he pier, you may see another old boat put to humbler
uses, now that its seafaring days are over, and uses sometimes no less
romantic than the Cap'n's garden. It is a flat-bottomed boat, and lies
bottom side up just above the little beach made by the lap of the waves,
for the tide does not affect the Salt Pond back here three miles from the
outlet. The paint has nearly gone from this aged craft, though a few flakes
of green still cling under the gunwales. But in place of paint there have
appeared an incredible number of initials, carved with every degree of
skill or clumsiness, over bottom and sides. This boat is the bench whereon
you wait for the launch to carry you down the Pond, for the catboat or
thirty-footer to be brought in from her moorings, for Cap'n Perry to land
with a load of oysters; or it is the bench you sit upon to watch the sunset
glow behind the pines on the opposite headland, the pines where the blue
herons roost, or to see the moon track on the dancing water. The Post Road
is alive with motors now, far into the evening. You get your mail from the
little post office beside it as quickly as possible--which isn't very
quickly, to be sure, for we do not hurry in South County, even when we are
employed by Uncle Sam--and then you turn down the quiet lane, past the
Cap'n's garden, toward the lap of quiet water and the salty smell. Affairs
of State are now discussed, of a summer evening, upon the bottom of this
upturned boat, while a case knife dulled by oyster shells picks out a new
initial. And when the fate of the nation is settled, or to-morrow's weather
thoroughly discussed (the two are of about equal importance to us in South
County, with the balance in favour of the weather), and the debaters have
departed to bed, some of them leaving by water with a rattle of tackle or,
more often in these degenerate days, the _put, put_ of an unmuffled
exhaust, then other figures come to the upturned boat, speaking softly or
not at all, and in the morning you may, perhaps, find double initials
freshly cut, with a circle sentimentally enclosing them. So the old craft
passes her last days beside the lapping water, a pleasant and useful end.

On the other side of the Big House from the pier, at the head of a tiny
dredged inlet, there is an old boathouse. It seems but yesterday that we
used to warp the _Idler_ in there when summer was over, get the chains
under her, and block her up for the winter. She spent the winter on o