Good-by! If I am smashed on the railroad, weep over my _pieces_. I think you told me you had already done that--on less provocation.
Geography never could find a lodgement in my head; but this I will assert, without fear of being sent to "the foot of the class," that granite, fish, and sand, are the principal products of Cape Ann. When you go down Broadway and see those square stone blocks in process of being pounded down for our mutual benefit, know that I am up here, a self-constituted superintendent of the work. Said a Cape-Ann-der the other day, "When you see six hundred ton of granite taken out of a quarry every week for the whole summer, you'd _not_-erally think that 'twould leave a hole there, but it don't." I mention this remark to you as a proof of the fertility of the soil.
Needle and thread are not to be despised any more than the deft fingers which ply them; but you should sit on a big stone at one of the quarries, and watch four or five of these stalwart fellows, each muscular hand grasping the hammer, coming down rhythmically, surely, powerfully, at the same instant, hour after hour, on the same huge granite block, till it is shaped for its purpose. It was a grand and suggestive sight to me. The men who did it were heroes; shaping--who can tell what?--monuments for history--public buildings--that will stand long after you and I are forgotten. And the other side of these exhaustless stone caverns rolled the broad ocean, waiting to float off on its mighty bosom these huge masses of granite to any desired port. And close by were woods, so filled with song, and perfume, and deep, cool shadows, and soft hum of insect life, and ancient trees, moss-coated, where the swell of the ocean and the sound of all this labor came with muffled breath, as if fearful to bring jarring discord to all that harmony. This granite, thought I, may stand for our pilgrim fathers; these woods, with their song and perfume, for their wives and daughters, who brought to this "rock-bound coast" the softening influence of their sweet, holy presence.
Away from all this, over the hill, down in the village, are the stores, and, more important to me, the post-office. I don't know what our pilgrim fathers did, but I know that to-day their descendants close them when they go to tea or dinner, while expectant customers patiently _roost_ on the neighboring fences till their places reopen. But I am happy to state that the Cape-Ann-ders make up for this placidity when they get hold not only of granite, but of horse-flesh. It is their stereotyped rule to race up-hill, at break-neck speed. It is therefore needless to state how they go _down-hill_ and how perfectly immaterial to them it is whether the horse fetches up in a stone-quarry or in the ocean. I ought to know, for I have danced often enough into the wet grass and dust, and over stone walls, in order to save my neck, to know. You see the Cape-Ann-ders, being born with oars in their hands, have not studied horse-flesh like Mr. Bonner. The ocean is their hunting-ground. One can't excel in all the virtues; but such fish as they coax out of it, and such chowder as they make of it, would go far to make one forget their equestrianism. I've seen about every kind of fish on the table except whales, of which I had my first astonished view yesterday. That _bulk can be frisky_ was the first lesson they taught me. As to their spouting, a political meeting is nothing to it! When they came up out of water to breathe, you might have heard them in New York--that is, if the rag-man, with his six infernal jangling cow-bells, hadn't been going through your street.