THE OLD TOWN CRIER WITH HIS BELL AND YELLOW SCROLL 
ADVENTURES IN 
COMRADESHIP 
(Continued from page 679) 
shine beamed with quiet benediction. 
We rather loved Mill Hill, with its 
memories of 1746, because there was 
always both the land and the sea visi¬ 
ble from its haven, and the wind was 
forever stirring, restlessly—as if eager 
to fill the sails of brave ships which 
had long since gone down to Davy’s 
locker. And from this vantage point 
we could mark the numerous little 
winding roads, the clumps of weather¬ 
ed houses, the distant moors—the mir¬ 
ror of Miacomet or of Cupaum. 
I mention all this with reverence, not 
because it will stir the pulse of the 
reader who is eager to reach for his 
rifle or his fishing tackle, or is insis¬ 
tent upon a “sports story” being wholly 
sport, but because it bears heavily 
upon the purpose of this narrative. 
These were indeed as much “adventures 
in comradeship” as the night we fought 
the hammock fire in the Everglades of 
Florida—a few months later. 
A Father was playing with all that 
was left of his “little boy.” 
We sat on the steps of a sedate old 
church, whose white columns reached 
up into elm trees ’as old as time, and 
blinked as a strange pageant passed 
in review—a costumed memorial to the 
long-gone days that had caused those 
towers to be built on the tops of houses 
—Nantucket’s own—the real “island¬ 
ers,” young and old, bred of the stock 
which first consecrated it, had reached 
into ancient sea-chests and brought out 
precious gowns, high hats, faded bon¬ 
nets—the habiliments of an almost for¬ 
gotten era, and, for a brief moment 
or two, allowed impudent eyes to gaze 
upon them. 
“It seems almost as if we weren’t 
we at all, doesn’t it?” Sonnyboy ob¬ 
served. And I agreed with him. The 
streets and trees and houses were in 
a perpetual, stationery mood of Nan¬ 
tucket’s youth—but here were living 
characters in their midst — and the 
magic scene was complete! 
A crochety old town - crier hobbled 
over the cobbles, ringing his discolored 
bell and reading from a yellow scroll. 
His short, tight trousers, his quaint 
vest, his astonishing waistcoat, his 
drab high hat, his sideburns —his voice! 
Reincarnation was staged for us! 
And on the porch of the old house, 
yonder, where the clambering roses had 
reached the ebb-tide of their luxuriant 
bloom and were turning pale at the 
thought of September and cold winds 
upon the moor, men and women of past 
sixty were rocking in chairs that any 
antique shop would have bartered its 
soul to possess—thin-visaged yet im- 
Page 703 
mortally proud faces, as colorless as 
granite, smiled sadly out from the 
shadows of poke bonnets. Grand¬ 
fathers and great-great grandfathers, 
wearing an echo of inherited captain¬ 
cies of brigantines and four-masters, 
found responsive solace in those same 
smiles beneath those same modest 
Quaker bonnets. 
Wisps of femininity in voluminous 
skirts, flounce - covered, chattered in 
many a flowered garden, like so many 
fluffy birds: younger men, in the stiff, 
shiny black hats of their period; 
shirts of flagrant checque, and panta¬ 
loons of white, wide-flaring at the shoe- 
tops, laughed their path down Main 
Street — the most wonderful “Main 
Street” of them all. 
With Sonnyboy I hovered around the 
docks, new and old, enamored of boats 
—just boats. Once we descended into 
the cabin of a real sailing vessel of the 
former regime, and something in the 
dead odor, something in the stains of 
time on the timber, something in the 
silence and the loneliness of it, made 
us feel as if we were transgressing. 
Those hours were happy ones for 
Mother. 
In her great unselfishness, she gave 
Sonnyboy all to me. For had she not 
possessed the body and the spirit of him 
since his very birth? It was at her 
knee his child tears had been squan¬ 
dered; it was in her arms that he had 
sobbed his tiny tragedies. Mothers 
make the greater sacrifice as a boy 
steps into Tomorrow—but they are 
strangely strong in bearing it. They 
are proud of the man that has come 
to take the boy’s place. And this pride 
allows them to conceal their heartache 
as they tenderly put away the baby 
booties, the remnants of toys, the suit 
that can never be worn again — the 
Youth which is so soon consumed by 
its own fast-burning fires. 
* * * * * * 
Came a man to the hotel whose talks 
were a lesson and whose consecration 
to Nature constituted a religion. He 
would sit in a nook of the porch and 
tell Sonnyboy of what the lads out in 
Chicago were doing to safeguard their 
feathered friends. He was a bird-sanc¬ 
tuary enthusiast. 
“We love birds out our way,” he said 
one evening, “and why not? On our 
(Continued on page 706) 
GRANDMOTHERS IN QUAKER BONNETS, GRANDFATHERS WITH SIDEBURNS 
