r. The fishermen began to mingle with
the crowd about the town-hall doors--blue-jowled Portuguese, their
women bare-headed or shawled for the most part; clear-eyed Nova
Scotians, and men of the Maritime Provinces; French, Italians, Swedes,
and Danes, with outside crews of coasting schooners; and everywhere
women in black, who saluted one another with gloomy pride, for this was
their day of great days. And there were ministers of many
creeds,--pastors of great, gilt-edged congregations, at the seaside for
a rest, with shepherds of the regular work,--from the priests of the
Church on the Hill to bush-bearded ex-sailor Lutherans, hail-fellow
with the men of a score of boats. There were owners of lines of
schooners, large contributors to the societies, and small men, their
few craft pawned to the mastheads, with bankers and marine-insurance
agents, captains of tugs and water-boats, riggers, fitters, lumpers,
salters, boat-builders, and coopers, and all the mixed population of
the water-front.

They drifted along the line of seats made gay with the dresses of the
summer boarders, and one of the town officials patrolled and perspired
till he shone all over with pure civic pride. Cheyne had met him for
five minutes a few days before, and between the two there was entire
understanding.

"Well, Mr. Cheyne, and what d'you think of our city?--Yes, madam, you
can sit anywhere you please.--You have this kind of thing out West, I
presume?"

"Yes, but we aren't as old as you."

"That's so, of course. You ought to have been at the exercises when we
celebrated our two hundred and fiftieth birthday. I tell you, Mr.
Cheyne, the old city did herself credit."

"So I heard. It pays, too. What's the matter with the town that it
don't have a first-class hotel, though?"

"--Right over there to the left, Pedro. Heaps o' room for you and your
crowd.--Why, that's what I tell 'em all the time, Mr. Cheyne. There's
big money in it, but I presume that don't affect you any. What we want
is--"

A heavy hand fell on his broadcloth shoulder, and the flushed skipper
of a Portland coal-and-ice coaster spun him half round. "What in
thunder do you fellows mean by clappin' the law on the town when all
decent men are at sea this way? Heh? Town's dry as a bone, an' smells a
sight worse sence I quit. 'Might ha' left us one saloon for soft
drinks, anyway."

"Don't seem to have hindered your nourishment this morning, Carsen.
I'll go into the politics of