Towns, like persons, I suppose, wake up now and then to find themselves famous; but I doubt if any town having this experience could be more amazed by it, more dazed by it, than was Three Rivers, one day last March, when we opened our newspapers from Boston and Montreal and lo, there was our own name staring at us from the front page! Three Rivers is in the Province of Quebec, on the shore of the Bay de Chaleurs; but we receive our metropolitan papers every day, only thirty-six hours off the presses; and this makes us feel closely in touch with the outside world. Until the railroad from Matapedia came through, four years ago, mail was brought by stage, every second day. The coming of the railroad had seemed an important event then; but it had never put Three Rivers on the front page of the Boston Herald.

The news-item in question was to the effect that the S. S. Maid of the North, Captain Pettipaw of Three Rivers, P. Q., had been torpedoed, forty miles off Fastnet, while en route from Sydney, N. S., to Liverpool, with a cargo of pig-iron. The captain and crew (said the item) had been allowed to take to the boats; but only one of the two boats had been heard from. That one was in command of the mate, and had been rescued by a trawler.

Captain Pettipaw of Three Rivers! Our Captain Pettipaw! How well we knew him; and who among us had ever thought of him as one likely to make Three Rivers figure on the front page of the world's news! Yet this had come to pass; and even amid the anxiety we felt as to the fate of Captain Joe, we could but be agreeably conscious of the distinction that had come to our little community. All that afternoon poor Mrs. Pettipaw's house was thronged with neighbors who hurried over there, newspaper in hand, ready to congratulate or to condole as might seem most called for.

"Poor Mrs. Pettipaw" or "poor Melina" was the way we always spoke of her, partly, I suppose, because of her nine children, and partly because—I hesitate to say it—she was Captain Joe's wife. But now that it seemed so very likely she might be his widow, our hearts went out to her the more. You see Captain Joe was, in our local phrase, "one of those Pettipaws." Pettipaws never seemed to get anywhere or to do anything that mattered. Pettipaws were always behindhand. Pettipaws were always in trouble, one way or another. It was a family characteristic.

Only five or six years ago Captain Joe's new schooner, the Melina P., had broken from her harbor moorings under a sudden gale from the northwest and driven square on the Fiddle Reef, where she foundered before our eyes. Other vessels were anchored close by the Melina P.; but not one of them broke loose. All the Captain's savings for years and years had gone into the new schooner, not to speak of several hundreds borrowed from his fellow-townsmen.

And the very next winter his house had burned to the ground; and the seven children—there were only seven then—had been parceled out amongst the neighbors for six or seven months until, about midsummer, the new house was roofed over and the windows set; and then the family moved in, and there they lived for several more months, "sort of camping-out fashion," as poor Melina cheerfully put it, while Captain Joe was occasionally seen putting on a row of shingles or sawing a board. At last, after the snow had begun to fly, the neighbors came once more to the rescue. A collection was made for the stricken family; carpenters finished the house; a mason built the chimney and plastered the downstairs partitions; curtains were donated for the windows; and the Pettipaws spent the winter in comfort.

The following spring Captain Joe got a position as second officer on a coastwise ship out of Boston, and the affairs of the family began to look up. From that he was promoted to the captaincy of a little freighter plying between Montreal and the Labrador; and the next we knew, he was in command of a large collier sailing out of Sydney, Nova Scotia. Poor Melina appeared in a really handsome new traveling suit, ordered from the big mail order house in Montreal; and the young ones could all go to church the same Sunday, and often did.

For the last year or two we had ceased to make frequent inquiries after Captain Joe; he had dropped pretty completely out of our life; and the thought that he might be holding a commission of special dangerousness had never so much as entered our minds. But poor Melina's calmness in the face of the news-item surprised everyone. It was like a reproach to her neighbors for not having acknowledged before the worth of the man she had married. It had not required a German torpedo to teach her that. And as for his safety, that apparently caused her no anxiety whatever.

"You couldn't kill the Captain," she repeated, with a quiet, untroubled smile, which was as much as to say that anything else might happen to a Pettipaw, but not that.

The rest of us admired her faith without being able to share it. Poor Melina rarely had leisure to read a newspaper, and she did not know much about the disasters of the war zone. And so, instinctively, everyone began to say the eulogistic things about Captain Joe that had never been said—though now we realized they ought to have been said—while he was with us.

