for his expenses. Mr.
Upham “left behind him a poem in manuscript, the subject of which
was taken from the Book of Job. He was ever attentive to the real
good of his people, and exerted himself with zeal and fidelity in
their service.” The Reverend Jude Damon was ordained in 1786, and
some notion of the festivity may be gathered from the fact that
Captain Joshua Atkins was voted forty dollars (Spanish Milled) to
defray the expense of entertaining the council. Mr. Damon was voted
two hundred pounds “settlement,” and, annually, seventy-five pounds
specie, the use of the parsonage, fifteen cords of oak wood, three
of pine, and five tons of hay delivered at his door. And Mr. Damon’s
comments upon certain of his parishioners, deceased, are preserved
for our pleasure in his private memoranda. One Mary Treat, dead at
ninety-five, “came from England at the age of fourteen, and was a
person of fine mind and robust constitution. She gave me a tolerable
account of London and Westminster bridges, and likewise observed that
the distance from Dover to Calais was so small that in a very clear
day linen might be seen from one place to another.” Samuel Small
was “a pious and good man whose great desire was to be prepared for
another and better world and to have an easy passage out of this.”
Of the Widow Atkins her “usefulness and activity in sickness and
midwifery will be remembered, and her memory will be embalmed with
a grateful perfume in the minds of all who were within the circle
of her acquaintance.” Another “had a taste for reading both sacred
and profane history.” Another, of enterprising spirit, was “greatly
prospered in his secular affairs, tender-hearted to the poor.” Vivid
little portraits flash out from his page: the husband, “tender and
affectionate, as a father distinguished for his talent of governing
his children, tempering indulgence with prudence; as a neighbor
pleasant and obliging, as a magistrate he was a peacemaker, as a
deacon of the church he magnified his office. He came to his grave
in full age, like a shock of corn cometh he in season.” Mr. Damon
himself was beloved for his tolerance and sweet spirit: of a welcome
guest one could say no more than “I would as soon see Mr. Damon.” But
his memoranda reveal that Mr. Damon had a keen eye. Of one female
parishioner who in her last illness “frequently expressed her desire
to be with her Redeemer,” he remarks, “It is to be hoped she was
as really pious as she seemed.” And of one deceased “professor”
he wrote that he “was possessed of good abilities and powers of
mind. These were, however, much eclipsed by his selfish spirit
and avaricious disposition.” To Mr. Damon’s cure belonged a local
astronomer, unlettered and untaught, a dreamer, who loved the stars.
He knew them all and called them by name, and, meeting with scant
sympathy in his star-gazing, scorned not the humblest disciple. “I
swear,” he had been known to exclaim, “half the stars might go out of
the sky, and nobody here would know it, if it wasn’t for me and Aunt
Achsah.”
The pastorates of Mr. Dunster, Mr. Stone, and Mr. Simpkins in the
North Parish of Harwich included its transfer to Brewster, and
covered a span of one hundred and thirty-one years. Mr. Dunster
married Reliance, daughter of Governor Hinckley, who is said to have
been baptized on the day of the memorable “swamp fight” that ended
King Philip’s War, and received her name in “token of firm reliance
in Divine Power” held by her mother for the safety of the father who
was fighting that day. Mr. Stone, in 1730, inveighs against “a sad
failing in family government—a wicked practice of young people in
their courtships which I have borne my public testimony against”—an
allusion, no doubt, to the ancient betrothal custom of “sitting-up.”
There are interesting cases of parish discipline recorded. In Mr.
