The old fishing and seafaring village, which has now almost lost the
recollection of its first estate in its absorption with the care of the
summer colony, was sparsely dropped along the highway bordering the
harbor, and the shores of the river, where the piles of the time-worn
wharves are still rotting. A few houses of the past remain, but the type
of the summer cottage has impressed itself upon all the later building,
and the native is passing architecturally, if not personally, into
abeyance. He takes the situation philosophically, and in the season he
caters to the summer colony not only as the landlord of the rented
cottages, and the keeper of the hotels and boarding-houses, but as
livery-stableman, grocer, butcher, marketman, apothecary, and doctor;
there is not one foreign accent in any of these callings. If the native
is a farmer, he devotes himself to vegetables, poultry, eggs, and fruit
for the summer folks, and brings these supplies to their doors; his
children appear with flowers; and there are many proofs that he has
accurately sized the cottagers up in their tastes and fancies as well as
their needs. I doubt if we have sized him up so well, or if our somewhat
conventionalized ideal of him is perfectly representative. He is,
perhaps, more complex than he seems; he is certainly much more
self-sufficing than might have been expected. The summer folks are the
material from which his prosperity is wrought, but he is not dependent,
and is very far from submissive. As in all right conditions, it is here
the employer who asks for work, not the employee; and the work must be
respectfully asked for. There are many fables to this effect, as, for
instance, that of the lady who said to a summer visitor, critical of the
week's wash she had brought home, "I'll wash you and I'll iron you, but I
won't take none of your jaw." A primitive independence is the keynote of
the native character, and it suffers no infringement, but rather boasts
itself. "We're independent here, I tell you," said the friendly person
who consented to take off the wire door. "I was down Bangor way doin' a