Heman White Chaplin

“ No? Well, it was like this: It was blowing a gale, and considerable sea on, one night when they were rounding Cape Horn on the home voyage, and she was pitching pretty bad, and David was out on the jib-boom taking in jib, and somehow she pitched with a jerk, so he lost his hold and went off, and, as he fell in the dark, naturally he struck out both hands, blind, like this; and he just happened to catch, by sheer accident, a gasket that was hanging from the jib-boom, and so he saved himself by a hair's breadth. ”

“ From the distance, borne on the gentle breeze, a click as even as a pulse-beat came faintly over the water.
“He may be a good-hearted fellow,” said the Deacon, “but I don't know as I hanker to be the man that's pulling that skiff. But then,—that may be simply and solely because I prefer a hair-cloth rocker to a skiff.”
“Delia,” said David Prince to his wife, one afternoon, “Calvin Green has bought four tickets to that stereopticon show that's going to be in the West Church to-night, and he gave me two, for you and me.” ”

“ Isaacs, “the good wife is the very best jewelry. Those are two dollars. But only study this pair. Hold those up to the light and take a bird's-eye view through those lovely stones, so round and large like green peas. Now look. So! Now let your friend look!”
“I 'm no judge,” said the other man, “I know what pleases me—that's all. But them would make a great display, David, wouldn't they?”
“You 're right, sir,” said Mr. Isaacs. “'Display' is the very word. My wife wear just the twins of this pair to the congregation, every week.” ”

“ So that by day or night you could never be lonesome, unless, perhaps, on some thick night, when you could see no light, and could only hear a grating knell from the bell-buoy, and could seem to see, through the white darkness, the waters washing over its swaying barrel.
There was a good-sized boarded barn, well shingled on the roof, with hay-mows, and with room for two or three cows and a horse and a wagon, and with wide doors “fore and aft,” as the neighbors put it; through its big front door you could look out to sea. ”

“ In the pulpit was the same old-fashioned, bookish man, who, having led his college class, had passed his life in this unknown parish, lost in delight, in his study, in the great Athenian's handling of the presumptuous Glaucon, or simply unfolding parables in his pulpit.
That former night came vividly back to Delia Prince. Through the opening hymn, in which she did not join; through the story of the feast in Simon's house, she was thinking of the time when David told her he had shipped, and she had made up her mind to save a home. ”

“ Don't you care that the money's lost, that you stand there and don't say a word, and look at nothing?”
“I don't want to say anything now,” she said, “I want to think.”
“Well!” said Captain Bennett, the next day, to his wife, “Delia 's got more spunk! I should have felt like laying right down in the shafts, in her place; but instead of that, to actually go and talk them into letting her keep the Cal-lender place and pay for it so much a month! And David's signed a paper to do it.” ”

“ Isaacs, as he took from the show-window three or four cards of plated ear-rings. “I knew you would come in to buy somethings. When I saw you look in—the very first moment—I say to my wife, 'There is a good young man that will give a present to some lovely young lady.' Yes, sir, the very words I said to Sarah.”
“What's the price of this pair? I haven't got any girl to treat, but I 've just got paid off for a whaling voyage, and my lay figured up a twenty-dollar bill above what I expected, and I don't care if I do lay out a couple of dollars on my wife besides what I 've brought home for her.” ”

“ One spring the parson took a notion to raise a pig. So he went down to Jim Barrows, that lived there handy by, and says he, 'Mr. Barrows, I hear you have a litter of young pigs, and I should like to have one to raise.' So Jim he got his stilyards and weighed him out one, and the minister paid him, and Jim he sent it up. Well, the minister kep' it some three months, and he used to go out every day and put on his spectacles and take his scythe down from the apple-tree and mow pig-weed for him, and he bought corn-meal to feed him up with, and one way and another he laid out a good deal on him. ”

