usual island
proportion of the sexes, came out of the cottages, and stood in the
lanes talking and laughing, or walked to the edge of the bluff to see
the sun go down. We rubbed our eyes. Was this real, or were we looking
into some showman's box? It seemed like the Petit Trianon adapted to an
island in the Atlantic, with Louis XV. and his marquises playing at
fishing instead of farming.

A venerable codfisher had been standing off and on our vehicle for some
time, with the signal for speaking set in his inquisitive countenance. I
hailed him as Mr. Coffin; for Cooper has made Long Tom the legitimate
father of all Nantucketers. He hove to, and gave us information about
his home. There was a picnic, or some sort of summer festival, going on;
and the gay lady-birds we saw were either from Nantucket, or relatives
from the main. There had once been another row of cottages outside of
those now standing; but the Atlantic came ashore one day in a storm, and
swallowed them up. Nevertheless, real property had risen of late. "Why,"
said he, "do you see that little gray cottage yonder? It rents this
summer for ten dollars a month; and there are some young men here from
the mainland who pay one dollar a week for their rooms without board."

Thompson said his sensations were similar to those of Captain Cook or
Herman Melville when they first landed to skim the cream of the fairy
islands of the Pacific.

I was deeply moved, and gave tongue at once. "It is sad to think that
these unsophisticated, uninflated people must undergo the change
civilization brings with it. The time will come when the evil spirit
that presides over watering-places will descend upon this dear little
village, and say to the inhabitants that henceforth they must catch men.
Neatness, cheapness, good-feeling, will vanish; a five-story hotel will
be put up,--the process cannot be called building; and the sharks that
infest the coast will come ashore in shabby coats and trousers, to prey
upon summer pleasure-seekers."

"In the mean time," said Thompson, "why should not we come here to live?
We can wear old clothes, and smoke cigars of the _Hippalektryon_ brand.
Dr. Johnson must have had a poetic prevision of Nantucket when he wrote
his _impecunious_ lines:

'Has Heaven reserved, in pity for the poor,
No pathless waste or undiscovered shore,
No secret island in the boundless main?'

This is the island. What an opening for young men of immoderately s