FOOTING IT ACROSS THE CAPE 93 



disappointed here. But this shore will never be 

 more attractive than it is now. Such beaches as 

 are fashionable are here made and unmade in a 

 day, I may almost say, by the sea shifting the 

 sands. Lynn and Nantucket! this bare and 

 bended arm it is that makes the bay in which 

 they lie so snugly. What are springs and water- 

 falls? Here is the spring of springs, the water- 

 fall of waterfalls. A storm in the winter is the 

 time to visit it — a lighthouse or a fisherman's 

 hut the true hotel. A man may stand there and 

 put all America behind him." 



This was all true in Thoreau's day and long 

 after. But the fashionable world has since 

 found the Cape, and brought its palatial hotels 

 and its million-dollar cottages to sit down in 

 friendly fashion among the villagers and share 

 their summer life with them. Thereby both are 

 benefited. But after all the chief charm of the 

 Cape is still that vast stretches of it are as free 

 from fashion as Thoreau said they always would 

 be, and the forests like those Captain John Smith 

 and Myles Standish, Karlsefne and \^errizana 

 traversed still grow there in wide stretches. 



