By The Sea | Page 7

has excited
his sense of the absurd,--contagious laughter, full of innocent fun.
Then he will appear, perhaps, with his wooden dinner-bucket,--he is
going off with his grandfather for the day,--and will yodel to the old
man as a signal to make haste. Then you will hear him consulting with
some one upon the weather.
All this time he will be going; through various evolutions, swinging in
the hammock, sitting on the fence, opening his bucket to show you
what he has to eat, closing the bucket and sitting down upon the cover,
or turning somersaults upon the grass. Then he will encamp under an
apple-tree to wait until his grandfather appears, enlivening the time by

a score of minute excursions after hens and cats. Then he will go into
the house again, and rock while the old man finishes his coffee, sure of
a greeting, confident in a sense of entire good-fellowship, until the
meal is finished, and James Parsons is ready to take his coat and a
red-bladed oar, and set out. Then the boy is like a setter off for a
walk,--all sorts of whimsical expressions in his face, of absolute delight;
every form of extravagance in his bearing. The only trouble is, one has
to laugh too much; but with all this, something so manly, so
companionable.
He is no little of a philosopher in his way. He has been a great deal
with older people, and has caught the habit of discussion of affairs, or
rather, perhaps, of unconsciously reflecting forth discussions which he
has heard. He has an infinite curiosity upon all matters of human life.
He likes, within limits, to discuss character.
In the boat his chief delights are to talk, to eat cookies, and to steer.
When it is not blowing too hard for him to stand at the tiller, he will
steer for an hour together, watching with the most constant care the
trembling of the leach.
It makes no difference to him at what hour he returns,--from oystering
or from the cranberry-bog. If it is in the middle of the afternoon, good
and well. Instantly upon landing he will collect a troop of urchins; in an
incredibly short space of time there will be a heap of little clothes upon
the bank; in a moment a procession of small naked figures will go
running down to the wharf, diving, one after the other. If distance or
tide or a calm keeps him out late, so much the better. In that case there
is the romance of coasting along the shore by night; of counting and
distinguishing the lights; of guessing the nearness to land from the dull
roar of the sea breaking on the beach. "Don't you think," he will
sometimes say, "that we are nearer shore than we think we are?"
It is amusing sometimes, on a distant voyage of fifteen or twenty miles,
after seed oysters, when a landing is made at some little port, to see him
drop the mariner at once and become a child, with a burning desire to
find a shop where he can buy animal-crackers. Finding such a
place,--and usually it is not difficult,--he will lay in a supply of lions

and tigers, and then go marching about with great delight, with
mockery in his eyes, keenly appreciating the satire involved in eating
the head off a cooky lion, incapable of resistance.
No picture of Joe would be complete which left out his dog. Kit was a
black, fine-haired creature, smaller than a collie, but of much the same
gentle disposition,--a present from Captain Pelham. When Kit was first
presented to the boy he domesticated himself at once, and in a week it
was impossible to tell, from his relations with the household, which
was boy and which was dog. They were both boys and they were both
dogs. Kit had an unqualified sense of being at home, and of being
beloved and indispensable. It was long before he became a sailor.
When, at the outset, it was attempted to make a man of him by taking
him when they went out to fish, the failure seemed to be complete. He
was a little sea-sick. Then he was sad, and sighed and groaned as dogs
never do on shore. He would not lie still, but was nervous and feverish.
Once he leaped out of the boat and made for shore, and had to be
pursued and rescued, exhausted and half-drowned. Still, whenever he
had to be left at home, it was a struggle every time to reconcile him and
leave him. Once he pursued a boat which he mistook for James's along
the shore of the bay, half down to Benson's Narrows, got involved in
the creeks which the tide was beginning to fill, and had