CAPE SPLIT, Aug. 7, 1878

Machias, Maine Union Paper

Addison, Maine

8-20’78

Mr. Editor: We’re on a Cape Split “toot”. By ‘we’ I mean 2 men, 2 women, 2 young women [the other two are not old] and several little folks. We put up at Uncle Enos’s house and barn. The women and children have the house and we men have the barn. Our bed is a hay mow. No need of crowding each other out. Our fellow lodgers are: Two hogs that snore part of the time and the rest of the night they remind one of a married pair seeking a divorce but unable to get it. A cow who wakes earlier than a Yankee housekeeper in June. A horse who, tired of his stall, comes into the barn floor and spends he night moving about sampling the haymows. A rooster who sings like a prima donna at the first streak of dawn. The dawn does not streak very early – fog.

But in spite of all these freaks of “Goldsmith’s animated Nature”, we make a good thing of it. Mr. Editor, did you ever sleep in a barn on a haymow? If not, try it. It is impossible to die happy without that experience.

Cape Split is a great place but the split is a fraud. It is at most a mild double-ender.

The Almighty has done a fine piece of work here art this point. The rocks are delightfully ragged and wicked. I took a walk around the Cape on Sunday and the work was still going on. It was the same eternal thunder and roar. There is no day of rest at Cape Split. Its a grand industrial system – no suspension of business, no shutting up shop.

If you come to the Cape, put up at Uncle Enos’ everybody does. Most roads go by a place. Some come to an end. The Cape road is one of these and it ends at Uncle Enos’. As no man ever comes to the end of a road and takes the back track without doing something, the man in this case stops and eats at Uncle Enos; free table or sleeps in Aunt Enos’ free beds -and does not go home till morning.

Moreover, Uncle Enos is invaded from the sea and, did he not keep a well supplied table, these hungry souls would “clear the cloth and leave the platter clean”.

Mr. Editor, when you become rich and retire from business, do not build your house at the end of the road, least of all at that end where lands ends and sea begins – with a good harbor. If you do, you will be eaten into debt and out of house and home.

Now, Mr Editor, I know your columns are open to the giving of good advice and, as it runs in our family to give advice, I want to say a few words on my own responsibility to those who find it so convenient to put their legs under Enos’ table and tumble Aunt Enos’ beds. This is the advice: -

Good friends don’t ride a free horse as long as you are able to pay for one. Uncle Enos does not keep a hotel – but his bread and butter has to be paid for all the same. Go to see his, to be sure. It is the place to stop at:

But when you go, be sure to show

The color of your money.

To eat and sleep, a thank-you cheap,

Is not so very funny

To host and wife, when all their life,

Give gratis dinners to saints and sinners.

Smiles may be cheap but who can eat

Such unsubstantial fare:

A compliment cannot pay rent,

Or give one clothes to wear.

Pay up like men for you may then,

Come back again

With welcome hail, by horse or sail. OLD PECULIAR