The Steeple-Jack

Dürer would have seen a reason for living   in a town like this, with eight stranded whales to look at; with the sweet sea air coming into your house on a fine day, from water etched   with waves as formal as the scales on a fish.

One by one in two's and three's, the seagulls keep   flying back and forth over the town clock, or sailing around the lighthouse without moving their wings — rising steadily with a slight   quiver of the body — or flock mewing where a sea the purple of the peacock's neck is   paled to greenish azure as Dürer changed the pine green of the Tyrol to peacock blue and guinea gray.

You can see a twenty-five-   pound lobster; and fish nets arranged to dry.

The whirlwind fife-and-drum of the storm bends the salt   marsh grass, disturbs stars in the sky and the star on the steeple; it is a privilege to see so much confusion.

Disguised by what   might seem the opposite, the sea- side flowers and trees are favored by the fog so that you have   the tropics first hand: the trumpet-vine, fox-glove, giant snap-dragon, a salpiglossis that has spots and stripes; morning-glories, gourds,   or moon-vines trained on fishing-twine at the back door; cat-tails, flags, blueberries and spiderwort,   striped grass, lichens, sunflowers, asters, daisies — yellow and crab-claw ragged sailors with green bracts — toad-plant, petunias, ferns; pink lilies, blue   ones, tigers; poppies; black sweet-peas.

The climate is not right for the banyan, frangipani, or   jack-fruit trees; or for exotic serpent life.

Ring lizard and snake-skin for the foot, if you see fit; but here they've cats, not cobras, to   keep down the rats.

The diffident little newt with white pin-dots on black horizontal spaced-   out bands lives here; yet there is nothing that ambition can buy or take away.

The college student named Ambrose sits on the hillside   with his not-native books and hat and sees boats at sea progress white and rigid as if in   a groove.

Liking an elegance of which the sourch is not bravado, he knows by heart the antique sugar-bowl shaped summer-house of   interlacing slats, and the pitch of the church spire, not true, from which a man in scarlet lets   down a rope as a spider spins a thread; he might be part of a novel, but on the sidewalk a sign says C.

J.

Poole,

Steeple Jack,   in black and white; and one in red and white says Danger.

The church portico has four fluted   columns, each a single piece of stone, made modester by white-wash.

Theis would be a fit haven for waifs, children, animals, prisoners,   and presidents who have repaid sin-driven senators by not thinking about them.

The   place has a school-house, a post-office in a store, fish-houses, hen-houses, a three-masted schooner on the stocks.

The hero, the student,   the steeple-jack, each in his way, is at home.

It could not be dangerous to be living   in a town like this, of simple people, who have a steeple-jack placing danger signs by the church while he is gilding the solid-   pointed star, which on a steeple stands for hope.