The streets are paved and clean. There are few horses on the island, and these are harnessed single to box-wagons, painted green, the sides of which are high enough to hold safely a child, four or five years of age, standing. We often inquired the reasons for this peculiar build; but the replies were so unsatisfactory, that we put the green box down as one of the mysteries of the spot.
It seemed to us a healthy symptom, that we saw in our inn none of those alarming notices that the keepers of hotels on the mainland paste up so conspicuously, no doubt from the very natural dislike to competition, "Beware of pickpockets," "Bolt your doors before retiring," "Deposit your valuables in the safe, or the proprietors will not be responsible." There are no thieves in Nantucket; if for no other reason, because they cannot get away with the spoils. And we were credibly informed, that the one criminal in the town jail had given notice to the authorities that he would not remain there any longer, unless they repaired the door, as he was afraid of catching cold from the damp night air.
In the afternoons, good-looking young women swarm in the streets,
"Airy creatures,
Alike in voice, though not in features,"
I could wish their voices were as sweet as their faces; but the American climate, or perhaps the pertness of democracy, has an unfavorable effect on the organs of speech. Governor Andrew must have visited Nantucket before he wrote his eloquent lamentation over the excess of women in Massachusetts. I am fond of ladies' society, and do not sympathize with the Governor. But if that day should ever come, which is prophesied by Isaiah, when seven women shall lay hold of one man, saying, "We will eat our own bread and wear our own apparel, only let us be called by thy name," I think Nantucket will be the scene of the fulfilment, the women are so numerous and apparently so well off. I confess that I envy the good fortune of the young gentlemen who may be living there at that time. We saw a foreshadowing of this delightful future in the water. The bathing "facilities" consist of many miles of beach, and one bathing-house, in which ladies exchange their shore finery for their sea-weeds. Two brisk young fellows, Messrs. Whitey and Pypey, had come over in the same boat with us. We had fallen into a traveller's acquaintance with them, and listened to the story of the pleasant life they had led on the island during previous visits. We lost sight of them on the wharf. We found them again near the bath-house, in the hour of their glory. There they were, disporting themselves in the clear water, swimming, diving, floating, while around them laughed and splashed fourteen bright-eyed water-nymphs, half a dozen of them as bewitching as any Nixes that ever spread their nets for soft-hearted young Ritters in the old German romance waters. Neptune in a triumphal progress, with his Naiads tumbling about him, was no better off than Whitey and Pypey. They had, to be sure, no car, nor conch shells, nor dolphins; but, as Thompson remarked, these were unimportant accessories, that added but little to Neptune's comfort. The nymphs were the essential. The spectacle was a saddening one for us, I confess; the more so, because our forlorn condition evidently gave a new zest to the enjoyment of our friends, and stimulated them to increased vigor in their aquatic flirtations. Alone, unintroduced, melancholy, and a little sheepish, we hired towels at two cents each from the ladylike and obliging colored person who superintended the bath-house, and, withdrawing to the friendly shelter of distance, dropped our clothes upon the sand, and hid our envy and insignificance in the bosom of the deep.
And the town was brilliant from the absence of the unclean advertisements of quack-medicine men. That irrepressible species have not, as yet, committed their nuisance in its streets, and disfigured the walls and fences with their portentous placards. It is the only clean place I know of. The nostrum-makers have labelled all the features of Nature on the mainland, as if our country were a vast apothecary's shop. The Romans had a gloomy fashion of lining their great roads with tombs and mortuary inscriptions. The modern practice is quite as dreary. The long lines of railway that lead to our cities are decorated with cure-alls for the sick, the ante-mortem epitaphs of the fools who buy them and try them.
"No place is sacred to the meddling crew
Whose trade is——"
posting what we all should take. The walls of our domestic castles are outraged with graffiti of this class; highways and byways display them; and if the good Duke with the melancholy Jaques were to wander in some forest of New Arden, in the United States, they would be sure to
"Find elixirs on trees, bitters in the running brooks,
Syrups on stones, and lies in everything."
Last year, weary of shop, and feeling the necessity of restoring tone to the mind by a course of the sublime, Thompson and I paid many dollars, travelled many miles, ran many risks, and suffered much from impertinence and from dust, in order that we might see the wonders of the Lord, his mountains and his waterfalls. We stood at the foot of the mountain, and, gazing upward at a precipice, the sublime we were in search of began to swell within our hearts, when our eyes were struck by huge Roman letters painted on the face of the rock, and held fast, as if by a spell, until we had read them all. They asked the question, "Are you troubled with worms?"