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IX DOWN IN
MAINE
I HAVE always thought that fiction made the people
of the New England country much more picturesque and entertaining than they really
were, for it has seemed to me that in New England, as elsewhere, the
commonplace abounded and distinct originality only cropped out at infrequent
intervals. Since going “down” in Maine I have revised this opinion somewhat,
and am willing to concede more than I would have before to our dialect writers
— at least to such as are not carried away with a craze for queer types and
mere grotesqueness. The rural
population along the Maine coast is composed almost wholly of Yankees of the
purest strain, than whom there does not exist a more piquant combination of
shrewdness and originality, intermixed with not a little downright oddity and
crankiness. They are born jokers, and their conversation is enlivened with many
curious twists and turns and out-of-the-way notions. The talk of the men and
boys, it must be allowed, is apt to be well seasoned with brimstone, yet this
insinuates itself in such a gentle, casual way that it is robbed of half its
significance. On ordinary occasions the inclination is to avoid absolute
swearing, and make the word “darn” in its various conjugations serve to give
the desired emphasis. “Darn” was one of the hardest-worked words I heard,
though a close second was found in the mention of his Satanic Majesty. Another
characteristic of the Maine folk was their great fondness for whittling. Some
of them would pare away with their jack-knives at sticks big enough for
firewood, and at one sitting whittle them all to pieces. Yet this jack-knife
labor was strangely aimless. These down-east Yankees only whittled out their
thoughts rarely anything else not even a tooth‑pick, though I did see one man,
on the porch of a store, fashion a prod about a foot long with which he
proceeded to clean out his ears. Still
another characteristic of the inhabitants was their serene lack of haste.
“Forced-to-go never gits far,” was a sentiment that seemed to have found
universal acceptance in the rustic fishing village where I sojourned. The people
were all loiterers on the slightest excuse. You saw them visiting in the
fields, they sat on fences together and in the grass by the roadside, and on
the counters and among the boxes of the little stores, and on the piazzas in
front of the taverns and post-offices. Teams that met on the road often drew up
to give the drivers opportunity to talk, or a man driving would meet a man
walking, and both would stop, while the latter adjusted one foot comfortably on
a wheel-hub and entered into conversation. Yet the
people were not incompetent or thriftless. In their plodding way they nearly
all made a decent living, and some accumulated modest wealth. The homes were,
almost without exception, plain two-story buildings of wood with clapboarded
sides. The low, old-fashioned, weatherworn houses, shingled all over, walls as
well as roofs, were getting rare. Barns were small, for it is not a good
farming region, and the houses presented a somewhat forlorn and barren aspect
from lack of the great elms, maples, and spreading apple trees which in other
parts of New England are an almost certain accompaniment of country homes.
These trees do not flourish in northeastern Maine. Instead, spruce and fir are
the typical trees of the landscape. Their dark forests overspread a very large
part of the country and give to it a look of rude northern sterility,
bespeaking short summers and long, cold winters.  A Lobster-pot To me the
region was most attractive close along the shore. I liked to linger on the
odorous wharves, with their barnacled piles and their litter of boards and
barrels, ropes and lobster-pots. I liked still better to follow the water-line
out to the points where were seaward‑jutting ledges against which the waves
were ceaselessly crashing and foaming. Behind the points the sea reached inland
in many a broad bay and quiet cove, and with every receding tide these invading
waters shrunk and left exposed wide acres of mud-flats where barefoot boys
grubbed with short-handled forks for clams. Then there were the frequent ruins
of old vessels, some of them with hulls nearly complete, but dismantled of
everything that could be ripped off and taken away; others with little left
save their gaunt, black ribs sticking up out of the sand like the bones of
ancient leviathans of the deep. “‘Twa’n’t
storms that spiled ‘em leastways that wa’n’t the trouble with most on ‘em,”
explained a man I had questioned about them. “They just wa’n’t sea‑worthy no
longer, you know.” The
man
was fastening a new sail to the bowsprit of his clumsy fishing sloop
