VINEYARD SOUND AND GAY HEAD (GOSNOLD'S DOVER CLIFF) FROM CUTTYHUNK.

From a painting by C. H. Gifford.

crease in the number of lobsters caught during the last twenty-two years. Laws have been passed to remedy this, fining anyone with lobsters under ten and a half inches long five dollars for each "short lobster" in his possession, but the laws are hard to enforce.

One grizzled Cuttyhunker lives half the year in an old warehouse just above ordinary high water. In storms or very high tides everything on the ground floor is awash; but the old salt said: "I don't mind that nothin'. The salt water has been swashin' round me all my life." All his household goods are safely stored away in the upper story underneath the eaves. A ladder with a rope hand-rail affords ready access. One long window has a canvas shutter, fastened by rope lanyards when the wind blows too strong for comfort.

"I like ter live down here," said he. "It's so handy to my work. I start off lobsterin' sometimes 'tween three and four o'clock in the mornin', and eat just a bite before startin'. Get in nigh on ter two in the arternoon, hungry as a bear. Don't want ter have to climb way up to the village and wait to have things cooked. Here everythin' is handy, right by the dock. I eat whatever's ready while I'm cookin' suthin' more, or when my wife's here, she cooks it."

He is a strong, honest, quick-witted specimen of a Yankee fisherman grandfather, weighing a hundred and eighty pounds, working early and late, owning a farm in the centre of Martha's Vineyard and an orange grove in Florida. But he says: "There ain't nothin' in farmin' nowadays. The wife she says wool is sellin' for only twelve an' thirteen cents a pound. Think on it!" As for the orange plantation, he declares: "I won't never git my money back again"; but in winter he goes down South to "have a look at it." The dock just in front of his warehouse is taken up in the autumn, the props knocked from under it, and all tied up and anchored as securely as

possible on the bank; but the winter storms play havoc with it nevertheless.

Cuttyhunk has a neat little schoolhouse, a church and a library of three hundred books. The school is in session three-quarters of the year, and the church the other quarter; for it is only in the summer that the islanders can have a minister, or, more properly speaking, a young man who hopes some day to become a minister. The stores are in private houses and closely connected with the kitchen department. If the good housewife gets tired of keeping certain things for sale, a neighbor will undertake to supply them next season. The candy store moves often, occupying a dark closet now in this house, now in that.

In

Forty or fifty people live on the island all winter, fourteen households, besides the men at the life-saving station. Most of the hard work comes in the spring, summer and fall. winter the men make lobster pots, smoke, play cards, lie around and take things easy. Almost all the islanders come from old New England stock. They are strong, courageous and hard-headed, slow to make friendships and slow to break them; true as steel to those they love, and hospitable to all who come to them.

Until two years ago no horse had reached Cuttyhunk. The island turnouts were two-wheeled carts, drawn each by a stout donkey. Cows, sheep, turkeys and hens roam freely almost everywhere. Old fishnets are hung

on poles to protect flower-beds and choice bits of kitchen garden. With the exception of the few acres in and around the village, the whole island (of between six and seven hundred acres) is owned by the Cuttyhunk Fishing Club. "The farm" is rented out for five hundred dollars a year, but of late it has not been a success, although corn and other vegetables grow well. The reason seemed to be, as one of the natives expressed it: "The man who runs the farm won't make nothin' outin it. Cause why? He hain't got no headpiece."

The clubhouse stands on a bold bluff looking off on the broad Atlantic to the southwest and across Vineyard Sound, that highway of ships, to where Gay Head rises glorious from the waves. In 1864 some New York gentlemen discovered that striped bass could be caught from the rocks of Cuttyhunk. A club was soon organized, and the clubhouse erected. Its walls are decorated with paintings of great fish caught; but the bass have decreased very greatly in numbers since. the early seventies, when nearly seven thousand pounds of the striped beauties were landed in a single year. The largest bass on record weighed sixtyfour pounds. But even should the fish desert the island entirely, there is little danger of the club members following. Most of them are well on in years, and regard Cuttyhunk as one of the most delightful of places for a summer's rest. Öne old Texan has spent twenty-two successive seasons at the club. Another member has never failed to appear in the last thirty-two years. Behind the clubhouse a really beautiful garden glows with many-colored flowers, and long rows of healthy vegetables give evidence that the club table is not neglected. On the south a well-kept lawn reaches down to the edge of the cliff; and a fine spyglass, mounted on its tripod, invites to watch the passing ships.

