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THE middle-aged stranger whom I met by chance upon the lower rocks at Mary’s Neck, that salt-washed promontory of the New England coast, was at first taciturn but became voluble when a little conversation developed the fact that we were both from the Midland country. We were indulging in the unexciting pastime of fishing for rock-cod, and the reason for his taciturnity, he explained, was that he had mistaken me for a native of Mary’s Neck; and, when I informed him that nothing was more unlikely than that a native would be fishing for rock-cod, he expressed astonishment that I, a fellow-Midlander, should seem to know anything about what a native would or would not do.

It was certainly a relief, he said, to meet a fellow-being from the Middle West—from “back home” was the way he put it—and I was the first person he could really talk to that he had encountered since his recent arrival at Mary’s Neck. He had been through a great deal in that short time, he told me, and he shook his head ruefully; then, with the confidential trustfulness that one Midlander on foreign soil nearly always reposes in another, he began straightway to tell me all about his troubles. We ceased to annoy the rock-cod with murder, sat upon a ledge over the salty seaweed that heaved and fell with the Atlantic surge, and I listened while he spoke fully of what lay disturbingly upon his mind.

A man’s vocabulary reveals him, and from the first I was interested not only in what this exile said but in how he said it. His manner of speech was characteristic, I thought, of what we sometimes call the “average well-to-do American” of these times; thus, just as one guesses the engine by its sound, so I caught at the creature through words seldom divested of a half-concealed plaintive humor and now and then unintentionally eloquent, and found him genuine. The sun was overhead when he began by informing me that his name was Massey and he came from Logansville, Illinois; but the broken shadows were stretching eastward across the rocks and the light was rosy before his narrative concluded.

Not long after this, we chanced to meet again, in the same manner, and, abandoning our humble pastime, again he talked and again I listened. I have noticed that many of the northern New England people fortify themselves within their reticence, and even in time of distress seem to feel that an open mouth is a breach through which the foe may leap; but when we Midlanders are in difficulties we always need to tell somebody about them. Mr. Massey’s troubles were more like perplexities, those that bemuse the foreigner treading a strange soil and hearing unfamiliar tongues, though sometimes his bewilderments were the deepest indeed, when concerned with his own family. Moreover as this family of his consisted of a wife and two daughters, he seemed to feel that he would not invariably be understood if he talked freely at home; it was necessary to him to open his heart to a fellow-man.

For the greater part of the year my own habitation is at Cobble Reef, several miles distant from the much more populous, lively and affluent resort at Mary’s Neck. After our second meeting, Mr. Massey drove over to Cobble Reef to see me and express himself in a long talk on my modest but breezy verandah; he came again and formed the habit of coming when he had something on his mind. Once, when he telephoned plaintively that he had twisted his ankle, I went to Mary’s Neck, and, without much inquiry, found his cottage, for it was the largest on the crest of the coastal rocks and of itself rather conspicuous evidence of Mr. Massey’s worldly prosperity. He was in a long wicker chair upon his verandah; he welcomed me heartily but expressed regret that his wife and daughters were absent, and then, frowning thoughtfully, added that perhaps it was just as well for us to have the place to ourselves. In fact, I had at no time the pleasure of meeting the Massey ladies, though a moment after I had left him, that day, I saw a shiny big limousine turn into his driveway and caught a glimpse of three charming faces and some pretty clothes.

I had a better view of one of the daughters late in the season on a day when he came to see me. The manner of his arrival was pleasant; he descended from a fine, fawn-colored runabout driven by a dark-eyed pretty girl of twenty, who seemed to take it as entirely a matter of course that three young men of similar age should have squeezed themselves into the rumble-seat. All three scrambled to take the place at her side vacated by Mr. Massey; muscular force was involved, and she used some of this, herself, to settle the contest. When two had been established beside her and the other forced to retire to the rumble, she leaned back, patted the defeated one upon a towsled head, then called to Mr. Massey that she would return for him later, and, settling herself to the controls of her lively machine, whizzed away down the white road that crosses the salt marshes and leads to Mary’s Neck. From his chair on my verandah, Mr. Massey a little anxiously observed the speed of her departure, but sighed resignedly. “That one was Clarissa,” he said. “Pretty much any time you’d happen to see her it would be about the same way—dashing off for somewhere else with three or four of ’em hanging on as well as they can. As a matter of fact, it seems to Mrs. Massey and me that about all we’re getting this end of our summer at Mary’s Neck is just glimpses of both our daughters. Enid’s eighteen and more serious than Clarissa; but they’re both in and out all the time—mostly out.”

He sighed again and went on to speak of intimate family matters. Indeed, I suppose that seldom has a man spoken with a more copious freedom to another man not a relative or of old acquaintance. There were times when he related the details of episodes mortifying to himself—told me of things he had thought and done that were of a kind not unknown in other people’s experiences but that most of us feel it is more becoming not to impart. Gradually he formed in my mind a fairly clear impression of contrast or even conflict—something like a semi-historical picture of a Midland family a little convulsed by being out of its native environs; and, since there appears to be something of possible value, or even entertainment, in such a picture, I have here transcribed what presented it to me. The effect seems to be the homely narrative of a Logansville family’s accommodating itself to a New England summer; but there may be something more generally applicable, here and there beneath the surface of Mr. Massey’s talk, or, as I should say, his many talks. In recording them it has seemed only fair to him to preserve them in his own congenial Midland manner and to let him speak for himself.

B. T.