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Acolyte, v. 2, issue 2, whole no. 6, Spring 1944
31858063101376_008
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had quite a number of mills there, but nothing's left now but one jewelry factory. "That's a pretty prominent proposition, thought--all the travelling salesmen seem to know about it. Makes a special kind of fancy jewelry out of a secret alloy that nobody can analyse very well. They say it's platinum, silver, and gold-- but these people sell it so cheap that you can hardly believe it. Unless they have a corner on that kind of goods. "Old man marsh, who owns the thing, must be richer than Croesus. Queer old duck, though, and sticks pretty close around the town. He's the grandson of Captain Obed Marsh, who founded the business. His mother was some kind of foreigner-- they say a South Sea native--so everybody raised Cain when he married an Ipswich girl fifty years ago. They always do that about Innsmouth people. But his children and grandchildren look just like anybody else so far as I can see. I've had 'em pointed out to me here. Never saw the old man. "And why is everybody so down on Innsmouth? Well--you mustn't take too much stock in what people around here say. They're hard to get started, but once they do get started they never stop. They've been telling things about Innsmouth-- whispering 'em, mostly--for the last hundred years, I guess, and I gather they're more scared than anything else. Some of the stories would make you laugh--about old Captain Marsh driving bargains with the devil and bringing imps out of hell to live in Innsmouth, or about some kind of devil-worship and awful sacrifices in some place near the wharves that people stumbled on around 1850 or thereabouts---but I come from Pauton, Vermont, and that kind of story doesn't go down with me. "The real thing behind all this is simply race prejudice--and I don't say I'm blaming those that hold it. I hate those Innsmouth folks myself, and wouldn't care to go to their town. I suppose you know--though I can see you're a Midwesterner by the way you talk--and what a lot of our New England ships used to have to do with queer ports in Asia, Africa, the South Seas, and everywhere else, and what queer kinds of people they sometimes brought back with them. You've probably heard about the Salem man who came back with a Chinese wife, and maybe you know there's still a colony of Fiji Islanders somewhere around Cape Cod. "Well there must be something like that back of the Innsmouth people. The place was always badly cut off from the rest of the country by salt marshes and inlets, and we can't be sure about the ins and outs of the matter, but it's pretty plain that old Captain Marsh must have brought home some odd specimens when he had all three of his ships in commission back int he 1830's and 1840's. There certainly is a strange kind of streak in the Innsmouth folks today--I don't know how to express it, but it sort of makes me crawl. You'll notice it a little in Joe Sargent if you take his bus. Some of them have flat noses, big mouths, weak retreating chins, and a funny kind of rough grey skin. The sides of their necks are sort of shrivelled or creased up, and they get bald very young. Nobody around here or in Arkham will have anything to do with them, and they act kind of offish themselves when they come to town. They used to ride on the railroad, walking and taking the train at Rowley or Ipswich, but now they use that bus. "Yes, there's a hotel in Innsmouth--called the Gilman House--but I don't believe it can amount to much. I wouldn't advise you try it. Better stay over here and take the ten o'clock bus tomorrow morning. Then you can get an evening bus there for Arkham at 8 o'clock. There was a factory inspector who stopped at the Gilman a couple of years ago, and he had a lot of unpleasant hints about the place. It seems they get a queer crowd there, for this fellow heard voices in other rooms that gave him shivers. It was foreign talk, but he said the bad thing about it was the kind of voice that sometimes spoke. It sounded so unnatural--slopping-like, he said --that he didn't dare go to sleep, just kept dressed and lit out early in the morning. The walk went on most of the night. "This man--Gaset, his name was--had a lot to say about the old Marsh factory, and what he said fitted very well with some of the wild stories. The books were in no kind of shape, and the machinery looked old and almost abandoned, as if it hadn't been run a great deal. The place still used water power from the lower falls of the Mawtuxet. There were only a few employees, and they didn't seem to be doing much. It made me think, when he told me, about the local rumors that Marsh doesn't -- 4 --
