40 
CAPE COD. 
they were not tied to unworthy companions, by the 
rhyme. When one ox will lie down, the yoke bears 
hard on him that stands up. 
One of the first settlers of Eastham was Deacon John 
Doane, who died in 1707, aged one hundred and ten. 
Tradition says that he was rocked in a cradle several of 
his last years. That, certainly, was not an Achillean 
life. His mother must have let him slip when she dip¬ 
ped him into the liquor which was to make him invul¬ 
nerable, and he went in, heels and all. Some of the 
stone-bounds to his farm, which he set up, are standing 
to-day, with his initials cut in them. 
The ecclesiastical history of this town interested us 
somewhat. It appears that “ they very early built a 
small meeting-house, twenty feet square, with a thatched 
roof through which they might fire their muskets,” — of 
course, at the Devil. “In 1662, the town agreed that 
a part of every whale cast on shore be appropriated for 
the support of the ministry.” No doubt there seemed 
to be some propriety in thus leaving the support of 
the ministers to Providence, whose servants they are, 
and who alone rules the storms; for, when few whales 
were cast up, they might suspect that their worship 
was not acceptable. The ministers must have sat upon 
the cliffs in every storm, and watched the shore with 
anxiety. And, for my part, if I w^ere a minister, I 
would rather trust to the bowels of the billows, on the 
back-side of Cape Cod, to cast up a whale for me, than 
to the generosity of many a country parish that I know. 
You cannot say of a country minister’s salary, commonly, 
that it is “ very like a whale.” Nevertheless, the minis¬ 
ter who depended on whales cast up must have had a 
trying time of it. I would rather have gone to the Falk* 