"He was such a good man," said Mrs. Thibault, the barrister's wife. "So devoted to his home. I remember of how he would sit there on the doorstep for hours, watching his little ones at their play. Poor babies! Poor little babies!"

"Such a brave man, too; and so witty!" said John Boutin, our tailor. "The stories he would tell, my! my! Many a day in the shop he'd be telling stories from dinner till dark, without once stopping for breath as you might say. It passed the time so nice!"

"And devout!" added Mrs. FougÈre, the postmistress. "A Christian. He loved to listen to the church-bells. I remember like it was yesterday his saying to me, 'The man,' he said, 'who can hear a church-bell without thinking of religion, is as good as lost, to my thinking.'"

"Not that he went to church very often," said Boutin.

"His knee troubled him," explained Mrs. FougÈre.

Early in the evening came the cable message that justified poor Melina's confidence. EugÉnie White—the Whites used to be Le Blancs, but since EugÉnie came back from Boston, they have taken the more up-to-date name—EugÉnie came flying up the street from the railroad station, waving the yellow envelope and spreading the news as she flew. The message consisted of only one word: "Safe"; but it was dated Queenstown, and it bore the signature we were henceforth to be so proud of: Joseph Pettipaw.

Two days later the Herald contained a notice of the rescue by a Norwegian freighter of the Captain of the Maid of the North; but we had to wait ten days for the full story, which occupied two columns in one of the Queenstown journals and almost as much in the Dublin Post, with a very lifelike photograph of Captain Joe. It was a wonderful story, as you may very likely remember, for the American papers gave it plenty of attention a little later.

It had been a calm, warm day, but with an immense sea running. Before entering the war zone Captain Joe had made due preparation for emergencies. The ship's boats were ready to be swung, and in each was a barrel of water and a supply of biscuit and other rations. The submarine was not sighted until it was too late to think of escaping; the engines were reversed; and when the German commander called out through his megaphone that ten minutes would be allowed for the escape of the crew, all hands hurried to the lee side and began piling into the boats. The mate's was lowered away first and cleared safely.

The Captain was about to give the order for the lowering of his own boat, when the only woman in the party cried out that her husband was being left behind. It was the cook, who was indulging in an untimely nap, his noonday labors in the galley being over. In her first excitement Martha Figman had failed to notice his absence, but had made for the boat as fast as she could, carrying her three-year-old child.

"Be quick!" called out the commander of the submarine. "Your time is up!"

"Oh, Captain, Captain, don't leave him," implored the desperate woman. "He's all I have!"

Then Captain Joe did the thing that will go down in history. He seized the little girl and held her aloft in his arms and called out to the Germans:

"In the name of this little child, grant me three more minutes."

"Two!" replied the commander.

Captain Joe leaped to the deck and rushed aft, burst open the cook's cabin, and hauled Danny Figman, quite sound asleep, out of his berth. The poor rascal was only partly dressed, but there was no time to make him presentable. A blanket and a sou'wester had to suffice. Still bewildered, he was dragged on deck and ordered to run for his life.

A few seconds later the boat lowered away with its full quota of passengers; the men took the oars, cleared a hundred yards safely; and then there was a snort, a white furrow through the waves, an explosion; the Maid of the North listed, settled, and disappeared. The submarine steamed quickly out of sight; and the two boats were all that was left as witness of what had happened.

On account of the terrible seas that were running, the boats soon became separated; and for sixty-two hours Captain Joe bent his every energy to keeping his boat afloat, for she was in momentary danger of being swamped, until on the third morning the Norwegian was sighted, came to the rescue, and carried the exhausted occupants into Queenstown.

Three Rivers, you may depend, had this story by heart, and backward and forward, long before Captain Joe returned to us; for not only did it appear in those Irish journals, but also on the occasion of the Captain's arrival in New York in several metropolitan papers, written up with great detail, and with a picture of little Tina Figman in the Captain's arms.

"This is the Captain," ran the print under the picture, "who risked his life that a baby might not be fatherless."

You can imagine how anxious we were by this time in Three Rivers to welcome that Captain home again; not one of us but wanted to make ample amends for the injustice we had done him in the past. But we had to wait several weeks, for even after the owners had brought Captain Joe and his crew back to New York on the St. Louis, still he had to go to Montreal for a ten days' stay, to depose his evidence officially and to wind up the affairs of the torpedoed ship. But at last he was positively returning to us; and extensive preparations were undertaken for his reception.

