By The Sea | Page 2

all
together, and hove in and hove out; and we altered our fences to suit."
I remember hearing him testify as a witness 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 rôle 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