way, down there by
the sea-wall on a hot day, settin' up agin' a spruce tree admirin' the
lan'scape, with ants an' pitch ekally a-meanderin' over ye."

"Lunette's man-boarder there, the husban', he 's editor of a
noos-sheet, and gits a thousand dollars a year--'tain't believable, but
it's what they say--an' he thinks he knows it all. He got Fluke to
take him out in his boat; he began to direc' Fluke how to do this, an'
how to do that, and squallin' and flyin' at him. Fluke sailed back
with him and sot him ashore. 'When I take a hen in a boat, I'll take a
hen,' says he."

"Did ye hear about Fluke's tradin' cows?"

"No."----

Meanwhile Brother Skates had been standing listening, patient,
interested, but now recovered himself, blushing, in his new rubber
boots.

"Can't one of the Basins start 'He will carry you through'?" he
entreated.

"I'd like to," said one sister, the string of her tongue having been
unloosed in secular flights; "I've got all the dispersition in the
world, Brother Skates, but I don't know the tune."

"It 's better to start her with only jest a good dispersition and no
tune to speak of," said Brother Skates with gentle reproof, "than not
to start her at all."

Thus encouraged the song burst forth, with tune enough and to spare.

It was this I heard--I, a happy adopted dweller, from the lowest
handle-end of the Basin, while driving over through the woods with
Captain Pharo Kobbe and his young third wife and children.

"Come, git up," said Captain Pharo, at the sound, applying the lap of
the reins to the horse; "ye've never got us anywheres yet in time to
hear 'Amen'! Thar 's no need o' yer shyin' at them spiles, ye darned
old fool! Ye hauled 'em thar yourself, yesterday. Poo! poo! Hohum!
Wal--wal--never mind--

[Illustration: Music fragment: 'My days are as the grass. Or as--']

Git up!"

As we alighted at the school-house, we listened through the open panel
with comfort to the final but vociferous refrain of "He will carry you
through," and entered in time to take our seats for the class.

Elder Skates stood with a lesson paper in his hand, from which he asked
questions with painful literalness and adherence to the text.

The audience, having no lesson paper or previous preparation of the
sort, and not daring to enter into these themes with that originality
of thought and expression displayed in their former conversation,
answered only now and then, with the pale air of hitti