Produced by Al Haines
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
To
The coast of Maine was in former years brought so near to foreignshores by its busy fleet of ships that among the older men and womenone still finds a surprising proportion of travelers. Eachseaward-stretching headland with its high-set houses, each island of asingle farm, has sent its spies to view many a Land of Eshcol; one maysee plain, contented old faces at the windows, whose eyes have lookedat far-away ports and known the splendors of the Eastern world. Theyshame the easy voyager of the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean;they have rounded the Cape of Good Hope and braved the angry seas ofCape Horn in small wooden ships; they have brought up their hardy boysand girls on narrow decks; they were among the last of the Northmen'schildren to go adventuring to unknown shores. More than this onecannot give to a young State for its enlightenment; the sea captainsand the captains' wives of Maine knew something of the wide world, andnever mistook their native parishes for the whole instead of a partthereof; they knew not only Thomaston and Castine and Portland, butLondon and Bristol and Bordeaux, and the strange-mannered harbors ofthe China Sea.
One September day, when I was nearly at the end of a summer spent in avillage called Dunnet Landing, on the Maine coast, my friend Mrs. Todd,in whose house I lived, came home from a long, solitary stroll in thewild pastures, with an eager look as if she were just starting on ahopeful quest instead of returning. She brought a little basket withblackberries enough for supper, and held it towards me so that I couldsee that there were also some late and surprising raspberries sprinkledon top, but she made no comment upon her wayfaring. I could tellplainly that she had something very important to say.
"You have n't brought home a leaf of anything," I ventured to thispracticed herb-gatherer. "You were saying yesterday that the witchhazel might be in bloom."
"I dare say, dear," she answered in a lofty manner; "I ain't goin' tosay it was n't; I ain't much concerned either way 'bout the facts o'witch hazel. Truth is, I 've been off visitin'; there's an old Indianfootpath leadin' over towards the Back Shore through the great heronswamp that anybody can't travel over all summer. You have to seizeyour time some day just now, while the low ground 's summer-dried as itis to-day, and before the fall rains set in. I never thought of ittill I was out o' sight o' home, and I says to myself, 'To-day 's theday, certain!' and stepped along smart as I could. Yes, I 've beenvisitin'. I did get into one spot that was wet underfoot before Inoticed; you wait till I get me a pair o' dry woolen stockings, in caseof cold, and I 'll come an' tell ye."
Mrs. Todd disappeared. I cou