Brewster Ship Masters #271103

B E F O R E noon of a day in October, 1849, Henry David Thoreau, author and nature-lover, quitted the Cape Cod train at what was at that time the railroad terminus at Sandwich and took that almost obsolete conveyance, the stage, for as far as it went that day,' as we told the driver. As far as it went that day, was, as a matter of fact, as far as the down-the-cape stage from Sandwich went on any other day, and that was as far as the Higgins tavern in Orleans. It is probable that the driver was Mr. Higgins himself and, if so, that he wore his carefully brushed silk hat and passed it about among his passengers as a depository for their fares. That this was Mr. Higgins's regular custom, the writer believes, because his grandmother used to tell him so, just as she told him the story of Moses in the bulrushes, and of the wonderful sagacity of Capt. Barney Paine's little schooner, the Boston packet, which, being lost in the bay during a violent storm and with a broken compass, stranded on the flats directly opposite her skipper's home in Brewster, thus proving that she knew her way home all by herself.