Thompson said his sensations were similar to those of Captain Cook or Herman Melville when they first landed to skim the cream of the fairy islands of the Pacific.
I was deeply moved, and gave tongue at once. "It is sad to think that these unsophisticated, uninflated people must undergo the change civilization brings with it. The time will come when the evil spirit that presides over watering-places will descend upon this dear little village, and say to the inhabitants that henceforth they must catch men. Neatness, cheapness, good-feeling, will vanish; a five-story hotel will be put up,—the process cannot be called building; and the sharks that infest the coast will come ashore in shabby coats and trousers, to prey upon summer pleasure-seekers."
"In the mean time," said Thompson, "why should not we come here to live? We can wear old clothes, and smoke cigars of the Hippalektryon brand. Dr. Johnson must have had a poetic prevision of Nantucket when he wrote his impecunious lines:
'Has Heaven reserved, in pity for the poor,
No pathless waste or undiscovered shore,
No secret island in the boundless main?'
This is the island. What an opening for young men of immoderately small means! The climate healthy and cool; no mosquitoes; a choice among seven beauties, perhaps the reversion of the remaining six, if Isaiah can be relied upon. In our regions, a thing of beauty is an expense for life; but with a house for three hundred dollars, and bluefish at a cent and a half a pound, there is no need any more to think of high prices and the expense of bringing up a family. If the origin of evil was, that Providence did not create money enough, here it is in some sort Paradise."
"That's Heine," said I; "but Heine forgot to add, that one of the Devil's most dangerous tricks is to pretend to supply this sinful want by his cunning device of inconvertible paper money, which lures men to destruction and something worse."
Our holiday was nearly over. We packed up our new sensations, and steamed away to piles of goods and columns of figures. Town and steeples vanished in the haze, like the domes and minarets of the enchanted isle of Borondon. Was not this as near to an enchanted island as one could hope to find within twenty-five miles of New England? Nantucket is the gem of the ocean without the Irish, which I think is an improvement.
THE SNOW-WALKERS.
He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter. It is true the pomp and the pageantry are swept away, but the essential elements remain,—the day and the night, the mountain and the valley, the elemental play and succession and the perpetual presence of the infinite sky. In winter the stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the moon achieves a fuller triumph, and the heavens wear a look of a more exalted simplicity. Summer is more wooing and seductive, more versatile and human, appeals to the affections and the sentiments, and fosters inquiry and the art impulse. Winter is of a more heroic cast, and addresses the intellect. The severe studies and disciplines come easier in winter. One imposes larger tasks upon himself, and is less tolerant of his own weaknesses.