But the central point of interest to Cuttyhunk visitors is apt to be the life-saving station, established by the United States government in 1889. As early as 1847 the Massachusetts Humane Society had erected stations on the Elizabeth Islands, supplied with approved life-saving appliances. for the use of the brave islanders, who would not brook the sight of fellowmariners shipwrecked and perishing before their eyes without an attempt

at rescue.

Many are the crews whose lives these stout-hearted volunteers have saved at the risk of their own. In February, 1893, when the brig

Aquatic was wrecked on the "Sow and Pigs" reef, five of the six members of the volunteer crew perished in their attempt to reach the vessel. That was a terrible day for Cuttyhunk.*

But a few nights before, a fourmasted schooner, the Douglass Dearborn, was wrecked on the rocks to the southward and her half-frozen crew rescued with great difficulty, one by one, in the breeches buoy. The life savers were worn out by their exertions. Suddenly came the terrible news: "A brig wrecked on Sow and Pigs-the sea will break her up before morning!" In haste the undaunted islanders made their way to the west end of Cuttyhunk, where blazing torch-lights on the wreck flared out of the darkness, above the seething combers, raging in to the shore. "No boat can live in such a sea," said a brave old salt. "Oh! yes, she can," answered Tim Akin, Jr., and he called for volunteers. Five men stepped out and the surf-boat was quickly launched. Slowly she staggered forward, up and down amid the waves. Captain Tim was a man who never knew fear. "Come on, boys,—ain't this fun!" he shouted from his place at the steering oar. Just then, close by the brig, a gigantic comber overwhelmed them and the men upon the wreck saw four ghastly faces upturned to theirs as the gallant rescuers, clinging to their overturned boat, were borne swiftly past, helpless, into dark ness and death. One man, Josiah Tilton, was carried by the waves toward the brig's stern. The bight of a rope was flung him and he was saved, yet he alone of the life savers could not swim.

Contrary to all expectation, the brig held together until the following noon, when all aboard her were rescued from the foretop where they had taken refuge. The men had wrapped the topsails about them and crouched under the lee thus made. But they were drenched by the icy seas, and

*See poem "Cuttyhunk," by Edward Payson Jackson, in the New England Magazine, June, 1893.

their clothes were frozen stiff in the biting wind gusts. A little longer exposure would have ended their lives. A fund of $30,000 was subscribed and divided among the families of the drowned heroes, and the Canadian. government made a grant of $1000 for the same good purpose,-for the wrecked brig hailed from St. John, N. B. The men who perished had rescued many a shipwrecked crew. Their rewards were sometimes $3, sometimes $5, and never more than $15 per man. Cuttyhunk is a rough mother and rears strong and fearless sons. The voice of duty is strong within them and courage is as the air they breathe.

A generous emulation exists between the government station men and the other islanders to see who shall beforemost in the noble work of saving life. At the present time there are, as an old lobsterman said, "three humane buildings" on Cuttyhunk. "The Captain" who has charge of them has invented many a useful life-saving apparatus, and has medals from Paris and Havre commending his work. He has on exhibition at the Board of Trade building, Gloucester, Mass., a model of a life-saving car, to be built of aluminum bronze. Its general adoption by coasting vessels would result in the saving of many lives. The captain's interest in his invention is purely philanthropic, for he has never applied for a patent.

At the government station seven or eight men are always on duty, except during June and July. All night long and every foggy day they patrol the cliffs and stony sand reaches along the west and south shores. Each man carries two Coston signals, whose bright red glare has warned many a ship approaching too near the dangerous coast or given promise to wrecked mariners that help is not far distant.