Dunster’s time, “the church met to hear a charge examined against
a sister, brought by another sister in the church, the pushing her
out of a pew, and hunching another in time of divine service in
the meeting-house.” And as late as 1820 a committee was appointed
“to keep the meeting-house clear of dogs, and to kill them if their
owners will not keep them out”; boys, likewise, the committee were
to “take care of and keep them still in time of meeting.” No light
task, we may guess, where the boys were segregated in a balcony apart
as if for the special incitement of mischief; nor were boys the only
ones who were irked by those long services. It was the sexton’s duty
to turn the glass at the beginning of the sermon, which must be
ended with the sand, and Freeman remembers the “early preparation
for a determined stampede from the meeting-house the moment that
the benediction was pronounced. Coats were buttoned, canes and hats
were taken in hand, pew-doors were unbuttoned, and diligent and full
preparation was made for a general rush to ensue as soon as the
closing Amen should begin to be articulated by the minister. And
such a babel of tongues and noisy scattering of devout worshippers
as followed was memorable.” Nor is it remarkable that men should
have welcomed the Amen as a blessed release when pews must have been
stools of penance for a full-bodied sailor, or for a child whose
short legs must dangle unsupported, so narrow was the seat, so hard
and straight did the back rise therefrom. Mr. Freeman recalls other
points of the service, that of the choir “tuning their voices—often
with the aid of the bass viol and sometimes violin, during the
reading of the psalm,” and the slamming of the hinged seats of the
pews when the congregation rose for the prayer. It would have been
papistical then to kneel in the house of God, and a man addressed his
Maker stoutly upon his feet; the monotony of the service was further
varied, when the last hymn was given out, by standing with backs to
the parson as if, his contribution duly delivered, full criticism
might be turned upon the choir.
Mr. Simpkins steered Brewster through the troubled times of the
Embargo War, and aided with his intercession the deliberations of
the town as to paying war tribute to the British. Grandmothers of
not many years ago could tell stories of Parson Simpkins, a stately
gentleman for whom the best New England rum was kept on the sideboard
to cheer his parochial calls. But the parson, on such visits, was not
infrequently the herald of disaster: for when a ship arrived with
captain or seaman missing, drowned or dead in some foreign port,
the minister was first notified, and even if his call were only for
pleasure, the wife or mother who saw him coming would have a pang of
dread, and the neighbors say: “There goes Mr. Simpkins—bad news for
some one.”
One of the last of these long cures, running through thirty-five
years, was that of the Reverend Thomas Dawes, worthy successor of
his prototypes, a fine, scholarly gentleman of the old school. The
rounded periods of his sermons were sometimes applied to the case of
his parishioners with a directness that offended sensitive ears, but
is valued rightly in the stock-in-trade of many an urban preacher
of to-day. “We of _Brewster_,” he would roll out with melodious
emphasis. His reading of hymn and Scriptures was a remembrance to
be treasured, his presence in the pulpit a benediction, and who
that had seen him there could forget the shining glory of his face
as he “talked with God.” For the children of his parish, through a
long season, he made Saul of Tarsus a living personality, and the
coasts of the Mediterranean as familiar to them as Cape Cod Bay. He
illustrated his instruction by crayon sketches in color, and the
scholars saw how Gamaliel’s pupils were grouped about their master’s
feet; they knew how a man should adjust his phylactery; and though
there were derision of the High Priest’s countenance, there was no
confusing the style of his breast-plate with that of a centurion. As
he aged, the good pastor became something of a recluse. He loved his
books, and through the years amassed in his little study a collection
that was typical of the best in his day and generation, with a queer
alien blot now and then: for it was said that he could never resist
the blandishments of the canvasser and the appeal of the book in his
hand. Dying, he left his treasure intact to the village library;
nor did he see the necessity for any such stipulation as old John
Lothrop’s that his books were only for those who knew how to use them.
The temporal affairs of these good men not infrequently needed
mending, nor, as time went on, were the clergy usually recruited from
among the natives: Cape Cod men, pursuing their vocations by land
and sea, were likely to depute to aliens the less lucrative cure of
souls. Versatile Mr. Avery, of Truro, seems to have come out well in
the struggle and to have bequeathed a tidy fortune to his heirs. But
Jonathan Russell and Timothy Alden, as we have seen, needed to have a
care to their firewood; and Oakes Shaw, the successor of Russell and
father of the great chief justice, even had recourse to the constable
to adjust the arrears of his stipend. Mrs. Shaw, debating with her
son his choice of a profession, was betrayed into some ironical
appreciation of the clergy which she was quick to regret. “I hope you
will not mistake your talent,” wrote she. “I could name several that
took upon them the sacred profession of divinity, this profession
so far from regulating their conduct, that their conduct would have
disgraced a Hottentot. Others we have seen in various professions who
have been an ornament to the Christian religion. I was not aware till
I had just finished the last sentence that you might construe it into
a discouragement of entering upon the study of divinity. This is not
my intention, for I do most sincerely hope that you will make it your
study through life whether you ever preach it or not.”
