Of course it was so and there was nothing to do about it. Henry, knowing that his Cape neighbors were not much for locking doors, had casually let himself in at the front and, without being seen, made a quick exit out the back, into the safety of neighboring woods and familiar haunts.
Henry’s episodes generally took place during the spring and summer months because he planned on spending the cold days at Barnstable, enjoying the warmth, food and hospitality of the County Jail. He was always expected there then, and he hardly ever varied the routine. He was popular with fellow inmates and with prison personnel and, if his crimes were frequent, they were always of a comparatively minor nature. Once, though, he betrayed the rules of hospitality and it can be believed that his hosts must have taken a very dim view of it, indeed. That was the time when Henry, having completed one of many sentences, emerged into a bustling Cape springtime looking considerably stouter than usual. It was not surprising. A mile or so down the road he drew a prison blanket from under his swollen coat and sold it at a bargain price to an unsuspecting householder. With these funds he obtained a bottle and commenced the celebration of his release.
Henry, whose spirit of independence knew no limits and who knew better, nevertheless, took the attitude that a certain village constable, who then was the only force of law and order in the village, was the sole cause of his various “persecutions”. In the village for many years life became a constant kind of cat-and-mouse game between them. The constable was probably a good man, who in a town that was almost without crime was hardly called upon to be a brave one, but he had an almost overwhelming sense of the importance of his own position and it was probably that trait that made him the everlasting butt of the revellers of the Night Before the Fourth. On that night, his home, on the lonely outskirts of the village, would become an armed camp while he, with a carefully-polished badge of authority on his chest and shot-gun on his knees, prepared to withstand an assault which never failed to materialize and never failed of success. His outhouse toppled readily like a leaf before the storm, firecrackers boomed beneath his veranda and beneath the very window where he sat in the darkness. Each time he peered from behind his curtain the assault began anew. Finally, as the first gray light of Independence Day filtered across the eastern sky he would be hung in effigy in his own dooryard.
Henry was usually at the head of the attacking forces, of course, and it was Henry, of course, who conceived the idea of giving our Constable a memorable ride on one Night Before the Fourth. In the village cemetery, in those days, there rested an ancient town hearse, a curious, horse-drawn vehicle that was shaped like an elaborate coffin on wheels and whose walls and top were entirely of glass. So it happened that, on one Night-Before, the hearse was quietly pulled up to the Constable’s house and he, protesting violently but uselessly, was placed within it, listening to the heavy clasp close above him, an unwilling captive in a glass cage on wheels. Then with great ceremony, in the manner of Timberlane home from the wars, the procession and its prisoner wound through the village streets. When, at length, the conquerors tired of the sport the constable was abandoned in the middle of Main Street where the first light of day and the earliest-rising villagers discovered him in his glass prison. Law and order was restored and he was released to try to restore his lost dignity. He never really did—but he did learn that when some Cape Codders went out to celebrate their independence they really meant it. For, ever after, on the afternoon of the Night Before, our Constable could be seen driving his Model T in the general direction of the canal with never a look backward towards our village. On the morning of the fifth he would be back with us, his badge freshly shined and his billy-club at the ready to maintain law and order for another year—or, at least for another 364 days.
Henry would never have served as a model of deportment on the Cape and his good neighbors deplored his multitudinous misconducts. But his crimes were generally petty and they had a Falstaffian flavor which made him something of a legend. At one time or another you might find his counterpart in any Cape village, and in a day when bad movies had not been replaced by bad talking movies, and when radio had not even suspicioned television, Henry’s latest escapades provided pretty good conversation during long winter evenings on the Cape. Certainly the celebration of Independence Day could not have been the same without him.
SOME PURVEYORS OF NOSTRUMS
Look at any copy of the Register of fifty to seventy five years ago and you will find that, if you can believe advertisements, there was hardly any ailment then of man or beast that did not have a cure. In the old newspaper columns you would find advertisements for Hop Bitters—Invalid’s Friend and Hope (“no vile, drugged, drunken nostrum but the purest and best medicine ever made”), Hood’s Sarsaparilla (a “reliable invigorant that excites the liver to action”), Dyke’s Beard Elixir (“guaranteed to force luxuriant mustaches or grow hair on bald heads in from 20 to 30 days”), and a hundred and one sulphur tonics for females suffering from “general debility and delicate health”. For the gentlemen there was Dr. Dye’s Voltaic Belt through which “electricity” could “restore health, vigor and manhood” and for everyone, particularly in spring, there were a number of Ginger compounds. Ginger, which rode the clipper ships back from the Orient, was an especially favorite ingredient of spring tonics, which was often combined with other ingredients, enough to exhilarate anyone. For example there was Sanford’s Compound of Ginger which noted on its label that to fine ginger had been added “genuine French Brandy, rendering it very much superior to all other preparations on the market.” Inasmuch as the alcoholic content was duly listed as 67% it must have been superior indeed, and there would be little wonder if large segments of the population might not be almost excessively exhilarated come springtime.
The Cape was not left out of the race to make the greatest of all “specifics”. A Hyannis doctor contrived the formula for Fletcher’s Castoria, still a favorite household remedy which babies have been crying for—or at—these many years. And part of the memories of springtime for many a Cape Codder is the little bottle, full of an untasty, brown liquid, called Speedy Relief, that still rests at the back of many a Cape Cod medicine chest. This remarkable remedy, which, from the label, seems to have been equally effective whether used internally or externally, must have brought shudders to many a Cape child before he hustled off to the comfort of a soft feather bed and the joy of a hot soapstone in a flannel bag to drive off the spring dampness that seeped into the unheated rooms above-stairs.
Speedy Relief was the invention of William F. Kenney of South Yarmouth and many Cape people today hold a clear memory of the man with reddish side-burns who carried a black bag full of small bottles and whose calls were as regular as springtime. Of course Speedy Relief was only a sideline with Mr. Kenney who was, in addition to being a manufacturer, an inventor, the village jeweller, and in charge of the telegraph office at South Yarmouth. In addition he had a tintype studio and many a Cape scrap book is filled with pictures of belles and beaus who posed before the broken Greek column in his studio. Nevertheless, so sensitive are Cape Cod taste buds, that it is mostly the memory of Speedy Relief that has lived on.
The wide-spread popularity of the Cape’s own specific played a part in providing a new minister of the town of Yarmouth with some unpleasant moments. His first service was progressing nicely, and it was clear that he had the concentrated attention of all his parishioners. Then he launched into his prayer on which he had spent considerable preparation. All went well until he solemnly intoned, “and to all our sick, bring speedy relief”. These words nearly brought down the house with a wholly unexpected and unlooked-for reaction. The good parson must have been sorely perplexed, indeed, until he was at length let in on the fact that he had, all unwittingly, issued a kind of commercial for a local panacea.