and willows, lemon yellow in the sun, shade the waysides. Golden-winged woodpeckers and red-shouldered blackbirds dart to and fro, while the abundance of jaunty martin-houses shows that Cape Cod hospitality is not limited to the human.
The quiet, white homesteads, with green blinds, broad porches and sometimes a cupola for the sea-view, stand in a sweet tranquillity and dignity that should abash the showy summer residence. But these old-fashioned homes keep up with the times. Against the well-sweep leans the bicycle. The dooryards are blue with myrtle, or pink with rose-bushes, or gay with waving daffodils. Old age is in fashion on the Cape. When twilight fades, the passer-by sees gathered about the early evening lamp the white heads of those whose “chores” are done. And though death comes at last, the cemeteries are so tenderly kept that the grave is robbed of half its dread. Even in the oldest burial-grounds, where the worn, scarred stones lean with the privilege of age, the staring death’s-heads are cozily muffled in moss, and “Patience, wife of Experience,” sleeps under a coverlet of heartsease.
All the way from Provincetown to Falmouth
are certain briny signals,—a ship’s figure-head, marble steps whose stone was washed ashore as wreckage, lobster-pots, herring-nets, conch-shells set on lintels, a discontented polar bear pacing a stout-paled yard, ruffling cockatoos, boats converted into flower-boxes, whales’ vertebræ displayed for ornament, garden-beds marked out with scallop-shells, everywhere the ship-shape look, the sailor’s handy rig, and everywhere the codfish used for weathercocks. In Barnstable court-house a mammoth cod is suspended from the ceiling. Vistas of ocean outlook, too, from under arches of green branches, flash upon the eye, the salty flavor is not lost in woodland fragrances, and the rolling hills and wavy pastures take their model from the sea.
Of the old-timey features of the Cape, no one is more impressive than the witch-like windmill with its peaked cap, outspread arms and slanting broomstick, reminding us that the Pilgrims came from Holland. Some of these antique mills have been bought by summer residents and moved to their estates for curiosities, but the one at Orleans was in use as late as 1892, taking its profitable toll of two quarts out of the bushel.
The general history of Falmouth but repeats the story of her sister towns. The first settlers are believed to have come in boats from Barnstable, in 1660. They encamped for the night among the flags of Consider Hatch’s Pond, where a child was born and, in recognition of the rushes that sang his earliest lullaby, named Moses. The town was duly incorporated in 1686, next after Eastham, and has steadfastly stood for piety, wisdom and patriotism. She admitted the Quakers, and if one of her deacons held a negro slave, as colonial deacons often did, poor Cuffee was at least brought to the communion table. It is Truro that contains “Pomp’s Lot,” where the stolen African, with loaf of bread and jug of water at his feet for sustenance on his new journey, escaped slavery by hanging. As for learning, it was Sandwich Academy which the Cape towns held in awe, but our Falmouth men, like the rest, half sailor, half farmer and all theologian, had a genuine culture, born of keen-eyed voyaging and of lonely thought, that kept the air about them tingling with intelligence. When it comes to war stories, if Provincetown, from her end of the Cape, can tell of her boy in blue that went down with the Cumberland,