Her son chose the law, and gave us one of the two great men, both of
them lawyers, whom the Cape has produced. Palfrey quotes one who went
so far as to affirm that “no spot has made such a gift to the country
as Great Marshes in Barnstable.” There lived James Otis, chief
justice of the Court of Common Pleas in the troubled times of the
Revolution, and there James Otis the patriot was born. James Otis,
the younger, when he grew to maturity, removed to Boston, but he may
be counted a son of the Old Colony and an inheritor of its genius. He
was far more than a fiery orator whose eloquence was the inspiration
of other men’s work; but on a flood of enthusiasm induced by that
eloquence he was carried into the House of Representatives. “Out of
this election will arise a damned faction,” commented a royalist
judge, “which will shake this province to its foundation.” His
prediction fell ludicrously short of the event. Otis conducted the
patriots’ cause with such “prudence and fortitude, at every sacrifice
of personal interest and amidst unceasing persecution,” that the
“History of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts” can declare that:
“Constitutional government in America, so far as it is expressed in
writing, developed largely from the ideas expressed by James Otis and
the Massachusetts men who framed the Constitution of 1780.”
And the man who more than any other in Massachusetts was to perfect
their work, who stands beside the great Marshall in the history of
American jurisprudence, and by the wise decisions of a temperate
mind established the flow of justice through the channel of the
common law, was also a native of Great Marshes. There, in 1781,
when the work of the earlier patriots was accomplished, Lemuel
Shaw was born. Slowly, irresistibly, by sheer force of worth and
capacity, he advanced to fame. He was graduated from Harvard, he
entered the law, and for twenty-six years practised his profession
in Boston. At one time and another he served in the General Court,
he was firewarden, selectman, a member of the school committee,
and of the constitutional convention of 1820; and in 1830, when he
was appointed chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court, his sane
inheritance, his tempered judgment, his wide experience of law and
of men, had forged a mind perfectly adapted to his opportunity.
In his thirty years upon the bench he enriched incalculably the
sparse records of the common law. In the opinion of a fellow jurist,
“The distinguishing characteristic of his judicial work was the
application of the general principles of law, by a virile and learned
mind, with a statesman’s breadth of vision and amplitude of wisdom to
the novel conditions presented by a rapidly changing civilization.”
The Pilgrims had brought here and practised the Anglo-Saxon
conception of such freedom as is commensurate with justice to all.
“They brought along with them their national genius,” wrote Saint
John de Crèvecœur in his “Letters from an American Farmer,” in
1782, “to which they principally owe what liberty they enjoy, and
what substance they possess.” It was the great American jurists who
developed and adapted that conception of justice for the due guidance
of the new nation.
Shaw lived in Boston, but, unlike James Otis, he never gave up
his hold upon his native town. He loved the village roads and
Great Marshes and the sea. And, curiously, as if again the magic
of the sea’s charm persisted in the fortunes of its children,
Shaw’s daughter married Herman Melville, the author of “Typee” and
“Omoo.” Shaw was fond of children, and used to drive his little
granddaughter about Boston in his old chaise; there is a story of
his being caught by a visitor at a game of bear with the children.
But he could be stern enough on the bench; and a sharp practitioner,
complaining of his severity, was tartly reminded by a fellow lawyer
that “while we have jackals and hyenas at the bar, we want the old
lion on the bench with one blow of his huge paw to bring their scalps
about their eyes.”
Shaw spoke again and again at local celebrations on the Cape. At
one such banquet he might have proposed, or answered, the toast to
“Cape Cod Our Home: The first to honor the Pilgrim ship, the first
to receive the Pilgrim feet; the first and always the dearest in the
memory of her children everywhere.” But it was at Yarmouth that he
expressed best, perhaps, the loyalties of his great heart: “There is
not one visitor here male or female whose heart is not penetrated
with the deep and endearing sentiment, at once joyous and sad, which
makes up the indescribable charm of home.”