Oldport Days | Page 6

gone."
In towns like this, from which the young men mostly migrate, the work
of life devolves upon the venerable and the very young. When I first
came to Oldport, it appeared to me that every institution was conducted
by a boy and his grandfather. This seemed the case, for instance, with
the bank that consented to assume the slender responsibility of my
deposits. It was further to be observed, that, if the elder official was
absent for a day, the boy carried on the proceedings unaided; while if
the boy also wished to amuse himself elsewhere, a worthy neighbor
from across the way came in to fill the places of both. Seeing this, I
retained my small hold upon the concern with fresh tenacity; for who
knew but some day, when the directors also had gone on a picnic, the
senior depositor might take his turn at the helm? It may savor of
self-confidence, but it has always seemed to me, that, with one day's
control of a bank, even in these degenerate times, something might be
done which would quite astonish the stockholders.
Longer acquaintance has, however, revealed the fact, that these Oldport
institutions stand out as models of strict discipline beside their
suburban compeers. A friend of mine declares that he went lately into a
country bank, nearby, and found no one on duty. Being of opinion that
there should always be someone behind the counter of a bank, he went
there himself. Wishing to be informed as to the resources of his
establishment, he explored desks and vaults, found a good deal of paper
of different kinds, and some rich veins of copper, but no cashier. Going
to the door again in some anxiety, he encountered a casual school-boy,
who kindly told him that he did not know where the financial officer
might be at the precise moment of inquiry, but that half an hour before
he was on the wharf, fishing.
Death comes to the aged at last, however, even in Oldport. We have
lately lost, for instance, that patient old postman, serenest among our
human antiquities, whose deliberate tread might have imparted a tone
of repose to Broadway, could any imagination have transferred him
thither. Through him the correspondence of other days came softened
of all immediate solicitude. Ere it reached you, friends had died or
recovered, debtors had repented, creditors grown kind, or your children
had paid your debts. Perils had passed, hopes were chastened, and the
most eager expectant took calmly the missive from that tranquillizing

hand. Meeting his friends and clients with a step so slow that it did not
even stop rapidly, he, like Tennyson's Mariana, slowly "From his
bosom drew Old letters."
But a summons came at last, not to be postponed even by him. One day
he delivered his mail as usual, with no undue precipitation; on the next,
the blameless soul was himself taken and forwarded on some celestial
route.
Irreparable would have seemed his loss, did there not still linger among
us certain types of human antiquity that might seem to disprove the
fabled youth of America. One veteran I daily meet, of uncertain age,
perhaps, but with at least that air of brevet antiquity which long years
of unruffled indolence can give. He looks as if he had spent at least half
a lifetime on the sunny slope of some beach, and the other half in
leaning upon his elbows at the window of some sailor boarding-house.
He is hale and broad, with a head sunk between two strong shoulders;
his beard falls like snow upon his breast, longer and longer each year,
while his slumberous thoughts seem to move slowly enough to watch it
as it grows. I always fancy that these meditations have drifted far astern
of the times, but are following after, in patient hopelessness, as a dog
swims behind a boat. What knows he of the President's Message? He
has just overtaken some remarkable catch of mackerel in the year
thirty-eight. His hands lie buried fathom-deep in his pockets, as if part
of his brain lay there to be rummaged; and he sucks at his old pipe as if
his head, like other venerable hulks, must be smoked out at intervals.
His walk is that of a sloth, one foot dragging heavily behind the other. I
meet him as I go to the post-office, and on returning, twenty minutes
later, I pass him again, a little farther advanced. All the children accost
him, and I have seen him stop--no great retardation indeed--to fondle in
his arms a puppy or a kitten. Yet he is liable to excitement, in his way;
for once, in some high debate, wherein he assisted as listener, when one
old man on a wharf was doubting the assertion