Within the Capes

by Howard Pyle

I will say here, that Captain Granger will be always glad to see you if, at any time, you should chance to come to Eastcaster. If he is not at home, you will be likely to find him playing chequers or backgammon at the Black Horse Tavern, just around the corner of Market street, and nearly opposite to the court-house.

However, that is neither here nor there, and I find that I am wandering from the point. But you must excuse and overlook that, bearing in mind that it is the way of an old man, who has done a great deal of talking in his day. I thank goodness that I am old enough now to know better than to gossip and talk as much as I used to do, and am rather silent than otherwise.

Nevertheless, I promise now that I will heave ahead with my yarn, though it may be that I will leave some things untold that you would like to hear, being, as I said, no great talker, in which case you must come to Eastcaster, and then I will tell you anything that you may want to know.

I will not enter into a long yarn concerning what happened in Tom Granger’s life before the year 1812, for though such a yarn would hold within it many concerns of interest, it is not for the sake of relating them that I have thus taken my pen betwixt my fingers. It was late in the spring of that year (1812) when he returned home after a three years’ cruise to the East Indies.

I think that there is no joy in all the world like that of getting home again after a long voyage, such as this had been. I do not know but that it repays one for all the sorrow and pain of leave-taking, and for the home-sickness that follows thereon. Even such changes as have happened betwixt the going and returning do not seem amiss, provided that they have not brought grief and trouble with them.

The changes that had occurred since Tom’s departure in the summer of 1809 had brought no sadness with them. When he had gone away, he had left his sisters, Susan and Mary, as young girls; the former sixteen and the latter fifteen years old. They had now grown into a pair of fine young women and were chits no longer. This was the first and greatest change that struck Tom, so you may see how little had happened. The folks were already beginning to tease Susan about Will Gaines, who had just returned from Philadelphia, where he had been studying law, and had set up an office for himself in Eastcaster.

The next day was Sunday, or First-day, as we call it in Quaker neighborhoods, and as all of the family were going to meeting, Tom put on his best toggery to go with them.

It was a beautiful, bright clear day, and as Tom stood on the porch waiting for Henry, who was to go with him, his heart swelled within him with the love of home. It seemed sweet to him to look on the young leaves of the trees, the green meadowlands and the richness of growing wheat, after seeing nothing for months but a wide stretch of troubled waters; it was good to feel the balmy blowing of a breeze that was not salt; to hear the singing of the robin and the chattering of the wren; the crowing of the cocks and the lowing of the cattle, and not to have in his ears the everlasting washing and gurgling of the water alongside.

The folks use to ride to meeting on horseback in the old times, the women behind the men on pillion saddles. But Tom was a sailor, and consequently no good figure on horseback, so he and Henry, the youngest, set off ahead of the rest to foot it, for the homestead farm was only a mile and a half from Eastcaster meeting.

The meeting-house looked very pleasant where it stood, back from the street under the shadow of the two great elms in front of it. The old meeting-house was standing then, for they did not tear it down to make room for the new building until ’32. The present building is larger than the old one was, and is, no doubt, lighter and better, and more comfortable in many ways; but for all that, I have never liked it as well as the old black and red brick meeting-house, with its high roof running up to a point from all four corners and topped with something that looked like a belfry, though it had no bell in it, of course.