that lay
on its side on the beach. “But you see that vessel, right
over thar in the
middle o’ the cove — that’s a wrack. It
drove in here in a storm with nobody on
board. That was a East Injiaman wunst. There ain’t many
vessels of any size
owned along the coast here now. This boat’s the sort we have
mostly hereabouts
these days. I go lobsterin’ in it. I got one hundred and
twenty pots out, and
I’ll be startin’ to visit ‘em about three
o’clock to-morrer mornin’. It’ll be
noon by the time I c’n make the rounds and git
back.” I left the
man tinkering his boat and went up from the shore into a pasture field. There I
found two children, a boy and a girl, picking wild strawberries. The berries
were small, but they were sweet and had a delicate herby flavor never attained
by cultivated varieties. The boy said they intended to sell what they picked to
the hotels. The hotels were good customers all through the season, and the
children tramped over many miles of field and swamp and woods in a search for
the succession of berries from the strawberries, which ripened in June, and the
raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries and huckleberries which followed
later, to cranberries in the early autumn. Now
a man
called to the little girl from a neighboring patch of cultivated land
where he
was hoeing. “Susy,” he said, “I want you
to go home ‘n’ get my terbacker. It’s
right in my other pants’t I hung up by the suller
door.”  A Home on the Shore “Do you
want your knife, too?” the girl called back. “No, jest
the terbacker. I can’t work good ‘ithout it.” “Your
beans are looking well,” said I, from over the fence. “Yes; but
the darned weeds grow so I have to hoe ‘em,” he complained, with the air of
thinking the weeds increased in number and size out of pure contrariness. “You’re a
stranger round here, ain’t ye?” he continued, inquiringly. I
acknowledged that I was. “Well,
d’ye ever see that stun over’t Green Harbor?” No; I had
not. “Well,
ye
ought to. It’s a grave-stun marble —
’n’ ‘t was jes’ like any other
stun when
‘twas planted. Man named Ruckle is buried thar. I
c’n remember him when I was a
boy. He was a great hand for religion — use to be alus
tellin’ how now he bore
the cross, but sometime he’d wear the crown. “An’
people use to say to him he mustn’t be too sure. Might be
he’d go to hell after
all. But, no, he knowed he was goin’ to heaven,
‘n’ if there was any way o’
informin’ his friends he was wearin’ the crown
after he died he’d let ‘em know.
Well, he died ‘n’ they buried him
‘n’ put up the stun, ‘n’
‘bout three months
after’ards people begun to notice there was
somethin’ comin’ out on’t. It was
special plain after rains, ‘n’ then they made out
‘twas a figger of a man with
his hands folded, prayin’; and there was a crown on his head.
It’d pay you to
go over thar ‘n’ see that thar stun.
You arsk for Job Ruckle. He’s a relative ‘n’ he’ll tell you all about it.”  SUMMER CALM My
curiosity was aroused, and a few days later I went over to Green Harbor and
looked up Mr. Job Ruckle. He was standing in his kitchen doorway. “It isn’t
going to storm, is it?” I remarked. Mr. Ruckle
cast his eyes skyward. “Well, I do’ know,” was his response, “we been havin’
awful funny weather here lately. Now to-day you can’t tell what it’s goin’ to
do. There’s spells when the sun almost shines, and then it comes on dark and
foggy ‘n’ you hear the big bell dingin’ down at the lighthouse.” His
friendly communicativeness, like that of most of the natives, was delightful. I
mentioned the mystical gravestone and he said: “I’ll take ye right to the
buryin’-groun’ ‘n’ show it to ye. But I got to draw a bucket o’ water fust. My
woman’d give me Hail Columby if I didn’t.” He picked
up a heavy wooden pail, and I followed him across the yard to an antiquated
well-sweep. He lowered and filled the pail. “The well
ain’t so very deep, but you won’t find no better water nowhar,” he declared. I begged
to try it and commended its sweetness and coolness. “Yes, the
rusticators all take to that water,” was his pleased comment. By
rusticators he meant the summer boarders of the region. That was the common term
for them on the Maine coast. At first my unfamiliar ears failed to catch the
signification of the word, and I had the fancy that a rusticator was some
curious sea creature akin to an alligator. “These
‘ere rusticators,” the man went on, “stop here time ‘n’ agin to git a drink
from my well. That’s ginoowine water, that is!” Presently
he was leading the way down one of the narrow, woodsy lanes that abound in the
district to the rustic burial-place of the community. “Thar’s
the stun,” said Mr. Ruckle,
“‘n’ thar’s the figger
coverin’ the hull back on’t.
