All of the merchandise in the store was hurriedly disposed of, but J.F. kept the building, and the chairs that were for resting and conversation and the stove that was for warmth in winter. He also kept the wide front porch with the two benches that had been set just so to catch the breezes from the Sound. I would sit there with him often, looking through the large windows to the clean, but empty, glass cases and the haunting shadows that the long-gone cans had left behind them on the rows of shelving. We would sit there and smoke and talk, or sometimes not talk, and we would watch the sleek, new cars of the summer visitors going by lickety-split to the new Super-Market down the street. AUNT ALICE Just at the corner where Main Street meets the High Bank Road at South Dennis there stands a little, gray half-house that was built back in 1835 by Captain Eleazar Nickerson. Above the door there is a beautiful fan-light window to set this little house off from others of its kind in the village. Wisteria vines have broken their way through the porch flooring and press around the fan light and lilacs press against the corner of the house. It is now an empty house and a sad house and it will never again be quite the same house without Aunt Alice. But it will be there along the High Bank for many another year and it will be loved again and hear laughter again because it was built to endure. And it was built with great artistry from its exterior dentil to its fine old panelling. It will always be “Aunt Alice’s House”. I had just reached the door of the old white church at South Dennis after a Sunday service when I felt a tug at my arm and turned to meet Aunt Alice. She was small and sparkling and it was difficult to believe that she was eightyish. She was neat as a pin and there was a twinkle in her eyes that betrayed a sense of humor and something in the way she held herself that spoke of great inner strength. She was full of enthusiasm for the Yarmouth Register and she wished to volunteer her services in any way she could be of help. So, at eighty, she became the village correspondent for the paper, gathering the news, putting it down in faultless English in a firm, precise hand, and prefacing it with an appropriate bit of verse that was like a breath of springtime in any season. The problems of other people were always of more importance to her than her own and it was sometime before I learned very much about her. When I did I knew that my new friend was one of the last living members of that large and courageous group of Cape women who had gone to sea.