The Bozeman weekly chronicle. (Bozeman, Mont.) 1883-1889, 1885-01-07
CAPE COD WOMEN.
Wives and sweethearts Whose Lives
Are Full of Sorrow.
The Torture OF Mind and Strain OF
Nerve which Destroy Youth
and Reaufy-Unceasing
Suspense.
NEW York Snn.1

New York Sun
'If there ever was blighted race of
women" said a gentleman of this city,
recently returned from a visit to Cape
Cod, lit exists in the peninsular vii
lages of Massachusetts, villages which
depend on the fisheries for the sup
port of their Inhabitants. Nowhere else in
ali New England will one see 50 high an aver
age of female beauty, especially in sym
metl-y Of form and freshness of complexion
as is noticeable among the young girls of
these Cape Cod fishermen's towns, girls rang
ing from Is to % years of age. But it will
not take one lGng to discover the startling
and melancholy fact that il this girlish
beauty and FRESHNESS is unusual and unex-
peeted, it is also only too apparent that its
duration is brief The change produced in
these girls by the lapse Of a few years is
painful in the extreme. No matronly g1aces
are to be seen among them after their girl
hood days are past. That charming mid
die stage of maturing womanhood, be-
tween the freshness and buoyancy
of the girl of 90 and the woman of 35
or 40, is entirely absent. The heightened
color of the cheeks is gone. The eyes are
sunken and wear constant look of sadness
and anxiety. Gray hair in heads over which
a score and half of years have. scarcely
passed, and deep lines in faces which should
show no trace of age for twenty-five years tG
come, are rather the rule than the exception.
These women, besides suffering from all the
inevitable sorrow which fall to women's
lot, no matter in what station she may be
placed, have an added intense and perpetual
sorrow all Their own. Theirs is a life of con
tinual SUSPENSE and anxiety, which is almost
certain to be in time embittered by an ovar-
whelming grief.
"The most obtuse observer needs not to ask
the cause of this lack of complete matronly
beauty among these women whose budding
days open with the greatest promise of
superb physical womanhood, and for the
utter extinction of that lightheartedness
and brightness which marked their girlish
life. The cause suggests itself at once to enc
who sees the congregations of women on the
beaches and in the quiet streets of the
sleepy villages. He will notice occasionally
a feeble old man among them, generally sup
ported on the arm of some female companion,
who, most likely, carries on her other arm
chubby faced child of lusty lungs. But in
these groups, or anywhere about the village,
the observer will look in vain for the pres
ence Of males between the tottering years of
these relics of the past and the prattling days
of babyhood 1t is the fishing season, and
there are no men or boys on shore. Their
smacl1s are tossing on the treacherous
waters of the fishing banks, and their re-
turn, if they return at ALL is as uncertain as
the weather, which forms the one great sub
ject of conjecture and apprehension among
the villagers. Husbands, sons, fathers,
brothers and sweethearts are somewhere out
on the bosom of the sea, probably homeward
bound, perhaps steering for still more dis
tant waters, perhaps struggling for life
among the waves. Fair weather keeps hope
warm in many an anxious woman's breast;
the bowling northeaster chills it with doubt
and despair. Constantly watching by day,
waking in the night to listen for sounds
from the sea, whether they may be the roar
ing of the dreaded tempest or merely the
moan Of the surf ON the beach, Is it any won
der that the torture of mind and heart and
straEsi az nerve and vital force that rlust fol-
low this perpetual suspense and longing
should destroy the fountains of youth and
beauty in these patent suffering women and
place upon them the marks of age while they
are yet young.
"Yet the girls grow up with but one
thought of what their future lot viii be, with
but one object in view upon which their
visions of happiness are based. Go among
any group of tbese bright, buoyant girls in
any of the villages of the class am speaking
of, and you will find that nine out Of ten of
them look forward TO 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
~. Al. 20
fishermen's wives, or that the life Of fisher
mans 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 a
DE- zen sad-eyed young wives and mothers on
the beach or at the landing, where some one
is always waiting and watching for sail in
tie citing, one cannot prevent his imagina-
ton from seeking most melancholy chan
nel There is the girl now. It viii not be
long before she viii 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 return she is longing and praying
may be struggling in the breakers, while the
Highland light, which she can see, is shining
pitilessly on his agony, for she has only to
climb spur of land that rises Behind her
house to see the skeleton Of ship which
foundered only a few months ago, and all
her crew were lost in sight of home The
gravestones in the little churchyard recall
to her every Sunday how, in one night, by
the wreck Of fishing craft homeward bound,
over seventy women of her own village were
widowed, or those already widowed left
childless, and nearly ev cry home made desc
late It's to future attended with painful
suggestions such as these, and with rnceasing
suspense and ever present agony Of mind,
tnat these bright, fair young girls sacrifice
all thair youth and beauty, and bouyaney Cf
spirits, and pass voluntarily within the pale
Of a biightad womanhood."