Staccato Notes of a Vanished Summer | Page 5

type is mostly of a seafaring brown, a complexion which seems to
be inherited rather than personally acquired; for the commerce of
Kittery Point perished long ago, and the fishing fleets that used to fit
out from her wharves have almost as long ago passed to Gloucester. All
that is left of the fishing interest is the weir outside which supplies,
fitfully and uncertainly, the fish shipped fresh to the nearest markets.
But in spite of this the tint taken from the suns and winds of the sea
lingers on the local complexion; and the local manner is that freer and
easier manner of people who have known other coasts, and are in some
sort citizens of the world. It is very different from the inland New
England manner; as different as the gentle, slow speech of the shore
from the clipped nasals of the hill-country. The lounging native walk is

not the heavy plod taught by the furrow, but has the lurch and the sway
of the deck in it.
Nothing could be better suited to progress through the long village,
which rises and sinks beside the shore like a landscape with its sea-legs
on; and nothing could be more charming and friendly than this village.
It is quite untainted as yet by the summer cottages which have covered
so much of the coast, and made it look as if the aesthetic suburbs of
New York and Boston had gone ashore upon it. There are two or three
old- fashioned summer hotels; but the summer life distinctly fails to
characterize the place. The people live where their forefathers have
lived for two hundred and fifty years; and for the century since the
baronial domain of Sir William was broken up and his possessions
confiscated by the young Republic, they have dwelt in small red or
white houses on their small holdings along the slopes and levels of the
low hills beside the water, where a man may pass with the least
inconvenience and delay from his threshold to his gunwale. Not all the
houses are small; some are spacious and ambitious to be of ugly
modern patterns; but most are simple and homelike. Their gardens,
following the example of Sir William's vanished pleasaunce, drop
southward to the shore, where the lobster-traps and the hen-coops meet
in unembarrassed promiscuity. But the fish-flakes which once gave
these inclines the effect of terraced vineyards have passed as utterly as
the proud parterres of the old baronet; and Kittery Point no longer
"makes" a cod or a haddock for the market.
Three groceries, a butcher shop, and a small variety store study the few
native wants; and with a little money one may live in as great real
comfort here as for much in a larger place. The street takes care of itself;
the seafaring housekeeping of New England is not of the insatiable
Dutch type which will not spare the stones of the highway; but within
the houses are of almost terrifying cleanliness. The other day I found
myself in a kitchen where the stove shone like oxidized silver; the
pump and sink were clad in oilcloth as with blue tiles; the walls were
papered; the stainless floor was strewn with home-made hooked and
braided rugs; and I felt the place so altogether too good for me that I
pleaded to stay there for the transaction of my business, lest a sharper

sense of my unfitness should await me in the parlor.
The village, with scarcely an interval of farm-lands, stretches four
miles along the water-side to Portsmouth; but it seems to me that just at
the point where our lines have fallen there is the greatest concentration
of its character. This has apparently not been weakened, it has been
accented, by the trolley-line which passes through its whole length,
with gayly freighted cars coming and going every half-hour. I suppose
they are not longer than other trolley-cars, but they each affect me like
a procession. They are cheerful presences by day, and by night they
light up the dim, winding street with the flare of their electric bulbs,
and bring to the country a vision of city splendor upon terms that do not
humiliate or disquiet. During July and August they are mostly filled
with summer folks from a great summer resort beyond us, and their
lights reveal the pretty fashions of hats and gowns in all the charm of
the latest lines and tints. But there is an increasing democracy in these
splendors, and one might easily mistake a passing excursionist from
some neighboring inland town, or even a local native with the instinct
of clothes, for a social leader from York Harbor.
With the falling leaf, the barge-like open cars close up into
well-warmed saloons, and falter to hourly intervals in