Arizona republican., 1908-10-03

But whether fleet owners or mere sea captains, they one and all cherish ed love for the sturdy sand spit which had been their home and in- tended some day to return to it and settle down. That they did this the hundreds of handsome, substantial dwellings on the cape testify. It is a curious fact that, in the old days, there was scarcely house on the main street of a Cape Cod village which was not the home of Captain somebody or other
 That was Yankeedom as it used to be. But Cape Cod has changed greatly in the last quarter of a century. US sons no longer go to sea There are a few steamship captains in active ser vice and a few-a very few-skippers of fishing schoOners. But even the fishing industry has left the cape to find new headquarters at Gloucester or Boston. Cranberry growing and the taking of summer boarders are the chief occupations in the cape villages nowadays.
 And the Cape Cod Yankee, where is he? A number of the retired captains Sllli nv = III lllfll NilicibtTB 5ACf' ing old gracefully amid the changed surroundings and swapping yarns with their fellows concerning the time when the deep sea trade of the world was "a large proportion of it-carried un- der the American flag. As examples of the the pure Yankee type of the best sort they are almost unique. Men like Captain Cy Whitaker, in Joseph C. Lincoln's new novel, "Cy Whitta- ker's Place'-a sort of David Harum with a salt sea flavOr-are still to be found and when found are well worth knowing Some of them are cultivated educated gentlemen; others, like Cap tain Cy are rougher, gentlemen in thought and deed. but speaking with the Cape Cod twang and saltiness, dropping their g's and using the quaint idioms which have come down through the generations.
 In the cape parlance a crochetty, cross grained person is unlikely" sociable. cOmpanionable one is folk sy" The wind never blows from the north, but always from the moth" or the "no'thard." A thunder storm is invariably a tempest" When the sunset sky is obscured by fog it is 'thickenin' up to tn eatard." Exclam- ations like 'I swan to man" or "l swum" are as common as bayberry and beach plum bushes on the Cape Cod hillsides. There are weather vanes on every barn-a wooden swordfish being the most common-and every old salt glances at his vane before retiring for the night and makes his prophecy con corning the morrow's weather Usu- ally these prophecies are worth heed ing.
 Among a certain class of COdders- the poorer class as a rule-the use of am" instead of are" is a curious hab- it "We'm goin' fishin' tomorrow" in stead of we are going and "YOu'm looking fine, ain't ye" are examples of this. Men like Captain Cy Whitaker do not speak thus; their dialect is of a milder type and is generally a mat ter of habit rather than lack of knowl- edge.
 But the Yankee, if he is disappear ing. will not pass without an affec- tionate chronicler. What FenimOre Cooper was to the last of the Mohi cans. Joe" Lincoln, himself Yankee and a Colder is the last of the Yan- kees. He is peculiarly the Yankee writer.
 When he was a youngster the deep sea days were not yet over. His fath- CT was a sea captain and his mother had sailed on her husbands ships for years. Around the center table in the sitting room" of his home and around the stove at the village postoffice the talk had always a salty flavor. He knew men who had fought pirates in their youth, had been cast away on desolate islands, had floated on shakey rafts in mid-ocean, had hobnubbed with native kings and traded beads and colored cloth for copra and pearls He knew women who had loaded guns to help their husbands and the mates to subdue a crowd of desperate mu- tineers. He lived the life of a Cape Cod community in the seventies and it is of that lift that he has written successfully.
 The very fact that the Yankee at mosphere of MT LincOln's book is odd and unfamiliar to most of his readers is a surer indication even than census figures that the Yankee is passing. He may of course remain as d name but the original stock is rapidly being dis solved in a part of that great mixture of races which is going on in America today.
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