A BIT OF NANTUCKET—THE HOUSE-TOPS.
After running the gantlet of the crowd on the wharf, the stranger is at liberty to look about him.
The fire of 1846 having destroyed the business portion of the town, that part is not more interesting than the average New England towns of modern growth. Generally speaking, the houses are of wood, the idea of spaciousness seeming prominent with the builders. Plenty of house-room was no doubt synonymous with plenty of sea-room in the minds of retired ship-masters, whose battered hulks I saw safe moored in snug and quiet harbors. The streets are cleanly, and, having trees and flower-gardens, are often pretty and cheerful.
The roofs of many houses are surmounted by a railed platform, a reminder of the old whaling times. Here the dwellers might sit in the cool of the evening, and take note of the passing ships, or of some deep-laden whaleman with rusty sides and grimy spars wallowing toward the harbor. Here the merchant anxiously scanned the horizon for tidings of some loitering bark; and here superannuated skippers paced up and down, as they had done the quarter-deck. I question if the custom was not first brought here from the tropics, for in Spanish-talking America the best room is not unfrequently the roof, to which the family resort on sweltering hot nights. Sometimes a storm arises, when the precipitancy with which the sleepers gather up their pallets and seek a shelter is the more amusing if witnessed near day-break. Formerly every other house in Nantucket had one of these lookouts, or a vane at the gable-end, to show if the wind was fair for vessels homeward-bound.
While other towns have increased, Nantucket for a length of time has stood still. I saw no evidences of squalid poverty or of actual want, though there was a striking absence of activity. The fire, of which they still talk, though it happened thirty years ago, can not be traced by such visible reminders as a mass of new buildings fitted into the burned space, or by a cordon of old houses drawn around its charred edges. The disaster caused the loss of many handsome buildings, among them Trinity Church, a beautiful little edifice, having latticed windows.
If there was no squalor obtruding itself upon the stranger, neither was there any display of ostentatious wealth. There were a few large square mansions of brick or wood, and even an aristocratic quarter, once known as India Row; but, on the whole, a remarkable equality existed in the houses of Nantucket. The old New England Greek temple greets you familiarly here and there. I read on the sign-boards the well-remembered names of Coffin, Folger, Bunker, Macy, Starbuck, etc., that could belong nowhere else than here. Whenever I have seen one of them in some distant corner of the continent, I have felt like raising the island slogan of other times, "There she blows!"
The Nantucket of colonial times was not more like the present than sailors in pigtails and high-crowned hats are like the close-cropped, wide-trowsered tars of to-day. Houses were scattered about without the semblance of order. The streets had never any names until the assessment of the direct tax in the administration of President Adams. Common convenience divided the town into neighborhoods, familiarly known as "Up-in-Town," "West Cove," or "North Shore." An old traveler says the stranger formerly received direction to Elisha Bunker's Street, or David Mitchell's Street, or Tristram Hussey's Street.
The average conversation is still interlarded with such sea phrases as "cruising about," "short allowance," "rigged out," etc. I heard one woman ask for the "bight" of a clothes-line. I had it from credible authority that a Cape Cod girl, when kissed, always presented the other cheek, saying, "You darsent do that again." A Nantucket lass would say, "Sheer off, or I'll split your mainsail with a typhoon."
There is a story of a "cute" Nantucket skipper, who boasted he could tell where his schooner might be in the thickest weather, simply by tasting what the sounding-lead brought up. His mates resolved to put him to the test. The lead was well greased, and thrust into a box of earth, "a parsnip bed," that had been brought on board before sailing. It was then taken down to the skipper, and he was requested to tell the schooner's position. At the first taste