FullReads

I.

The coast of Maine was in former years brought so near to foreign shores by its busy fleet of ships that among the older men and women one still finds a surprising proportion of travelers. Each seaward-stretching headland with its high-set houses, each island of a single farm, has sent its spies to view many a Land of Eshcol; one may see plain, contented old faces at the windows, whose eyes have looked at far-away ports and known the splendors of the Eastern world. They shame the easy voyager of the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean; they have rounded the Cape of Good Hope and braved the angry seas of Cape Horn in small wooden ships; they have brought up their hardy boys and girls on narrow decks; they were among the last of the Northmen’s children to go adventuring to unknown shores. More than this one cannot give to a young State for its enlightenment; the sea captains and the captains’ wives of Maine knew something of the wide world, and never mistook their native parishes for the whole instead of a part thereof; they knew not only Thomaston and Castine and Portland, but London and Bristol and Bordeaux, and the strange-mannered harbors of the China Sea.

One September day, when I was nearly at the end of a summer spent in a village called Dunnet Landing, on the Maine coast, my friend Mrs. Todd, in whose house I lived, came home from a long, solitary stroll in the wild pastures, with an eager look as if she were just starting on a hopeful quest instead of returning. She brought a little basket with blackberries enough for supper, and held it towards me so that I could see that there were also some late and surprising raspberries sprinkled on top, but she made no comment upon her wayfaring. I could tell plainly that she had something very important to say.

“You have n’t brought home a leaf of anything,” I ventured to this practiced herb-gatherer. “You were saying yesterday that the witch hazel might be in bloom.”

“I dare say, dear,” she answered in a lofty manner; “I ain’t goin’ to say 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 Indian footpath leadin’ over towards the Back Shore through the great heron swamp that anybody can’t travel over all summer. You have to seize your time some day just now, while the low ground ‘s summer-dried as it is to-day, and before the fall rains set in. I never thought of it till I was out o’ sight o’ home, and I says to myself, ‘To-day ‘s the day, certain!’ and stepped along smart as I could. Yes, I ‘ve been visitin’. I did get into one spot that was wet underfoot before I noticed; you wait till I get me a pair o’ dry woolen stockings, in case of cold, and I ‘ll come an’ tell ye.”

Mrs. Todd disappeared. I could see that something had deeply interested her. She might have fallen in with either the sea-serpent or the lost tribes of Israel, such was her air of mystery and satisfaction. She had been away since just before mid-morning, and as I sat waiting by my window I saw the last red glow of autumn sunshine flare along the gray rocks of the shore and leave them cold again, and touch the far sails of some coast-wise schooners so that they stood like golden houses on the sea.

I was left to wonder longer than I liked. Mrs. Todd was making an evening fire and putting things in train for supper; presently she returned, still looking warm and cheerful after her long walk.

“There ‘s a beautiful view from a hill over where I ‘ve been,” she told me; “yes, there ‘s a beautiful prospect of land and sea. You would n’t discern the hill from any distance, but ‘t is the pretty situation of it that counts. I sat there a long spell, and I did wish for you. No, I did n’t know a word about goin’ when I set out this morning” (as if I had openly reproached her!); “I only felt one o’ them travelin’ fits comin’ on, an’ I ketched up my little basket; I didn’t know but I might turn and come back time for dinner. I thought it wise to set out your luncheon for you in case I did n’t. Hope you had all you wanted; yes, I hope you had enough.”