ged to a windowpane on the east side. These
watchmen were paid $350 a year, practically a dollar a day, and
they seemed to have been as efficient as the lately installed
electrical appliance.

From the crow's nest to the church roof this old tower is
pencilled and carved with the names of Nantucketers, written in
for the last hundred years and many an otherwise forgotten man and
event is thus recorded for the use of future historians. Yet it is
safe to say that no man of all the island dwellers ever did or
ever will tread the stairs or look from the octagonal windows with
a more intense individuality than that of Billy Clark, Nantucket's
town crier, now lamentably dead since 1907. Each afternoon he
climbed to the crow's nest with horn under his arm to watch for
the daily incoming steamer. He could sight it about an hour before
it would dock and as soon as he did the horn blew grandly and his
voice rang out over the town in a rhyme, doubtless of his own
composing.

Hark, hark, hear Billy Clark,
He's tooting from the tower,
He sees the boat, she is afloat,
She'll be here, in an hour.

And so she would, and before she touched the dock Billy deftly
caught a bundle of Boston papers and racing uptown sold them all
before the passengers were off the boat, unless they moved
quickly. But these were but a few of Billy's multitudinous
activities. He cried auctions and sales, entertainments of all
sorts and if for any reason a public affair must be suddenly
postponed the quickest way to get the news about was to slip a
half dollar to Billy who forthwith cried the matter with amazing
celerity and vehemence from all the street corners, tooting his
horn between whiles to get the attention of all. Weekly or oftener
Billy used to cry meat auctions in the lower square, which have
always been a Nantucket institution; at these one bids for his
first choice of cuts and having bid highest is allowed such
portions and such amounts of the "critter" as he pleases.

*****

Billy Clark made much money, as money was reckoned in his day on
the island but he had no faculty for keeping it or even keeping
account of it. For thirty years his returns for his newspapers
sold were made from time to time to the Boston office in,
seemingly, such sums as struck his fancy as being appropriate.
These were more than adequate for by and by the office sent down
word, "Tell Billy Clark for heaven's sake to quit sending us
money: He is too