Morning journal and courier., 1884-09-12
CAPE COD WOMEN.

company or NorWalk to run race TOT S1U0 side within two weeks.
 CAPE COD WOMEN.
 Are Full Of Sorrow.
 From the New York Sum-
 Eff there ever was blighted race of wo- men," said gentleman of this city, recently returned from visit to Cape Cod, 'sit exists in the peninsula villages of Massachusetts, villages which depend on the fisheries for the support of their inhabitants. Nowhere else in all New England will one see so high an average of female beauty, especially in sym metry of form and freshness of complexion as is noticeable among the young girls of these Cape Cod fshermen's towns, girls rang ing from fifteen to twenty years of age. But it will not take one long to discover the start ling and melancholy fact that if this girlish beauty and freshness is unusual and unex- pected, it is also only too apparent that it's duration is brief. The change produced Tn these girls by the lapse of a few years is pain full in the extreme. No matronly graces- are to be seen among them after their gir1hood days are past. That charming middle stage of maturing womanhood, between the fresh ness and buoyancy of the girl of twenty and the woman of thirty-fve or forty. is entirely absent. The heightened color of the cheeks is gone. The eyes are sunken and wear a constant look of sadness and anxiety. Gray hair in heads over which score and half of years have scarcely passed, and deep lines in faces which should show no trace of age for twenty-five years to come, are rather the rule than the exception. These women, be- sides suffering from all the inevitable sorrow which fall to women's lot, no matter in what station she may be placed, have an added in tense and perpetual sorrow all their own. Theirs is a life of continual suspense and anxiety, which is almost certain to be in time embittered by an overwhelming grief.
 "The most obtuse observer needs not to ask the cause of this lack of complete ma tronly beauty among these women whose budding days open with the greatest promise of superb physical womanhood, and for the utter extinction of that light -heartedness and brightness which marked their girlish life. The cause suggests itself at once to one who sees the congregations of women on the beaches and in the quiet streets of the sleepy villages. He will notice occasionally feeble old man among them, generally supported on the arm of some female companion, who, most likely, carries on her other arm chub- by-faced child of lusty lungs. But in these groups, or anywhere about the village, the observer will look in vain for the presence of males between the tottering years of these relics of the past and the prattling days of babyhood. It is the fishing season and there are no men or boys on shore. Their smacks are tossing on the treacherous waters of the fishing banks, and their return, if they re- turn at all is as uncertain as the weather, which forms the one great subject of conjec- ture and apprehension among the villagers. Husbands, sons, fathers, brothers and sweet hearts are somewhere out on the bosom of the sea- probably homeward bound, perhaps cfi11 struggling for life among the waves. Fair weather keeps hope warm in many an anx- ious woman's breast; the bowling northeast CT chills it with doubt and despair. Con- stantly watching by day, waking in the night to listen for sounds from the sea, whether they may be the roaring of the dreaded tenn pest or merely the moan of the surf on the beach, is it any wonder that the torture of mind and heart and strain of nerve and vital force that must follow this perpetual sus- pense and longing should destroy the foun- tains of youth and beauty in these patient, suffering women and place upon them the marks of age while they are yet young!
 fYet the girls grow up with but one thought of what their future lot will be, with but one object in view upon which their visions of happiness are based. Go among any group of these bright, buoyant girls in any of the villages of the class I am speak ing of and you will find that nine out of ten of them look forward to a union with some one who will spend his life fishing in the summer and coasting in the winter. The idea that there might be any other future for them than the one which is to come to them as fshermen's wives, or that the life of a fsherman's wife is anything different from the natural sequence of married life, never seems to occur to them.
 Looking at one of these bright, happy girls, chatting and romping amid half doz- en sad-eyed young wives and mothers on the beach or at the landing, where some one is always waiting and watching for a sail in the offing, one cannot prevent his imagination from seeking most melancholy channel. There is the girl now. It will not be long before she will be a wife. Imagine her two years married, sitting alone in her little home, her baby in the cradle, and the north wind bowling without. She knows too well that at that moment the one for whose re- turn she is longing and praying may be struggling in the breakers, while the High land light, which she can see, is shining pitt lessly on his agony, for she has only to climb a spur of land that rises behind her house to see the.skeleton of ship which foundered only few months ago, and all her crew were lost in sight of home. The gravestones in the little churchyard recall to her every Sun day how, in one night, by the wreck of fish ing craft homeward bound, over seventy wo- men of her own village were widowed, or those already widowed left childless, and nearly every home made desolate. It is to a future attended with painful suggestions such as these, and with unceasing suspense and ever present agony of mind, that these bright, fair young girls sacrifice all their youth and beauty and buoyancy of spirits, and pass voluntarily within the pale of Q blighted womanhood."