By The Sea | Page 2

to a will. It appeared that the testator was sick in bed when he signed the instrument. He was suffering greatly, and when he was to sign, it was necessary to lift him with the ex-tremest care, to turn him to the light-stand. "State what was done next," the lawyer asked of James. "Captain Frost was laying on his left side," said James. "Two of us took a holt of him and rolled him over."
He had probably not the least suspicion that his language had a maritime flavor. I asked him one night, as we coasted along toward home, "What do seafaring men call the track of light that the moon makes on the water? They must have some name for it" "No, no," he said, "they don't have no name for it; they just call it 'the wake of the moon.'"
James's learning had been chiefly gained from the outside world and not from books. I have heard him lay it down as a fact that the word "Bible" had its etymology from the word "by-bill" (hand-bill). "It was writ," he said, "in small parcels, and they was passed around by them that writ 'em, like by-bills; and so when they hove it all into one, they called it the Bible.'"
But while James had little learning himself, he appreciated it highly in others. I had occasion to ask him once why it was that the son of one of his neighbors, in closing up his father's estate, had not settled his accounts regularly in the probate court. "Oh, I know how that was," he replied; "he settled 'em the other way. You see, he went to the college at Woonsocket, and he learned there how to settle accounts the other way: and that's the way he settled 'em." And then he added, "When Alvin left the college, they giv' him a book that tells how to do all kinds of business, and what you want to do so's to make money; and Alvin has always followed them rules. The consequence is, he's made money, and what he 's made, he 's kep' it. I suppose he's worth not less than sixteen hundred dollars."
Sometimes he would venture a remark of a gallant nature. "They don't generally git the lights in the hall so as to suit me," he once said. "I don't want it too light, because then it hurts my eyes; but I want it light enough so as 't I can see the women!"
James was a large, strong man, but Mrs. Parsons, although she was little and slight, and was always ailing, constantly assumed the r?le of her husband's nurse and protector, not only in household matters, but in other affairs of life. Whenever she had visitors,--and she and James were hospitable in the extreme,--she was pretty sure to end up, sooner or later, if James were present, with some droll criticism of him, as much to his delight as to hers.
James sometimes liked to affect a certain harshness of demeanor; but the disguise was a transparent one. How well do I remember the time--oh, so long ago!--when for some reason or other I happened to have his boat instead of my own, one day, with one of the boys of the village, to go to Matamet, twelve miles off, to visit certain lobster-pots which we had set. We were delayed there by breaking our boom, in jibing. We should have been at home at noon; at seven in the evening we were not yet in sight. When we got in, rather crestfallen at our disaster, particularly as the boat was wanted for the next day, James met us at the pier. We were boys then, and his tongue was free. As he stood there on the shore, bare-headed, hastily summoned from his house, with his hair blowing in the wind, waving his hands and addressing first us and then a knot of men who stood smoking by, no words of censure were too harsh, no comment on our carelessness too cutting, no laments too keen over the irreparable loss of that particular boom. The next time I could take my own boat, if I were going to get cast away. And I remember well how he ended his tirade. "I did n't care nothing about you two," he said. "If you want to git drownded, git drownded; it ain't nothing to me. All I was afraid of was that you 'd gone and capsized my boat, and would n't never turn up to tell where you sunk her. But as for you--" and he laughed a laugh of heartless indifference.
But ten minutes later, and right before his face, at his own front gate, Mrs. Parsons betrayed him. "I never see father so worried," she said, "sence the time