26 
CAPE COD. 
taverns, unless on public occasions. I know not of a 
proper idler or tavern-haunter in the place/' This is 
more than can he said of my townsmen. 
At length, we stopped for the night at Higgins's tav¬ 
ern, in Orleans, feeling very much as if we were on a 
sand-bar in the ocean, and not knowing whether we 
should see land or water ahead when the mist cleared 
away. We here overtook two Italian boys, who had 
waded thus far down the Cape through the sand, with 
their organs on their backs, and were going on to Prov- 
incetown. What a hard lot, we thought, if the Prov- 
incetown people should shut their doors against them! 
Whose yard would they go to next ? Yet we concluded 
that they had chosen wisely to come here, where other 
music than that of the surf must be rare. Thus the 
great civilizer sends out its emissaries, sooner or later, 
to every sandy cape and light-house of the New World 
which the census-taker visits, and summons the savage 
there to surrender. 