As he was coming by the St. Lawrence steamer, Lady of GaspÉ, the principal decorations were massed in the vicinity of the government wharf. If I tell you that well nigh three hundred dollars had been collected for this purpose from the good people of Three Rivers, you can form some idea of the magnitude of the effort. A double row of saplings had been set up along the wharf and led thence to the Palace of Justice; and the full distance, an eighth of a mile, was hung with red and tricolor bunting. Then there were three triumphal arches, one at the head of the wharf, one at the turn into the street, and one in front of the post-office. These arches were very cleverly built, with little turrets at the corners, the timber-work completely covered with spruce-branches; and each arch displayed a motto. Mrs. FougÈre and EugÉnie White had devised the mottoes, little John Boutin had traced the letters on cotton, and Mrs. Boutin had painted them. The first read: "Honor to Our Hero." The second was in French, for the reason that half our population still use that language by preference, and it read: "Honneur À notre HÉro"; and the third arch bore the one word, ornately inscribed: "Welcome."

All the houses along the way were decorated with geraniums and flags; and as the grass was already very green (it was June) and the willows and silver-oaks beginning to leave out, it may fairly be said that Three Rivers was a beauty spot.

Seeing that no one can tell beforehand when a steamer is going to arrive, the whole town was in its best clothes and ready at an early hour of the morning. The neighbors trooped in at poor Melina's, offering their services in case any of the children still needed combing, curling, or buttoning; and all through the forenoon the young people were climbing to the top of St. Anne's hill to see if there was any sign of the Lady of GaspÉ; but it was not till three in the afternoon that the church-bell, madly ringing, announced that the long-expected moment was about to arrive.

I wish I could quote for you in full the account of that day's doings which appeared in our local sheet, the Bonaventure Record, for it was beautifully written and described every feature as it deserved, reproducing verbatim the Mayor's address of welcome, Father Quinnan's speech in the Palace, and the Resolutions drawn up by ten representative citizens and presented to Captain Pettipaw on a handsomely illuminated scroll, which you may see to-day hanging in the place of honor in his parlor.

But let my readers imagine for themselves the arrival of the steamer, the cheer upon cheer as Captain Joe came gravely down the gang-plank; the affecting meeting between him and poor Melina and the nine little Pettipaws, the littlest of whom he had never seen, and several of whom had grown so in these last four years that he had the names wrong, which caused happy laughter and happy tears on all sides. Then the procession to the Palace! There was an orchestra of four pieces from Cape Cove; and a troop of little girls, in white, scattered tissue-paper flowers along the line of march.

The Mayor began his speech by saying that an honor had come to our little town which would be rehearsed from father to son for generations. Father Quinnan took for his theme the three words: "Father, Husband, Hero"; and he showed us how each of those words, in its highest and best sense, necessarily comprised the other two. And the exercises closed with a very enjoyable piano duet which you doubtless know: "Wandering Dreams," by some foreign composer.

People watched Captain Joe very closely. It would have been only natural if, returning to us in this way, he should have remembered a time, not so long before, when the attitude of his fellow-citizens had been extremely cool. But if he remembered it, he gave no sign; and he smiled at everyone in a grave, thoughtful manner that made one's heart beat high.

"He has aged," whispered Mrs. FougÈre. "But his face is noble. It reminds me of Napoleon, somehow."

"To me he looks more like that American we see so often in the papers—Bryan. So much dignity!" This from Mrs. Boutin.

We appreciated the Captain's freedom from condescension the more when we heard from his own lips, that same evening, a recital of the honors that had been showered upon him during the past weeks. The Mayor of Queenstown had had him to dinner; Lady Derntwood, known as the most beautiful woman in Ireland, had entertained him for three days at Derntwood Park, and sent an Indian shawl as a present to his wife. On the St. Louis he had sat at the Captain's right hand; in New York he had been interviewed and royally fÊted by the newspaper-men; and at Montreal the owners had presented him with a gold watch and a purse of $250. Also, they had offered him another ship immediately.

"Oh, you're going again!" we exclaimed; and the words were repeated from one to another in admiration—"He's going again!" But Captain Joe smiled thoughtfully.