Here’s the head ‘n’ the two eyes,
‘n’ out this side is the hands clasped,
‘n’
thar’s the crown. Looks like an old Injun, I tell
‘em. There’s lots o’ people
come here to see it — some on ‘em way from
Philadelphia, ‘n’ I’ve seen this
lane all full o’ rusticators’ buckboards. Some
think the figger’s a rael sign
from heaven; but my idee is that the marble’s poor, or thar
wouldn’t no stain a
come out that way. I tell the relations ‘t I’d take
the stun down ‘n’ put up a
good one, but the rest on ‘em won’t have it
teched.” The story
of the stone. was interesting and the cloudy markings on its back curious, and
I could make out the vague figure crowned and prayerful, yet it certainly was
too grewsomely like an “old Injun” to be suggestive of a heavenly origin. One thing
that impressed me during my stay in Maine was the astonishing number of little
churches among the scattered homes. I could not see the need for half of them.
The only excuse offered for their superabundance was the uncompromising
denominationalism of the inhabitants. One man told me of a little hamlet where
two churches had recently been begun a Methodist and a Baptist. “They’re
at Clamville, way up ‘t the end o’ Hog Bay,” he explained, with the customary
attention to details. “‘Tain’t nothin’ of a place only ‘bout six houses there
and the people are poorer’n Job’s turkey; but somethin’ stirred ‘em up lately,
and they set to work to put up them two churches. Well, their money’s given out
now, and they’ve stopped on both of ‘em. I wouldn’t wonder a mite if they stood
there jes’s they air, half finished, till they rotted and tumbled to pieces.” It was a
man named Smith who related this. He was driving and had overtaken me walking
on the road, and as he was alone he had offered me the vacant seat in his
buggy. That is a way the Maine folks have, for a team not already filled never
passes a pedestrian, whether acquaintance or stranger, without this friendly
tender of assistance. “You look
like a feller I knew once that was to our Smith reunion, over in Washington
County a few years ago,” the man confided. “But he was rather taller’n you,
come to think. I was livin’ over there then and I got up the reunion myself. We
had a great time. There was Smiths from all around Massachusetts and everywhere
forty or fifty of ‘em; and there was a friend of mine there, an artist from
Aroostook County with his camera. He took two pictures of the crowd, and he had
bad luck with both of ‘em. I looked through his machine and it was the
prettiest sight ever I see all of us settin’ there on the grass with the woods
behind. By George, I wouldn’t ‘a’ had them pictures fail for twenty-five
dollars! “You’re
stoppin’ over here at Sou’ East Cove, I s’pose. You at one o’ the hotels?” “Yes, at
Bundy’s.” “Well,
that’s a good place — best there is there. I’ll set you right down at the door.
Bundy’s wife’s a good cook, and they ain’t too highfalutin on prices. Only
trouble is Bundy gets full.” “What, in
Maine?” “Oh, yes,
no trouble about that. You c’n always get your liquor in packages from the
cities, and there’s always drinkin’ resorts in every town that has drinkers
enough to support ‘em. In Bar Harbor and such places they run the saloons
perfectly open, but mostly they are a little private about ‘em. You have to go
downstairs and along a passage or something of that sort. It’s understood that
about once a year the drinkin’ places’ll be raided, and every rum-seller pays a
fine of one hundred and fifty dollars. System amounts to low license to my
thinkin’, and I don’t see but there’s full as many drunkards in Maine as you’ll
find anywhere else among the same sort of people.  THE POST-OFFICE PIAZZA “I’ll tell
you of a case. I live back here a mile or so beyond where I picked you up, and
down a side road near the shore there’s a man and wife lives, and the man gets
tight about once in so often. He’s uglier’n sin when he’s spreein’ beats his
wife ‘n’ all that sort o’ thing. Well, up she come the other night through the
woods carryin’ a little hairy dog in her arms. Her man had been and got crazy
drunk and took to throwin’ things at her, and her face was cut and bleeding.
