ten feet along it is on edge, perhaps ten feet
further on end. A blind man could know his exact location in any
part of the town simply by the sound of his own footfall on the
sidewalk surface beneath him.

So it is with the houses, and I fancy in this lies one great charm
of the town to the city-bored summer visitor. No doubt every old
sea dog was his own architect, and the houses show it from main
truck to keelson. Yet hardly in a single instance is the result
displeasing, within or without, above decks or below. Instead,
there is a fine harmony of contrasts that delights while it rests.
As for location, it would seem as if each shipmaster, once he had
the structure launched, brought her up at full tide and let her
lie just where she stranded when the ebb began. So they rest
today, jumbled together in friendly neighborliness or slipping
down the tide toward the harbor on the one hand and toward the
wide high seas of the downs on the other. The town melts into the
open either way and belongs to it, merging gently with no
possibility of shock or rudeness. So it is with the people, the
real Nantucketers. Each intensely individual they yet blend in a
wholesome harmonious whole that joins the outside world with
little friction. The sailor instinct is strong in them, and they
bring their barks alongside the dock or the stranger with a
pleasant hail and without a jar.

*****

As the silver-toned Lisbon bell of the Unitarian church tower
dominates the sounds of the town so the gilt dome of this church
tower dominates the town to the eye of the inbound mariner, as he
swings round Brant Point. So, too, in more than one way, since its
building in 1810, this strong tower has dominated the home life of
the city. Its glassed-in crow's nest has been the city's watch
tower for a century and more. And so in a measure it is today. The
fire alarm system, now modern and electric, warns of fire by its
means, summoning the firemen to boxes by numbers rung. Yet only a
few years ago the old tower was literally a watch-tower, occupied
always by one of three superannuated seamen who watched for fires,
and seeing one rang the bell and shouted the location to the fire
department. One stood watch in the glassed-in octagon above. Two
sat by the fire and smoked in a room in the belfry below. If the
wind was in the east they put the stove pipe out of a hole in the
west side of the tower. If it blew from the west the stove pipe
was readily chan