"I told them I didn't mind being torpedoed," he said ('Oh, no! Certainly not! Mind being torpedoed; you! Captain Joe!') "but—"

"But what, Captain?"

"But I said as I couldn't bear for to see a little child exposed again in an open boat for sixty-four hours."

"But Captain, wouldn't they give you a ship without a child?"

"They said they would," he replied, doubtfully, shaking his head.

"Then what will you be doing next?" we asked, mentally reviewing the various fields in which he might add laurels to laurels.

He meditated a little while and then replied: "Home'll suit me pretty good for a spell."

Well, that could be understood, certainly. Indeed, it was to his credit. We remembered Father Quinnan's speech. The husband, the father, had their claim. A little stay at home, in the bosom of loved ones, yes, to be sure, it seemed fitting and right, after the perils of the sea.

And yet, why was it, as we took down the one-eighth-mile of bunting that night, there was a faint but perceptible dampening of our enthusiasm. Perhaps it was the reaction from the strain and excitement of the day, for it had been, there was no denying it, a day of days for Three Rivers; a day, which, as Father Quinnan had said, would be writ in letters of gold in Memory's fair album. This day was ended now, and night came down upon a very proud and very tired little community.

If this were a fancy story instead of a record of things that came to pass last year on the GaspÉ Coast, my pen should stop here; but as it is, I feel under a plain obligation to pursue the narrative.

I've no doubt that many other towns in the history of the world have faced precisely the same problem that Three Rivers faced in the months following: namely, what to do with a hero when you have one. Oh, if you could only set them up on a pedestal in front of the Town Hall or the post-office and keep them there! A statue is so practicable. Once in so often, say on anniversaries, you can freshen it up, hang it with garlands and bunting, and polish the inscription; and then the school-children can come, and somebody can explain to them about the statue, and why we should venerate it, and what were the splendid qualities of the hero which we are to try to imitate in our own lives. I hope that all cities with statues realize their happy condition.

For two or three weeks after the Great Day Three Rivers still kept its air of festivity. The triumphal arches could be appreciated even from the train, and many travelers, we heard, passing through, leaned out of the windows and asked questions of the station agent.

Wherever Captain Joe went, there followed a little knot of children, listening open-mouthed for any word that might fall from his lips; and you could hear them explaining to one another how it was that a man could be torpedoed and escape undamaged. At first no one of lesser importance than the Mayor or the Bank Manager presumed to walk with him on the street; and he was usually to be seen proceeding in solitary dignity to or from the post-office, head a little bowed, one hand in the opening of his coat, his step slow and thoughtful, while the children pattered along behind.

But the barrier between the Captain and his fellow-townsmen was entirely of their own creation, it transpired, for he was naturally a sociable man, and now more than ever he craved society, being sure of a deferential hearing. Once established again in Boutin's tailor-shop and pool-parlor, he seemed disposed never to budge from it; and as often as you might pass, day or night, you could hear him holding forth to whatever company happened to be present. It was impossible not to gather many scraps of his discourse, for his voice was as loud as an orator's.

"And Lady Derntwood—no, it was Lady Genevieve, Lady Derntwood's dairter by her first husband and fully as beautiful as her mother, she said to me, 'Captain,' she said, 'when I read that about the little girl—For the sake of this little child, grant me three minutes!—the tears filled my eyes, and I said to my maid, who had brought me my Times on the breakfast tray, "Lucienne," I said, "that is a man I should be proud to know!"'—and that's a fact sir, as true as I'm settin' here, for Lucienne herself told me the same thing. A little beauty, that Lucienne: black hair; medium height. We used to talk French together."

Or another time you would hear: "And they said to me, 'Captain,' they says, 'and are you satisfied with the gold watch and chain and with the little purse we have made up for you here, not pretending, of course, for one minute,' they says, 'that 'tis any measure of the services you have rendered to us or to your country. We ask you,' they says, 'are you satisfied?' And I said, 'I am,' and the fact is, I was, for the watch I'd lost was an Ingersoll, and my clothes put together wouldn't have brought a hundred dollars."

