visit it. So they were
soon wending their way up Orange street, through Lyons to Pleasant, and
then up South Mill to the Old Mill itself. On paying five cents apiece,
they were privileged to go to the top and look through the spy-glass,
and also see the miller grind some corn. This old windmill, built in
1746, with its old oaken beams still strong and sound, situated on a
hill by itself, was to Bessie the most picturesque thing that she had
seen. She associated this with the oldest house on the island, built in
1686, facing the south, which she had seen the day before.

In the afternoon they continued their sight-seeing by visiting the
Athenaeum on Federal street. They found it to be a large white building
with pillars in front, on the lower floor of which Miss Ray was
particularly pleased to see such a good library of six thousand volumes,
and a reading-room with the leading English and American periodicals,
the use of which she learned was to be gained by the payment of a small
sum. Bessie was attracted to the oil-painting on the wall of Abraham
Quary, who was the last of the Indian race on the island. Then they
examined, in an adjoining room, the curiosities gathered together for
public inspection. Here they found the model of the "Camels," and also
the jaw of a sperm whale, seventeen feet long, with forty-six teeth and
a weight of eight hundred pounds. Bessie said that the whale from which
it was taken was eighty-seven feet long and weighed two hundred tons.
When Mrs. Gordon learned that this very whale was taken in the Pacific
Ocean and brought to the Island by a Nantucket Captain, she became as
much interested in it as in the "Camels," for surely it had an
historical interest. After an hour spent in this entertaining manner,
they returned to their boarding-place in time to greet the gentlemen who
had come back with glowing accounts of their day's work, or rather
pleasure, for they had met with splendid success. Tom's fingers were
blistered, but what was that compared to the fun of blue-fishing!

What particularly interested the ladies was a "Portuguese man of war"
which one of the gentlemen had caught in a pail and brought home alive.
This beautiful specimen of a fish, seen only at Nantucket, their hostess
said, and seldom caught alive, was admired by all, who, indeed, were
mostly ignorant of the habits or even the existence of such a creature.
Bessie wondered how such a lovely iridescent thing could be poison to