She was highstericky bad, and talkin’ wild like, and huggin’ that little dog o’
hern and tellin’ it to kiss her only comfort she had in the world, she said. I
was for gettin’ the man arrested, but she wouldn’t hear of it. “Hohum,
wal, wal, it ain’t easy to know what to do about this drinkin’ business, and
our Maine system don’t work to perfection no more’n any other. Guess it’s goin’
to rain.” It did
rain that evening — came down in floods with an accompaniment of lightning and
thunder. After supper I sat on the piazza with the rest of the hotel family.
Among the others gathered there was a young woman from one of the neighbor’s,
and a travelling agent who said he had made fifteen hundred dollars in nine
weeks, and a piano-tuner from a seaport a score of miles distant, who said he
had made thirty‑four dollars in the last three days. “But I ain’t collected a
red cent of it,” he added, “and how in the old Harry ‘m I goin’ to pay my hotel
bill with things goin’ on that way I’d like to know!” Slap! The
piano-tuner despatched a mosquito. “Dick,”
said he, addressing the landlord, “where’d all these mosquitoes come from down
around here?” “Well,”
responded the landlord, soberly, “we bought quite a few last year. Had ‘em
barrelled up and sent on from Boston.” “Dick, d’
you know,” said the travelling agent, “I like to ‘a’ got killed when I come off
the steamer on to your wharf this trip?” “No; how’s
that?” “My
gosh,
I had the greatest highst ‘t I ever had in my life! Stepped
on a banana peel or
something, and my feet went out on the horizontal so almighty quick I
forgot to
flop. I couldn’t ‘a’ sat down any harder
if I’d ‘a’ weighed five ton!” Then the
others related various “highsts” they had experienced, after which the
piano-tuner changed the subject by remarking: “Too bad you didn’t git your hay
in, Dick. I’d ‘a’ helped you if you’d spoken to me about it.” The hay
alluded to was a bedraggled little heap in front of the hotel steps that had
been mowed off a patch about two yards square. “Yes, that
grass is wetter’n blazes, now. I cut it with my scythe this mornin’, and I been
calculatin’ to put it on my wheelbarrer ‘n’ run it into the barn, but I didn’t
git round to it. This’s quite a shower and it’s rainin’ hot water—that’s what
it’s doin’! But it’ll be all right to-morrer. These evenin’ thunder-storms
never last overnight. You take it when they come in the mornin’, though, and you’ll
have it kind o’ drizzly all, day.” “Dick,”
said the tuner, “what’s the matter you don’t git the rusticators here the way
they do at Cod‑port? This is a prettier place twice over.” “The
trouble,” replied Dick, “is with the Green Harbor end o’ the town. We got all
the natural attractions this end, and there ain’t no chance o’ the rusticators
quarterin’ over there’t Green Harbor, and the Green Harborers know it. So the
whole caboodle of ‘em turns out town meetin’ days and votes down every blame
projec’ we git up for improvin’ o’ the place. Only thing we ever got through
was these ‘ere slatted‑board walks laid along the sides o’ the roads, but
they’re gittin’ rotted out in a good many spots now. What we want is asphalt.” “But the
rusticators like scenery,” commented the piano-tuner. “Perhaps your scenery’d
draw ‘em if you only fixed it up a little. I’ve heard tell that they whitewash
their mountains in some places so ‘t they look snow-capped. Why don’t you
whitewash your mountains up back here? You’d have all the people in Boston
comin’ up to look at ‘em.”  An Old Schoolroom Mr. Bundy
ignored the suggestion of whitewash. His mind still dwelt on the wrongs of his
end of the town. “We can’t even git a new schoolhouse,” he declared. “Same old
shebang here we had when I was a boy, and same old box desks. They’re most
whittled to pieces now, and the roof leaks like furiation. You’d find the floor
all in a sozzle if you was to go in there to-night.” “That’s
your district school, ain’t it?” questioned the travelling agent. “But you got
a good high school?” “Yes, the
buildin’s good enough, but the school only keeps here one term. Then it goes
down t’ the Point a term and then over t’ Green Harbor a term.” “What do
the children do; foller it around?” “No; it’s
four miles between places, and that’s too fur.” “Nearly
all the boys in town seem to have bicycles,” I said. “I should think they might
go on those.” “That’s
so, there is a considerable number of bicycles owned round here,” acknowledged
Mr. Bundy. “D’ you ever notice though, ‘t a boy c’n go almost any distance on
his bicycle for pleasure, but as f’r usin’ it f’r accomplishin’ anythin’, he
might’s well not have any?” “Well,
I’ve got to go home,” interrupted the young woman from the neighbor’s. “What’s
your rush?” a young fellow sitting next her inquired.
