A NONOGENARIAN GRANDFATHER PLACIDLY
CATCHING UP THE MESHES OF AN OLD NET.
of a shower. These women turn easily to housekeeping duties, and often the out-of-door tasks accomplished, continue the web of romance with knitting, spinning and hooking rugs.
The sailmaker is a romantic figure in the doorway of some old “gear” house, as he sits surrounded by billows of canvas, dark and mildewed, patching, roping and otherwise overhauling the old mainsail. His, too, is a figure in imminent danger of passing. The dashing motor boat, blowing the spume from her bow, says, “The day of sails is over.”
One summer, visiting with the Lighthouse-keeper’s family in their characterful little binnacle-home on the edge of the rocks at Peggy’s Cove, our last day for adventuring having arrived, and even as we waited for the coming of the mail-carrier’s cart by which we had engaged “outward passage”, we strolled down to the waterfront to say a last farewell to our “old-timers”. It was at that last moment, in what turned out to be the eleventh hour of his life, that we chanced upon a ninety-year-old grandfather in high boots and straw hat placidly catching up with his nonogenarian fingers the broken meshes of an old net. Mailcart or not, we must have this picture! Click! As it happened, mending this bit of net was his last task. For before the picture which we promised to send back to him could come into his hand, the Great Reaper had brought him to his last illness and he was soon awa’!
CHAPTER IV.
SEA-COAST HOMES OF THE MARITIME PROVINCES.
HE open-door to an understanding of the sea coast life, its enthusiasms, its joys, its sorrows and its toil, is by way of the little sea-coast homes edging the ‘long-shore road in out-of-the-way coves and harbours, remote from towns, cities and the big sea-ports. These little houses are as a voice in the land; as soon as one heaves in sight by a turn of the road or a dip of the land we instantly feel their personality. Their dimensions may be small, roofs low, windows few, doors narrow—all these things are overlooked because they all fit in with the whole, to make a sweet, lovable little place, where we might easily fancy ourselves living happily—the big world far away, the horizon of our wants satisfied by the vision and tang of the gray sea, and the fishboat putting out in the early morning, to come again with the sinews of the evening meal. There are many ways of approaching these sea-coast homes, but the preferable way is—afoot. The man or woman who takes to the open road and puts up where he can when dusk comes down over land and sea, is the voyager likely to have the best adventures and to make the most discoveries. He discovers, primarily, that many tongues are heard in these little sea-coast homes—English, Gaelic, Breton and Acadian-French, and should he go far north enough, some “Huskie”. He will even find little colonies of Jersey Islanders in the midst of the English-Gaelic-French stretches. Even so, the traveller coming to any of these sea-side doors in the evening light will never have to beg a place to lay his head. Hospitality is part of the unwritten code of these parts. An additional mouth to feed brings about absolutely no confusion. It matters not which language the housewife speaks. You may not be able to employ her Gaelic or she your English, but her heart is kind and friendly and the sea has taught her to be cosmopolitan. Her door is ajar to visitors; a small matter like languages will never close it. There are many common grounds on which to meet and always “sign” language and a little latent ability on both sides to “act out” any situation going beyond the combined vocabularies adds spice. Indeed I think the “acting out” one of the chief charms particularly in the little French homes.
The interiors of these sea-coast cottages in which we have frequently found ourselves guests, not one but many summers, are in every way as individual and winning as their exteriors are attractive. All the furniture is hand made, with odd “bits” here and there salvaged from wrecks, or which have otherwise “washed in with the tide”. It is fitting that as the house is home-made—it shelters homemade things. On the floors are round, plaited rag rugs—pretty spots of colour but not so brilliant or so highly prized as the rough, hooked rug showing large patterns designed from nearby objects or some treasured association—the family cat, the dog, the flowers from the wee garden. In some of the French shore homes both the plaited and hooked rug give way to the Catalon. Having duly examined and admired those on the floor, Madame takes the visitor up into the garret to see the ponderous loom that holds another in the making. Scattered about are her wools, spun and dyed and perhaps previously sheared by herself. Catalons furnish material enough for hours of conversation and if the visitor is fortunate enough to be a guest under Madame’s roof the chest of floor rugs and homespun couverts may be opened to view. Some of these couverts may be old, the work of Madame’s or M’sieu’s mother. Oh, many are the stories woven into the couverts of the Magdalen Islands and the Gulf of St. Lawrence shores from Quebec to Cheticamp—stories in detail more than one summer long.