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had quite a number of mills there, but nothing's left now but one jewelry factory. "That's a pretty prominent proposition, thought--all the travelling salesmen seem to know about it. Makes a special kind of fancy jewelry out of a secret alloy that nobody can analyse very well. They say it's platinum, silver, and gold-- but these people sell it so cheap that you can hardly believe it. Unless they have a corner on that kind of goods. "Old man marsh, who owns the thing, must be richer than Croesus. Queer old duck, though, and sticks pretty close around the town. He's the grandson of Captain Obed Marsh, who founded the business. His mother was some kind of foreigner-- they say a South Sea native--so everybody raised Cain when he married an Ipswich girl fifty years ago. They always do that about Innsmouth people. But his children and grandchildren look just like anybody else so far as I can see. I've had 'em pointed out to me here. Never saw the old man. "And why is everybody so down on Innsmouth? Well--you mustn't take too much stock in what people around here say. They're hard to get started, but once they do get started they never stop. They've been telling things about Innsmouth-- whispering 'em, mostly--for the last hundred years, I guess, and I gather they're more scared than anything else. Some of the stories would make you laugh--about old Captain Marsh driving bargains with the devil and bringing imps out of hell to live in Innsmouth, or about some kind of devil-worship and awful sacrifices in some place near the wharves that people stumbled on around 1850 or thereabouts---but I come from Pauton, Vermont, and that kind of story doesn't go down with me. "The real thing behind all this is simply race prejudice--and I don't say I'm blaming those that hold it. I hate those Innsmouth folks myself, and wouldn't care to go to their town. I suppose you know--though I can see you're a Midwesterner by the way you talk--and what a lot of our New England ships used to have to do with queer ports in Asia, Africa, the South Seas, and everywhere else, and what queer kinds of people they sometimes brought back with them. You've probably heard about the Salem man who came back with a Chinese wife, and maybe you know there's still a colony of Fiji Islanders somewhere around Cape Cod. "Well there must be something like that back of the Innsmouth people. The place was always badly cut off from the rest of the country by salt marshes and inlets, and we can't be sure about the ins and outs of the matter, but it's pretty plain that old Captain Marsh must have brought home some odd specimens when he had all three of his ships in commission back int he 1830's and 1840's. There certainly is a strange kind of streak in the Innsmouth folks today--I don't know how to express it, but it sort of makes me crawl. You'll notice it a little in Joe Sargent if you take his bus. Some of them have flat noses, big mouths, weak retreating chins, and a funny kind of rough grey skin. The sides of their necks are sort of shrivelled or creased up, and they get bald very young. Nobody around here or in Arkham will have anything to do with them, and they act kind of offish themselves when they come to town. They used to ride on the railroad, walking and taking the train at Rowley or Ipswich, but now they use that bus. "Yes, there's a hotel in Innsmouth--called the Gilman House--but I don't believe it can amount to much. I wouldn't advise you try it. Better stay over here and take the ten o'clock bus tomorrow morning. Then you can get an evening bus there for Arkham at 8 o'clock. There was a factory inspector who stopped at the Gilman a couple of years ago, and he had a lot of unpleasant hints about the place. It seems they get a queer crowd there, for this fellow heard voices in other rooms that gave him shivers. It was foreign talk, but he said the bad thing about it was the kind of voice that sometimes spoke. It sounded so unnatural--slopping-like, he said --that he didn't dare go to sleep, just kept dressed and lit out early in the morning. The walk went on most of the night. "This man--Gaset, his name was--had a lot to say about the old Marsh factory, and what he said fitted very well with some of the wild stories. The books were in no kind of shape, and the machinery looked old and almost abandoned, as if it hadn't been run a great deal. The place still used water power from the lower falls of the Mawtuxet. There were only a few employees, and they didn't seem to be doing much. It made me think, when he told me, about the local rumors that Marsh doesn't -- 4 --
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