Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-10-13

old houses old sands, old men. Al
ready they dream that when they are
~ gone the tides, which seem to eat
deeper into the Cove each year, will
lust come on up one Spring and carry what's
left of Cape Cod down under the water of the
Seven Seas that in its old youth it conquered its
work and its glory done. And that will be be-
fore long now for there are only few folks
left.
You can count the families on one hand.
There are the Whites and the Fullers in the
Hollow, the Rogerses at the Bog the Brewster
brothers at the Cove. That's about all now
in this tenuous half-drowned, seven-mile wrist
of the Cape. OF the Whites and Rogerses there
are four generations in the Fuller house three;
the latter ends run pretty puttering, though,
and pretty thin. @
fits far cry from the Edward Fuller who
came ashore to say his prayers, chase Indians
and leave his name on the Pilgrim Tablet over
In Provincetown down to Eddie Fuller, yawn-
ing and attending to his pimples behind the
post office boxes at the Center-m it's far
cry from those dreadless subjects of the dread
sovereign" down to the youthless White youths,
f7ivVer-rattiing to their feyered merTymakingS
at Wellheet Eastman, their galvanic dead
frog dancing, their drugstore tipple and their
radio jazz-if there's gap there there's a gap
almost as wide and quite as melancholy still
living under the roofs with them-Sam White
and Benjie Fuller in the Hollow, Ember Rogers
at the Bog, Andy and Isaiah Brewster at the
Cove-men who fetched Kennebec ice-cakeS TO
Calcutta and brought new China tea UP the
Thames in the Sea Glory and the A. j. Stowell
two weeks ahead of London's own East India
men in the days that were days.
In those days the Cape bred women, too.
Look at Molly, Andy Brewster's wife, that's
dead and gone. Then look at the Molly Brew
ster of today. She keeps house for her great
grandfather Andy and his brother Isaiah at the
Cove and what house she keepsi Well, it's not
the way the other Molly did Of 60 years ago.
Bread baked in Boston, beans baked in Chi
cago, cake in cardboard from goodness-knows-
where! She hasn't the time, she says.
HASN'T the time! Those two old men fathom
the sad, deep, literal truth of that. She
hasn't the time. She came too late the sands
too nearly run. After her the deluge: why
take pains? What's the of forethought
with nothing to come? What's the use of
character, never to be handed down? What's
the use even of appearances? Studying her
secretly from beneath their watery lids, they
comprehend. That is why then, she speaks a
language Of strange, daring, slipshod words;
why her gestures are all immoderate and her
songs out of tune; why she goes about I'M
abashed in skirts as short and lips as red as
California harlot in the days of gold. That
Is why she is never at home evenings, darning
or quilting under the sitting-room lamp, but
of as soon as ever the supper dishes are
stacked Win a pat ana ming ana mouth
IF rebellion fitting the devil alone knows where
In the dark of the country of the old.
Let us eat drink and be merry" Poor
girl!
She hasn't the time even to care about the
company she keeps. This strikes deepest into
the hearts of Andy and Isaiah Their pride is
bitter. To think of these two blond vikings of
the Republic who carried the Stars and Stripes
around wondering world, who came to fetch
good, honest Indies rum ashore under the dark
Cove like the free men they were, and went up
to the meeting house in their Sabbath beavers
to worship the God of Massachusetts, as only
free men may-to think of them having to sit,
shackled to their rockers by the weight of their
proud years, and watch the remnant of their
line and population going, without visibly car
ing to the dogs!
They would have called him dog in their
time, or at least lone of them foreigners of
some sort"
He comes out of the deepening shadows.
Whence he comes, in that narrow land where
there are only the Rokerses and Brewsters,
the Fullers and the Whites, who can say?
Andy and Isaiah can't. When they try their
minds close up
He comes out of the deepening shadows, his
approach heralded long before he is seen, by
the sounding boards of the hills that gather
down to the Cove the whine of gritted springs,
gaskets wheeling. A curious centaur head and
shoulders and busy arms of man, body Of an
ungroomed half-ton truck. So from their rock
ers on the porch behind the mosquito netting
they always see him. Jimmy the Greek. So
he careens to a halt under the antique uneasy
willows in the blue-brown shadow cast by
Sheep Hill; so he snorts, backs, swerves, carrf-
coles, paving the sand, gamboling in the twi-
light of these Yankee GODS SO he rears there,
breathing heavily with his pitted cylinders,
peering CLASSIFY with his one large rectangular
eye at the house beyond the turf, the house