THE OLD TOWN
Elm Street, into which we rushed that afternoon, was a broad
thoroughfare extending from one end of the town to the other. On both
sides it was lined with trees, set at the edge of the brick sidewalks.
Mainly fine tall elms, they lent a distinction to the street and made
it notable among those which characterize the older towns of New
England. In the opinion of all the citizens, Elm Street was beyond
comparison.
Local pride did not exaggerate. Its unusual length, its great,
graceful trees and the dignified houses, made the street undoubtedly
beautiful. There were houses of every style which has been in vogue
during two hundred years. Roofs which sloped in the rear nearly to the
ground, gambrel roofs, and the various less attractive fashions of the
nineteenth century,--all were there.
But those of which the owners were most proud, those best suited to
the street, were the great, square, three-storied houses, built in the
early years of the century. That was the time of the town's prosperity,
before a fire had checked its growth, before shifting sands had almost
closed its harbor. Ships from the old town sailed every ocean then,
and carried our flag into strange, foreign ports. Their captains, or
their owners, built many of the big, square houses, so you could often
see, on the roof, a little railed platform, where the householder
might stand of a morning to sweep the harbor and the ocean with his
spy-glass. Charley Carter's father did this regularly, although the
ships in which he was interested sailed to this port no longer, if,
indeed, they sailed at all.
The town was built along one bank of the river, and Elm Street
followed the crest of the slope. It was an easy thing, therefore, for
any one standing on the roof of one of the houses to get a good view
of the river, the salt marshes, the sand-dunes, and the ocean. The
ocean spread out there, bright and clear, from the dim blue mountain
that rose on the far horizon in Maine, to the low hills of Cape Ann.
Sometimes, at night, the east wind brought the rumble of breakers, or
the booming sound of a whistling buoy that guarded the harbor.
The town was long and very narrow. From Elm Street you could look
down some of the cross streets to the river, and beyond. On the other
side of Elm Street, as soon as you had passed the gardens that lay
behind the big houses, you were almost in open country. There were a
few outlying farms, a few shanties, and then bare, scrubby fields, the
Common Pasture, rocky knolls and clumps of woods. On one of these farms
dwelt Mr. Diggery,--a fierce little man, of whom we went in terror.
So near did the river come to the lower part of the town that a storm
often made people who lived in that quarter need high boots to get
across the street; while the country (unexplored wilds to us!) closed
up so near on the other side of Elm Street, that owls, woodchucks, and
an occasional fox penetrated the gardens.
It was this nearness of the river and ocean, and of the open country,
that made the town such a delightful dwelling-place for us. Even the
centre of the town, the neighborhood where Ed Mason and Jimmy Toppan
lived, and Rob Currier, the two Carters, Horace Winslow, Peter Bailey,
and I,--this was a region thick with the possibilities of adventure.
Much of this centred about the frog pond and the Mall. The pond was
full of goldfish, and other humbler fish, and toads, frogs, and
water-beetles. You were sure to find something interesting whenever you
walked around the pond. Many of our neighbors on Elm Street owned large
gardens, to which we had entrance--either by permission, or by the
informal and far more adventurous method of climbing the back fence.
The owners of the gardens, at that period, were mostly elderly persons,
dwelling in great contentment and the most profound quiet. Their lives
were comfortable, well-ordered, and precise. They lived mainly in the
past. They pondered much on some grandfather, or great-grandfather, who
had built up a fortune through foreign trade, and they heeded not at
all the remarks of envious and ill-natured folk who liked to point out
that one of the chief commodities of this trade was rum. The principal
hallmark of their respectability was a portrait of their ancestor, with
very pink cheeks,--the sign of an outdoor life, and not necessarily an
indication of a taste for port and madeira.
Beside this venerable portrait would hang a lively representation
of the ship _Sally B._, as she appeared on some memorable occasion
entering the harbor of Singapore, and viewed by one of those artists
who invariably happen to be near by when the ship is under full sail
and making not less than twelve knots.
It was a period not so very far removed from our own time, and yet
different from it in a number of respects. No thumping, grinding
trolley car disturbed the quiet of Elm Street that bright June
afternoon. Infrequently, an omnibus rambled up and down. By night the
darkness was punctuated here and there by a gas flame at the top of an
iron lamp post. Rob Currier's big brother Dick had the proud privilege
of going about our neighborhood at sunset, with a ladder and a supply
of matches, to set these lamps alight. We used to watch him, and wonder
if we should ever get old enough and sufficiently influential to occupy
a public position like his. But before we reached the required age and
dignity the old lamp-posts had been taken down in favor of electric
lights.
No one had his letters brought to his house. If he wanted his mail,
or wished to send a letter, he went to the post-office. The nine
o'clock parade of citizens making toward that building was one of the
regular features of life in the town. At nine in the evening a church
bell rang the curfew,--although it had absolutely no significance.
