Part IX. 
In Saying “Goodbye ” to Dear Old Nan¬ 
tucket, We Get a Taste of What the 
Whalers Must Have Experienced, Knock 
About a Bit on an Island Rich in His¬ 
toric Traditions, and a Father Discovers 
With a Sudden Pang of Regret, That 
Boyhood Does Not Last Forever—That 
the Son of Today Is the Man of To¬ 
morrow. Make the Most of Them, Then 
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nrt/JNO 
PARTNEQ, 
A PE ACPI or 
A BOAT, 
habitat, from Cape Cod to the 
Bermudas. 
Then it was that he made a 
remark which I have never 
forgotten. Said he: 
“Now you know ’em and 
now you don’t. It’s strange 
how anything as common as 
a squid can look so different 
when it’s a little different.” 
Homely philosophy, and I 
will not be forgiven for a 
comparison which is wholly 
odius; but that squid episode 
came back to me, out of a 
clear sky, the morning after Sonnyboy 
had saved my life out on the moor, at 
the storm-swept fresh-water lake. I 
was sitting on the porch of the hotel, 
breakfast - digesting, when Sonnyboy 
walked past, en route to the beach. A 
very pretty young girl accompanied 
him. Both were laughing happily. He 
did not see me. 
And all in a flash I was struck 
by the terrifying realization that I no 
longer had a “little boy.” Up to 
this, although Mother had repeatedly 
warned me, I could see him only as a 
very immature youngster; a mechan¬ 
ism with much of the fundamental 
machinery missing. The passage of 
time is insidious. Sonnyboy had worn 
By W. LIVINGSTON LARNED 
his first pair of full-length white ducks 
while on Nantucket—dancing. 
As I saw him now, he was oddly, in¬ 
congruously tall. In marking us up on 
the wall, at home, Mother had proved, 
beyond the shadow of a doubt, that 
Sonnyboy would be a “tall man”—and 
he was a shade taller than his father, 
even then! 
And notwithstanding this, I could 
never see him as anything more than 
a “little boy.” It is a failing fathers 
have. I realize that now! 
A strange maturity was obvious in 
his stride, his manner, his bearing, his 
voice, as he strode down the path be¬ 
tween the row of little stunted pine 
trees. “Now you know ’em and now 
you don’t. It’s strange how a thing 
can look so different when it’s a little 
different.” 
That was the echo from many years 
ago! 
This was Sonnyboy—and it wasn’t! 
I saw the spectre of a grown-up, with 
a pretty girl on his arm. The boy and 
the man were strangely fused in one! 
They were no sooner out of sight, 
Sonnyboy’s deepening voice vibrant on 
the clear, crisp air, than something 
Mother had said not so long ago also 
blew up, like salt spray, in my mind: 
“You won’t have him many years 
longer. He’s growing fast. These are 
precious hours. Make the most of 
them. Once a boy steps across the line 
I T must have been as much as ten 
years ago that an old fisherman 
said something to me while we 
were out angling off the keys, several 
miles below Miami; we had come upon 
a most amazing squid. There are many 
varieties of them and some grow to 
be 29 feet long, but this little marine 
novelty was in a class by itself. It 
was but eight inches, from tip to tip, 
bronze in color, beautifully speckled, a 
tail like multicolored taffeta and— 
blue eyes! 
My companion was a seasoned fisher¬ 
man and had at one time been con¬ 
nected with an aquarium, but it was 
his first sight of a blue-orbed squid. 
And he had prowled around their 
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