In the handsome station, finished in hard polished wood and kept as neat as wax, two big surf-boats are ready for emergency, mounted on their long carriages and supplied with oars, lifepreservers, ropes and other necessaries. The beach-cart is there loaded with hawser, shot-lines, Lyle gun and ammunition. There are the breechesbuoy, the life-car and all things. needed to send a strong rope out to the wreck, along which rope when fastened to the mast the breeches-buoy or life-car makes its perilous way through dashing surf and blinding spray safe to the welcoming shore.

On the last July night, just before the men go on duty, a dance is usually given at the life-saving station. The home of life-cars and surf-boats is bare, save where upon the walls lanterns, life-belts, blocks and tackles serve half as ornaments, half as a sombre setting for the bright, girlish faces and the muscular, sunburnt men, who look so well in their uniforms of blue and white. Through the great open doorway a group of spectators can be dimly seen, leaning against a life-car, standing, or sitting upon coils of rope, while beyond the sea drags the pebbles over the singing beach and the half moon rides through a cloudless sky. Promptly at twelve o'clock the fiddle and the banjo, those instruments of Cuttyhunk gaiety, cease. Two guardsmen take clocks and signals and start on their four-hour watch, which is to continue every night and foggy day through cold and sleet and driving rain until the summer comes again. These men receive sixty dollars a month; and one may some of the islanders speak of the lifefisherman's life from the fact that some of the islanders speak o fthe lifesavers as having "a good berth and an easy time of it."

OME years ago, of a summer afternoon, a perspiring organ-grinder and a leathery ape plodded along the road that goes between thinsoiled hillsides and the lake which is known as Elbow Lake and lies to the northeast of the village of Salem. In those days it was a well-traveled highway, as could be seen from its breadth and dustiness. At about half the length of its bordering on the lake there was a spring set in the hillside, and a little pool continually rippled by its inflow. Some settler or later owner of the thin-soiled hillsides had left a clump of trees about it, making as sightly and refreshing an Institute of Charity as could be found. Still another philanthropist had added half a cocoanut-shell to the foundation.

The organ-grinder turned in under the trees with a smile, in which his front teeth played a large part, and suddenly drew back with a guttural exclamation; the leathery ape bumped against his legs, and both assumed attitudes expressing respectively in an Italian and tropical manner great surprise and abandonment of ideas. A tall man lay stretched on his back beside the spring, with a felt hat over his face.

Pietro, the grinder, hesitated. The American, if disturbed and irascible, takes by the collar and kicks with the foot: it has sometimes so happened. The tall man pushed back his hat and sat up, showing a large-boned and sun-browned face, shaven except for a black mustache clipped close. He looked not irascible, though grave perhaps, at least unsmiling. He said: "Its free quarters, Dago. Come in. Entrez. Have a drink." Pietro bowed and gesticulated with

Elbow Lake is shaped as its name implies. If one were to imagine the arm to which the elbow belonged, it would be the arm of a muscular person in the act of smiting a peaceable looking farmhouse a quarter of a mile to the east. Considering the bouldered front of the hill behind the house, the imaginary blow would be bad for the imaginary knuckles. It is a large house, with brown, unlikely looking hillsides around it, huckleberry knobs and ice-grooved boulders here and there. The land between it and the lake is low, and was swampy forty years ago, before the Rand boys began to drain it, about the time when R. Rand entered the third quarter century of his unpleasant existence.

R. Rand was, I suppose, a miser, if the term does not imply too definite a type. The New England miser is seldom grotesque. He seems more like congealed than distorted humanity. He does not pinch a penny so hard as some of other races are said to do, but he pinches a dollar harder, and is quite as unlovely as any. R. Rand's methods of obtaining dollars to pinch were not altogether known, or not, at least, recorded,-which accounts perhaps for the tradition that they were of doubtful uprightness. He held various mortgages about the county, and his farm represented little to him except a means of keeping his two sons inexpensively employed in rooting out

stones.

At the respective ages of sixteen and seventeen the two sons, Bob and Tom