“Thought I was keepin’
company with you. We no need to be stirrin’ before midnight
— ’tain’t perlite.”
“Midnight!
what you talkin’ about?” scoffed the landlord. “When I used to go to see my
girl we set up till half-past six in the mornin’ — set up till breakfast was
ready.” “Well, I
can’t wait no longer,” reiterated the girl. “Hold on,”
said the young fellow. “I’ll borry a lantern and go along with you.” “‘Tain’t
far, I don’t want ye to,” was the response. “You git over across the street
there alone and the thunder’ll strike you!” the piano-tuner remarked. But she
had gone, and he turned to the young fellow: “Well, I’m blessed if you didn’t
make a muddle of it. Course she wouldn’t go home with you. Who’d go home with a
lantern!” For a time
the company lapsed into silence and meditated. Then some one spoke of a
schooner which had come into the bay and anchored the day before, and went on
to say that it had eight or ten young fellows on board from New York. “They’re
sailin’ the boat themselves except for a cap’n and a darky cook, and they’re
givin’ shows along the coast. They give one over t’ the Point last night.” “What was
it like?” inquired Mr. Bundy. “Well,
‘twas kind of a mixture, but minstrels much as anything.” “There’s a
good deal goin’ on around here just now,” commented the landlord. “To-morrer
night there’s a dance over ‘t Green Harbor, and night after that there’s a
dance here.” “Isn’t it
pretty hot weather for dancing?” I asked. “Yes, I’ll
warrant there’ll be some sweatin’; but we don’t mind that. We dance in spells
all the year, though we ain’t had any’ dances lately, since winter.” “How much
is the admission?” “Ladies
are free. The men pays fifty cents each, or fifteen cents if they come in to
look on and not to dance. But you wait till next week. We’re goin’ to have a
regular town show then. You’ve seen the posters, I s’pose. There’s one in the
office, and they’re all around the town — on fences and trees and barn doors,
and I do’ know what not. The fellers ‘t put ‘em up said they plastered one on
to the back of every girl they met. Course that’s talk, but I know they pasted
some on to Bill Esty’s meat cart.” “Yes,”
said the piano-tuner, “and they got one on to Cap’n Totwick’s private kerridge,
too.” “Private
darnation!” responded Mr. Bundy. “The only private kerridge Cap’n Totwick’s got
‘s that ram‑shackle old wagon he peddles fish in.” “I met the
cap’n when I come Monday,” the piano‑tuner went on. “I was standin’ out in
front o’ the post-office readin’ a letter when he drove up from his house just
startin’ out on a trip, and he stopped and told me he’d forgot to take his
horse’s tail out o’ the britchin’ when he was harnessin’, and if I’d switch it
out for him ‘t would save him gittin’ out. I see the bill pasted on his wagon
then, and to pay for my horse‑tail job I made him wait while I read it
through.” “Say, you
wouldn’t think it to look at him,” said the landlord, “but Cap’n Totwick’s got
a good lot o’ money salted down.” “He
dresses like an old scarecrow,” responded the piano-tuner, “and five dollars’d
be a big price for that hoss he drives.” “Well,”
said Mr. Bundy, “I was at the post-office one day and the cap’n come in just as
I was sayin’ I wanted to git a sixty dollar check cashed, and he reached down
into his old overhalls for his pocket-book, and cashed the check — yes, sir!” Thus the
talk rambled on from one topic to another through the long evening. I can only
suggest in what I have related its racy interest and the graphic glimpses it
afforded of the life and thought of the region; and when I think it over I am
glad I avoided the famous resorts and big hotels in my trip and took up
lodgings in that humble hostelry at Sou’ East Cove.  A Moonlit Evening |
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