“ Isaacs's well-poised mind no morbid fancies arose. “Those hard winters makes me cheerful,” he was wont to say in the fall; “they makes the business lifely.”
Still, Mr. Isaacs was a little troubled this afternoon, and, singularly enough, about a most happy purchase that he had just made, at ninety per cent below value. There the articles lay upon the counter,—a silk hat, a long surtout, a gold-headed cane and a pair of large rubbers; a young man's Derby hat and overcoat and rattan cane, and a pair of arctics; a lady's bonnet and dolman and arctics ”

“ Told me all about the losing of the money, told my wife, told my boy, told Uncle Joe, told our minister, told the Doctor, told Zimri Cobb, told Cyrus Bass, told Captain John Wells, told Patrick Coan; and proves it out to 'em all that 't was the Jew that did it.”
“Kind of zealous, like the Apostle Paul supplying the pulpit to the Gentiles,” said the Deacon; “won't let alone of a man, till he gives in 't the Hebrew's in the wrong.” ”

“ But Uncle Silas gravely shook his head.
“I can't indorse this runnin' in haste,” he said. “I never, in all my experience, knew a man before to buy real estate without sort of goin' up street and talkin' it over, and comparin' notes 'round generally. Now, we could have given him points down here about the Callender place.”
“Oh, he's made a good trade there,” said Captain Bennett.
“That all may be,” said Uncle Silas, “but it 's the principle, not the five cents, I 'm lookin' at. I should have hed more faith in his holdin' out if he hed n't jumped quite so quick. ”

“ Travelling has ever been viewed as a means of education. Thus Athenian sages sought the learning of the Orient. Thus may we this evening, without toil or peril, or expense beyond the fifteen cents already incurred for the admission-fee, journey in spirit from the wild Atlantic to the sunset coast. ”

“ They 're cool ones!”
“Well, right here,—about what my wife flung out,” said Green, glancing over his shoulder to where the women were talking, both at once, woman-fashion; “you know my wife's way,—you haven't ever heard any such talk going round, have you, as that I was hounding folks about your bad luck? I say an honest man speaks right out,—no fear, no favor. Ain't that so?”
It was a bitterly cold, clear night, a few weeks later. Runners squeaked and boot-heels crunched in the road. David had passed Green's house at seven o'clock, going to the store ”

“ You know how a hard sum 'll shake itself out in your head overnight; and I think it's the most natural thing that a man with a A No. I active mind always should feel sort of tired and not know what ails him. George, won't you jes' git up and hand me that pipe—you ain't doin' nothin'.”
“However it was,” said Captain Bennett, “Delia saw that he was drifting to leeward, and she was worried. Well, you know when the reformation set in, that winter, and run crowded houses,—one night in the West Church and the next in the other. One night David surprised his wife by going ”

“ I should say David might have lost it somewhere else.”
Nobody spoke. Captain Bennett whistled softly.
“I never felt so bad in my life,” continued Green, “as I did when he missed his money. When we come up into the depot he was telling me a kind of a comical story about old Jim Torrey, how he wanted to find out if all his hens was laying, or if any of 'em was disposed to shirk, and he got him a pass-book ruled in columns, and opened a ledger account with every hen, by a name he give her; and we got up to the ticket-window, and he put his hand into his breast-pocket for his wallet—by George! ”

“ Isaacs; “I think he would come in if you go outside and take him by de arm like a true frient, and bring him in. My broder Moses walk outside de whole day long, and take each man when he go by and talk to him like his own broder, wid tears in his eyes, and make dem come in and buy somedings.” ”

“ Isaacs, “is there no time to sell our friend Calvin a pair? He will repent not to secure those other pair, until his dying day; so sorry like he lose his ship some day upon those rocks. I suppose there is no others like those in the whole creation.”
But he wrapped the purchase up in a bit of white paper and gave David Prince four trade dollars in change for a ten-dollar bill, and the two men went out, leaving Mr. Isaacs free to attend to a timid woman in black who had just come in to raise fifty cents upon a ring, while Mrs. ”

“ There 's what 's left of five hundred and twenty dollars, and you must make the most of 'em. Hold 'em up to the light and see how handsome they are. I don't know, after all, but they are worth while for a man to pitch overboard off Cape Horn and harpoon whales two years for. ”