far ahead of us."

As might have been expected Nantucket's town crier died poor and
would have been in want had not a subscription paper been started
for him by the local paper. This, made up in large part by summer
visitors and off-islanders, amounted to several hundred dollars,
and at the end there were forty dollars left with which to buy him
a tombstone. I have not seen this tombstone. It ought to have a
horn neatly graven, but I suppose it has not. The town misses him,
needs him, more than one citizen says that, but so individualistic
a place makes no attempt to get another. There is something of the
Quaker idea in that, for though the island was once a great Quaker
stronghold few if any of the old sect remain. But it is the Quaker
idea. A new town crier will arrive when the spirit moves. Till
then the horn is silent. An off-islander might suppose that the
town crier was appointed in town meeting as is the fence-viewer,
the sealer of weights and measures, the pound-keeper and the
hog-reeve. But that is not so. Billy Clark evolved himself, so to
speak, and the town patiently waits a second coming.

*****

From the watch tower one looks down many-flued chimneys and sees a
score or so of railed-in platforms on the very housetops, often
surrounding the chimney. These are the "shipmaster's walks," often
known as the "wives' walks." From these one gets a good look off
to sea and can readily fancy wives and sweethearts climbing to
them to watch for some whaleship that left port perhaps three
years before. I fancy them too high, too breezy and too
conspicuous for much walking by these. Thence one may see the
island round, and get a broad view of the open downs to southward
that tempt one to tramp, seeking the edge of the Gulf Stream, led
by the steady roar of its breakers pulsing against the clay
cliffs. On the downs one gets a sense of the whole of the island
as nowhere else. Here it is a ship at sea, unsinkable and steady,
blown upon by the free winds of all the world. In the half-gale
out of the west I note the smell of the shoals, a suggestion of
bilge in the brine, not altogether pleasant. I fancy a heavy sea
stirs the slimy depths and brings their ooze uppermost. I had
noticed this from an incoming liner's deck when off the lightship
before, but charged it to the ship. Now I know it for a strange
odor of the sea. It makes me half believe the humorous, oft-told
tale of skipper Hackett, who knew his location by ta