DAY BEFORE YESTERDAY the next summer.
The journey
to
Mount Desert was not
an easy one in 1876, as you had to take a steamer either from Rockland or Portland, and they were both wretched The Lewiston plied between Bar Harbor and old tubs. Portland, but I once came back the Rockland way in the the Useless, as she was commonly called through a dense fog that lasted till we neared Rockland, when the the countless islands fog lifted just in time for us to see Ulysses
But, fog or no fog, the captain, according to his custom, ran his boat full speed all the morning as if we were in open water; he did not appear to regard the islands at all, but steered partly by the echo that came
all
about
us.
from them and partly by instinct; it was extraordinary that he could do it without accident. At Rockland, where we made the connection with the railroad, we were supposed to get lunch at the station, but I found that the meal waiting-room consisted entirely of pies and cakes we had reached what Charles Dudley Warner calls "'the
in the
could have some bread and cheese; she said I might, but added: 'You can't eat it here, you'll have to eat it in the kitchen." So I retired to the kitchen with my vulgar fare. In those days Bar Harbor was still pretty primitive, though there were several large hotels, Rodick's being the most important, and a few cottages, but there were only
region of perpetual pie."
two
I
asked the waitress
if I
country places the Lyons' and the Gouverneur Ogdens'. The Atlantic House was the next in importance to Rodick's and we rented a small cottage near by and took our meals there- -"mealers" we were called by the real
Living was delightfully inexpensive then. I rethat lobsters cost three cents apiece in the village. There was not much to be bought in the village store, for the proprietor did not often renew his stock, remarking natives.
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