friends had reached
the crest of the long slope leading up from the townhall. On one side
of the road stretched the imposing frontage of the "Atkins estate," with
its iron fence and stone posts; on the other slouched the weed-grown,
tumble-down desolation of the "Cy Whittaker place." The contrast was
that of opulent prosperity and poverty-stricken neglect.

If our village boasted one of those horseless juggernauts, such as are
used to carry sightseers in Boston from the old North Church to the
Public Library and other points of interest--that is, if there was a
"seeing Bayport" car, it is from this hill that its occupants would be
given their finest view of the village and its surroundings. As Captain
Josiah Dimick always says: "Bayport is all north and south, like a
codfish line. It puts me in mind of Seth Higgins's oldest boy. He was so
tall and thin that when they bought a suit of clothes for him, they used
to take reefs in the sides of the jacket and use the cloth to piece onto
the bottoms of the trousers' legs." What Captain Joe means is that
the houses in the village are all built beside three roads running
longitudinally. There is the "main road" and the "upper road"--or
"Woodchuck Lane," just as you prefer--and the "lower road," otherwise
known as "Bassett's Holler."

The "upper road" is sometimes called the "depot road," because the
railroad station is conveniently located thereon--convenient for the
railroad, that is--the station being a full mile from Simmons's "general
store," which is considered the center of the town. The upper road
enters the main road at the corner by the store, and there also are
the Methodist meetinghouse and the schoolhouse. The townhall is in the
hollow farther on. Then comes the big hill--

"Whittaker's Hill"--and from the top of this hill you can, on a clear
day, see for miles across the salt marshes and over the bay to the
eastward, and west as far as the church steeple in Orham. If there
happens to be a fog, with a strong easterly wind, you cannot see the
marshes or the bay, but you can smell them, wet and salty and sweet. It
is a smell that the born Bayporter never forgets, but carries with him
in memory wherever he goes; and that, in the palmy days of the merchant
marine, was likely, to be far, for every male baby in the village was
born with web feet, so people said, and was predestined to be a sailor.

When Heman Atkins came back from the South Seas early in the '60's,
"