Shaw spoke again and again at local celebrations on the Cape. At one such banquet he might have proposed, or answered, the toast to “Cape Cod Our Home: The first to honor the Pilgrim ship, the first to receive the Pilgrim feet; the first and always the dearest in the memory of her children everywhere.” But it was at Yarmouth that he expressed best, perhaps, the loyalties of his great heart: “There is not one visitor here male or female whose heart is not penetrated with the deep and endearing sentiment, at once joyous and sad, which makes up the indescribable charm of home.” CHAPTER XI GENIUS LOCI I Otis and Shaw were great, and the qualities that made them so, particularly those of Shaw, were indigenous to the soil. It is interesting to look through a book like Freeman’s “Cape Cod,” and study there the portraits of the men who built this unique community. They are often singularly handsome, with a fine, well-bred, upstanding air. They, preëminently, are not villagers, but men of the world who know their world well and have considered its works. Perhaps in every face, whether it has beauty of line or the homely ruggedness graved by generations of positive character, the dominant feature is a certain poise of mind: these men would think, and then judge; they would look at you straight, and it would be difficult for you to conceal your purpose. It would be easier to be persuaded than to persuade them; and in the end it is probable that your yielding would be justified in wisdom. From such characters could be drawn a composite that might fitly be the _genius loci_; and lest its secret charm elude us and Cape Cod appear no more than a pleasing sandy offshoot of New England, we should do well to learn of him. He is, as we see him, in essence a follower of the sea: one who pursues romance to mould it to everyday use. For a closer aspect it may be convenient to place him in the eighteen-forties, or earlier, at latest the fifties, in the great days of the clippers.