It had always been done: that was reason sufficient for an old and
conservative place. When the ringer died, or something else happened
to stop its mournful sound, a well-to-do citizen quickly provided
funds to continue the ringing. The curfew laws, with their reference
to children, had not come into vogue, so the bell sounded each evening
simply out of regard for an old custom. Few heard it, and to few of
these did it make the slightest difference.
We did not often hear foreign tongues or see foreign faces on the
streets. Once in a while we might overhear two old women, with
shawls over their heads, conversing in Irish as they passed along.
The Mediterranean peoples had not arrived,--although they had sent
a pioneer in the person of Mr. Mazzoni, who presided over a little
stand at the foot of Main Street, and was an important personage to us,
because of the peanuts which he sold.
The boys who went to the parochial school, the Pats and Mikes, were a
kind of hostile crew, and when we met it was usually with an exchange
of horse-chestnuts or snowballs. This was because of no racial or
religious animosity,--we were simply two rival gangs, that was all. On
one occasion, when Ed Mason and I met a number of the parochial school
boys out in the country, there was an exchange of epithets that stopped
(as such meetings did not always stop) this side of blows. I was
reduced to a state of almost tearful indignation when one of the little
Irish boys asserted that I was "a Protestant."
I denied the charge vehemently, but when I got home and repeated the
insult, I learned that it was only too true. I had never suspected it,
and had gone on thinking that I was merely a Unitarian. Alas, it seemed
that I was a Protestant as well.
The charm and quaintness of the past had by no means vanished from
the old town. Wooden ships were still built on the river, now and
then, and the sea-captains gathered and gossiped in the rooms of the
Marine Society. Overhead was a museum of curiosities of the deep, and
of foreign lands. Some one of the captains would always be willing to
unlock the room for us, and let us inspect the dusty albatross, the
dried flying-fishes, the little ships in bottles, and all the other
objects of interest.
One grocery, still displayed the sign "E. & W. I. Goods," and more
than one citizen walked the streets in a beaver hat. There was old fat
Captain Millett, who tacked down Main Street every morning in summer
under an enormous green-lined umbrella, big enough to shelter a family.
There was Captain Bannister, who lived alone in his curious little
house on West Injy Lane, where he cultivated a garden patch of cinnamon
pinks. And there was Mr. Babbitt, the Quaker gentleman, who used to
pass with stately tread, as we played on Elm Street, or about the pond.
He was tall and dignified, and he wore a high hat and a frock coat,--I
had almost said a surtout,--with a shirt collar so high and antiquated
that he seemed to belong to the time of Martin Van Buren. He kept on
his black velvet ear-caps until summer was well advanced, and he put
them on again the first of September. But he was the friend of a great
poet, and every one respected him for that, as well as for his own
character.
There was still a town crier,--one of the last, or, as he claimed,
the very last one in this country. "Squawboo" (as we were told we
must not call him), or Mr. Landford (as we were told we ought to call
him), walked the streets with a large dinner bell. He would pause at
intervals, and ring his bell vigorously. Then, throwing back his head,
he would emit a volume of sound which would strike the hearer with
astonishment. I have seen strangers paralyzed with amazement as they
heard for the first time, and unexpectedly, the deep, tremendous tones
that issued from his throat.
"Hear--what--I--have--to--say!" he would begin.
"Grand--dance--at--City--Hall--to-morrow--evening--at--eight--o'clock.
--Admission--fifty--cents--ladies free!--COME, ONE--COME, _EVERYBODY_!!"
And then he would ring the bell again, and walk on.
I have stopped, for the most of this chapter, to explain what kind of
a town it was in which we passed the believing years, the years which
began with us, and continued for a dozen summers or so. But now, if you
please, we will return to that afternoon when we dashed out of school,
and left Mr. Colburn and Miss Temple behind. We ran into a land of
wonder. The first thing for me to learn about was that fishing trip for
to-morrow.
I hastily consulted Ed Mason about it. No; we could not go, it must be
postponed. Parts of the necessary tackle were missing, and there were
reasons, connected with the approaching Fourth of July, why neither of
us desired to make any avoidable expenditures just then.
But there was another plan, into which I might be admitted,--if I could
prove trustworthy.
"You won't tell?" queried Ed Mason.
"Course not!"
"Cross your heart?"
I crossed my heart and hoped I might die.
But I could not know just then,--I must wait until next morning.
It was fearful discipline for the soul, but I survived until after
breakfast the next day. Then I presented myself at the Masons' side
yard,--their house was within stone's throw of ours.
Ed had, so I understood, some mysterious recipe,--some ceremony to
perform that was not only extraordinary in itself, but it was to be
rewarded in the most fascinating manner imaginable.
He came out of the house with a serious face, led me down behind an
apple tree, and there, after looking carefully about for eavesdroppers,
unfolded the cryptic plot.