So the weeks went by; and the triumphal arches, on which the mottoes had run a good deal, were taken down and broken up for kindling; and still Captain Joe sat and talked all day long and all night long, too, if only anybody would listen to him. But listeners were growing scarce. His story had been heard too often; and any child in town was able to correct him when he slipped up, which often happened. The two hundred and fifty dollars was spent long since, and now the local merchants were forced to insist once more on strictly cash purchases, and many a day the Pettipaw family must have "done meagre," as the French say. Unless all signs failed, they would be soon living again at the charge of the community. Close your eyes if you like, sooner or later certain grim truths will be borne home to you. A leopard cannot change his spots, nor a Pettipaw his skin. Before our very eyes the honor and glory of Three Rivers, the thing that was to be passed from generation to generation, was vanishing: worse than that, we were becoming ridiculous in our own eyes, which is harder to bear, even, than being ridiculous in the eyes of others.

There was one remedy and only one. It was plain to anybody who considered the situation thoughtfully. Captain Joe must be got away. So long as your hero is alive, he can only be viewed advantageously at a distance. At all events, if he is a Pettipaw.

It was proposed that we should elect him our local member to the provincial Parliament. It might be managed. We suggested it to him, dwelling upon the opportunities it would afford for the exercise of his special talents which, we said, were being thrown away in a little town like Three Rivers. He conceded that we spoke the truth; "but," he said, after a moment of thoughtful silence, "I am a sailor born and bred, and my health would never stand the confinement. Never!"

Next it was found that we could secure for him the position of purser on the S. S. Lady of the GaspÉ. But this offer he refused even more emphatically.

"Purser!—Me!" There was evidently nothing more to be said.

Writing to Montreal, Father Quinnan learned that if he so wished Captain Pettipaw might have again the command of the little freighter that ran to the Labrador; and the proposition was laid before him with sanguine expectations. Again he declined.

"The Labrador! Thank you! They wouldn't even know who I was!"

"You could tell them, Captain."

"What good would that do?"

No answer being forthcoming to this demand, still another scheme had to be sought. It was the Mayor who finally saved the day for Three Rivers. He instigated a Patriotic Fund, to which every man, woman and child contributed what he could, and with the proceeds a three-masted schooner of two hundred tons burden was acquired (she had been knocked down for a song at a sheriff's sale at Campbellton); she was handsomely refitted, rechristened, and presented, late in October, to Captain Joe, as a tribute of esteem from his native town.

It is not for me to say just how grateful the Captain was, at heart; but he accepted the gift with becoming dignity; and before the winter ice closed the Gulf (so expeditiously had our plans been carried out) the Gloria was ready to sail with a cargo of dry fish for the Barbadoes.

The evening previous to her departure there was a big farewell meeting in the Palace of Justice, with speeches by the Mayor and Father Quinnan, a piano duet, and an original poem by EugÉnie White, beginning:

It was remarkable to see how all the enthusiasm and fervor of an earlier celebration in that same hall sprang to life again; yes, and with a solemnity added, for this time our hero was going from us. He sat there on the platform by the Mayor, handsome, square-shouldered, his head a little bowed, a thoughtful smile on his lips under the grizzled moustache: he was every inch the noble figure that had stood unflinching before the gates of death; and we realized as never before what a debt of gratitude we owed him. At last our hero was our hero again.

There is but little more to tell. The next morning, bright and early, everybody was at the wharf to watch the Gloria hoist her sails, weigh anchor, and tack out into the bay. There were tears in many, many eyes besides those of poor Mrs. Pettipaw. The sea had a dark look, off there, and one thought of the dangers that awaited any man who sailed out on it at this time of the year.

"Heaven send him good passage!" said Mrs. Thibault, wiping her eyes vigorously.

"Yes, yes, and bring him safe home again, the brave man!" added Mrs. Boutin, earnestly; and all those who heard her breathed a sincere amen to that prayer.

It was sincere. We had wanted Captain Joe to go away; we had actually forced him to go away; yet no sooner was he gone than we prayed he might be brought safe home again. Yes, for when all is said and done, a town that has a hero must love him and cherish him and wish him well. Because we have ours, Three Rivers will always be a better place to live in and to bring up children in: a more inspiring place.

Only, perhaps, if Mrs. Boutin had spoken less impulsively, she would have added one or two qualifying clauses to her petition. For instance, she might have added: "Only not too soon, and not for too long at once!" But for my part, I believe that will be understood by the good angel who puts these matters on record, up there.