August, 1918 
9 
‘ Speaking of whalers,” said the Illustrator, 
as Mr. Tabor came back to us from attending 
a chance customer, the ghost of a never-to-be- 
told story hovering in his eye, .“we hear that 
the Morning Star and the Greyhound are re¬ 
fitting.” 
Arthur Tabor wheeled upon us, “Yes sir, 
back from a three years’ cruise. Look here, 
wouldn’t you folksies like to go down and poke 
about those boats?” 
We had risen as one man, and it was with a 
feeling of the eternal goodness of things that 
Arthur Tabor’s personality always gave us, 
that we finally hurried off for luncheon, to the 
adornment of which our host could by no means, 
be persuaded. 
T HE quiet of the early afternoon lay over 
the little seaport and the blue water, as we 
made our way down a cobbled hill to where 
Arthur Tabor met us and helped us thread our 
way through rows of hundreds of saturated 
barrels of oil, lying at the wharf heads. Sud¬ 
denly rounding a shanty built of an old deck 
house, we came upon both the Greyhound and 
the Morning Star. They were not disappoint¬ 
ing, these sturdy old denizens of the past. On 
the Greyhound, aloft in the maintop-mast rig¬ 
ging, three men were, with deliberate skill, un¬ 
shipping the main to’-gallant, and lowering 
away to deck. The cheery shouts of the workers 
came thinly from the heights above us, and 
we walked the length of the ship, with our eyes 
riveted above, while Arthur Tabor at some 
length detailed to us the separate parts of the 
rigging until our minds reeled under the rapid 
fire of terms. 
We lingered by the Greyhound and then 
picked our way carefully over to where the 
Morning Star was berthed. Here we were in¬ 
vited to go aboard. 
The elaborate figurehead and all the sleek 
paint carefully picked out with gold seemed 
to denote the beginning of a voyage rather than 
the end of one. Astern, the deck cabins with 
their little windows and blinds, rising flush 
with the blunt cutoff and huge rudder, gave the 
ship a somewhat quainter look. Just above the 
name was an elaborately carved eagle holding 
in its talons a very freshly painted Old Glory. 
The most unusual thing about these old whalers 
was, perhaps, the clumsy white painted davits 
beginning aft of the foremast and running clear 
to the stern. 
A short stocky man, with a solemn heavily- 
bearded face was laboring up the companion- 
way. Arthur Tabor siezed upon him instantly 
and forthwith presented us to the captain who 
answered our eager questions with superlative 
seriousness, and in an unemotional voice went 
on explaining the cutting-in process, apparent¬ 
ly without consciousness as our circle grew 
augmented by the crowd of young boys who 
clung about the ship like barnacles. 
We learned, as we listened, how the great 
mammal after its death was floated at the side of 
the vessel and the cutting-in begun. The head 
was first severed and swung aboard. Then the 
blankets of blubber were stripped from the car¬ 
cass and lowered through the main hatch into 
the blubber room. After the spermacetti was 
secured from the head and, in the case of a 
“Bowhead,” the whalebone, the rest of the 
great mass was sent plunging overboard to 
join the rejected carcass stripped of its blubber. 
Suddenly the captain moved off still talking, 
and we turned to Arthur Tabor for his more 
sprightly narratives. While he talked to us 
Rounding a shanty built of an 
old deck house we came upon the 
sturdy old denizens of the past 
we felt all the romance of the sea, all the fine 
old sturdiness and daring of sailing days; the 
sting of the salt spray and the mystery of the 
calm southern nights. 
I N the waist of the ship were the furnaces 
and caldrons for extracting the oil, all of 
which was ifiade so clear to us that we seemed 
to see the hard days and still nights of endless 
toil; the great ship close reefed, with the wheel 
lashed down, a blazing cresset furnishing a 
flaring light to the workers, the cursing of the 
officers, the labored breathing of the men, slid¬ 
ing and slipping on the greasy deck, and the 
glare and trailing smoke of the try-works fire. 
“And that reminds me,” added our con¬ 
ductor, as he returned from a busy trip for¬ 
ward, but the Illustrator, rending the spell that 
held us, raised his hand imploringly, his eyes 
on his watch. Arthur Tabor waved the idea 
suggested aside, “If you will come up to the 
Dartmouth Society I will show you some relics 
of those days and there is a story for every one!” 
I almost wept in my vexation, for we had a 
boat to catch that brooked no delay, and we 
felt, in the farewell of our New England host, a 
kindly pity and a solemn wonder that time 
should be such an all-important factor in our 
lives. 
Now the story of the past is half the fun of 
collecting. Without these tales collecting is 
merely the acquiring of antiques and has no 
more interest than any ordinary purchase. Give 
your antiques and curios the background of 
romance, and they will be a perpetual source of 
pride and inspiration. Let every object in your 
collection, however humble, have its story— 
either yours or its. And you can learn these 
stories if you find dealers such as Arthur Tabor. 
There are Arthur Tabors by the score .scattered 
over the country, for it takes a whimsical man 
to conduct a curiosity shop. Seek them out, 
and collecting will renew its charm for you. 
I don’t mean to make this a homily on col¬ 
lecting, but I must add one or two more pieces 
of advice. Read up the history of the locality 
in which you hunt your antiques. If you are 
going to New Orleans or Charlestown or Balti¬ 
more or the small New England coast towns, 
acquaint yourself with their past. This will 
give you a quicker understanding of their an¬ 
tiques. 
Take your time in purchasing. The average 
antique dealer has an “asking price” and a 
“selling price.” You may have to haggle and 
leave the shop and go back to haggle some more, 
but if you are patient and persistent the “asking 
price” will come down; it may even go lower 
than the “selling price”! In the process you 
will test your knowledge of values and the final 
owning of the antique will be given added in¬ 
terest because you had to struggle for it. 
